Key verse: 2:9
But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
In the field of history, there’s a basic idea called the principle of analogy: we understand people and events by relating them to similar people and events. The current war in Afghanistan is often compared to the war in Vietnam. The comparison is not perfect; Afghanistan isn’t Vietnam. Yet it can be useful for making a point. Recently we watched an episode of Supernanny. It was about a family with six kids. The house was disorganized and life was out of control because the mom was distracted and the father was disengaged. The next day my wife’s lovely face turned dark, and I asked her what was wrong. Ahe said, “I’m just like that mom, and you’re just like that dad.” I didn’t appreciate that comparison. I responded, “I am not just like that dad.” But of course she did have a point.
Analogy is how we make sense of the world around us. Our brains are hardwired to make those comparisons. But there are two events in history where the principle of analogy fails because there is nothing that we can find to compare them to. The first event is Creation. It is the moment when God called the universe into being, when something came out of nothing, when nonexistence became existence. We can try to wrap our minds around it. Will we ever understand Creation? No, we will not. It will forever be a mystery.
The second point where analogy fails is what Christians call Incarnation. This is the moment when God came into the world. The Creator became part of his creation. God called into existence a human being, and that being he created was fully God. God made something, and what he made was himself! Will we ever understand Incarnation? No, we will not. It will forever be a mystery.
Portions of the Bible have been translated into more than 2,000 different languages and dialects. In every language or dialect thus far, there is a native word that can be used as a rendering of God. In Greek it is ????, pronounced “Theos.” In Chinese, it is ? (“Shen”). In Zulu, it is Baba Umkulukulu. Every people-group has some accurate knowledge of God. Yet missionaries struggle because the native words for God may have extra meanings that are not biblical. For example, one word for God in Hindi is Bhagwan, which can be translated as “divine being.” But Bhagwan can be used as a title for a highly respected person. Bible translators and missionaries are forever struggling with this question: How do we communicate the gospel to people in a new culture using language and concepts that the people understand without that the message getting diluted or distorted by that culture’s pre-existing ideas and values?
No one knows who wrote the book of Hebrews. Some think it was Paul; others say it might be Barnabas or Apollos. Whoever wrote this book had a brilliant mind. He had thorough knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and excellent command of the Greek language. The writing style is said to be exquisite. But when we read Hebrews, we sense that the author is struggling to put into words something for which there were no words. This was the first generation after Christ. It took many generations for the Church to hammer out its understanding of Jesus, the meaning of his virgin birth, his life and ministry, his rejection, horrible suffering and death on the cross, his glorious resurrection, his ascension to heaven, his sending of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Today we have terms such as incarnation and trinity. But the author of Hebrews has no such words. And because he is writing to people of Jewish background, he is wrestling with the fact that, to the Jewish mind, the message of the gospel seems so profoundly unbiblical.
Think about it. The author wants to communicate that Jesus is God. Jesus is not a part of God or a picture of God, but he is God himself, all of God, packed into the body of a human being. So the author wants to say that Jesus is God. But he cannot say it that way, because it conflicts with the way that Hebrew people imagined God. God revealed himself to Israel as the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He revealed himself as Yahweh, “I am who I am,” whose name was so holy that it would never be spoken. He revealed himself as a personal God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who intervened in human history and made relationships with people. He revealed himself as the savior, the one who brought salvation to Israel through the sacrifice and blood of the Passover Lamb. To the Hebrew mind, God was all those things and many more. But they never imagined that this God could become a man. So the author of Hebrews is really in a pickle. He has to tell people that Jesus is God, but he can’t say it, because their Old Testament conception of God is incomplete. So he tries to put Jesus into words. His first attempt comes in chapter 1 verse 3: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Those beautiful and mysterious words are a summary of the whole book of Hebrews. That is my personal key verse for meditation this year, and it is the key verse we have chosen for our church at Penn State.
