Humans have limits, and the Great Society did not acknowledge those limits. It did not look evil. But in fact, arrogance that denies limits is deeply evil.

Like you, I’m busy. I’m a pastor with a sermon to write and a flock to tend. Why did I read a 400-page book about the history of 1960s America? Shouldn’t I read, instead, about our own turbulent times?
My answer to that question might not lead you to read Amity Shlaes’s Great Society: A New History.[1] However, I hope it will inspire you to become more familiar with the vision of some of our fellow Americans during this period, a vision that they dubbed “The Great Society”—a program, like so many other grand schemes, that failed to live up to its name. Some truly great legislation came from this era, but enmeshed within them came much damaging legislation as well.[2] As Shlaes reminds us, “Nothing is new, just forgotten.”[3] Or as Solomon put it, “There’s nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9).
So, what was The Great Society? Why did it fail? And what must we learn from it? That is the question that this review essay attempts to answer as it follows and interacts with the story Shlaes tells of this epoch. It is a tornado siren for our own day. Those who care deeply about justice in our day will care deeply about the weather conditions that caused so much systemic wreckage for the precious people with whom justice is concerned.
Truly, Shlaes offers a cautionary tale for our compassionate nation.
This essay is a Christian exercise in stewarding history’s lessons in love for neighbor. This is a pastoral exercise in guarding the church from faulty visions of both humanity and heaven. It’s long, but only because this is a long-neglected subject. We have heard much over the last decade—from politicians and pastors alike—about the legacy of slavery in the form of a straight line from American’s founding to Jim Crow to the present as an explanation for real problems in America. Americans at our best are concerned to get our history right for the sake of doing right by our neighbors today. But what about that period we call “The Sixties” that was filled with programs and projects designed to eradicate poverty and racism? And why do we hear so little about these dramatic political efforts and their outcomes? Why is this so, especially given that their aims are the aims of modern justice movers and shakers today?
If you care about justice, about the poor, and about the lingering effects of slavery, then come with me on this journey into our country’s more recent history.
The Legacy of Slavery or the Legacy of Liberalism?
An exchange between columnists back in 2014 piqued my interest in this period. Nicholas Kristof, in his New York Times piece titled “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” writes the following: “The presumption on the part of so many well-meaning white Americans [is] that racism is a historical artifact. They don’t appreciate the overwhelming evidence that centuries of racial subjugation still shape inequity in the 21st century.”[4] Racists have existed and do exist. No problem with this claim. But Kristof says more: that present inequities are shaped by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, by past and enduring racism, both personal and systemic.
Thomas Sowell sees the same situation differently: “If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state.”[5] The title of his piece was his thesis, “A Legacy of Liberalism.” According to Sowell, “Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and ‘war on poverty’ programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began . . . from the laws and policies of the 1960s, nothing comparable happened economically. And there were serious retrogressions socially.”[6]
This resonated with me.
Cabrini-Green Homes, the public housing project just outside my window in downtown Chicago when I was a college student in the late nineties, was by then notorious for crime and violence. “The Projects”—Whose idea was that? And what precisely did they expect to achieve by building these inner city monoliths?
My father, then a district manager for a retail chain in St. Louis, was awakened many nights by the police due to break-ins at his stores in East St. Louis. What was the backstory for that “bad part of town”? Later, when I sold cell phones to fund my years as a seminary student, I encountered different cultures in different stores, each with their own admirable qualities and predictable sins. Upper-middle-class folks worked hard but frequently asked to split their accounts following a divorce. Rural folks frequently needed new phones for a child returning from Afghanistan or else for a man in the home who lost his phone in another drunken fishing incident. Then there were the black urban poor, many lovely individuals and loving mothers. In this community, however, few were married, “baby daddies” were a daily thing, and there was a refrain in the context of selling: “I’m waiting on my check,” that is, a government check. This was a cultural norm. More than the rest, this part of town felt stuck, trapped, downtrodden.
