This book of the New Testament can seem somewhat intimidating to study and understand. The author speaks at length about such subjects as the tabernacle, the Day of Atonement, the high priesthood, and someone named Melchizedek. But it has become one of my favorite books and God has used it in many good ways in my life. I hope that this study will deepen your understanding of and trust in Jesus, our wonderful high priest.

Hebrews is an epistle, or letter. It does not start with greetings, as the other epistles in the New Testament do. But it is clear that it was written to a specific group of believers that the author knew and had a relationship with. This is especially seen in the warm greetings with which the letter ends.

The authorship of this letter has always been debated. In the early church it was considered by most scholars to be authored by Paul, but there were those who had their doubts. Today it is not considered tenable to hold Paul as the author, but it seems likely that the author was a part of the Pauline circle, because of similar themes and the mention of Timothy towards the end of the letter.

The date of the letter is also somewhat difficult to determine. The various theories put the time between AD 68 to the early 80s. The main issue for many scholars is whether the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, or if it had been destroyed by the time the letter is written (the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70). If the Temple was still standing, then the sacrificial system was still in place. However, it is not necessary to solve this issue in order to understand and benefit from the message of the author.

With the number of references to the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, and the Jewish traditions, it is most likely that the letter was written to Jewish Christians. The author is writing to people who came to faith in Jesus and even stood firm through persecution, but are now, for various reasons drifting away from the living God. Somehow, over the years, their view of Christ had not grown and neither had their dependence on Him alone. They were attempting to add other things to their faith in Christ and the author is concerned that they are in danger of making Christ secondary to their faith or in turning from Christ altogether.

The author’s response to this situation is to point them back to Jesus, to help to see more clearly the greatness of His person and work, and so to feed their faith in Him. The letter’s wonderful description of Christ has led scholars to sometimes call it the fifth gospel.

¹ In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by [his] Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. ³ He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ⁴ having become as much superior to angels as the name he has obtained is more excellent than theirs.

Hebrews 1:1-4

So, with just a few strokes of his pen, the author establishes that what God has done in Jesus is the center of the center. First notice the contrast that he sets up between God speaking in the past, and God now speaking in Jesus:

In many and various ways ———— Only one way
of old ————————————– in these last days
to our fathers —————————- to us
by the prophets ————————- by [his] Son

The one thing that has remained consistent is that the God who is, is a God who speaks. He is not a God who remains silent, or who waits for us to come towards Him. Instead, He is a God who addresses us first, who opens up the communication.

But the point the author seeks to drive home here is that in Christ, the way that God speaks is unique from all that came before. The Son is not just one more prophet, even the greatest of all the prophets. His coming as God’s word is amazing and distinctive and it ushers in, not just a new age, but the final age, the “last days”. Something truly cataclysmic has occurred, and nothing will ever be the same again.

So, what is so unique, so superior in God’s speaking by, or in, His Son? Well, the author tells his readers with a few rich and succinct statements. Let’s go through these, one phrase at a time. First the author tells us that this Son by whom God spoke is God’s appointed heir of all things and is the One through whom all was created. The Greek word that here is translated “world” actually encompasses more than our earth. It includes all things and is similar to Paul’s statement in Col. 1:16 . We see here that this Son has a unique relationship then to all of creation. The Word that God speaks to us in the Son is the Word through whom all things are created, including time, space and material creation. The Word addressed to us in the Son comes to us from outside of creation, and is intimately connected to us—He is our beginning and our end. The Son is not created or made, but the one through whom everything else that is, has come into existence. The Son exists eternally as does God the Father.

Having spoken of the Son’s relationship with creation then, the author turns to describing the relationship of the Son with God Himself. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe (lit. all) by his word of power. Notice that the verb tenses here are all present tense, which indicates continuing action or being. In speaking then, of His relationship with God, the author is speaking of Who the Son essentially is in His being. And who He is cannot be separated from the being of God Himself.

The Greek that is translated here “He reflects the glory of God” is more literally, “who being the radiance or brightness of the glory”.  The Son doesn’t just reflect God’s glory, He is the actual shining forth, the visible radiance of the glory that is God. Here, in the Son, we see the very gloriousness of God—here and only here, in the Son, is where the glory that is the essence of God shines forth.

The second phrase is not a change of topic, but a filling out of the first. The literal Greek is “the character of the reality of him”. The Son is the “wholly valid revelation of this transcendent reality of God” (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. VIII, p. 585). The word translated here “character” or “stamp” is a word that refers to a tool for engraving. The transcendent reality of God is here engraved or stamped in the Son; He is the exact likeness of God.

The last phrase here, upholding the universe (lit. all) by his word of power, speaks of the present action of this Son. He is currently, continually upholding all that has been created. Of what prophet could this be said? Of what created being? This word, spoken in these last days in the Son, is Himself continually at work in creation. Nothing continues, nothing exists apart from His working. He is not upheld, but like God the Father is the one who upholds the whole universe.

Now we can see more clearly why God speaking in His Son is so very different from all the times and ways He spoke before. All of what was spoken by the prophets was revelation about God. Now, in the Son—we have the self-revelation of God. What the prophets gave us were signs, Jesus is the reality. The eternal God is speaking Himself into the world He has created! This is truly astonishing. God has not sent someone else to tell us more about Him. He has come Himself.

Theologian Thomas F. Torrance writes, “When we look into the face of Jesus Christ and see there the very face of God, we know we have not seen and cannot see God anywhere else or in any other way but in him for he is God himself become human, and there is no God except the God who has come and meets us in Jesus.”

When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Now, having established the wonderful nature of this Word, the author speaks of what the Son has accomplished. The verb tenses have changed again—this time to indicate completed action. The author is telling his readers even more about the uniqueness of this word. This word, spoken in these last days to us by the Son, has the effect of purification, or cleansing of sin. And this cleansing has been completed in the Son, its fulfillment signified by His now being seated at the right hand of the Father. There is a movement that this self-revelation of God goes through, a development that reaches completion. This word is effective in our lives to purify and enable us to draw near to God.

This idea of a development or movement occurring in the Son’s being spoken into creation continues in the last verse of this section: having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. This may seem odd to us at first. Isn’t the Son of God already superior? And how does He inherit a name that is superior to the name of angels if He already was the Son of God?

Actually, this statement will be developed through the rest of the book of Hebrews, so we cannot fully answer these questions now. But we can say a few things. The Son, when He becomes the word spoken in these last days, becomes incarnate. He assumes human flesh in order to be truly spoken into our fallen world, into actual time and space. It is as the word made flesh, as the Son of God and Son of Man that He accomplishes the cleansing of our sins. And the process that He goes through, this incarnation in order to speak the self-revealing of God, leads to His exaltation, now as this incarnate Son.

What does all this mean? It reveals to us that the God who is, is a God who is not content to be without us. He not only tells us about Himself in the prophets, but He Himself meets us, gives Himself to us for our healing in His Son. Jesus, as the word spoken in the Son, stands uniquely alone as God’s first and last word to us. God has Himself addressed us in the person of Jesus. What word that any prophet has ever spoken add to this word of redemption to us? In Jesus we meet the invisible eternal creator God, in person, in time and space, in flesh and blood. In Jesus we meet and hear and watch God himself face to face.

⁵ For to what angel did God ever say, “Thou are my Son, today I have begotten thee (Ps. 2:7)”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son (2 Sam. 7:14)”? ⁶ And again, when he brings the first-born into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him. (Ps. 97:7)” ⁷ Of the angels he says, “Who makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire. (Ps. 104:4)” ⁸ But of the Son he says, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the righteous scepter is the scepter of thy kingdom. ⁹ Thou hast love righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness beyond thy comrades. (Ps. 45:6-7)” ¹⁰ And, “Thou, Lord, didst found the earth at the beginning, and the heavens are the work of thy hands; ¹¹ they will perish, but you remain; they will all grow old like a garment, ¹² like a mantle you wilt roll them up, and they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end. (Ps. 102:25-27)” ¹³ But to what angel has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand, till I make thy enemies a stool for thy feet” (Ps. 110:1)? ¹⁴ Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those about to inherit salvation?

