Hebrews 4:15

The context

Hebrews 3 and 4 form a single argument. The author cites Psalm 95's warning about the wilderness generation — hardened hearts, testing, exclusion from rest — and applies it to a congregation tempted to drift. The warning is followed by encouragement, and 4:14-16 is the hinge: since there is a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, the readers should hold fast and approach the throne of grace with confidence.

Verse 15 gives the reason that approach is possible. It answers an unstated objection: a high priest in heaven might be too remote to understand.

The words

Sympathēsai, from sympatheō, means to suffer with someone — not to feel sorry for them but to share the experience. The author denies that Jesus is a priest unable to sympathize.

Astheneia, "weakness," is what he sympathizes with. It is not the word for sin; in Hebrews it can name the frailty that leaves a person open to it.

Peirazō means to test or try, and the same verb appears in the psalm quotation of 3:8-9, where Israel tested God in the wilderness; the vocabulary links the scenes, though the direction differs. The phrase kath' homoiotēta, "according to likeness," limits the comparison, and chōris hamartias, "apart from sin," states the exception — describing how the testing ended.

What this passage establishes

That the high priest Christians approach is not detached from human weakness, and that his sympathy rests on having been tested. Real solidarity and real sinlessness are asserted in the same breath, and the sinlessness is a condition of the priesthood's value rather than a denial that the testing was real.

What it does not establish

It does not settle whether Jesus could have sinned. "Apart from sin" reports the outcome. Whether the testing involved a genuine possibility of failure is a later question; the verse is compatible with either answer, and the church has never defined the point dogmatically.

It does not itemize what "in every respect" covers. The phrase is qualified by "according to likeness," and the author does not list the temptations. Reading particular modern experiences into the verse is inference, not exposition.

It does not promise that sympathy removes suffering. The passage moves from sympathy to confidence at the throne, not to the end of trial. The help offered is mercy and grace in time of need, and what that consists of is left open.

How the church has read it

The Chalcedonian settlement — one person, two natures, without confusion or change — is the frame most traditional reading assumes. The peccability debate is post-Reformation: B. B. Warfield argued that a divine person cannot sin, so the temptation was real but the fall impossible, while others insisted that a test without the possibility of yielding is not a test.

First pass, written October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• I am homosexual and I was born homosexual – don't homosexuals have the right NOT to be hated and persecuted by the church?
• How could Jesus have been GENUINELY tempted if He could not sin?!
• How exactly does the death of Jesus secure salvation for anyone when the deaths of countless others matter not a bit in this regard?
• The Bible says that God’s eyes are too pure to look upon sin. So then how can the Holy Spirit be present at all times with people (even believers, who still commit sins)?
• So God hears every prayer? I asked for a new car and got nothing. Therefore God does not exist.
• If Jesus is God and God cannot be tempted, doesn't it follow that Jesus cannot be tempted? Yet Matthew 4 presents the temptation of Christ — another biblical contradiction, isn't it?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.