So the author of Hebrews is trying to put into words (a) things for which there were no words and (b) things which deeply conflicted with Hebrew understanding of God and to the Jewish people seemed very unbiblical. At the same time, he is showing that these things are profoundly biblical. The whole Old Testament from beginning to end is riddled with references to the Son of God. Everything about Jesus that we as Christians believe – his divinity, his humanity, his baptism with the Holy Spirit, his suffering and death, his resurrection and glorification, his life and present ministry to us, his offices as Prophet and Priest and King, his work to recreate and restore this world, and the consummation of history in his glorious Second Coming – all the essential truths of the Christian faith are really and truly found in the Old Testament, and they are the point of the Old Testament. The book of Hebrews was written to show that everything, absolutely everything, is about Jesus. The Bible is about Jesus. The world is about Jesus. All of history is about Jesus. We are about Jesus. Everything and everyone emanates from him and flows back to him. “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
I used to think that the Christian life was about understanding God and serving God. To me, it was about orthodoxy and orthopraxy, correct knowledge and correct practice. As a scientist, I wanted to get it right. So my spiritual life was all about being right. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It does sounds good in theory. But in practice it’s a losing proposition, because we are never going to get it right. I believe it was John Calvin who said that even the best theologian is only right maybe 80% of the time. I don’t know where he got that figure, but to me the estimate seems high. And when I think about how I live my life, there is so much that I’m doing wrong. So the goal of being right all the time is not realistic, and it doesn’t do much for our character development. There is a word in the English language for someone who wants to be right all the time. It’s a four-letter word: j-e-r-k. The Bible has a cure for that. The cure is a five-letter work: J-e-s-u-s. Life is not about us being right. Life is all about Jesus. It’s about being with Jesus and relating to Jesus. One of the greatest preachers of the 20th century was a man named A.W. Tozer who pastored a church on the south side of Chicago. People call him a “mystic” because he practiced deep personal meditation and worship. He described the inner life of Christian this way. Your mind, your inner being, is like an eye. That eye is always looking at something. A Christian is someone whose inner eye is focused on Jesus. When you become a Christian, you turn your inner eye toward Jesus and you keep looking at him for all eternity. We live in this physical world, and Jesus is not physically present right now, and he won’t be until he returns. But he is enthroned in heaven, and so until he comes again, we are focused on Christ in heaven. We can’t think about Jesus 24-7. We have people around us whom we care about and duties to which we have to attend. So our inner eye is often looking here and there. But as a compass needle always swings back to the north, the inner eye of the Christian is forever turning back toward Jesus.
And that’s the main point of the book of Hebrews. I’m a very practical person. When I read a passage of Scripture, I want to know the bottom line of how it applies to me, what I am practically supposed to do. The book of Hebrews has long passages describing Jesus, explaining who he is and what he does. Between these passages are short “application” sections, and every one of those application sections says the same thing. Each one is an exhortation to look at Jesus. Don’t lose sight of Jesus! Pay attention to Jesus! (2:1) Fix your thoughts on Jesus! (3:1) Fix your eyes on Jesus! (12:2) The first of those application sections comes at the beginning of chapter 2. The author urges us to pay more careful attention to what the Bible says about Jesus so that we do not drift away (1). If the message given to the Israelites in the Old Testament came to them as a divine revelation, carried by angels and conveyed to Moses in a cloud of smoke with peals of thunder, how much more must we pay attention when God himself comes into this world and reveals himself right there, right her, in bodily form as Jesus Christ? If God does that for us, how will we escape judgment if we ignore such a great salvation? (2-3) This glorious salvation is the real presence of God in this world. Immanuel! God is with us! That salvation, that presence, was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself (3). He made himself known to us through his teachings. He said to us: “I am the light of the world.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the way and the truth and the life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” If someone comes to us and says that, and if he is not a crazy lunatic but a truly wonderful person, how in the world can can we ignore it? The evidence is not just found in the words and life of Jesus. We have the testimony of the apostles, the ones who were with him, who saw him, smelled him, touched him, who participated in his life and were changed by him (3). They became living witnesses of the risen Jesus (Acts 1:8). They didn’t just say, “Jesus is risen,” because words alone are just words. No, they carried in their own person, in their own lives and characters, the very life and character of Jesus was part of them. They were in Christ, and Christ was in them. This was made clear by the work of the Holy Spirit which was very visible and very tangible in the early Church. When people came to Christ in the first century, you knew it, because you could see in them the wonderful miracles and gifts and signs distributed to everyone in the church – not the same gifts to everyone in the same way, but a variety of gifts distributed by God according to his will. And while everyone had different gifts, they all showed the same kind of fruits: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). These fruits of the Spirit were evident in them in levels that went beyond human effort and were clearly supernatural. They had supernatural love, supernatural joy, supernatural peace.
It is only in the last two two chapters of the book of Hebrews that the author starts to give us any kind of teaching that most would regard as “practical application.” At the very end of the book, we find exhortations to live the Christian life, to endure hardship as God’s discipline, to live in peace with others, to love one another, to remain sexually pure, to not love money, and so on. This in itself is a wonderful lesson: It is only after Jesus has been revealed to us, after we come to him, after we see him and know him, after we have personally experienced the Incarnation, that we have any basis for changing our behavior. The gospel has many implications for how we live and relate to one another. But we cannot absorb the ethical implications of the gospel until we see and relate Jesus himself, because all those things are flowing from the person of Jesus.