Hebrews 1:5-14

This passage is clearly connected to the preceding one by the word “For”. The word “For” here indicates that the author is attempting to prove or substantiate the point he just made. And that point is, “When he had made purification (or cleansing) for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited. (1:3b-4)” The “he” the author is referring to here is the Son, the One by whom God has spoken in these last days, the very self-revelation of God. Unlike all the ways God had spoken before, the Son Himself is the speaking. He is revealing, in His very person, Himself as God, and so all of who He is, is included in this speaking.

And because the word that ushers in the last age is the Son Himself, it includes the event of His whole incarnate life, death, resurrection, and ascension. And what we see here, is that when God speaks by His Son, we are changed, we are affected. We see in Jesus the very heart and purposes of God, but God also actually brings about His purposes for us through this word, this Son. The eternal Son of God breaks into the very time and space He created with His Father, and in and through His life and death, He makes purification of sin.  Having accomplished this cleansing for us, He ascends back to the Father and sits at His right hand, but now as the glorified incarnate Son.

So this event, this movement that the Son goes through to be the word now spoken by God gives Him an inheritance, as this incarnate word, this self-revelation which is far superior to the angels. Now, as I said before, what this exactly means will be unfolded the rest of Hebrews, so we will not try to delve any deeper now.

But it is this last statement, that this word is far superior to the angels and the name He has inherited is so much great than theirs, that the author is substantiating in this next section. You’ll notice that he is quoting several Old Testament passages here to contrast the angels and the Son. These passages are actually all quoted from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which was done about 200 years before Christ. It is known as the Septuagint or the LXX, because the tradition is that seventy scholars worked on it. Over the years after the Babylonian captivity and the diaspora, more and more Jews spoke Greek as their first language and it became necessary to translate the scriptures so that these Jews could read it. The author of Hebrews, who clearly is very fluent in Greek, always quotes from the Septuagint. Now, if you go back and look up the references in your Old Testament, you will find some differences, because our Old Testaments are translated from the Hebrew, not the Greek.

As I said in my introduction to Hebrews, the author is addressing a group that has begun to add to their trust in Jesus. For a variety of reasons, they are hoping to have more power or control over their current circumstances and so they are becoming “Jesus and …” Christians. I doubt they think they are drifting away from Christ. They probably thought they were just adding in either some new spiritual techniques or older traditions that they hope with enrich and strengthen their relationship with God.

In the first few verses, the author begins to deal with the false view that Christ is just one more in the long line of prophets that have gone before Him. Now, the author distinguishes Christ from the angels. Angels had always been important in Jewish history. They had often appeared to individuals with messages from God, or had helped lead Israel’s armies. They were naturally held in reverence by the Jewish people.

At the time of the author’s writing of this letter, there was a lot of interest in and speculation about various heavenly beings. This interest was partly fueled by ideas from the Greek philosophers. There was a popular idea that the earth, material things like bodies and food, were bad, heavy, impure and that the heavens and heavenly beings were good, light, and pure. This philosophy stated that the best thing humans could do was to try to escape from the material and become part of the spiritual since that was so much better. Some of these philosophers held that there were ascending levels in the heavenlies, each level with various spiritual beings attending to it.

In other words, the direction to move in, for a better life, was away from earthly concerns and towards the pure realms of the heavens. Naturally, in this thinking, angels are far superior to any being that has inhabited the earth. Angels would be considered by many to be superior servants of God over any human messengers. So the Son, who came to earth and took on human flesh, while He is great, He is either as good as the angels, or maybe the angels were still superior to Him because they had not ever taken on our impure humanity.

The argument that the author presents to his readers here to prove the superiority of the incarnate Son over the angels is brilliant. He goes back to several passages in their Jewish scriptures to show that, even before the incarnation, God had made it clear in the words He had spoken previously by the prophets, that His Son was God with Him and is superior to His servants, the angels. This new word, spoken in the last days, was prepared for and pointed to by the very words God spoke by the prophets to men of old. By quoting all of these scriptures, the author underlines the superiority of the Son to all of the scriptures. All that came before were signs pointing to the reality of the Son, who is the word spoken in these last days. The difference between God’s words by the prophets and God’s word by His Son is as great as the difference between a sign pointing to Chicago, and Chicago itself!

And the verses the author chooses to quote demonstrate just as large a contrast between the Son and the angels. Jesus is not just another heavenly being, or even the greatest of the angels. To turn to trusting in angels, because trusting in the Son may not be enough, is exposed here for the foolishness that it is.

Before we consider the main points that the author is making, I just want to comment on the validity of the author’s use of these verses. It may seem to us that he is stretching it by using some of these verses to make his point. But he isn’t. The understanding that the rabbis had of their scripture was that it always contained more than one meaning and that there was a meaning beyond the immediate or obvious. The writer is arguing in the way of what was considered good Jewish interpretation in his day.

Instead of working our way through this passage one verse at a time, we will just look at the main points the author brings up. Most of the psalms quoted here and the passage in 2 Samuel have to do with the Davidic line. They are therefore Messianic and royal psalms, pertaining to God’s anointing of the Davidic king, whom He refers to as His son. These passages stress the unique relationship God has to this first-born or begotten son. The Son is the one whose reign is forever, whom angels worship, and who is anointed by God and honored by God in being given the seat at His right hand. It is God Himself who will subdue the Son’s enemies. The author makes it clear that this king, however, is not just one more descendent of David’s. He is human, He is descended from David, but He is God Himself, v. 8 “But of the Son he says, ‘Thy throne, O God …’” and v. 10 “‘Thou, Lord, didst found the earth at the beginning, and the heavens are the work of thy hands.’”

This second passage, which comes from Psalm 102:25-27 not only speaks of the Son’s role in creation, but also contrasts the eternal, uncreated nature of the Son with everything else—which is created. Everything else, the earth and the heavens, quotes the author, “‘will perish…they will grow old like a garment, like a mantle you will roll them up. (vv. 11-12)’” But, “‘you remain… you are the same, and your years will never end.’” The angels are created beings, but the Son is the creator.

The angels are not sons, they are servants. In fact, the author concludes this section by reminding his readers that the angels are sent forth to serve, “for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.”—in others words, to serve the readers themselves!

The author, in quoting all of these passages demonstrates the greatness of this Son, by whom God has now spoken to us. There is no need to look around for new or old ideas to add to our faith in Jesus. This word is the word!

¹ Therefore we must pay the closer attention to what we have heard, let we drift away from it. 2 For if the message declared by angels was valid and every transgression or disobedience received a just recompense, ³ how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, ⁴ while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will.

Hebrews 2:1-4

Having spoken at length about the wonderful Son by whom God has spoken in these last days, about His superiority to all of God’s words by the prophets because now, in the Son, we have the very self-revelation of God, and about His superiority to the angels, the author now issues the first of five warnings he will give his readers in this letter.

Now, I think that we are often tempted when reading passages like this, to let our fears fill in the meaning. We fear that this passage, and similar passages, means that God really is looking to condemn us, and that we had better keep on trying to stay on His good side if we want to prevent that from happening. And I usually find that what people think staying on His good side means is trying really hard to be perfect—i.e. to always be following His commands, serving Him well, being a good asset to the kingdom.

We need to be very careful, in reading warning passages like this, to listen carefully to what is actually being said and in the context in which it is being said. So, first let’s take a look back at the last line of the previous section. In 1:14, the author says “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” As we know, he is speaking here of angels. He has been reciting passage after passage from the Greek Old Testament to show that the Son, the eternal Son, is not just a great angel, but is superior in every way to these heavenly beings. They are, like us, on the side of creation—they are created. He is the eternal creator.

And in this closing statement of his argument, the author asks his readers a rhetorical question, in other words a question he assumed they knew the answer to. Are angels sent to serve us, those who inherit salvation? He is asking them this to show the emptiness of adding a trust in or worship of angels to their trust in the Son. And notice how he describes them, and us. The Greek translated here “who are to” is one word that means “about to”. So, the author is referring to all of them as “those about to inherit salvation”.