As statistics will show, not all blacks are stuck. Not hardly. The community I encountered does not characterize the whole of blacks in America, an important clarification. Today 82% of black Americans are above the poverty line despite only 30% being married.[7] 94% of black married couples are above the poverty line.[8] That we hear so much about black poverty is owing more to political rhetoric that exploits poor urban blacks, painting this subculture as the state of blacks as a whole. The dynamics I explore in this essay apply equally to whites and blacks, a point Shlaes makes.[9] The difference is that one group’s poor are exploited for political and social gain and the other are not.
For that downtrodden part of town in my sales experience, it did seem that something structural was going on—something systemic that shaped cultures and the precious individuals embedded within them. But I did not resonate with Kristof’s take in the New York Times.
What were these “war on poverty” programs Sowell wrote of, and how were they related to the passage of the civil rights laws of the 1960s? What were these “serious retrogressions,” and what might they have to do with “the liberal welfare state,” as Sowell claims? Sowell’s own body of work has been helpful on these questions, especially in the realm of researched statistics.[10]
But what is the story behind these stats, these policies? Who were the personalities involved in them? Why did the American public embrace them? What might all of this have to do with the “legacy of slavery” and the various disparities we see today?
Shlaes’s book Great Society tells that story.
This is the story not of cruel people, but in Shlaes’s words, “lovable people who, despite themselves, hurt those they loved.”[11]
At the start of the 1960s the country was affluent. That’s the first word that describes America at the start of the decade. The post-war American industries stood head and shoulders above those of other countries. The sharpest contrast was in the automotive industry. That a small Japanese company like Toyota could ever be competitive in the US was not on even the shrewdest industry leader’s mind. The American middle class thrived, work was in demand, and jobs paid well. If you weren’t skilled, a company would train you and then employ you. Young people growing up at this time had a different perspective than their parents who grew up during the Great Depression. Poverty was the exception rather than the rule. Add to this America’s recent industrial and managerial achievements in the Second World War and you have a generation marked by a second word: confidence. This was an optimistic generation. America could do anything and in particular, the United States government could do anything. Trust in government was high and so were hopes in the possibilities of government. We hear it in Kennedy’s words at Rice University on the Nation’s space effort in 1962: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”[12] This affluence and confidence made for a generation intrigued with socialism. Sound familiar?
The New Deal era programs of the 1930s failed to address the economic depression, leading to a truly Great Depression.[13] The Second World War pulled the country out of its economic plight. But those failures had faded just enough for a renewed optimism in big-government solutions.
The 60s were also dominated by ambition, a third word for the era that stirred popular intrigue with socialism to political action. This was a moral ambition, ambition for a cause, ambition with “a fierce urgency of now.”[14] The Great Depression era had its great crisis to overcome, and the World War II generation accomplished a truly great feat overseas. What great achievement might this generation undertake? If that wasn’t on the mind of average Americans, it was certainly on the mind of their political leaders. President Lyndon B. Johnson answered that question with what he called “The Great Society.”
What Was the Great Society?
We can answer that question from six angles: legal, historical, religious, political, sociological, and economic. This is not the outline for Shlaes’s book, which works across the sixties chronologically. Her story dramatizes the events of this period and humanizes its many characters. I commend it to you. This here is my attempt to synthesize what I learned from her narrative account.
1. Legally, the Great Society was Lyndon Johnson’s sweeping domestic legislative agenda to eliminate poverty and racial disparities.
Yes, that’s exactly what it was. This was in an era before the loss of trust in the government that makes that kind of legislative ambition sound hollow. In fact, it was in part the great failure of these promises that explains our present cynicism. But make no mistake: this is what they set out to do by legislation.
This package of legislative initiatives created new federal programs and whole agencies to help Americans in nearly every area of life: education, housing, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation, including bussing for school integration.
In her narrative history, Shlaes spends most of her volume tracing the personalities around the President during this time—aids, fed chairmen, famed economists, and union bosses. The mingling of genuine altruistic motives and blinding political ambition—often in the same characters—is a study of human nature and the nature of government. Among this cast of characters, President Johnson, as one of his aids put it, “made laws the way other men eat chocolate chip cookies.”[15] That was his expertise from the Senate. That’s what he became famous for in the White House. The sheer amount of legislation passed during this period was unparalleled.