The rest of chapter 2 is about Jesus’ humanity. Chapter 1 presents his divinity, chapter 2 is about his humanity. At the moment of his incarnation, Jesus became a human being. He is still a human being, and he will forever remain a human being; his humanity is now a permanent part of who he is. Why do we need to know that Jesus is a human being? One reason is that it reveals the humility of Jesus. But, and perhaps even more importantly, it teaches us about the true worth, dignity, and greatness of human beings. Yes, Jesus humbled himself and came down from heaven. But the purpose of that incarnation was not to demean or debase himself. He did it to redeem us and to exalt us, and restore us to our true position as rulers of the earth. Putting it another way: He didn’t come to pull us out of the world and take us away to our true home in heaven. He came to bring heaven down to earth and to make this world and us the glorious creation and creatures that we were always meant to be. Look at verses 5-8a.
5 It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. 6 But there is a place where someone has testified:
“What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
a son of man that you care for him?
7 You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor
8 and put everything under their feet.”
Here the author of Hebrews is quoting from Psalm 8. On the campus of Harvard University, at the eastern side of Harvard Yard, there is a building called Emerson Hall that houses the department of philosophy. This building was made famous by the 1970’s movie Love Story. Emerson Hall was built in 1905. While this building was being constructed, the administration was looking for an appropriate inscription to put on top of the building. One suggestion was “Man is the measure of all things.” That is a famous quote from the Greek philosopher Protagoras, and it expressed the spirit of early 20th century thought. But the inscription that was actually used on this building, which is there to this very day, is the beginning of this verse from Psalm 8:4 “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”
When I first heard that story and saw the inscription, I completely misunderstood its meaning. I thought Psalm 8:4 was saying that man is nothing, that he is a lowly creature, worthless scum, because of his sinful nature. I was practicing a kind of “worm theology” which regards human beings and especially myself as unimportant. I thought that was humility. But the real point that the psalmist makes is the exact opposite. He is saying that human beings are great. In the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, the four human children – the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve – became rulers. They became King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund, Queen Lucy. To some Christians, that looks self-centered and presumptuous: “How dare you dream of being a king or queen? You were made to be a humble servant, and that’s it!” And they can claim to have the Bible on their side. After all, didn’t Paul call himself “a servant of Christ Jesus,” using the word doulos which means slave?
Yes, Christians are supposed to be humble servants because Jesus was a servant. But we are also supposed to be rulers, because Jesus is a ruler. If we are rulers, then what is our domain? Are we supposed to take ownership of our homes, our finances, our careers, our families and ministries? Yes, we are stewards of the small kingdoms God has given us. But verse 5 says that we have been put in charge of “the world to come.” What is that? Some of us would instinctively respond, “Heaven.” Is heaven our true home? Not at all. “World” in verse 5 is the Greek word oikoumene which means this world, and all the people in it.
Look at verse 5: “It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come…” This world has not been given to angels; it has been given to us. To me, that truth is deeply comforting, because we were never made to live in heaven. We were custom-made made to inhabit the earth, and the earth was custom-made for us. If I try to imagine spending eternity in heaven, it makes me sad, because there are so many things in this world that I really like. I like to be with my wife and look at her face. I like Al’s Italian Beef on Taylor Street. Their beef is seriously good. These earthly things seem good to us because they are part of God’s good creation. So the thought of being in heaven forever made me said. But then I looked in the New Testament to see what it actually says about the afterlife. It says that when our bodies die, our souls go to be with Jesus in heaven (Lk 23:43; 2Co 5:8). But we aren’t going to be there forever. The risen Jesus has promised to come back to this earth in bodily form (Acts 1:11). When he does, there will be a resurrection. The trumpet will sound and our souls will go back into our bodies (1Co 15:52). But they will be new, glorious post-resurrection bodies that resemble the body of the risen Jesus (1Co 15:49). And together with Jesus we will rule on this earth, a gloriously refurbished and renewed earth (Ro 8:21).
So God has made us the rulers of this world. But do we feel like rulers? No, we don’t, because the present reality appears different. The author knows this, so he says at the end of verse 8, “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them.” At present, we do not feel we are in charge. Like the family in that episode of Supernanny, so much in our present lives seem out of control. We can’t control our finances. We can’t control our tempers. We can’t control how other people see us and respond to us. Much of the time we feel helpless. That’s why it is easier for Christians to see themselves as slaves than as rulers. No, at present we do not see ourselves as ruling over the world. Human beings are at the mercy of the elements. We are helpless in face of earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. We’ve made a mess of the created world. And we’ve messed up our nations and our society. Because of human mismanagement, the earth is filled with disease, poverty, oppression and war. History is sad, sad story of how people messed things up. The Church has played some role for good, but too often Christians have been part of the problem. No, at present we do not see a wonderful world being ruled over by good people who do good things.
Now look at verse 9: “But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
There is so much here in this one verse that we could talk about it for ages. This message is getting long, so we’re not going to get through 10-18. Let’s briefly think about each part of this verse, and then we will stop.