How are they getting salvation? By inheriting. They are not those about to earn, buy, make real, or work for salvation. To inherit something is to be given it by another, usually a relative. It is truly ours, but we may not have full use of it yet, or be experiencing the full benefits. But it is ours, and it is a gift that is bestowed on us, not earned by us. So the author reminds them that who they are, are people who have an inheritance of salvation, it is truly theirs and they will receive it, they are about to come into their inheritance.

Now there is one more part of this sentence we need to consider before we can go on to the warning that follows. The author says that they are about to inherit salvation. Well what is salvation? Is it primarily a “get out of hell free card”? Well we can look at a couple of things here to help us look more deeply at this concept. But it will be unfolded through the rest of the letter, so we are just beginning our look here.  First of all, salvation is connected to the earlier statement about purification or cleansing from sin. This the Son accomplished as God’s word spoken to us. Uncleanness was understood as not just the absence of cleanness, but as the power to positively defile and to make communion with/receiving from God impossible. It disrupted, then, one’s relationship with God. Purification restored this communion; it allowed real relationship with God again.

The Greek work translated “salvation” has a particularly rich and full meaning. It is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to translate more than one Hebrew word. First of all, it means “to make roomy or spacious”. Someone needing to be saved was thought to be hemmed in, constricted, or choked. Salvation is not something one does for oneself—it must be done for you by another, who opens up the way out, the way to freedom. To grant salvation and help was understood to be the task of God’s rule and action on earth. There is a strong emphasis in the Old Testament on the limits of any salvation not given by God.

So, what is it that the readers have heard that the author now warns them to give more heed to? They have heard this Word that God has spoken, His self-revelation in His Son, who gives us His complete salvation as our future, our inheritance. And this word that contains their salvation is unique and superior to all that has come before it; all those words were signs pointing to the reality that has come in Christ.

It is this word that they need to give more abundant heed to “lest we drift away from it.” The word translated “drift” describes a boat that is unmoored and is drifting away aimlessly. The Greek philosopher, Plato, used it to describe something slipping away from memory.

The author then goes on to compare the message, or word declared by angels and this word, “such a great salvation” declared by the Son and testified to by both those who were with Him and by God with various signs and miracles. The message from the angels was most likely the law. Both Paul (Gal. 3:19) and Stephen (Acts 7:53) speak of the part that the angels had in the giving of the law. The author first upholds the truth that this angelic message was valid or firm and that therefore every “transgression or disobedience” received a “just recompense”. In other words, the author is reminding them of the reality of what they had received from God in the law. Isn’t it true, he is asking them, that disobeying the law always had just consequences?

So, if this is true of God’s message given by angels, then what does that mean for this great and wonderful salvation that God has wrought for us in Christ? This salvation is done, it is the accomplished reality. And this word given to us in the Son, has addressed us. Where can we go if we neglect this reality?

I think, from looking over the whole letter to the Hebrews, that the original readers were people who had first received the good news of God’s love for them in Christ with joy. But, for various reasons they were now not content to trust completely in the Son. Maybe they were impressed with the various ideas current about angels and wanted to be “with it” or “super-spiritual”. Or maybe they wanted to find ways to get God to do what they wanted Him to do. Isn’t this what happens to us? When we are struggling, don’t we hope that some new program, some new technique in prayer, will be “more effective” in our spiritual life? Or maybe they feared that the difficulties they were encountering in their lives were proof that God wasn’t pleased with them. So, maybe they need to add back the sacrificial system to their faith.

The author attempts to help his readers in two ways, and he will continue this through the rest of his letter. The first, and most primary thing that he does is to help them to focus again on the wonderful person and work of Jesus, and therefore, on the astounding grace of the triune God. He seeks to feed their weak trust by inviting them to look deeply and fully at the character, purposes and work of God. He doesn’t chide them and tell them to just “have more faith”. In showing them the greatness of Jesus, they can see more clearly the foolishness of their doubts, anxieties, fears, and efforts to add to their trust in Christ. This look at Jesus is what most of the letter is about.

Secondly, the author issues intermittent warnings. He wants them to see the danger of counting on lesser things, or believing and acting on their fears. Because when they do these things they are drifting away from a real, vibrant living trust in the living God, which means they are drifting from reality. Later he will warn them that this drifting can lead to actual rejection of the grace of God. But here he wants them to understand that when they try to add something else to their trust in Christ, they are actually moving away from Christ. C.S. Lewis spoke of this in his essay, “First and Second Things”. He says there that when we put “second” things first: family, friends, our attempts to please God, etc., we end up losing the first thing, which is God Himself, and also losing the second because nothing can truly take the place God occupies and so ruin it by trying to make it into something it is not. The Hebrews were losing their proper appreciation of angels and their Jewish heritage by trying to put them on the same level as Christ. But they were also losing their relationship with the Son, because they were not fully resting in and relying on Him.

¹¹ For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all one. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren, ¹² saying, “I will proclaim thy name to my brethren, in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee.” ¹³ And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again, “Here am I, and the children God has give me.” ¹⁴ Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, ¹⁵ and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage. ¹⁶ For surely it is not with angels that he is concerned but with the descendants of Abraham. ¹⁷ Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people. ¹⁸ For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

Hebrews 2:11-18

Our author is continuing to unfold the greatness of God’s speaking to us in these last days by His Son. In this self-revelation, the triune God has accomplished His purpose for us to bring “many sons to glory”.  And He accomplishes this, not by staying distant from us, not by sprinkling fairy dust over us, but by the Son of God becoming the Son of Man, Jesus, “a little lower than the angels” and as the Son of Man, suffering death “that he might taste death for everyone”. Remember the last sentence in the previous section? The author tells us that it was fitting, right, that Jesus “in bringing many sons to glory” was perfected as the pioneer or trailblazer of their salvation through suffering.

The beginning of this section is connected to the last with the word “for” that we have already had earlier in the letter. Why was it fitting that Jesus should suffer as the pioneer of our salvation? The reason that the author unfolds in these verses is Jesus’ relationship with us, with humanity, which is established in His incarnation. God, in Jesus, becomes truly united to us, to heal us from the inside out. As the early church father, Athanasius, put it, Jesus doesn’t heal us as a doctor who gives medicine or advice, but He becomes one with the patient and overcomes our brokenness and rebellion in Himself to truly cleanse us from our sins!

The author develops this point throughout this passage, helping his readers gaze deeper into the true significance of the incarnation. To work our way through this passage, we will look at the various descriptions of the incarnation presented and then at all the implications of the incarnation the author draws out.

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all one. The reason it is fitting for Jesus, our pioneer, to be perfected through suffering is that he, as the One who sanctifies, is one with those being sanctified. In the previous verse, we learn that Jesus pioneers our salvation, our being unbound, freed, given the space and room that comes with life from God. Here He is described as the One who sanctifies. This word fills out more what salvation is. “Sanctify” is a word used in the context of worship, or communion with God. I think often we understand sanctification and holiness to be some sort of static state of perfection, a level of perfect behavior that is required to enter heaven. Actually these words have more to do with belonging to God. In the Old Testament, these terms could be used of vessels that were set aside for use in the tabernacle or, later, the temple where God dwelt. The priests were sanctified also and this was so they could be in God’s presence. The Hebrews understood that God’s desire was to have a real relationship with them and that He had to be the One to make that possible. So in this verse, we see that God provides our real sanctification in Him, in Jesus. Our freedom to know God, live in His presence, is secured for us by God Himself though the Son’s incarnation.

And Jesus sanctifies us by being one with us, by becoming “all one” with us, the ones He is sanctifying. What does this mean? The author develops this idea in the rest of this passage. In verse 14, the author says, Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature. Since we are made of flesh and blood, God in Jesus took on and so shares in our actual nature. Remember that a very prevalent view at that time was that bodily existence was considered inferior to spiritual existence. Why would any spiritual being want to take on our bodily nature? Why would God, the Creator and Sustainer of all, partake of human nature?