2. Historically, the Great Society was an ambitious moniker reflecting that period’s mindset: confidence in what government could do and should do.
“Let’s not alleviate poverty; let’s cure it,”[16] President Johnson stridently and repeatedly insisted. He meant it. America after the Second World War was confident in its federal government. So too were government officials. Lyndon Johnson wanted to expand government in a way that eclipsed Roosevelt’s transformative presidency, but Johnson did not have Roosevelt’s crises: economic depression and war. Johnson, rather, had affluence. Things were not just going well for Americans, but exceptionally well. Johnson’s challenge, then, was to generate a sense of urgency for America to see it go well for everyone—literally.[17] His legacy as president—and the legacy of those whose careers were bound to his presidency—depended on such grand plans.
A “good society” would not do. He rejected that suggestion.[18] He insisted, rather, on a “Great Society,” and this became his rallying cry. America had already organized itself to finish a war overseas. Winning the war on poverty, it was said, would be a “mopping up action.”[19] This war, like any war, would be a job for the federal government. They were not sloganeering. They really were that optimistic in the power and precision of government planning.
3. Religiously, the Great Society was the expression of the nation’s collective human and religious—even Christian-informed—impulse to do something good for those who are hurting.
This legislative vision did not emerge in a vacuum. Johnson’s vision was a continuation of what President Kennedy pursued before him, in part, and what President Nixon continued after him. In his own time, it was marketable as the political expression of the human desire to help those in need, a good desire shaped by America’s Christian roots.
It was President Kennedy who by executive order established the Peace Corps, headed by Yale-grad and decorated officer Sargent Shriver. Shriver became President Johnson’s poverty czar, the principal architect of his “War on Poverty,” and head of the Office for Economic Opportunity. Along with many Americans, Shriver believed that what the church already did for the poor, the federal government could and should do through its programs.[20] To a national conscience informed by its Christian heritage, this just seemed right.
4. Politically, the Great Society was a political project with all the incentives and complexities intrinsic to politics.
Political motivations and incentives abounded. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society vision was curious on the heels of Kennedy’s death. Lyndon Johnson to that point was known for his opposition to civil rights legislation.[21] Johnson wanted to exceed the accomplishments of his predecessor, President Kennedy. This was something of a political imperative given that the House and the Senate went to Democrats following Kennedy’s assassination. He must do more. But he also wanted to best his intellectual and political father, President Roosevelt, and his New Deal. What Roosevelt did in creating infrastructure jobs to supposedly energize the economy, Johnson intended to do with the influx of cash to impoverished communities. Johnson expected these communities to begin to work, to contribute, and to join the rest of their American peers in their share of affluence. Without the crisis of a depression, Johnson leveraged the crisis of Kennedy’s death to move on this apparent political opportunity.[22] He forwarded this vision on a wave of empathy and optimism. As they said, Roosevelt had his “New Deal,” and Johnson had his “Fast Deal.” But had it, he did.[23]
A lawmaker by trade, Johnson was more attentive to legislative inputs and intentions than he was to results. Laws—and the promises they held out—were the goal. The more the better. Not so much the outcomes. As the war in Vietnam became complicated and politically costly, neither Johnson nor his successor, Richard Nixon, could afford politically to go back on these promises. The Great Society had to move forward no matter the results. The priority of winning elections consumed and compromised even the most principled economists and advisors at the time to such an embarrassing extent that many later acknowledged their complicity.[24]
5. Sociologically, the Great Society institutionalized America’s commitment to a desegregated society.
The Great Society was an expansive vision that merged ambitions and political visions beyond an interest in helping the poor. In one of his famous speeches, Johnson, who was fashioned as the “Great Emancipator” of the twentieth century, said, “We’ve got to find a way to let Negroes get what most white folks already have.” He continued, “Freedom is not enough. You do not take a person who has been hobbled by chains and put him at the starting line of a race and say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others.’” What the nation needed was, “equality as a fact and equality as a result.”[25]
Thomas Sowell, a young economist at the time, disagreed: “To expect civil rights to solve our economic and social problems was barking up the wrong tree.”[26] Blacks, for all the gains they had remarkably made, were nevertheless underdeveloped and, for that reason, genuinely and understandably discouraged.[27] Much to the embarrassment of whites and blacks, reading scores were significantly lower among blacks. From Sowell’s perspective, the black community should have turned away from counting on political leaders to change their circumstances and toward an investment in “our own self-development as a people.”[28] As Sowell has demonstrated in his own research, this is how any formerly-oppressed group rises out of the developmental consequences of their oppression.
