The High Priest’s Sympathy – Hebrews 4:14-16

’Compassion’ is an eminent virtue in human nature as absolutely innocent. So was the nature of Christ from the beginning; for therein was he “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” Now, though in that blessed estate wherein we were created there was no actual object for us to exercise compassion upon or towards, seeing everything was at rest in its proper place and order, yet was there no virtue more inlaid in our rational constitution, as being absolutely inseparable from goodness and benignity, upon a supposition of a suitable object. Hence they are justly esteemed to be fallen into the utmost of degeneracy from our first make, frame, and state, and to be most estranged from our common original, who have cast off this virtue where it may and ought to have its actual exercise. Nor are any more severely in the Scripture reflected on than those who are unmerciful and without compassion, fierce, cruel, and implacable. No men more evidently deface the image of God than such persons. Now, our nature in Christ was and is absolutely pure and holy, free from the least influence by that depravedness which befell the whole mass in Adam. And herein are the natural virtues of goodness, benignity, mercy, and compassion, pure, perfect, and untainted. And he hath objects to exercise these virtues on which Adam could not have, and those such as are one with himself, by their participation in the same common principles of nature and grace. – John Owen