HEBREWS ii. 9:—But we behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man.
THE words I have chosen as a text form a part of a great passage, the proximate purpose of which is to set in a clear light the surpassing glory of Jesus Christ. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews the unapproachable greatness of our Lord’s person is exhibited. No mere “interpreter” of God He, like the prophets; no mere “messenger” of God, like the angels. The Jewish-Christian readers of this Epistle had been prepared by their traditional teaching to expect the coming of a culminating interpreter of God, of a final messenger from God, and they readily greeted Jesus Christ as such. Our author reminds them that, greeting Jesus Christ as such, they had found in Him something much more. No doubt they had found in Him the supreme interpreter of God, who, alone, having seen God, is in a position to “” declare Him,—or, as our author expresses it, who, being the very effulgence of God’s glory and the very impress of His substance, can, alone, manifest all that God is. And they had found in Him the final messenger of God who had come to do a service, for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation, which no angel could do, or in His own words, who had come not to be ministered unto but to minister. But our author reminds his readers that they had found in Jesus something more glorious than even these great things, seeing that He had received by inheritance the much more exalted name of Son. The ineffable glory of Jesus Christ lies, he tells us, in this,—that even the great functions of interpreter of God and messenger of God, great as these functions as exercised by Him are, are not the source and not the measure of His greatness. As the Son of God, the effulgence of God’s glory, and the impress of God’s substance, all the prophets are but His servants, and before His majesty the very angels veil their faces and do Him homage.
The greatness of His work, of course, he now goes on to remind them, corresponds with the greatness of His person. In the second chapter our author advances to exhibit this surpassing greatness of the work of the Son of God. The salvation He wrought is called with pointed directness “so great a salvation,” and is contrasted by this epithet with all that even the divinely given law could accomplish. To exhibit its greatness it is set before us in the height of its idea on the positive side. That we are saved by it from sin is taken for granted, and alluded to as a matter well known to all. But the negative side of salvation is not treated as the measure of its greatness. We are asked to attend, not to what we are saved from, but to what we are saved to. And that is presented as nothing less than dominion over the universe. This dominion God has destined for man from the beginning. But man had failed of his destiny. How hopelessly, how dismally, he had failed, none knew better than those the author of this Epistle was addressing—Jews, who had lost even their Jewish ideals, and were now doubting whether in Christianity they had not lost all. He points them to Jesus as one who had saved them out of this depth to that height. Lordship, —not over ‘ this world,” with its troubles and trials, its incompletenesses and make-believes, and after all done, the end of death,—but over the ‘ world to be,” was theirs. True, they had not entered as yet into their heritage: the “” world to be,” by that very token, is not yet. But Jesus had entered upon it; and in Him they held the reversion to it. ‘ But now, not yet do we see all things subjected to man: but Him who has been made a little lower than angels for the suffering of death, Jesus, we behold crowned with glory and honour, in order that by the grace of God His tasting of death should be for every man.” He is on the throne; and He is there not for Himself but for us. It was for us that He died, nay, that He took upon Himself mortality; and now He is on the throne that this dreadful experience of death might really avail for us.
Had He only died for us, perhaps salvation might have consisted solely in relief from this penalty of sin which He bore for us. That He ascended out of death to the throne, conquers the throne itself for us. When we behold Jesus on the throne for us, we may see how great a salvation He has wrought for us. For on that throne we too shall sit, not merely in Him but with Him. It has always been the Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom; not apart from the Son but along with that Son who is not ashamed to call us brethren. And because this has always been and still is the Father’s will, it behoved Him who orders all things for His own glory, in leading many sons into glory, to bring the leader of their salvation through sufferings to the full accomplishment of His great task.