For surely it is not with angels that he is concerned but with the descendants of Abraham. Jesus partakes of our nature because we are the ones that He is sanctifying. The Greek word here translated “is concerned” actually means “take hold of” or “seize”. It gives a much more active sense to what God does in Christ. On this word, Chrysostom, an early church father comments, “It is derived from the image of persons pursuing those who turn away from them, doing everything to overtake them as they flee and to take hold of them as they are bounding away. For when human nature was fleeing from him … he pursued after and overtook us. He showed that he has done this only out of kindness and love and tender care.”

Jesus, in sharing in our human nature, in sanctifying us, comes to us where we actually are. He doesn’t just come looking like a human, or taking on a perfect human nature. He grabs a hold of us in our actual fallen broken state, in our running away from the grace of God. This is why the author goes on to say, “Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect.” In order for Jesus to truly grab a hold of us, He had to meet us where we actually were, in our sin and rebellion, to rescue us from our bondage, to lead us out into life—in other words, to save and sanctify us Himself.

To give us salvation, the triune God and Creator of all speaks Himself in His Son into our real and actual fallen existence. He doesn’t cease to be fully God, but assumes our real fallen humanity to heal us from the inside out. This is why this Word, spoken in these last days, is superior to everything that came before, is superior to the angels, is superior to Anything else we may seek to trust for our lives. No other has or can so unite themselves to all humanity and sanctify us for being in communion and fellowship with God. Only the very Son of God so united to humanity can.

Now we will go back through this passage to see what the author tells his readers of the implications of this incarnation. His first statement is quite startling and wonderful, “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” Jesus, God the Son, becomes one with us in such a way that He unashamedly calls us brothers and sisters. In order to make us able to truly belong to Him as His dear children, God the Son, God’s word in these last days, comes to belong to us as one of us! And I find it fascinating that the author doesn’t just say that He calls us brethren, but that He is not ashamed to identify us as His own family. God’s purpose for us is to bring “many sons to glory” (2:10), to give us a real share in the Son’s sonship and glory. As the early church fathers put it, He who is the Son by nature makes us His children by grace… and He is glad to do it! He has really made himself our actual and true brother.

Now the author quotes three Old Testament passages to confirm that Jesus is indeed connecting Himself to us at the deepest level. The first passage (in v. 12 above) is from Psalm 22, verse 22. This is a lament song of David and was considered one of the messianic, “suffering servant” passages. Jesus quotes the first line, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” when He is on the cross. This verse comes towards the end of the psalm where the speaker resolves to trust God and to worship Him in the midst of the congregation. Our author here, then, is saying that Jesus, rather than being ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, is standing with us, in our midst, to proclaim His Father’s name to us. The second two (in v. 13) are actually consecutive verses. They are from Isaiah 8:17 and 18 respectively. In this passage Isaiah warns of a great invasion from Assyria into the land of Judea. He speaks of himself and those who are with him, that he will place his trust in God. The author of Hebrews, in connecting these words with Jesus, is indicating that Jesus, in being one with us, is trusting the Father with us, as one of us, and on our behalf. And, as with the earlier quotations from the Hebrew scriptures, our author is indicating that in Jesus, we have the reality, the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament points to.

The next implication of the incarnation which the author gives is Jesus’ triumph over the power and fear of death, “that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” Jesus is the pioneer, the trailblazer of our salvation. He has grabbed a hold of us at the point of our rebellion and taken us out into the freedom of salvation. In His death He has tasted death for everyone. Here, the author tells us that Jesus, as our pioneer, had to go through death, the same death we would have to go through, to destroy its power over us, and so to deliver us from the fear of death that we have been enslaved to. Our sin not only separates us from the One who made us temporarily, here and now, but finally, because it leads to death. Death, then, had become the last word. We could not escape it and no matter what we might accomplish or have in this life, death would still be the final reality. But the path to life that Jesus cuts for us is the path through our death. Through this death, Jesus renders the devil “impotent”, as it says in the Greek. So death no longer has the final say, Jesus steps in our place and issues the final Word, the Word of Life in place of death.

Finally, the author tells his readers that Jesus had to be made “like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people.” Now so much of what he says here will be further developed at length in the rest of the letter, so I am actually not going to go into this statement much here. This is the first time he speaks of Jesus as a high priest, an image he will expound on in great detail. His point here is that Jesus became a merciful and faithful high priest on our behalf by becoming like us in every respect and in so doing, he made expiation, or purification as it is stated at the beginning of the letter, for our sins. In making expiation, Jesus removes the obstacle of our sin, which is what keeps us from having communion with the triune God who made us.

And Jesus does all of this, as we have seen, by actually uniting Himself to us in our fallenness, and really beating a way forward, removing the sin, suffering our death, and taking us to Himself as His brothers and sisters. This is why he is “able to help those who are tempted”, as it says in the last verse of this section. He can help us in this deep and profound way because “he himself has suffered and been tempted” as one of us, tempted in our place and on our behalf. He took on our real brokenness, our real distrust of and contradiction to God, and turned us back to the Father in Himself. This creating of a path, blazing the trail, was something Jesus doesn’t accomplish outside of Himself, but actually in Himself, which is why He suffered and died. And the help that He offers us is the help of One who has taken on our disease, healed it in himself first, and now gives us a share in His health as one of us, united to us as our high priest.

⁵ For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. ⁶ It has been testified somewhere, “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? ⁷ You did make him for a little while lower than the angels, you have crowned him with glory and honor, ⁸ putting everything in subjection under his feet (Ps. 8:4-6).” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. ⁹ But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one. ¹⁰ For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.

Hebrews 2:5-10

It is hard to know how much to take on of this passage in one go. I am stopping rather arbitrarily at v. 10 in order to keep this from being too long. The thought that the author begins in v. 5 is actually not finished until the end of chapter 2. But I think this will make sense on its own, even though it will be more filled out in continuing through the next study which will cover the rest of this chapter.

The Jewish people in Jesus’ day had a deep rooted identity in their past relationship with God: their laws—both written and oral, their worship system, and their festivals and traditions. When the Jewish readers of this letter first heard of Jesus, they embraced Him as the Messiah, as the One anointed by God. They believed that He was worthy of their trust and they endured persecution joyfully because they believe something better was theirs because of Christ. Now the author is warning them to give abundant heed to this message they heard and first welcomed “lest we drift away from it (2:1)”. He wants them to remember that God has given them a new reality, a great salvation, and there is nowhere to turn if they neglect it.

Clearly, something has happened to these Jewish believers that has led the author to write and to issue this warning (and those that will follow). They were adding to their faith in Christ. Maybe they were listening to the latest theories and wondered if one of these might be “the key” to a happy, healthy life on earth. Or they were still struggling with persecution and were considering going back to all that they had had as Jews. We don’t know for sure what the temptations were for these Christians, but I think that we can say that underneath it all, they weren’t exactly sure where Christ fit into their lives. They were not clear on just exactly who He was and what He had done for them. Was He another model of faith? How were they to understand Him in light of their long history as God’s people?

So, the author frames this whole letter in terms of God’s speaking to or addressing them, and he drives an ultimate wedge between all that God has done to communicate with them in the past and the word He has now spoken in His Son. He wants them to see, in the following pages, all the ways that the Son is unique and superior as God’s self-revelation. Now God has come Himself and given Himself to us in His Son. But what does that mean? Why has He come Himself? Why weren’t the earlier words sufficient?

These are the questions the author seeks to answer in his letter. He carefully, wonderfully, points to this Son, helps his readers to gain the fullest picture of Him as possible, so that their trust in Him might grow.

One of the reasons that there may have been some question about Christ’s standing in comparison to the angels was the prevalent belief that creation, and humanity, all things that are earthly are inferior to heavenly things. How could Christ be superior to the pure spiritual angels when He had a human body? Surely human beings are lower than the angels! Well, in order to answer this objection, the author reminds his readers of God’s original purpose in creating humanity. And in doing this, he brilliantly moves his readers into a much deeper look at the character and work of the Son, the Word of God.

