Like us in every way...

"...but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin."

- Hebrews 4:15

It's funny what we do with that word "tested". It comes from the Greek word periasmos (in the perfect tense in this particular case, pepeirasmenon), which can indeed mean "tested", but I think more properly means "tempted" in these kinds of contexts. So, a re-reading would be:

"...but we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."

The word "sin" at the end is held in tension with the word "tempted", which makes much more sense than the word "tested". Jesus was tempted just like we are, but he didn't sin. That's exactly the point of the difficultly I think. We just can't quite bring ourselves to confess that Jesus was tempted in exactly the same way that we are because we can't get through it without sin. We can't imagine Jesus doing it either because that creates two more problems: on one hand, we want him to be exactly like us in essence, which creates skepticism about his sinlessness. On the other hand we want him to be more than we are (divine), which means that he's not really human. It's a knife that cuts both ways.

It's a false dilemma though. We do, in fact, confess that Jesus was "like us in every way except for sin" (Fourth Eucharistic Prayer), and that he was fully man and fully God "without confusion, without change, without division (and) without separation " (the Chalcedonian Creed). Theologically all we're really saying is that Jesus was perfect; in practical terms that simply means that he had a perfect will that could choose perfect obedience, even if that meant death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-11).

The important thing for us to realize is this: he was the first of a new humanity. Some day we will all be able to obey God perfectly because we will all be like Jesus, who was the firstborn of a new family (Romans 8:29). More to the point, the context of Hebrews 4 has to do with Jesus the new High Priest of an order older than that connected with the Exodus and the Law. He is our stand-in, the One who intercedes on our behalf precisely because he knows what we have to work with. He knows our temptation and so can sympathize, but his perfection allows his to do something about it. He is the man with one foot on the bank of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity; his sinlessness is what makes him useful to us, and in his humanity he assumes every part of us so that he can atone for it.

He is our final High Priest. He is our peace with God.