Daily Thoughts from Hebrews: Jumping Ship

Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. (Hebrews 3:1-6, ESV)

Jesus is superior to angels, who, indeed, had a role in establishing the Law for Israel and who should therefore be obeyed as the Law expresses. Moses also had a supreme role in the establishment of the Law and you can just hear the families and friends of this congregation who remain in Judaism challenging this congregation with a failure to honor Moses by honoring Jesus.  But if Moses is considered God’s chief servant who faithfully oversaw His house (Israel and the Tabernacle), then Jesus is the Son who built the house and is faithful over it as God’s Son, not servant.

Jesus is the apostle and high priest of our confession of faith, over our confessional utterance of belief.  He is both the one sent from God (‘apostle’ means sent one) with authority to represent God, and he is high priest of our confession, the one whose intercession on our behalf and sacrifice on our behalf has made our confession a saving one.  He has made us holy brothers and sisters and given us a heavenly calling in contrast with the current Judaistic earthly focus on a ritual that the author of Hebrews will later show has been displaced.  Why would anyone leave the one calling for the former?

Moses was indeed faithful in all God’s house and God defended him as such in Numbers 12 against Miriam and Aaron’s jealousy for his power.  But Jesus is faithful over God’s house and we are that house, as Israel was, only if we retain our confession, our confidence and trust in the hope Jesus offers.

Why would you leave or grow weary of a calling that comes from such an exalted Jesus for a former life that was characterized by poverty of spirit, hopelessness, purposelessness, addiction to earthly things and absent divine direction?  You had confidence in Christ and his calling, you even boasted about it because it is the greatest.  If you don’t  hold fast to it what excuse will you give on judgment day?

Backsliders jump from the lifeboat into the Titanic.

Daily Thoughts from Hebrews: Angels Can’t Be High Priests and Satan Needs Destroying

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:14-18, ESV)

There are three reasons why Jesus “had to be made like his brothers,” that is, share in their flesh and blood, become a human being:

(1) We are human beings.  For God to fully enter into our plight and danger He had to become one of us.  And in order to be the atoning sacrifice on our behalf he had to be able to die.  And so the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, took on human nature.  We call this the incarnation, the taking on of flesh.  Jesus became a “bag of bones,” gave up glory for a cross, chose to experience suffering the way we do.  This does not mean God does not suffer, for He does, way more than we ever have.  But Jesus suffered the way we do, in a body that is subject to death.

(2) Satan needs destroying.  Satan has the power of death over us, not an absolute power, which only God has, but a relative one under God’s sovereignty.  God tells him he cannot kill Job (Job 2), but apparently he could have engineered that if he chose.  Satan’s greatest power with reference to death, however, is the fear we have of death.  He uses that fear to encourage us to pursue all kinds of false paths to immortality, and in the long run as we realize we cannot escape, he moves us to despair that anything can ever change and our slavery becomes lifelong.

(3) Angels can’t be high priests.  Our author is still showing Jesus’ superiority to angels.  Jesus didn’t become an angel to redeem angels.  He became a human to help the “offspring” of Abraham, those who truly believe like Abraham did (Genesis 15:6).  And Jesus couldn’t be a sympathetic high priest unless he was a human.  Jesus, as high priest, is both offering the propitiatory sacrifice (a sacrifice that satisfies the justified wrath of God against us for our rebellion) and he is the propitiatory sacrifice.  This the high priest of Israel could not do.  And Jesus understands our temptations and is able to sympathize and, more than that, help.  The author of Hebrews will go into greater detail about that as he goes.  Suffice it to say that here he is bridging to his next point in the argument designed to bring this erring congregation back to reality.  Jesus is superior to the priesthood of Israel, including Moses the leader-priest and Aaron the high priest.

Many a little boy and some girls have taken some delight in killing ants in their anthill.  Why not, they are little and unimportant creatures.  Some people feel God looks this way on us.  But Jesus’ incarnation is like us becoming an ant to show the ant the way from death to life.  Why would He do this for us unless we were anything but unimportant to Him?  He didn’t die for angels.  He died for us.

Daily Thoughts from Hebrews: Reaching Our Potential

For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,

          “What is man, that you are mindful of him,

or the son of man, that you care for him?

You made him for a little while lower than the angels;

you have crowned him with glory and honor,

putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:5-9, ESV)

The author of Hebrews says he is speaking about God subjecting the world to the Son.  We haven’t seen anything specifically mentioning that, but from the perspective of the Jews it is obvious.  The coming of Messiah is the signaling of the coming kingdom of God to earth.  It is God’s taking full rein of earth’s affairs, which says that at present His rule is more subdued than it will be then.  It is like a king who has been forced to flee from his realm but is still influencing things from afar, awaiting the day when he will return and be openly declared king again over a submissive realm.  It is Jesus, not angels, that has this responsibility.

Psalm 8 testifies that human beings were made lower than angels but were the ones given responsibility over the earth to fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:27).  The Messiah, Jesus (the first mention of his name in Hebrews is in this passage), is the ultimate human, just as he is the ultimate king.  So though Psalm 8 was understood by the author and original readers to be referring to the human race in general, they also understood and expected the Messiah to fulfill this passage in a deeper way.  These prophecies are like the waves hitting the shore at low tide, spectacular to be sure, but nothing like high tide.  Jesus is the high tide fulfillment of these low tide prophecies.

For now, however, we can’t see the subjection of all things to ourselves or to Jesus.  It still seems that things are out of control.  We are still responsible for ruling our world for good but we have in major ways failed to do that.  But Jesus, our supreme representative of humanity, has already been crowned with glory and honor in heaven with his ascension as a reward for suffering death on our behalf.  His exaltation will be ours one day.  He is bringing us along toward the destiny that was ours and forfeited in the beginning.  How can we go back to that old way of life!!