In a way, the warning in 2:1-4 is a parenthesis. In v. 5, the author continues his thought from 1:14. There he tells his readers that the angels are sent to serve those about to inherit salvation. In other words, it could be said that the angels are not higher than human beings because they were sent by God to serve us, to serve us who are to inherit this wonderful work that God has done in and through His Son.

Now, in v. 5, the author says “For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking (1:2).” The “world to come”—what does this phrase mean? The author says that he has already been speaking of it. Well, at the very beginning of the letter, the author describes the Son as the One “whom God has appointed the heir of all things,” and then later he quotes Psalm 110:1 where God says “Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a stool for your feet (1:13).” It looks like the world to come is the Son’s inheritance, when God has subjected all of His enemies under His feet.

This leads to the next question—who is the author speaking of? Well, if the world to come is spoken of earlier as pertaining to the Son, then the “who” must be Christ. But there are two other points to consider—both connecting this verse to 1:14. First, in the Greek, the word translated “to come” is actually “about” and is the same as in 1:14 “those about to inherit salvation”. So, is he connecting the salvation they are about to receive with the world that is about to come? Secondly verse14 is speaking of angels’ position relative to humanity. When the author says here that is was not to angels that God subjected the world, isn’t the most natural inference, then, to human beings since that was the comparison in verse14? Human beings were those to whom the world was subjected by God.

The author now quotes from Ps. 8:4-6. It is a psalm of praise and wonder that the God who made the heavens and the earth should put us in such a place of honor. Here the author uses the quotation to show that God’s intention for humanity, while created lower than the angels, is only lower for a short while. God’s plan for his “image-bearers” is that they will be crowned with glory and honor and they will have everything put in subjection under them. This is truly amazing! God’s plan is that He will raise up His lowly human creation to be higher than the angels.

Where do we look to see this purpose for humanity being worked out? The author tells them in his next sentences—we see this not by looking at ourselves or our circumstances. Instead we see that God is indeed faithful to His word when we see Jesus. Now notice, this is the first time that the author has referred to the Son by the name Jesus. Jesus is the name that the Son of God receives when He takes on our flesh. It is Jesus that we see made for a little while lower than the angels by now crowed with glory and honor having endured the suffering of death. The Son of God was always superior to the angels, but now as the incarnate Son He has become superior.

Well, what is the connection between God’s purposes for humanity and seeing this psalm fulfilled in Jesus? Jesus is crowned with glory and honor only through death, but His passing through death ends up affecting everyone, “that he might taste death for every one.” Somehow, by God’s grace, Jesus is connected with all of humanity in such a way that His death is related to ours.

“For it was fitting that God … in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.” This is an astonishing statement! First, let’s consider the phrase “sons to glory”. We have seen from the quote of Psalm 8, that God’s intention for humanity was always glorious. Here the author elaborates more. God is bringing many sons to glory. Jesus tasted death for everyone so that we might share in His glory and in His sonship! That is why he uses the word “sons”—not because this is only for the male gender, but to press home the point that it is Jesus’ own sonship. The Son that the author has been speaking of since the beginning of this letter is giving us a share in what is His. The glory and honor that God crowns us with is Jesus’ glory.

To bring many sons to glory the Son, Jesus, becomes the pioneer of our salvation. This word, “pioneer” is a very interesting one. In Greek, the word means author, founder or trailblazer, the one who cuts a way through for others to come along. Jesus is our trailblazer—He cuts a way through our death, by making His death connect with everyone’s, to bring us through death so that we becomes sons of glory. This is why we look to Jesus to see God’s purposes for us—because it is in and through Him as our trailblazer that God makes us His children.

Our understanding of this great salvation we are inheriting has also been expanded. Jesus, God’s self-speaking into our actual time and space, has made purification for our sins, has freed us from our uncleanness (this will get further developed also later) so that we can be taken up into sonship and glory with Him! Jesus has been appointed heir of all things and in Him, our pioneer as one of us, we can now share in His dominion over all things, his inheritance.

Jesus is made perfect as our trailblazer through suffering. The author tells his readers that it is fitting, that is, it makes sense, it is proper and right, that Jesus’ perfection is through suffering. The word “perfect” is from the Greek word telos, which means fulfillment or completion. Jesus is made our perfect, complete pioneer through suffering. The word now spoken in the Son is brought to its fulfillment in Jesus suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension back to the Father. And this is right, good, fitting. The author will develop more why it is right in the rest of this chapter. But for now I want us to consider this—by saying that it was fitting, the author is telling his readers that Jesus’ suffering was not arbitrary. The purpose of His suffering was not essentially to be punished on our behalf, but was intrinsic to the triune God’s intention to bring us up to share in His life and glory, as children. Jesus’ suffering and death was not a sign that He failed, that He wasn’t as great as the angels, or that He had no glory. On the contrary, His suffering is part of His glory, because He willingly endures it to give us a real share in that glory.

So, in seeing Jesus, we see God’s giving of Himself to us, and enabling us to truly be His children. We could not find our way to God, we could not raise ourselves to Him. Caught and hemmed in by the brokenness of sin, we cannot save ourselves, give ourselves freedom, space, well-being. But God, in Jesus, who is one with us in our humanity has wrought this for us! He who is the Son of God eternally by nature has provided us a way to be the sons and daughters of God, by his grace.

¹ Therefore, holy brethren, who share in a heavenly call, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.

Hebrews 3:1

We are going to deal with only one verse this time, because there is so much here. This verse actually belongs with the previous section, as the “therefore” indicates. It is the author’s conclusive statement to what he has just been telling his readers. In fact, as we have seen by the use of “for” in earlier verses, we can say that this statement is a conclusion to all that the author has said so far in this letter.

Up until now, our author has been reflecting on the wonderful reality of God’s healing, restoring, glorifying work for us, in and through His Son, His “word” that He speaks in these last days. By starting this sentence with “therefore”, it is as if the author is saying, “Because all that I have told you is reality, because God Himself has met us and healed us in His Son… consider Jesus” This is the first imperative, the first command of the letter.

But before we can look at this command, we need to look at how the author addresses his readers here. He calls them holy brethren. Both words refer back to what he has told them about what God has done for them in Christ. Holy is from the same Greek word as sanctify, which means to make holy. And as we saw in the last section, holiness is about belonging to the Holy God, being made able to be with Him, to dwell in His presence. They are holy because Jesus, the one who sanctifies, has sanctified them by partaking of their humanity and tasting death for everyone. And because He has done this, He is not ashamed to call them brethren. So, here the author wants to pointedly remind them of their real identity—this is who they are, not who they need to become or might get to be someday. They belong to God, are a part of His family. We are holy brethren to Jesus because of who he is: one with us in our humanity and one with God in his divine Person.

But he doesn’t stop there. He tells them that they have a share in a heavenly call. The word translated “share in” here means to partake of and is the same word that the author used earlier to speak of Jesus “partaking” of our humanity (2:14). And the heavenly call takes us back to God’s intention to bring many sons to glory (2:10). God, in His Son, doesn’t just come close to speak to us, but unites Himself to our broken humanity, is tempted as we are, dies for everyone and is now crowned with glory and honor as the pioneer of our salvation. Because He has shared in all that for us, we now have a real share in the glory and honor, the heavenly call, that Jesus has won for us. What’s His is ours!

And what are they to do, as the holy brethren? The author tells them to “consider Jesus.” While “consider” can mean primarily a mental action, the Greek word includes the idea of sight. It means to fix one’s eyes on, to continue to focus on or give attention to. The verb is in present tense, so it denotes continuing action.

The readers have begun to drift from their first trust in Jesus, adding in other rituals or even other beings to trust in to help them deal with the stresses, conflicts, and suffering of their lives. They are tempted by the desire to find some additional “key” that will help them to be secure, pain-free, or more successful. The author has agreed with them that they live in the “not yet.” God’s intention for humanity is to crown them with glory, to have dominion over creation. But here and now, these Christians are in the midst of a world and life that stills seems very much broken and incomplete. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him (2:8). These Hebrew Christians are tempted to believe that really, their circumstances tell them what reality is, and so they are looking for what they can add to their faith to make their more obvious circumstances better.

