Hebrews 5:7-10
In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard for His godly fear. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered; and being made perfect He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
A common conception of deity from ancient Mesopotamia to the present is one of a god immune from suffering, a god who in fact enjoys inflicting suffering just for the heck of it. When we speak, even today, of somebody who is “godlike” we generally mean, not their character, but their olympian power to do whatever they like without feeling the consequences. That definition of “godlike” marks the distance between popular culture and biblical revelation. For in Scripture, it is the willingness to bear the cross, not to wield invincible and dispassionate power, that is the mark of true godlikeness. And it is something that can only be seen (and lived) with the grace and help of the Crucified One, who not only died a cross death, but lived a cross life. Today, ask for His help to take up the cross and to bear suffering as God Incarnate did.