In this attempt to compensate the black community, Johnson went further than the vision to which Martin Luther King Jr. rallied a generation in his early speeches. He went further than the call for equal treatment before the law, further than seeing that the children of the civil rights era were treated “according to the content of their character.”[29] Instead, Johnson wanted a policy of redistribution to make up for what was lost in the black community’s development under oppressive laws. Not only was school segregation outlawed—a good thing—but mandated school integration required that students be bussed from one part of town to another, a bad decision, as we’ll see.
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Joshua’s call to Israel was urgent: “choose this day whom you will serve” (Josh. 24:15). For us today, this remains an urgent and timely summons to choose the Lord. What’s the difference between them and us? Do we have any hope of choosing the Lord? Because of Jesus, yes, we do. Joshua brought the people into the land of God’s presence, but he could not bring them out of rebellion. Jesus is our new Joshua, a better Savior who brings a better salvation. 

And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
Moving On or Moving In?
Joshua 24:15 is what we might call a kitchen calendar verse. It’s short, pithy, inspiring, and it’s God’s Word. On the one hand, we might lift this verse from the context of the book and attempt to live on it devoid of its broader story. Alternatively, as we grow in the knowledge of the Scriptures, we might “move on” from such famous phrases into the deeper things of God.
Perhaps there is a better way than either living on or, alternatively, moving on from verses like this. How about moving into them? Verses like these are a doorway into the message of the book, an entry at a high point of the story with all its tension and drama. So, let’s walk through the door of this verse to witness God’s grace to us in the story of Joshua, for it is, after all, the story of our salvation.
This verse comes to us in the course of Joshua’s final speech before he dies, a speech given to the whole congregation of Israel. A high point indeed! What did this passage mean for the original hearers? What did it mean for the original readers? What does it mean for us?
A Call to Serve
On the surface, Joshua issues a call to his hearers to serve the Lord in the land by means of his own example and resolve.
Service is, after all, the goal of the exodus, expressed many times over in Moses’s confrontation with Pharaoh. We’re familiar with the first part of his charge, “Let my people go,” but must remember what he said next: “. . . that they may serve me” (Ex. 4:23; 7:16; 8:1). What is more, Joshua’s generation lives not only on the other side of the Red Sea but in the land promised to Abraham.
Thus, the people standing before Joshua have every reason to serve the Lord. Not only have they seen his wonders, but Joshua has recounted and interpreted these wonders for them.
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We don’t argue that preaching and pastoring is for qualified men in order throw water on the zealous young woman who has a knack for understanding the Bible. If our young daughters ask, ‘Can I be a pastor?’ Our answer doesn’t stop at “no,” as if we’ve just clipped some wings. Rather, our answer is to explain that God has so composed the church body in his divine wisdom such that her gifts are to be used in a thousand possible constructive and upbuilding ways, but that God has the particular task of pastoring and preaching for qualified men. We want to direct God’s people to the God-ordained avenues that will bring most blessing to the church, the most flourishing to men and women, and the most glory to God—precisely because we trust him.

What are we to tell our young daughters when they ask, “Can I be a pastor?” Or when they’re a bit older and ask, “Why can’t women be pastors?” Wouldn’t it be nice for our girls not only to know God’s answer but also to understand and embrace his reasons? Here’s another scenario: you’re on a plane with a business partner when a youngster a seat away says, “My mommy is a pastor.” Your colleague asks, “Can women be pastors at your church?” That’s similar to the situation a member of my church was in just recently.
These are realistic scenarios and real people. These are also understandable questions.
