HIGH
PRIEST, SYMPATHY OF

THERE are plenty of women who have gone through the labor of childbirth. Many women have had a male doctor to deliver their baby. A male doctor can understand everything that his patient is going through. He can know what is supposed to happen during childbirth and what he needs to do to take care of the mom and facilitate the birth of the baby. In other words, he has the power to deliver the baby. But he doesn’t have the ability to feel the pain.

He can see a mother struggling with the pain, but he can’t experience it. He can hear the groans and functionally and informationally come to the aid of a laboring mom, but he can’t say to the mother that he knows how she feels.

Now, some women have their babies delivered by a female doctor who is also a mother. She can do what the male doctor did informationally. She can do what the male doctor did medically. She can do what the male doctor did in terms of proficiency of labor and delivery. But she can also do something else. She can empathize with her patient and let the laboring mom know that she has been there too and can feel her pain.

The female doctor can do what the male doctor can do plus something more. She can sympathize and understand what it is to cry when there is no epidural. She can sympathize and understand what it is to be frustrated when the baby is taking awhile to make its way down the birth canal. She can sympathize and understand what it is to be angry with a husband in the midst of the pain. She can sympathize because she’s been there.

In the same way, because of Jesus Christ, we have a Great High Priest who not only is a doctor and can deliver, but who has been where we are and can understand what we are going through.451

[Jesus; Circumstances, Understanding]

1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 4:15