If our circumstances cannot tell us the truth, what can? Well, the author tells them that we do see Jesus, and He is the one now exalted. He’s the one who tells us the truth, not our view of our current circumstances. So, he is telling them to keep on looking away from themselves and looking on Jesus. They are to consider, that is, dwell on, actively fix on the reality and presence of Jesus moment by moment.

Now we may be wondering, practically, how exactly to do this. Do we use Jesus’ name as a sort of mantra, saying it over and over? Do we ignore the circumstances of our lives, pretend they don’t exist, and try to “trust” by our sheer willpower that Jesus cares? I think the author has anticipated these misguided responses all along. He calls Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. They need to know, and continue to know better, the Jesus they are considering. Only by soaking in real state of affairs, the state brought about now that God has spoken by His Son, can they, and us, see their current circumstances with any clarity.

What does this phrase mean about Jesus being the apostle and high priest of our confession? Actually this can be viewed as a summary of all that the author has written so far. Jesus is both the one in whom God comes to us and in whom we are able to come to God. To better understand this, we need to look back to the Old Testament. The story of the Jews is really the story of the God who came to them and committed Himself to covenant relationship with them. This God wasn’t their idea. They weren’t seeking for a new god to worship. Their story is about the God who came to them and continued to come even in the face of their great resistance to Him. He told Abraham and later his descendents, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” In order to be their God, the one who dwelt in their midst, God continually unfolded for them His good and faithful character and purposes for His creation. They found they couldn’t manipulate or try to appease Him as the pagans did with their gods. They kept smacking up against the hard reality that He was, indeed, the God who is– “I am that I am” as He said to Moses.

God both came to them and revealed much about Himself over time, but He also made the way for them to come, to respond rightly, to Him. For, after all, how were these sinful creatures going to dwell with the Holy Creator and Sustainer Himself? As James Torrance, the late Scottish theologian, says in Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace (IVP) God provided them their worship and sacrificial system as “ordinances of grace”. He gave precise, detailed instructions to Moses for the construction of the tabernacle, the choosing of the priests, the kinds of sacrifices, etc. They were given no room to try and invent some way to approach or appease God on their own. God did not leave them guessing as how they were to be His people. He provided the way for them to respond to Him.

They learned that this God, who had come to them, was utterly other, above the creation that He made—the Holy One. But, at the same time, they learned that He would provide the way for them to dwell with Him. God told them how to consecrate, or make holy, objects and people to enable His people to receive from Him, to know Him, to have Him live in their midst. But, yes, the access to Him was still limited. The tabernacle was divided into 3 sections: the outer courtyard where all the people could come, the Holy Place, where the priests could go, and the Holy of Holies, which was entered only once a year and only by the high priest.

That day was the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur. It was the day that gathered up all the worship, all the sacrifices of the year. There is a lot we could say about the significance of this day and how it was observed, but we can do that later, because it will continue to be significant in this letter (you can also read more in Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace). For now, I just want to say a couple of things about the high priest’s role on the Day of Atonement. The high priest had the dual role of representing the people to God, and God to the people. In order to enter into the Holy of Holies, the high priest had to go through special preparations and wear special vestments. His breastplate, and the shoulder stones had etched on them the names of all the tribes of Israel. As the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies, these names pointed to the idea that all of Israel entered with him. The people waited outside, in the courtyard while he made his way in, carrying on behalf of them all the blood from the sacrifice to sprinkle on the altar for all of their sins. After God had atoned for their sin in accepting this sacrifice, the high priest returned to the people, this time as God’s representative to them, announcing their forgiveness and giving them a blessing.

This is the imagery the author has in mind here when he speaks of Jesus as our apostle and high priest. As the author told his readers at the beginning of the letter, God has sent out His word, in many and various ways, by the prophets. And now, in these last days, He has sent out Himself in the person of His Son. In Jesus, the apostle of our confession, God has come to us, has “tabernacled” among us as John says in the prologue to his gospel. He is the very self-revelation and presence of God in the midst of His creation.

And Jesus is the high priest of our confession. He has grabbed hold of our fallen humanity, become like us in every respect, and He makes our response to God, in our place and on our behalf. He provides us with his response as our response. Jesus is the reality that the Day of Atonement and the high priest pointed to. He comes to us to reveal the nature, character, and purposes of the Holy God and He partakes of our sinful nature, to purify us and heal us from the inside out and take us back up to the Father.

T. F. Torrance (brother of James), in his book Atonement (IVP) says this about this verse: 
In the three instances of homologia or ‘confession’ in the epistle to the Hebrews what is set forth is primarily the confession made by the high priest as he enters within the veil into the holy presence of God. It is the confession of our sin and the confession of God’s righteous judgement upon our sin. As apostle Jesus Christ bears witness for God, that God is holy, and brings that holiness to bear directly upon humanity and human sin. As our high priest Jesus Christ acknowledges that God is holy, acknowledges God’s holy wrath against our sin and says amen to it. Again as apostle he confesses the mercy and grace of God, his will to pardon and reconcile. As our high priest he intercedes for men and women and confesses them before the face of God as his own flesh and blood….and Jesus does this, not only in word, but in deed and life, in concrete reality” (p.89)

Amazing how much there can be to say on just one verse! There is a lot in Hebrews that can seem somewhat foreign to us, and we may start to feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the background. Don’t worry. Because the author is really, in many ways, just warming up to his subject, I think what he is saying will become more and more clear…and wonderful!

Let me wrap this up with a few thoughts. The author, to reach the point of telling his readers to consider Jesus, has been doing just that with them all along! He has been speaking of Jesus, pointing to Him for His readers to look upon, reminding them of the tremendous change that has taken place since God has spoken by His Son. They, and we, are to fix our eyes on Jesus, because only He can tell us what is true and real, who He is and who we really are. In the midst of all their daily concerns and struggles, they have started to turn their eyes to angels or other objects that might help them to suffer less or be more successful. But they were drifting because they had an inadequate or even faulty view of their salvation in Christ. The author encourages them to consider Jesus because He is present, with them, bringing the whole triune God to them, and them into the very presence and communion of God. And that’s what we’re doing when we study Hebrews as the author intends and now exhorts us explicitly to do.

When we don’t consider Jesus, isn’t it often because we don’t trust that He is present and faithfully active to bring about His good work in our lives? We forget (don’t we?) that He knows more of our circumstances, relationships, and even ourselves than we do. And when we do forget, other things seem to loom larger and have more real weight and take more heightened effect.  But as we reconsider!–we remember we can rely on His active, living grace to be at work in every moment of our day as Lord of all, and over all. What did the Hebrew Christians need to hear? What do we need in the midst of all we are facing? To gaze on the actual grace of God that has come all the way to us in Jesus to give us a share in His wonderful life—this is the reality, the key that enables us to see the truth about everything else, the One who puts everything in its true perspective.

² He was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all his (God’s) house. ³ Yet Jesus has been counted worthy of as much more glory than Moses as the builder of a house has more honor than the house. ⁴ (For every house is built by some one, but the builder of all things is God.) ⁵ Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, ⁶ but Christ was faithful over God’s house as a son, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the boasting in our hope until completion.

Hebrews 3:2-6

Our author is writing to Christians, most likely Jewish Christians, who, in the midst of their struggles and circumstances, are drifting away from Jesus and turning to other things to count on for their identity, security, or maybe in hopes of becoming  more spiritually advanced. Because of the great interest in angels in both the Hebrew and Greek societies, these Christians were tempted to add–to their faith in Christ–the worship of angels. Perhaps he was a mysterious angelic being who existed between God and human creatures?

But, because of their Jewish heritage, some were also tempted, among other things, to add Jesus onto their traditional reverence for Moses. The author of this book wants to address the question: How does Jesus fit in with all that occurred between God and His people? Is Jesus just another great prophet, or even another Moses?