In our age, women do many of the same things that men do. While trash collectors and plumbers are mostly men, men and women often work side-by-side in sales or management or hospitality. There are a few reasons for this apparent interchangeability of the sexes. Our economy in America is based on knowledge-work and depends less on the physical body, where differences between men and women are obvious and pronounced. Reproductive ethics aside, medical technology means that we also have less children to bear and nurture. The world around us also assumes a given of equality between the sexes in virtually every way. For these reasons, to teach that pastoring and preaching are reserved for qualified men may seem arbitrary at best or cruel and dismissive (even abusive) at worst. Whatever we make of the reasons for the ordering of the sexes in our modern world, this is the context we inhabit.
This month’s theme at Christ Over All emerges in a context of vigorous debate among evangelical Christian leaders concerning the merits of various biblical arguments for and against women serving as pastors and preachers. This is a time for scrutinizing arguments for the sake of truth and the church, which is in fact the pillar and buttress of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). But this is also a time for clear, concise, and compelling words to church members and friends so that they may see the truth as beautiful, reasonable, and good.
That’s the contribution I mean to make among the articles offered this month at Christ Over All. Here are concise and conversational responses to seven popular arguments for women pastors and preachers. These answers are written to poke holes in the egalitarian beachball, that pie chart we introduced earlier this month displaying the frequency of these arguments in a current debate raging among Southern Baptists. It’s the nature of hole-poking that not everything is getting said, but just enough to hopefully move the hearer in the right direction. This is also why I’ve linked these answers to pieces published earlier this month that address these and similar questions in article-length treatments.
Concise Responses to Seven Arguments for Female Pastors and Preachers
Let’s get on the plane together and pick up that conversation with our seatmate. We’ve just heard a little girl introduce her mom as a pastor. A discussion kicks off when our seatmate offers up a simple question, and then another, and then another. By considering our responses to these questions in this imagined (and less heated) setting, we will gain wisdom for conversations of every kind, from elder meeting discussions to convention floor debates.
1. Doesn’t the Bible teach that women can pastor and preach?
This is a good question. This question starts in the right place, with the Bible. It esteems pastoring and preaching as honorable. I’m also glad for the opportunity to answer it, as many are confused and curious about what the Bible says. Having said that, no, this is not what the Bible teaches. I assume you are talking about the office of pastor/elder, and the work of teaching and preaching when the church gathers.
Maybe you have heard of instances in Scripture of a woman teaching—even correcting—a man in private (Acts 18:26), or of how women were the first to testify to the resurrection of Jesus and did so to men (Matt. 28:8). Or perhaps you’ve heard that every church member speaks God’s Word to each other (Eph. 4:15). All of that is wonderfully true. But none of these instances actually describe the authoritative monologue given to an audience from Scripture that is preaching. Furthermore, we actually have passages written directly at this specific question. These passages are clear: the roles of pastoring and preaching are reserved for qualified men.
Where does the Bible teach this and, importantly, why? The Apostle Paul instructs Timothy, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12). Some attempt to deny the force of this passage by saying that Paul restricts teaching to men because of something specific to the first century culture. The argument usually goes like this: the Apostle Paul prohibits only uneducated women from preaching; but if they just got educated, then the prohibition no longer exists. Some argue, alternatively, that feminism overran Ephesus (the city where Paul wrote 1 Timothy) so that Paul was offering a corrective for that cultural context alone, but not ours. Paul, however, roots his argument not in culture but in creation; he grounds his prohibition by saying, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim. 2:13, 14). By grounding his argument in creation, Paul’s argument cannot be bound to the first-century, but rather it applies to all men and women across cultures.
As we might expect, in the very next passage, Paul outlines qualifications for the office of pastor (also called an elder or overseer): “The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Tim. 3:1, emphasis mine). Paul assumes that this office of elder—an office that that includes public teaching and shepherding—is for qualified men only (see also 1 Tim. 3:2).
All of this sounds restrictive, but in truth it is freeing. Here’s what this means: men and women are made in God’s image. In that way, they are the same. Yet they bear God’s image as men and women, to reflect his glory in ways inflected according to their gender. These roles assigned by God correspond to his design for men and women not only in his creation, but also among his redeemed new creation people, the church.
This may seem odd to us, but that is because our world is at odds with God’s design for men and women.
