Hebrews 1:1-4 is the prologue to the letter that has the theme of the latest word from God and the greatness of the Son of God. This passage contrasts the ages of antiquity with the age of the authors, ancestors with that of believers in the day of the author, and the prophets with the Son. He begins by showing that the speaking of God in the past has been diverse in geographical location and method of disclosure, the theme of Chapters 1-12. He refers to the time, which was 1long ago, that God spoke to their ancestors, referring to 11:11-38. The idea of God speaking is a metaphor, but it remains a powerful one. The author stresses that this speaking of God occurred in many and various ways by the prophets. Luther suggested that when God speaks to humanity, God always speaks in baby talk. God speaks like this because God is love. No matter how old or big we become, we are still helpless, dependent, unknowing babes as far as concerns our faith. God bends to our infirmities. God speaks, telling us what we need to know and what we can handle. We cannot stand the full weight of the full truth. The creator knows the needs and limits we have as creatures. Therefore, said Luther, God talks only in baby talk. Adam and Eve did not need to know all that Abraham needed, and Abraham did not need to know all that Moses needed, and Moses did not need to know all the King David needed. Prophets and priests had a different form of communication with the Lord as over against rulers. Our author is hinting at all of this. Further, the notion of revelation involves what God has to say to humanity. A speaker needs someone to listen, such as the prophet. The speaking of God creates a community of faithful listeners. This simple statement of the author sums up quite well the reality and preliminary nature of Old Testament revelation. It addresses its unity and its variety. It hints at the progression of covenant in Noah, Abraham, Israel, and the house of David. It suggests that the covenant is a promise. The covenant exists in expectation of a further covenant. The Old Testament is a revelation as it looks forward with expectation to a new covenant. It points beyond itself. Kings, priests, and prophets could only hint at the reality God would bring to humanity for its redemption in Christ. We can think of the rule of kings hinting at the rule of the Lord, the forgiveness offered in the sacrificial system hinting at the forgiveness God offers, and the prophet who hears from the Lord and speaks what the Lord wants hinting of Jesus Christ as the Word.[1] He presents a brief formula for viewing the Old Testament as promise and prophecy as we think of the multiplicity of the biblical ideas of revelation.[2] Looking at the Old Testament hints that God will speak again in a definitive way. The author refers to time again, 2but this time, yet again, in one more definitive time, in these last days. “In the last days” (Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28-29), “In the fullness of time” (Mark 1:15, Galatians 4:4), contain similar notions of the relationship between the time of the Old Testament and that of the New. God revealed Jesus as the Christ “at the end of the ages” and for the sake of humanity (I Peter 1:20). The rule of God has drawn near in Christ. The turning point of the times, revealed in Christ, is the fulfillment of all the promises of the covenant of grace.[3] The author refers to God speaking again, only this time by a Son, whom the Father appointed heir of all things. In all of this speaking by God, the content and theme of revelation is God, and thus, close to modern notions of the self-revelation of God.[4] Yet, we would be unwise to limit the notion of revelation to this one medium.[5]The Word spoken by Jesus is self-revelation in the sense that Christ is the work of God brought to fulfillment.[6]Therefore, Christ forms a unity in the midst of diverse forms of revelation we find in the history of Israel. God speaks, while the ancestors and we who read them are those to whom God speaks. The fact of God speaking is the center of the diversity. God spoke throughout this time. God did this in many ways and occasions. God spoke with emerging weight and definitiveness. While the speaking of God occurred in a variety of ways, it unites in the singleness and simplicity of the conclusion. The Old Testament looks forward with expectation while the New Testament recollects what God has said in the Son.[7] The Devil refers to Jesus as the Son of God (Matthew 4), while John 1:18 says Jesus is the only Son who has made the Father known. Obviously, the author intentionally magnifies what the Father has said in the Son. The Son was the way through whom the Father created the worlds (age), giving the honor due to the Son. Such language reminds us of the way Wisdom was present with the Father in creation and even delighting in the human race (Proverbs 8:27-31 and Wisdom 9:1-2, 9). In an analogous way, all things exist and find their preservation in the Lord Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 8:6), the Father created through the Son (Colossians 1:16), and God created through the Word (John 1:3). The passage concludes with a brief poem. It forms the background for the wisdom and logos tradition of Alexandria school in early Christian theology. We also find this an emphasis in Proverbs 8 as well. Thus, the Son is the reflection (ἀπαύγασμα, only use of word in NT, radiance) of the glory of God (referring to the presence of the God). The Son is the exact imprint (χαρακτὴρ, character, only occurrence of the word in the NT, an impression, representation, exact reproduction; a graving-tool, expression, stamp, or mark) of the very being (ὑποστάσεως, substance, reality, or even guaranteeing the reality) of God. Statements about Jesus as being the image of God are like statements about the divine likeness of humanity.