The sermon preached on the evening of Sunday 20th August was on Hebrews 5: 8 - 9 in which Rev James MacIver dealt with the topic of Christ's obedience.

He opened by referring to Acts 20:28, in which God's church is said to have been 'obtained with His own blood' and pointed out that it would be wrong to try to explain away such remarkable statements for fear of losing something of their impact. We must, however, remember that this is still God that is being described here as having shed blood.

Hebrews 5: 8 makes the same kind of startling impression. The 'son' here mentioned is Jesus; Jesus is God and, therefore, God learned obedience. This is worth pausing over because, not only does it surprise the believer to read that the omniscient God had anything to learn, but even more remarkable is the fact that what He learned was obedience.

He learned obedience in the person of the Son - not the Father, or the Holy Spirit - though He was still God.

Of course, this obedience was something which was learned during and through the incarnation. He came, in the florist place, to be a servant of the Father or, as Hebrews 10:5 - 7 puts it, 'I have come to do your will, o God'.

It was His purpose to do the will of the Father and it is in that light that we must understand His learning process. We know that He was sinless and so did not l;earn as mankind does, by making mistakes, or failing and then having to make up the deficiency. Rather, He learned obedience through being obedient. We see, for example, that when His parents found Him about His Father's business in the temple, He went home with them and was 'subject to them', like any minor is subject to His parents.

This, however, does not mean that His obedience was a static, finished thing from the moment of His birth. As Jesus' trials increased, so the obedience required of Him had to keep pace - and they did.

His life might be said to have reached the apex of obedience on the cross. Three times in the book of Matthew, Jesus prays regarding His forthcoming crucifixion. One can trace the mounting obedience which seems to grow through a deepening of His understanding through these three prayers.

First, He prays, 'if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will'. Then, the second time, the prayer changes subtly, 'My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, your will be done'. His third prayer is the same and He then has established His Father's will and goes to accomplish what He was sent to do. In fact, He accepted the cup and drank until it was dry.

All faculties of His human nature were perfectly obedient, but as more and more was asked of Him, that obedience rose to meet the challenge. In that sense, He could be said to have learned obedience through, or in, His suffering.

In doing His Father's will, Jesus Christ became our fully-qualified Saviour and the author of eternal salvation. He suffered a spiritual death first on our behalf and then the physical one.

Because of this, He deserves our obedience. It is impossible to separate the obedience of the Saviour from the obedience of the saved. Once you believe and see what He has done, failure to obey Him is tantamount to saying that He has not done enough to deserve your faithfulness.

The Lord commands our obedience because He has a right to it in the sense of having more than earned it, but also in the way that He compels us to come to the Lord's Supper, using words like 'come', 'eat', 'drink' and 'do this in remembrance of me'.

Nonetheless, we are not forced against our will. When we obey His command to 'come', it is because we love Him who first loved us and are delighted to respond as we ought to His gracious command. As David Livingstone put it, 'If a commission from an earthly king is considered an honour, how can a commission by our Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?'

Ultimately, we are not saved because of our obedience: we are saved because of His obedience. However, we cannot be saved without being obedient and when we are, that is the fruit of Jesus Christ's obedience to the Father. Our obedience to Christ is inseparable from our faith in Him.

Chapter 13: 12 - 14 of Hebrews says, 'So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through His own blood. Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp and bear the reproach He endured.'

In the Lord's Supper, that is exactly the Jesus who is before us: the source of our salvation, suffering outside the gate, being crucified for our sake's. When we know what He has done for us, how can we not go to where He is and bear His reproach with Him, even as he bore ours alone?