So, having already considered Jesus’ superiority to the angels, the author now turns to a consideration of how Jesus compares to Moses. To understand this passage better, we first need to look briefly at Moses and his relationship to “God’s house.” Moses was considered the greatest prophet of the Jews, in fact one of the greatest people in history. He was the one whom God chose to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. He led the people for the 40 years that they wandered in the wilderness and brought them to the boundary of the promised land. At the end of the book of Deuteronomy, the author writes, “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those signs and wonders, the Lord sent him to do in Egypt—to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land. For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”

It was Moses who received the law from God. At Mt. Sinai, he was the only one allowed to ascend to the top of the mountain to speak with God. The elders could come half-way up the mountain, but no further, and the people had to remain at the bottom. When the people made a golden calf to worship while Moses was away, God told Moses He would destroy them, but Moses intervened on their behalf. He mediated for the people before God more than once. Because of his role as mediator, it was believed by many Pharisees and teachers that it was Moses who would stand before God on their behalf in the final judgment.

What is this “house” that Moses was faithful in as God’s servant? It could refer both to the actual people of Israel and to the tabernacle. Moses was the one who received all the detailed instructions from God on the building of the Tabernacle, the place where God Himself would dwell with His people. He was faithful to build the tabernacle according to the instructions he was given, and God came and dwelt in it, among His people. And Moses was faithful as God’s servant to lead the rebellious people of God through their 40 years in the wilderness.

There was an assumption among the Hebrews that what or who came chronologically after was lesser than what came before. So, just what is Jesus’ relationship to Moses? Where does He fit in the hierarchy of apostles and prophets that God has sent to Israel over their history? The first point that our author makes is to focus on the similarity between Jesus and Moses: “He was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in God’s house.” Both of them were appointed by God, and both were faithful to the God who appointed them. The author has no desire to denigrate Moses to his readers. They can continue to hold Moses in high esteem as God’s faithful servant.

From here, however, the author wishes to help his readers understand the absolute superiority of Jesus. Jesus is not another one of the kind of servant Moses is. To compare them is to realize that there really is no comparison. The glory of Jesus is the glory of the builder of a house compared to the glory of the house that was built. We aren’t then comparing 2 houses, but a creation with its creator!

“Now Moses faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ faithful over God’s house as a son.” The preceeding sentence is correct! In the Greek, there are no “being” verbs here, making this read more like a phrase then a sentence. In fact, the verb comes in the next section, which is treated as a separate sentence our English translation. The author combines his first 2 points of comparison. Moses was unarguably faithful, as a servant. Notice the author uses the same word earlier to describe the angels. Moses was God’s servant, and, the author’s next point, he serves in God’s house by pointing ahead, pointing beyond himself to what would take place in the future. The faithfulness of Moses is seen in his not pointing to himself, but being a sign, a pointer to what was to come. So Moses was great, but part of his greatness is pointing to one even greater.

In contrast, Jesus is the son, not merely a servant. And He is faithful over God’s house. Although He is now made human, and so for a while a little lower than the angels, He is also the Creator—the builder and therefore, over the house. Here is a more literal translation of the Greek for this sentence: “But Christ (faithful) as a son over his own house whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” We are the house that Jesus creates and that He is faithful over. We belong to Him. And he is not just the creator. He is the Son in relation to God. He has an absolutely unique relationship with God as his Son. A servant is not related to the head of the family as is the Son. The Son inherits all that belongs to the Father. The Son is of the being of the Father, flesh and blood. The servant neither inherits what is the Father’s nor has the same blood relationship to the Father. So, by being a member of this household under the son, we ourselves are not just servants, not born or belonging to the household. Rather, we can trust that He will be the faithful Son that He is, acting according to who he is, so much more than a slave. We can trust that He will be our true pioneer—giving us salvation by making us the children He is bringing to glory, making us members with him of his family. He makes us his brothers and sisters in one and the same household he creates, oversees and indeed inherits!

We are his house “if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” I know that some of you might feel tripped up by the word “if.” Is the author saying that it is up to us to be Jesus’ house? Does Jesus merely give us a potential that we, by our efforts, must fulfill? Well, the word does express some uncertainty. So, the author is encouraging some sort of action from his readers. But what action exactly? He tells them they are to hold on “to the confidence” and rejoice, or glory/boast in the “hope.”  What is he saying here?

The first point we need to realize is that he is not telling them to just be hopeful or confident. If he was he would be throwing them back on themselves, merely encouraging them to be hyping themselves up, or thinking positive thoughts. These words are not referring to a state of mind at all. These words are used in the Old Testament in relation to God and His faithful work. Confidence and hope are defined by the object they are directed towards. So, the author here is encouraging his readers to continue to live on and in the true and wonderful reality that God has seized a hold of us in our fallen, broken condition, become one with us at the point of our deepest need and mess, and has truly healed us and made us His children. This is the truth, the reality, not some possibility, not wishful thinking that we are to trust in.

In other words, we are Jesus’ house as we continue to count on Him to be our great high priest, as we celebrate the fact that we are held by a sure and certain hope. We are not called to count on ourselves, but rather to count on him who is the Son of the Father, but who has also become one with us in our humanity to take us to the Father as brothers and sisters of His!

⁷ Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, when you hear his voice, ⁸ do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, ⁹ where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. ¹⁰ Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, “They always go astray in their hearts, they have not known my ways. ¹¹ As I swore in my wrath, “They shall never enter my rest.” ¹² Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. ¹³ But exhort (or encourage) one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. ¹⁴ For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end, ¹⁵ while it is said, “Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” ¹⁶ Who were they that heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? ¹⁷ And with whom was he provoked forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom did he swear that they should never enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? ¹⁹ So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

^4:1 Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it.² For indeed unto us was the gospel preached just as to them; but the message which they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers. ³ For we who have believed enter that rest as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. ⁴ For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” ⁵ And again in this place he said, “They shall never enter my rest.” ⁶ Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, ⁷ again he sets a certain day, “Today” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” ⁸ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later of another day. ⁹ So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God; ¹⁰ for whoever enters God’s rest also rests from his works as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us therefore strive to enter that rest that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience.

Hebrews 3:7-4:11

The author of the letter to the Hebrews is addressing Christians who have been drifting from their faith in Jesus Christ. They have lost a clear understanding of the character, purpose, and activity of God towards us in Jesus, and have started trusting in other things besides the grace of God. While the main emphasis of the letter is the person and work of Jesus, the author interjects 5 sections of warning for his readers. My guess is that his readers don’t believe that adding to their faith a trust in angels or in Moses, etc. is a problem. They probably thought they were being super-spiritual, that they had a new, improved Christian life and that they had grown up from their simple trust in Jesus alone.

I think we can understand this tendency to drift from Jesus. Aren’t we tempted to do the same? What are some of the things that we can add to our faith in Christ? New ways to pray? A certain approach to quiet time? Being involved on the most committees at church? Getting one or more degrees in theology or Biblical studies?

Well, you may be saying, “What is wrong with all those things? Aren’t we supposed to want to pray, have quiet time, serve at church, and learn more about our faith?” And this is probably just the question that these first readers asked: “Aren’t we supposed to be interested in the other heavenly beings, and in our heritage as God’s chosen people?”

The problem for them, and for us, comes when we begin to trust in these other things along with our trust in Jesus. We think that by praying in a particular way or getting a certain academic degree or increasing our level of devotion we will have a greater chance of impressing God, getting Him to do what we want Him to do or to make up for mistakes made or sins committed.  The danger is that when we start to count on these other things to give us an edge with God, we are not simply dependent on receiving His grace moment by moment. Or perhaps we come to believe that we need to be doing certain things for God and in the process of pursuing them, we get caught up in the machinery and details and demands of the task to the degree that we neglect a vital growing relationship and communication with the very God we think we are serving. Our level of progress or success in accomplishing the task begins to control us and define for us the quality of our lives, our sense of well-being and value. We can begin to derive our security and identity from those other things added on to the foundation of our essential trust in Jesus to be the source of our life.

