Here’s a perfect opportunity to think about the Perfect One being made perfect. What?
Let me spend one more session on the grain offering, specifically the cakes baked by fire, because I think it helps us with a very challenging idea. The writer to the Hebrews declares: “It was fitting for Him…in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Heb 2:10). Christ made perfect through suffering? Wasn’t He always perfect? Let’s think about the process of baking. We take a cake mix, blend the ingredients, and put the batter into the oven. Why? As far as the ingredients are concerned, what we put into the oven is what comes out. But something has changed. The baking process makes it possible to enjoy the finished cake. The same was true for the “cakes of fine flour mixed with oil” (v 4). What went into the oven? Flour and oil. And what came out? Flour and oil. But now they were cakes! After a “memorial portion” was offered to the Lord, “what is left of the grain offering shall be Aaron’s and his sons’” (vv 9-10). In a similar way, our Lord was perfect going into His sufferings, as well as when He came through them. Yet something happened. So, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author [Gk., archegos] and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls” (Heb 12:1-3). In order to bring “many sons to glory,” the perfect Son became the perfect “captain [archegos] of their salvation” by suffering in such a way that we can feed on those sufferings and gain strength in the face of our own tests and heartaches.