[8] Such statements are the basis for what the creeds affirm about Jesus, including that the Son is “consubstantial,” of the same substance, as the Father. The Son sustains all things by his powerful word. The Son sustains creation, and therefore created things participate in the filial relation of Jesus Christ to the Father and in fellowship with the Father. Yet, such relation finds its mediation through the self-distinction of the Son from the Father.[9] The Son made purification for sins, the effect of the work of the Son. We have redemption through the blood of Jesus and forgiveness of our sins (Ephesians 1:7-8, Colossians 1:14). God has made the Son a sacrifice of atonement by his blood (Romans 3:25). The Son then sat down (Psalm 110) at the right hand of the Majesty on high, like exalting Jesus to the right hand of God (Acts 2:33), and God highly exalting him, giving him a name above every name (Philippians 2:9-11). Consistent with this passage, John 1:18, Philippians 2:6-11, and Colossians 1:15-20 are the central New Testament affirmations of the deity of Christ. The lordship of the Son is an application of the lordship of the Father. The deity of Jesus shows who the Father is.[10] All of this means the Son, 4having become as much superior to angels, as the name he has inherited is more excellent than that of angels. In the Son is the origin of all that differs from the Father and therefore the independence of creation in relation to the Father. The Son is the mediator of creation in the sense that creation will accomplish its purpose in Christ.[11] For the early Christian witness, this thought is pervasive.[12]
In Hebrews 2: 5-9, redemption is through Christ rather than angels. The larger context, 1:4-2:18, states the superiority of Christ to the angels. He focuses here upon the notion that the humanity of Jesus, which would seem to make him inferior to the angels, is indispensable to the purpose of redemption. The Son had to become human in order to die. However, exaltation followed his death. Thus, 5 God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. God has not given this age over to angels. In fact, God has disarmed the angelic powers (Colossians 2:15), something the readers must acknowledge. The point is that while angels had a role in the old covenant and the Law, they do not have the same role now, with the coming of the Son. In this sense, angels are an annex to Christology. God became a human being, not an angel. Such affirmations concern the lordship of Christ over all powers. [13]
If Christ is better than the angels are, then the author must attend to the fact that Christ was, for a time, made lower than the angels were. 6 However, someone has testified somewhere, referring to Psalm 8:4-6, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? 7 You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, 8 subjecting all things under their feet.” Clearly, the psalm refers to humanity. The psalm captures both the lowliness of humanity and the exaltation of humanity. Yet, the author finds a deeper sense to the passage. The author will supply the identity of this mortal human being. The author has acquaintance with the Son of Man tradition, but does little more than mention it, as he does here.[14] Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. Human suffering and death make it clear that not all things are yet subject to humanity! As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them. He states the obvious fact that not everything subjects itself to humanity. Humanity experiences sickness, anxiety, and death. However, 9 we do see Jesus, who for a little while God made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor. The Father temporarily reduced the rank of the Son in sending the Son in Jesus. The Son is the king who overthrew enemies with the help of God. Paul expresses this theme differently in a hymn in which the Son was in the form of God, but emptied himself, taking the form a slave and born in human likeness, humbling himself to the point of death, which became the occasion for God to exalt him (Philippians 2:6-11). Paul will also say that God will subject all things to Christ, and that in the end, the Son will subject himself to the Father in order that God may be all in all (I Corinthians 15:25). Human transformation will come because God has the power to subject all things (Philippians 3:21). God has put all things under the feet of Christ, making Christ the head over all things for the church, for Christ is above all rule, authority, power, dominion, and name in this age and in the age to come (Ephesians 1:20-23). We can see here the self-distinction within the Trinity, the Son receiving rule itself from the Father. Of course, the text is not fully Trinitarian, since it does not mention the Spirit.[15] This crowing of the Son occurs because of the suffering of death (διὰ τὸ πάθημα τοῦ θανάτου), so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.[16] Jesus dies by the grace of God and for all persons. He is lower the angels through his suffering and death. Yet, the Father crowns him with glory and honor because he passed through suffering and death. His suffering will become the way he explains the fraternal relationship between Jesus and the children of God. Suffering connects the Son with humanity. God appointed Jesus to pass through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). Like us, Jesus felt the full range of human angst, forlornness, and heartache, knowing that not all was right with the world. However, God neither abandoned him nor renounced his promises. Yes, the Son is greater than is any angel. Yet, the Son dipped beneath them and their passionless existence for a brief time, experiencing suffering and death. Truly, Christ died for all, so that human beings might live for the one who died for them (II Corinthians 5:15). Thus, while united with us in suffering, Christ differs from us in the experience of death. He did not allow death to engulf or overwhelm him. He subjected himself to its power so that death would not engulf and overwhelm us.[17] Thus, what the psalmist understood as God making humanity a little lower than angels, yet God crowning them with great honor, the author understands as an analogy to what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth.
