Hebrews 2:5-3:1

Introduction

Last week the author of Hebrews taught us that Jesus is greater than even the angels. He is the Son of God, the Word of God, God Himself. Therefore his covenant, the New Covenant, that He proclaimed, is by nature superior to the Old Covenant.

The author has a pattern: teach, then apply, teach, then apply. He taught us that Christ is superior to the angels, and then the application was that we must listen to Christ. This came in the form of a warning that was cannot ignore ‘such a great salvation’. If the consequences for ignoring the Old Covenant were great, how much worse are those who ignore - and worse, walk away - from Jesus?

In today’s section, the author will once again return to teaching, before ending with another application. If in the prior section, the Author focused on the deity of Christ, he now turns his attention to the humanity of Christ. Several important theological concepts will be discussed in this passage:

Jesus, who is 100% God, also became 100% human. This is the incarnation. The dual-nature of Christ was a hotly debated topic in the early Church. Yet, from the earliest days, the clear doctrine of Christ was that he had two natures: divine, and human. He is 100% both.

Here is the kicker: it was actually more difficult for the Church to prove that Jesus was human than that He was God. A complete reversal of today.

Much of the New Testament focuses on this: This John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Followed by John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

There are serious salvation implications for the Incarnation. Namely, to redeem humanity, Christ had to become like us in every way.

Christ accomplished two things through his Incarnation: He defeated death, and He became our High Priest.

The ultimate enemy of humanity is death. The author of Hebrews will say, ‘that through death [Jesus] 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.’

It is through His suffering that Christ made himself eligible to become our high priest.

This is a big deal, because not only does it show Christ’s superiority to the Old Covenant high priests, but it also gives us hope.

Before Christ, it was easy and natural for humans to point to God and say, “You just don’t get it. It’s easy to sit your perfect throne and judge us, because you aren’t like one of us.” But through the Incarnation, Christ ‘emptied himself’ and became a human. And now God gets it. He endured everything we have endured.

Hebrews 2:5-9: The Glory of Man

The bridge into this next area of teaching is actually to compare the angels with humanity. ‘For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come’.

We know from the earliest passages of Genesis that humans are the crown jewel of creation. God put us in charge, and he gave us dominion to rule over all things. He did not give that charge to the angels.

He adds the words ‘to come’, as a reminder that we will also be rulers of the New Heavens and the New Earth. Yet this section will mostly focus on the world we live in now - the world we were meant to have dominion over.

To illustrate this, the author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8:4-6 “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,”

It’s often forgotten just how great humanity is. Or is suppose to be. As Gerald Griffin points out, we often see ourselves as ‘sinners saved by grace’ rather than ‘saints who still occasionally sin’. Both are true, but the default by which we see ourselves changes things. The Psalmist in this case takes the ‘high view’ of humanity - we’re pretty great!

Psalm 8 is actually a song where David is marveling at the wonder of God and his creation. See Psalm 8:1-3 “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,”

Similar to how David moves from talking about God, to talking about humans, the author of Hebrews has done the same about Jesus: he talked about his deity, and now is talking about his humanity.

Humanity is pretty great - but there’s just one problem…We aren’t actually as in control as David claims us to be. The author of Hebrews realizes this. Which is why he says in verse 8: “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.”

In fact, it often seems like nature subjects us more than we subject it. Anyone who has been through a natural disaster knows this first hand.

So then, who is this Psalm talking about, if not humanity at large? Well, says the author of Hebrews, Jesus!

Jesus was ‘for a little while made lower than the angels’. This likely means having become human for a short period. It could also refer to Christ’s time in the grave (see next verse), where he was brought ‘low’ (to the earth) for a short period of time (3 days).

Jesus was also ‘crowned with glory and honor’ as the Psalmist says, because of his suffering of death. Paul says something similar in Philippians 2:8-11 “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

‘so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.’ God’s intention was and is to redeem fallen humanity, and especially from death. This was contingent on Christ taking ‘death’ upon himself, so the rest of us wouldn’t have to. Through His suffering and death (and ultimately resurrection), Christ was exalted and glorified - because He took on the penalty reserved for us, so that we wouldn’t face it. This truly is ‘the grace of God’!

Hebrews 2:10-13

So what is the practical implication of Christ’s death, resurrection, and the glorification? He did it for us, so that the glory may be shared with us!

‘It was fitting…that in bringing many sons to glory, God should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

Verses 10-11 show us that what God intended to do for fallen humanity, he did through Christ first. Which makes sense, because Christ is humanity’s ‘representative’.

So if Christ was made ‘perfect’ through suffering. So are we. Now the word ‘perfect’ is better understood to be ‘full-grown, mature, or complete’. 1 Corinthians 14:18-20 uses the word to mean ‘adult’ or ‘grown-up’.

The sufferings Jesus endured, ‘matured’ him in a sense. It prepared him for his ultimate work on the cross and as the author will tell us shortly: it prepared Him to become humanity’s high priest.

Now what sufferings is the author referring to here? Certainly, what Christ suffered on the cross. But more than that, it seems to be the general ‘sufferings’ of becoming and being human!

If we think being human is tough, imagine ‘emptying yourself’ of deity and becoming human!

