----- Original Message ----- 
From: "H Dorrington" <hjdinfl@...>
>Christ was "made" perfect by another.

Well, no, not *another*.  The immediate antecedent is suffering obedience...
Christ's being made perfect is "passive", but the source of the action is
the obedience learned through suffering.

>It was through "suffering" not obedience to the law.

This isn't what the text says.  "Obedience to the law" is the context for
the entire section that begins in 3:7 and is the antecedent for the
"perfection" in question.  Christ's obedience is set over against Israel's
disbobedience to the Law.  The Law and its test at Kadesh Barnea is the
immediate context for Christ's "obedience" through suffering.  Further, this
statement above makes a false distinction between "suffering" and
"obedience" when the language of the paragraph says that Christ's
"suffering" was His obedience to the law.  The two are cause and effect in
this passage.  Suffering was the catalyst for learning obedience to the law.

Further, as your friend has pointed out, the writer of Hebrews is going to
bring this to bear again in chapter 10, where the readers themselves are
called to obedience through suffering.  But contrary to his position.... the
context is still obedience to *a* Law, albeit it's not the same, but a
parallel.  The context is no longer obedience to the Mosaic Law, but
obedience to the New Torah (10:29).

Nice flagpole.  :-)

Chad