“The world breaks everyone,” writes Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms, “and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” What is it about some people that make them strong at the broken places? It is not easy to supply an answer to that question. Hike down to your local chain bookstore and search the self-help shelves. You will not find a single book with a title such as Ten Easy Tips to Transcending Your Suffering. Self-help publishers move many books with the siren song that suffering is avoidable — even though that is a fundamentally dishonest premise. Suffering is a universal feature of the human condition. We are “born to trouble as sparks fly upward,” as Job 5:7 famously puts it. If Papa Hemingway is right, the world breaks everyone. The only real question is whether we can become “strong at the broken places.”
The world broke the Son through his suffering and death. Yet, God did not abandon him. He became strong, exalted in such a way that all things are subject to him. Through suffering and death, he became the means through which God would redeem humanity and the entire creation.
Hebrews 2:10-12, extending to verse 18, relates the Son to believers. The full humanness of Christ makes possible his saving death. The author stresses that God has come near to us in Jesus Christ. We do not truly know God by making surmises about the world that lead us to the logical conclusion that God exists, using the analogy of being. Rather, we know God when we turn in faith to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, using the analogy of faith. When we turn to the event of revelation and the event of faith occurs in us through the Holy Spirit, God has come near to us. If so, we are dealing with something far more important than an historical event of the distant past. We are dealing with its present reality in the word of proclamation, in the community of believers, and in the work of the Holy Spirit.
It might be difficult to believe that Christ looked at life fully through our eyes. This is a meditation upon the mystery of the incarnation, God become human in Christ. The writer has the Christ call us "brothers" and "sisters." Next, he hears the Christ calling us "children," his very "flesh and blood." He wants us to know how closely, how intimately God has related to God's creation in the Christ. The writer wants us to know that the angels are not the beings that are the subjects of Christ's Incarnation. No, Christ even dared "to become like us in every respect" so that he might intercede and be our priest to God.
10 It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist. This statement is like saying that all things are from, through and for God (Romans 11:36) and that all things are from God to the point where we exist for God (I Corinthians 8:6). To say that all things exist “through” God is something most of us understand quickly. However, to say that all things exist for God places our existence on a personal level. God intends our lives to be spiritual acts of worship (Romans 12:2). Everything we do is supposed to be for God’s glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). Even nonhuman creation — stars, seas, mountains, trees, animals — all praise God by their very existence (Psalm 148). It seems fitting that since the existence of all things is through God, God is bringing many children to glory. It also seems fitting that God should make the pioneer (ἀρχηγὸν) of their salvation, an interesting title for Jesus. Jesus is author of life in Acts 3:15, 5:31 and Leader and Savior. The emphasis of this author is on Christ as pioneer, champion, and high priest. Jesus is the captain and the author of our salvation. The word can refer to a “founder” in the sense of one who establishes something, or a “pioneer” in the sense of one who blazes a trail ahead of his followers. The letter makes clear that Jesus both establishes the reality of the audience’s salvation and leads them to it. He took the lead, forged out into new spiritual territory, and wrote the example we are to follow. Hebrews subsumes Christology under the crises he sees facing this congregation. Christology may become so functional to him that it ceases to be Christology.[18] Yet, such a title is close to the modern exegetical insight on the theme of the proleptic presence of salvation and the divine rule in the message and work of Jesus.[19] Such a statement does not allow us to separate universal resurrection from that of individual destiny. The new life imparted to him relates to a totality, the new humanity.[20] If cultic ideas of sacrifice, expiation, and substitution no longer communicate to a modern world, this notion of Jesus as pioneer or initiator of our salvation is still valid.[21] God has made Jesus perfect (fully qualified for his priestly ministry) through sufferings. The author feels no need to specify but focusing on his death as well as the course of his human life. Jesus willingly walked this path. Any life short of suffering and death would have been less than an identification with humankind and, therefore, less than a full understanding of the human condition.