Because of what Christ has done, we all have the same ‘source’ the Father. Notice that the author calls us the ‘sanctified’ ones. Just as well, because of his humanity, Jesus can call us ‘brothers and sisters’ (older translations probably just say brothers, but it refers to entire family of believers).

To prove his point, the author of Hebrews quotes two passages: Psalm 22:22, and Isaiah 8:17-18.

In Psalm 22:22, the author of Hebrews places Jesus as the Messiah who is speaking to his ‘brothers’. A key part of the Incarnation (God becoming human) according to Tom Long, “was to make the goodness of God known to human beings by becoming fully joined to humanity and by proclaiming the goodness and trustworthiness of God.”

An interesting phrase here, is the Greek word for ‘congregation’ in the Psalm quote, is the same word for ‘Church’. The Psalmist would have been talking about the people of God, and so here the author of Hebrews connects the dots that the Church are the people of God.

Second, the author of Hebrews quotes Isaiah 8:17-18 “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.”

This quote is twofold - it shows us that Jesus’s humanity even resulted in Him having to trust in God (the Father), just as the rest of us do.

It also shows us that the Messiah, by being human, relates us. In the Psalm He is right here next to us (the children of God).

Hebrews 2:14-18

Verses 14-15 are the crux of the importance of Jesus’ humanity. This is the purpose for the Incarnation: Jesus had to become that which He wanted to redeem. We ‘share in flesh and blood’ so Christ ‘partook’ in it as well. The word means fellowship.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this lesson, the early church really had a problem with the humanity of Christ. Many heresies were born by people who weren’t comfortable with the idea that Christ is 100% human.

But Hebrews (and other NT passages) make it clear that Jesus is fully human. In fact, he had to be. This is logically a salvation issue. If any part of Christ were not fully human, then that part of humanity would not be redeemed.

As an example, an early heresy that popped up claimed that Jesus was fully human, except in his mind - they said that his mind ‘was divine’. The Church’s response to this was, “If Christ did not have a human mind, then our minds are not redeemed.”

The Humanity of Christ is not just a crucial theological issue, it’s a salvation issue. If Jesus is not 100% human, we have some serious problems!

There are two key things to remember about Christ’s humanity though:

He was tempted, but He did not sin. That means that sin is not a human characteristic. Some say, ‘To err is human.’ but that’s just not true. It also means that temptation is not sin.

Christ died. Jesus is the only person who didn’t have to die because he didn’t sin (remember, ‘the wages of sin is death’.) and yet, like humanity, he partook in even our death. Why? ‘So that 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.’

Christ shared in our humanity, even to the point of death. And it was death that he ‘forced away’ from the enemy.

The word for ‘destroy’ means to ‘render powerless’. The devil is still very much around - Paul says he prowls around like a lion - but he has been disarmed.

Before the cross, the devil wielded death over us like a taskmaster. It’s fear looming over us since the fall of Adam and Eve. Yet Jesus took the devil’s club and beat him upside the head with it!

Jesus himself talks about this when he says, “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man.” Devil, and his weapon death, were in fact strong! But through His own death, Christ ‘bound the strong man’.

So what power does the devil still have if he has been disarmed, yet still prowls around looking for people to devour? Well, think of it like a dog chained to a tree. It can’t actually hurt anyone....unless they wonder too close to it.

Again the comparison to angels is brought up in vs 16 - Jesus didn’t come to save the angels - he came to save humanity (signified by the ‘offspring of Abraham’ also an allusion to the people of God - the Church.)

So why exactly was Jesus made human in ‘every respect’? So that he might become a ‘merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God’.

To become a high priest, Jesus needed credentials, and these were his: merciful and faithful.

As a high priest, he was able to make ‘propitiation for the sins of the people’ - this is OT imagery. But unlike the other high priests, Christ was able to remove the guild of sin (propitiation) by his own blood.

Verse 18 not only gives us hope, but it shines light on what Jesus had to endure.

He ‘suffered’ when tempted. It’s sometimes easy to gloss over this in the Gospels. But Christ suffered more so than any other human because he never gave into temptation.

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, “The person who gives into temptation after 5 minutes does not know the suffering of the person who gave in after an hour. Ultimately every one of us has given into temptation, but Christ never did. Therefore, he suffered more than any of can even comprehend.”

But it was Christ’s suffering that made Him ‘perfect’, and qualified him for his role as high priest. And therefore he is able to help us through our suffering.

To put it plainly, Christ blazed the trail. He set the example. He gets it. And now he beckons us to follow him down that path, knowing that we won’t experience anything that He himself did not experience, endure, or suffer.

Hebrews 3:1-5

We will get into this passage next week, but I want to briefly highlight it’s importance:

Just as the author gave a practical warning not to ignore or walk away from the faith after his teaching on the deity of Christ, he also gives a second warning here after teaching us about the humanity of Christ: ‘We are His house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.’ (vs 5)

Conclusion

Not only is Jesus 100% God, He is also 100% human. And this is very important. He’s not 50/50, or a mix of the two. He is both. At once. Two natures, together. Because of His humanity, he was able to redeem us from our sins, defeat the devil through his death (and therefore remove the fear of death). Now as the Living God and our true high priest, He is able to guide is down the path of redemption having already walked it himself. As Paul says in Romans 8:17 “and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”