2. Don’t churches that restrict women from pastoring and preaching actually protect male hierarchies that oppress women?
We can imagine that this evil motive restricts the roles of women in some places, just as all good authority can be misused. Where that is the case, however, the answer is not for women to assume the roles of men. Rather, the answer is for both women and men to fulfill their biblical roles. Men who oppress women are not being true to the servant-hearted masculinity God calls them to. And pastors who oppress women are directly disobeying their charge of “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:3). These are unfaithful pastors.
In the home, a true man and husband provides for and protects his family. He leads with love and consideration. He uses his authority for the good of his family. But if a husband abuses his wife, the answer is not for the wife to become a husband! The answer is for the husband to be a real man and to actually husband—and not hurt—his wife. So it is in the church. In fact, the Apostle Paul drew on these broadly understood household relationships to instruct on roles within the church, or what he calls “the household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15). Hence, a pastor “must manage his own household well . . . for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Tim. 3:4). This is another reason that the role of pastor is reserved for men. In the household of God, pastors are the men of the house.
In the same way that it is not possible for the wife to become a husband no matter what she may call herself, so it is impossible for a woman to become a pastor, biblically understood. As there are realms of authority in the home, so there are in the church, with one clarification: in the household of God, God is the father, the chief caregiver and authority. It is his household. And in his household, every sister has “elder” brothers, pastors who care for these women and provide for and protect the whole family.
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Jesus is our qualified and compelling great high priest. The Son became human not only to identify with us and represent us, but to intercede for us as one who can personally relate with us. Gethsemane is not only a moment of consecration for Jesus but of connection with us. He understands. He sympathizes. He has been there.

Jesus understands what we are going through. That’s one reason for the incarnation. It’s also a surprising lesson I’ve learned preaching through the book of Hebrews.
I decided to preach through Hebrews, in part, for its message to the church concerning apostacy. We live in an age of de-conversion and de-construction. That language may be new, but apostacy, as we used to call it, is an age-old problem. The author of Hebrews addresses this problem directly and severely.
The severe warnings of Hebrews have shocked me afresh, but they have not surprised me. There are some puzzles to work out with some of the terminology and imagery, sure. But once those issues are resolved, the warnings against falling away, however hard to hear, are to be expected. They are consistent with Jesus’ teaching and with the Apostles.
Here’s what I did not expect to find: an equally direct message concerning the sympathy of Jesus Christ. In fact, I am convinced that a primary way in which God keeps us from falling away is by communicating to us his profound and personal understanding of the very temptations and troubles that might otherwise lead us to leave him. The message of Hebrews, then, should not only properly scare us about falling away, but soften us to stay close to him, for he understands what we are going through.
I have it on good biblical grounds that you are suspicious of this claim, which I will explain later. My primary objective, though, is to overcome that suspicion so that you might stay faithful to the incarnate Son.
Priestly Sympathy is Greater Than Prophetic Warnings
It is true that the author returns five times to warn us against falling away (2:1–4; 3:7–4:13; 5:11–6:12; 10:19–39; 12:14–29). On a first reading, we might summarize the message of the book with the words, “Don’t fall away!” But that would not be enough to keep us from doing so. The strategy of the author of Hebrews is not to arrest our attention with warnings for their own sake. Rather, the author warns us so that he might gain a hearing for a message that will keep us from falling away. That message concerns Jesus’ priesthood, the subject of his argument which runs from 5:1–10:18.
While there is much to say about the priesthood of Jesus, two observations have convinced me that Christ’s sympathy for us is central to that message and therefore an essential help for our endurance.
First, the author frames his message with an emphasis on the sympathy of Christ.
On either side of his extended argument concerning Jesus’ priesthood, the author summarizes his overall message. Here’s the first and more concise of those two summaries:
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.(Heb. 4:14–16)
This is the first and only time in the New Testament that Jesus is called “a great high priest.” What makes Jesus’s high priesthood so great? He is a great high priest because of where he has gone for us, into heaven. But crucially, we must understand that Jesus is a great high priest because of where he has been for us. That’s what makes his heavenly ascent our earthly good. It would not be good for our sake if Jesus passed into heaven without having first passed through the temptations common to humanity.
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