Jesus, our representative

Hebrews is a really challenging book. Two parts stuck out to me (always two!).

1 Every high priest is a man chosen to represent other people in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers sacrifices for their sins. 2 And he is able to deal gently with ignorant and wayward people because he himself is subject to the same weaknesses. 3 That is why he must offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as theirs.

and

7 While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. 8 Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. 9 In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him

I have always had a hard time understanding why Jesus had to die. If God is all powerful and if God is merciful, why would anyone have to die for him to forgive us?

I know this idea won't be popular with most people, but maybe Jesus had to die because God, despite being all powerful and all knowing (or maybe because of it), is incapable of understanding people. Really understanding them, I mean. He might know everything we think and see all our motivations, but he cannot, in his perfection, emphasize with us.

But Jesus is our heavenly High Priest. He acts as both our representative before God and as the one who deals gently with us. And he can do this because he lived among us and was one of us. Even though he lived a perfect life free of sin, Jesus experience human emotions and human passions. He experienced love, despair, rage, hesitation, and friendship. Because of these experiences, he can understand us and teach us gently, in ways that we can understand.