<p>4:14 <i>Having then a great high priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession</i>- He endured our nature and temptations <i>so that</i> He might be an empathetic High Priest (consider the implications of Heb. 2:10,17; 4:14,15; 5:1,2); the Lord was fully consecrated as High Priest after His death, and it was then that He began to be the sympathetic, understanding High Priest which the Hebrew letter speaks of. The fact that He knows so thoroughly our feelings here and now, especially our struggles for personal righteousness, should <i>of itself</i> encourage our awareness of and relationship with Him. &nbsp;</p><p>The continuity between the mortal, human Jesus and the exalted Lord of all which He became on His ascension is brought out quite artlessly in Heb. 4:14: &ldquo;Our great high priest, who has passed through the heavens&rdquo;. The picture is of &ldquo;this same Jesus&rdquo;, the man on earth, passing through all heavens to &lsquo;arrive&rsquo; at the throne of God Himself to mediate for us there. His ascension to Heaven was viewed physically like this by the disciples, and is expressed here in that kind of language of physical ascent, to bring home to us the continuity between the man Jesus on earth, and the exalted Lord now in Heaven itself. The allusion is also to the Jewish idea of there being many 'heavens'; whether there were or not, Paul's idea is that the Lord has passed through them all. The same Jesus who was once here is now there; He who once experienced temptation can thereby strengthen us in our temptations. We need to realize that nobody can be tempted by that which holds no appeal; the Lord Jesus must have seen and reflected upon sin as a possible course of action, even though He never took it. And for the same reason, several New Testament passages (e.g. 1 Tim. 2:5) call the exalted Lord Jesus a &ldquo;man&rdquo;- even now. Let&rsquo;s not see these passages merely as theological problems for |Trinitarians. The wonder of it all is that Jesus after His glorification is still in some sense human. He as &ldquo;the pioneer of our faith&rdquo; shows us the path to glory, a glory that doesn&rsquo;t involve us becoming somehow superhuman and unreal.</p>