Hebrews 3:1-2 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house.
The author now reaches a point of applying his idea to the readers. This is seen in two ways. First is the “therefore,” which functions as a pause and application in Hebrews. The second is “consider Jesus.” Basically, the author is saying, since Jesus has become one with us in suffering and temptation, then we need to think more seriously about him and why he came. Since Jesus became fully human, we need to dig deeper into our understanding of him (“Christology”) and 1) not turn away from him towards other believes or abandon our faith in him and 2) grow in our understanding of the claims the Bible makes about him. These are two key points the author will discuss in the several chapters. Sharing in the “heavenly calling” refers to the call of salvation to which the readers had responded. They had heard the gospel and accepted it, but they had confusion about the deeper aspects of it and were tempted to turn away from it possibly because of this confusion. It is crucial that new believers be led into deeper understanding of the Bible to confirm their faith.
The first things in our deeper consideration of Jesus is that he is called the “apostle and priest of our confession.” As apostle, he brought the message of God’s love. “Apostle” is one who has been sent forth with a message. He also functions as our high priest who represents us to God and God to us. Paul calls Jesus the mediator in 1 Timothy 2:5, which is a similar idea. One thing that qualifies Jesus to serve in these two roles is because he was faithful to the Father, “who appointed him.” Jesus did not disobey or turn away from his calling, even to the point of suffering death on a cross. Jesus gives us an example to follow here. When we face different trials and temptations, we should not turn away either. We have one who walks with us and who will not abandon us before God, for that is what ultimately counts. We have another example in Moses. Moses was possibly the greatest mediator in the Old Testament. He served as the go between for Israel and God. Moses remained faithful to his calling, although he had a few failures along the road (particularly the incident when he disobediently struck the rock for water in Numbers 20:1-13). The author compares Jesus to Moses and show that Jesus is even greater than the greatest Old Testament hero.
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