“But we do see Jesus…” Do we see Jesus? Yes, we do. We do see him with that inner eye, the eye of faith. We see him in Scripture. We see the evidence of his presence and his work in ourselves and in one another. That is the essence of what we do here at worship service every Sunday. Worship is coming together in the presence of the Holy Spirit to honor the Father and to gaze upon Jesus. We come together to remember what Jesus has done for us and to understand what he is doing now. We stand together as his people, looking up to heaven to catch a glimpse of him. We stand as witnesses to what we believe, declaring to the world that he is ruling over the heavens and the earth. And together we express our longing for the day when he will return and unveil his rule for everyone to see.
“But we do see Jesus…” We are not yet ruling this world. But through eyes of faith we see Jesus ruling from heaven, seated on his throne at the right hand of the Father. We believe that all things are under his power. He is sustaining all things by his powerful word (1:3). As we see him, we pray, “You kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Until he returns, we carry out his mission. We preach the gospel and raise disciples. We live as his body, as the church, the present servants of Christ and future heirs of the world.
“…who was made lower than the angels for a little while…” This is the Jesus presented in the gospels. He walked among us in the flesh as a weak and limited human being. He became lower than the angels, even while they were worshiping him. When Jesus was arrested, he said to his disciples, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Mt 26:53). Jesus could have called on the angels, but he didn’t. He subjected himself to the forces around him, facing rejection, humiliation, such terrible suffering.
“…now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death…” Jesus has been crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death. His death was his path to glorification. Just before he died, he prayed in John 12:23: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified…” The death of Jesus looked like a defeat. The people turned against him, his ministry came to an end, his disciples all scattered, his friends abandoned him. In his death, he temporarily lost everything, so that he could win everything. Now, because of his death, he is presently crowned with glory and honor. In the book of Revelation, the elderly apostle John has a vision, and he catches a glimpse of Jesus on his throne. What he saw is found in Revelation 5:11-12:
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”
Can you catch a glimpse of that? Can you hear it, even faintly in the distance? Beaver Stadium at Penn State University is exactly one mile from my house. The stadium holds more than 100,000 people. During a football game, when the Nittany Lions score a touchdown, we can hear the sound of 100,000 fans cheering from a mile away. Around the throne of Jesus, there are 10,000 times 10,000 angels. That’s one hundred million angels. Angels are impressive creatures with big pipes. Imagine the sound of hundred million angels, proclaiming the glories of Jesus Christ. This is not a crazy fantasy. It is the reality of what is actually happening at this moment. Jesus is crowned with glory and honor. He is ruling from heaven and is getting ready to return, and he may come back at any moment.
“…so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Jesus tasted death for everyone. When it says that he tasted death, it doesn’t mean that he took just a little sip. He drank the full cup of death. Before he was nailed to the cross, they offered him drugged wine, but he refused. He fully experienced death in all its horror. The pain he went through was not just physical. What is the worst kind of pain that a person can experience is the pain of betrayal by someone you love. Children who are abused or abandoned by the parents they trust and love are deeply wounded; they feel the pain for the rest of their lives. Sharon and I have been married for twenty years, and I love her and trust her with all my heart. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be if she ever betrayed me, and I never think about it because I know that she will not. But Jesus and his Father had been together for many, many years. From eternity, since before the beginning of time, they were united in the most beautiful relationship of perfect love and trust. On the cross, Jesus was abandoned by the one than he had trusted forever. The Father cursed him, condemned him, and turned away from him in disgust. The Father heaped all his wrath and anger upon the Son. Their eternal relationship was severed. Jesus bore the unimaginable pain of complete separation from God. Jesus didn’t deserve his treatment, not one bit. He had loved his Father with all his heart; he had done everything his Father ever asked. Yet his Father returned the love with contempt.
Why did Jesus taste this death? “…so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Jesus tasted death for us. We too are going to experience death. But not in the same way, not by a long shot. Oh yes, we’ll feel the pain. We may get scared. But we will never be abandoned by God. Our deaths will be shrouded in God’s amazing love. We will be going to rest in the arms of Jesus. At the moment of death, we’ll be hearing him say, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” Our death is not biting the dust and getting squished like a worm. It’s our homecoming, our graduation, which brings us one step closer to our coronation. At that coronation, the Father will put everything under Jesus’ feet, and Jesus in turn will puts the world under our feet, and we reign together with him forever and ever in the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.
Jesus is fully God and fully man. We cannot imitate his divinity, but we must follow him in his humanity. The humanity of Christ is more glorious than we can imagine. His humanity is what we were meant to be, and it is what we are going to be. The seed of Jesus’ glorious humanity has been planted in every person who follows Christ. That seed is in you, and it is in me. The human Jesus is beautiful, and he is glorious. You are beautiful, and you are glorious.
