Hebrews 2:10-18 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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6] 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). 13 And again, in Isaiah 8:17, "I will put my trust in him." And again, in Isaiah 8:18, "Here am I and the children whom God has given me." These scriptures have a tone of boldness, stressing that these verses reflect the Son among people. The speaker in Isaiah 8 chooses to trust in God amid incredibly difficult circumstances. Others are disregarding God’s law (Isaiah 8:15), and God himself is “hiding his face from the house of Jacob” (Isaiah 8:17). The speaker, even in difficult circumstances, takes his stand of trust. This is the attitude Jesus displayed when God was perfecting him through the sufferings of humility and death: He put his trust in God his Father. Yet he does not do so alone. Instead, he includes the children whom God has given him in this instance, as well. This is Jesus’ articulation of what the author has portrayed in the previous verses. Jesus is leading the other children along, and, in this instance, he does so in the act of trusting in God. Because Jesus has trusted God even in his suffering, God has entrusted him with the care of his children. 14Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, (John 1:14) he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, of which this belief was common in the ancient world. If Satan is the origin of death, one can easily connect sin with it. The point is that Jesus defeated the supreme enemies, death, and the devil, providing release from an enslaving fear. Paul has a similar view in I Corinthians 15:54-57, where the risen Lord makes it possible say that death has lost its sting because Christ has defeated it. The risen Lord holds the keys of hell and death (Revelation 1:18). Christ Jesus has abolished death (II Timothy 1:10). God revealed who the Son was to destroy the works of the devil (I John 3:8b). The author has Jesus taking on the active role of making others holy while also identifying with those who need to become holy. 15 And free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. 16 For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, stressing the difference between humanity and angels, but the descendants of Abraham, using phrases from Isaiah 41:8-9. Paul has a similar view in Galatians 3:7, where God justifies gentile and Jew alike by faith. Luke 3:8b, where he urges the Jewish people not to trust their physical heredity, for God is able to raise up children of Abraham from stones, putting a similar view on the lips of John the Baptist. 17 Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, Jews would never accept a foreigner as high priest, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, a unique designation for Jesus in the New Testament. Yet, Jesus was not a Levite or a descendent of Zadok. God made him high priest to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Paul had a similar view in Romans 3:25, where God has put forward Christ Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement by the blood of Jesus. With John, Jesus Christ is also the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world (I John 2:2) and God loved us enough to send the Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins (I John 4:10.) 18Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, testing the obedience of the Son as was the pioneer and founder Abraham in 11:17, he is able to help those who are being tested. Paul has a similar view in I Corinthians 10:13, where he stresses God is faithful to the one tested in providing a way to endure. Paul shared similar views of Jesus in Romans 8:3, where Jesus comes in the likeness of sinful flesh, in 8:29, where he is the firstborn within a large family, and Philippians 2:7, where the Son takes the form of human likeness. Hebrews lays particular emphasis on the idea that Jesus experienced temptation like other people. Like them, he experiences temptation and is in the fight against temptation. Yet, he is also unlike us in that he did not yield to temptation.[7]
[1] Ernst Kassemann (Jesus Means Freedom, 1970, 101-16)
[2] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology Volume 2, 402)
[3] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 579, 628)
[4] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology volume 3 p. 421)
[5] Fred Craddock
[6] Pannenberg, (Systematic Theology Volume 2, 384)
[7] Barth (Church Dogmatics, IV.1, 59.2, 259-260)
Jungel says we can only speak of God through analogy interesting you would start off with the same thought. Great minds?
ReplyDelete😊 More likely you are seeing his and Barth’s influences. Both have impressed upon me the important nature of the event.
Delete