[22] Hebrews calls this “fitting” for God to do this, trying to explain why Jesus tasted death for all. His suffering and death were no accident. They are part of the divine drama of redemption. Thus, this passage relates to the difficult modern task of dealing with the development of Christology in the New Testament. Only in his completed life is he the Son, for his sufferings perfect him as the Son. The practical effect of this insight is that one must not limit the notion of incarnation to his birth, for if other things did not happen, such as his baptism, his proclamation of the rule of God, the path of suffering, and his resurrection, he would not be the Son.[23] 11 For the one who sanctifies, the Son, for which see John 17:19, and those whom the Son sanctifies all have one Father. For this reason, Jesus is not ashamed to call them (Jewish) brothers and sisters. Jesus looks at us — with all our imperfections, insecurities, and ignorance of him — and calls us family. The Son is on the same plane as those he is saving. This fact does not cause him “shame,” I find this to be a quite remarkable statement, given the shame we often have of ourselves, as well as for how others act. He bases his statement on Psalm 22:22, which boldly states, 12 saying, "I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you." Applied by this author, this assertion stresses the Son among the people of God. Jesus refers to the people around him as his mother, brothers, and sisters (Mark 3:33-35). The risen Lord refers to “my brothers” who need to receive the word and go to Galilee (Matthew 28:10). The risen Lord tells Mary that his brothers need to hear the word of his resurrection (John 20:17).
I submit that most of us do not have the custom of addressing Jesus in this way. He is like a pioneer. He is like our brother. To put even more directly, in Jesus of Nazareth God has become brother and family member to every human being, acquainted with our grief, hurts, struggles, pains in our attempts to establish true family and true home. God become broken humanity to show us the path toward our wholeness. He is flesh and blood, just as we are. Even though he is not part of the official priestly line, he can be our high priest before God because he has faced the tests of life victoriously and he has endured suffering and death. Jesus has become the brother of every human being. If he is the pioneer of salvation for the human family, then he has paved the way for healing, liberation, and guidance in how to live a human life. We may feel the alienation from God, others, and even from our desire to be our best self. Jesus is the pioneer in showing us the way to communion or fellowship with God, others, and our best self.
[1] Barth (Church Dogmatics I.2 [14.2] 83-84).
[2] Pannenberg, (Systematic Theology, Volume I, 213)
[3] Barth (Church Dogmatics III.1 [41.1] 53-54)
[4] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume I, (ibid, 222, 240)
[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume I, (ibid, 237)
[6] Barth (Church Dogmatics IV.3 [71.4] 584)
[7] Barth (IV.3 [96.2] 93-94)
[8] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology Volume 2, 208)
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 34
[10] Barth (Church Dogmatics I.1 [10.1])
[11] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology Volume 2, 22)
[12] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 369)
[13] Barth (Church Dogmatics III.3 [51.3] 500)
[14] Oscar Cullmann (The Christology of the New Testament, 1957, 188)
[15] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 302, 312)
[16] In order to describe Jesus, the author repeats every word from his citation of Psalm 8:5, changing the aorist active verbs into perfect passive participles. Hence, he and his readers see Jesus, who has been made lower than the angels for a time and who has been crowned with glory and honor. Its placement in the verse suggests that it provides an explanation for both participial phrases.
[17] “In Christ’s sufferings,” writes John Calvin — commenting on Hebrews 2 — “he differed from us, however, in this respect: he let himself be swallowed up by death ... not to be engulfed in its abyss, but rather to engulf it that must soon have engulfed us; he let himself be subjected to it, not to be overwhelmed by its power, but rather to lay it low, when it was threatening us and exulting over our fallen state.”
—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion II, 16, 7, trans. John McNeill (Westminster John Knox, 1960), 511-12.
[18] Ernst Kassemann (Jesus Means Freedom, 1970, 101-16)
[19] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology Volume 2, 402)
[20] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 579, 628)
[21] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology volume 3 p. 421)
[22] Fred Craddock
[23] Pannenberg, (Systematic Theology Volume 2, 384)
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