The Epistle to the Hebrews enters no claim to be the composition of one of our Lord’s immediate followers. Neither does it represent the thought of a period antedating the composition of the Epistles of Paul. It synchronizes in its date rather with that of the later half of these Epistles ((c. A.D. 64). It comes to us like its own Melchizedek, “ without father, without mother, without genealogy,” bearing its own independent witness to how Jesus was thought and spoken of by the Christian community in the seventh decade of the first Christian century; or, at least, by a special and very interesting group of Christians living at that time, made up of those Jews who had seen in Jesus the promised Messiah and accepted Him as their longed-for Redeemer.
In the designations it applies to our Lord in general, this Epistle reflects, of course, the usage of the oo first age of the Church, which has al nso ready been observed in the other Ppis: tles: but equally of course not without its own peculiarities. As in the Epistles of Paul, the most frequently occurring of the simple designations is) “Christ (3⁶,¹⁴ 55 6 ‘gitat2nes Ly 02⁶)1 1 0 The simple ‘ Jesus,” however, is employed relatively much more frequently than in Paul’s letters (2⁹ 3¹ 6²⁰ 5²² 10¹⁹ 12²,²⁴ ‘13¹²): it occurs almost as frequenidy, indeed, as ‘ Christ.” Neither is, however, a common title in Hebrews (nine and eight times respectively), nor is the compound title ‘ Jesus Christ,’ which occurs three times (10¹⁰ 13⁸,²¹), while Lord Jesus’ (13²⁰) and ‘ Jesus the Son of God (4¹⁴) each occurs once. The simple Lord also is only occasionally applied to our Lord (1¹⁰ 2³ 7¹⁴ [12¹⁴]); and no combinations of it with other designations occur at all, except, as we have already intimated, the phrase “our Lord Jesus’ is once met with (13²⁰).2 It is noticeable that in two of the three instances in which the term Lord is employed of Christ (1¹⁰ 2³) it is used in order to throw into prominence His superangelic dignity. The peculiarity of Hebrews is manifested in the free use it makes of the two designations, the Son (1²,⁵,⁵,⁸ 16 3⁸ 7²⁸), or more fully the Son of God (4¹⁴ (6⁶ 7³ 10²⁹), and the (or our) High: Priest” (217 3! 41415 510 620 426 81 g¹¹) or simply Priest (5⁶ ZSALIBLILA. [84]. 10²¹), which form respectively the favorite ontological and the favorite soteriological designations of Christ in this Epistle.
It is chiefly by means of and in connection with the title Son that this Epistle (in this, like the Epistles Ἐξοιύκαήρο of of John) gives expression to its conception of our Lord’s person. There is no lack of recognition of the humanity of our Lord. Indeed, nowhere else in the New Testament do we find the reality and the completeness of His humanity so fully expounded and so strongly insisted upon.³ But it is the transcendent conception of Christ, which looks upon Him as the Son of God, clothed with all the attributes of God, that gives its whole tone to the Epistle.⁴ The keynote is struck in the very opening verses, where our Lord is set as Son in contrast not merely with the prophets, the greatest renresentatives of God on earth, but also with the angels, the highest of creatures. All these are servants of God: He is His ‘ Son,’ through whom no doubt God works (12), but as one works through a fellow in whom He is reduplicated; and whom He addresses by the great names peculiar to Himself, God (1⁸) and—its equivalent here—‘ Lord (1¹⁰ 2²). That it is what is called the metaphysical Sonship, which is here attributed to our Lord is obvious in itself and is put beyond all doubt by the “anos, description which is given of Him as “Son.⁵ In this description there are assigned to Him divine works, in eternity and in time: the creation of the world and the upholding of the universe. But the most striking element of it tells us rather what the Son is than what He had done or is yet to do. He is, we are told, the effulgence of God’s glory and the very image of His substance “—which seems to be only a rich and suggestive way of saying, to put it briefly, that the ‘ Son,’ as Son,’ is just God’s fellow. He is the repetition of God’s glory: the reiteration of His substance. By the ‘ glory of God” is meant here just the divine nature itself, apprehended in its splendor: and by its effulgence” is meant not a reflection, but, so to speak, a reduplication of it. The Son is just God over again in the glory of His majesty.⁶ Similarly by the substance of God is meant, not His bare essence, but His whole nature, with all its attributes; and by the very image is meant a correspondence as close as that which an impression gives back to a seal: the Son of God in no single trait in the least differs from God.⁷ In a word, what is given to us in the Son is here declared to be God as Son standing over against God as ‘ Father.⁸