⁷ In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety

Jesus is the divine Son who became human (“in the days of His flesh”). This echoes what John wrote, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The Lord came to experience human nature in its entirety, including dependency upon God. This boggles the mind. The Infinite has joined in the creation experience of His creatures, the ones made in His image.

An ancient heresy, “Docetism,” taught this was impossible—Christ only seemed to be a human. But the book of Hebrews insists on the bodily nature of Christ (see also Hebrews 10:5, 10). Also, in support of true incarnation, Christ assumed the same role as all other humans in depending upon God the Father. The writer does not concern himself with an apologetic in defense of the Trinity doctrine, but asserts the implications about the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ.

He offered up prayers. This evokes a sense of worship, with prayers being the sacrifice given to the Lord. He made Himself dependent upon His father and did not resort to His divine abilities (which would then disqualify Him from the truly human experience and therefore from the priesthood).

He experienced deep emotions. Jesus didn’t just “go through the motions” of human experience. These were real feelings and anguish. When He said, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me,” genuine emotive humanity was on display. He can relate to us in all of our experiences, and is therefore eminently qualified to be our high priest.

He was subjected to death. Although Jesus submitted Himself to the Father when He said, “Not My will be done, but Yours” He accepted “the cup” of suffering and death. But, as we see from this verse, the Father did indeed hear His prayer and answer it. Jesus was saved, not from the experience of death, but was saved “out of death” (which is the sense that the underlying Greek allows). Death could not hold Him. This was not because He was God, but because as a human, He trusted in God alone to save Him. So, we can be assured that we too, can one day have mastery over death, because we trust in God alone also.

He was heard because of His piety (also translated as “reverent or deep submission”). There is a connection between answered prayer and obedience.

So, we see that Jesus is qualified as a High Priest because He was appointed by God (vs. 4-6) and He participated in the human experience perfectly.