The author of the letter wants to make sure that, as they gain a clearer and more glorious picture of Jesus, they also understand that, in their attempt to put other things first, by trusting in angels or Moses in addition to trusting in Jesus, they could lose the first thing, the very relationship with the triune God that they started with. Karl Barth, a theologian of the 20th century, defined sin as resisting God’s grace. When we look for anything else to be a source of identity and life, then we diminish our capacity to receive all that God desires to give us.

This drifting from Jesus may seem fairly innocuous at first. As I said, they probably thought they were becoming more spiritual by adding certain beliefs about angels, or thinking that trusting in Moses as well as Jesus was a move towards Christian growth. But this author cares too much for his readers to leave them in this delusion. Along with giving them this amazingly clear and glorious picture of the person and work of Christ, he warns them by pointing out to them where this trend can lead.

The author warns his readers by using the example of the generation of Israelites that Moses led out of Egypt in order to free them from slavery and lead them to the Promised Land. He points to this particular example because he has just been discussing Moses and comparing him to Jesus. Moses was so revered by the Jewish people that many believed he would be the one to intercede for them in the final judgment. The Jewish Christians he is writing to are tempted to add to their trust in Jesus, a trust in Moses. Surely, trusting in Moses, the Deliverer, will increase their favor with God, will make them more spiritual!

First, in the previous passage, the author explains the complete superiority of Jesus over Moses. In fact, Moses was never meant to be compared with Jesus. His ministry was to be a sign pointing to the reality. How can you compare a sign with the object the sign points to? How can you compare a sign to Chicago with Chicago itself? The superiority of Chicago doesn’t negate the value of the sign; the sign’s value is fulfilled in pointing beyond itself to the reality. Moses served God well, but to trust in him as well as Christ is equivalent to being equally satisfied with remaining at the sign instead of moving on to what it points to.

Now let’s look at the actual warning. I think the best way to work through this passage is by pulling out the main themes rather than going verse by verse. The author uses a quote from the Septuagint version of Psalm 95:7b-11 throughout this long passage. It refers to the various incidents recorded in Exodus and Numbers, when the Israelites became angry with Moses and with God: grumbling because of lack of food or water, making a golden calf to worship when Moses is on top of the mountain with God, and finally, refusing to go in and take the land after the report by the 12 spies. God swears that none of the first generation that came out of Egypt with Him, except for Caleb and Joshua, will enter the Promised Land and the people turn back to the desert and wander for 38 more years.

So, first of all, what exactly is the author warning against? How does our author describe what it is that the Israelites did that led to God swearing in His wrath that they would never enter His rest? Actually, if you look through the passage, you’ll see that there are a variety of words and images the author uses to describe the problem. Here is a list:
-do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion—3:8
-your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years—3:9
-They always go astray in their hearts, they have not known my ways—3:10
-lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God—3:12
-none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin—3:13
-if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end—3:14
-so we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief—3:19
-the gospel did not meet with faith in the hearers—4:2
-those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience—4:6

How do we put all this together? The root problem with the Israelites is that they did not respond to God out of trust that He really is the God He reveals Himself to be. God had revealed Himself to be more powerful than all of the Egyptian gods, than Pharaoh himself. He had freed them from their slavery and led them out of Egypt laden with treasures given to them by the Egyptians. But as soon as they found themselves without food, they were grumbling against God, saying that He had brought them out to the wilderness merely to die and so they wanted to go back to Egypt. When any trouble came, they didn’t assume the best about God, but the worst. Their grumbling against God was not rooted in Who He had shown Himself to be, but in their own justifications of their fears and desires.

Let’s think about this in terms of our human relationships. With my children, I have attempted, like any parent who desires to do a good job, to reveal myself to be a mother who is always striving for their best, who loves them, and who can be trusted to be fair, honest, and seeking to help them to become mature. Sometimes over the years, one or another of my children have been grumbling against me for how I acted, or didn’t act, in a certain situation. What is the most frustrating is when their grumbling reveals they are assuming false ideas of me—as if I had acted in a way to deliberately hurt them or disregard them. It is one thing to be angry about my actions, but quite another to believe I am capable of having the unloving and inconsiderate character and motivations they are assuming I have. And what kind of trust and obedience can I hope for when they have such a false image of me?

I know this is an imperfect example, but I hope it helps us to see more deeply into this text. The Israelites were disobedient, yes. But why? The author connects their disobedience with unbelief. The Israelites knew God’s ways. They had watched His works. The gospel had been preached to them, says the author, as it has been to us! In other words, God had extended His grace to them. He had spoken His good and faithful word of redemption and belonging into their lives. But “the gospel did not meet with faith in the hearers.” (4:2) They didn’t respond to God’s revelation of Himself with trust that He is indeed who He revealed Himself to be. They didn’t want to live as if He is who He said He is.

Our author wants to encourage his readers to continue to consider Jesus, and in doing so, continue to trust Him as their great high priest, to hold onto their full confidence in Him. Remember, when he uses the word “confidence” here, he is not speaking of their subjective feelings of being confident. He is not telling them to try real hard to be confident. The word “confidence” refers to an objective reality, what is true, regardless of how they feel. They stop holding on to the confidence they already have, when they begin to seek other people or things to trust in besides Jesus. And this can lead to the evil, unbelieving heart; the heart that has been hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

This is what the author is warning them against: distrust, unbelief. When we add other things to our trust in Jesus, we are no longer trusting in Jesus. When we seek to appease God with our commitments, actions, etc., we are no longer trusting in Jesus. And when we work hard to “have enough faith”, we are trusting more in our faith than we are in Jesus.

Essentially, what we stop trusting is:  that God loves us, is trustworthy, and is for us, on our side. And feeding a wrong view of God can lead to greater and greater hardening of our hearts. Distrust when harbored and acted on leads to greater unbelief.

The end result could be that we fail to enter God’s rest. This word “rest” refers to two things in the passage. First, the Promised Land that God gave the Israelites is referred to as His rest. But the land was not the whole of the rest God gives, or even the main rest He gives. Remember that our author quotes from Psalm 95. In this quote, the psalmist, David, is warning his own generation not to be like those in the wilderness. So, this means that there is another rest. And this rest the author refers to as a “sabbath rest”, connected to God resting on the seventh day of creation, but to be fulfilled for God’s people in the future.

Stop and think about this for a moment. Who is this God that they are drifting away from? Who is He whom the Israelites grumble against? He is the God who is offering His people rest. In the Old Testament understanding rest was what one has when everything is set right. It isn’t inactivity, but complete well-being, and freedom. Jesus came as our high priest to give us a share in His sonship, and so a share in His rest. What a good and glorious God He is!

They are to strive to enter that rest. Does this seem contradictory to you? This must be a parallel to his exhortation that they hold fast to their confidence to the end. And it is connected to his earlier command that they, “Consider Jesus.” To trust Jesus takes deliberate, continual effort. We do not naturally and automatically live restful lives in a restful world. Every day there are temptations to be anxious or fearful, to be manipulative and controlling. Every day, we are tempted, by some person, scheme, circumstance or plan, to turn our eyes away from Jesus.

So we find this command here—strive to enter His rest. Do we realize how much, then, God desires that we enter into and live in the rest He gives us? Or do we think that He is more concerned that we “do stuff for Him” and do it well? Do we think of living in His rest as a nice thought, but really not that important to our Christian lives? Or that it just isn’t practical to live out of the peace of Christ? Well, from what the author says here, our willingness to deliberately strive to live in God’s rest is connected with who we think God is. And we want to be very careful about carrying around with us an inaccurate view of God. Left unchecked, it can grow into a rejection of God– and His rest.

Last point. Notice that the quote from Psalm 95 begins, “Today, when you hear his voice…” The author continues this image of God speaking “today” through the whole passage. He tells them to encourage one another “every day, as long as it is called ‘today.’” Notice also that in his warning in 3:12, the author states that he doesn’t want them to “fall away from the living God.” It is because God is a living God that He is still speaking “today.” The God that they are drifting from is not dead or inactive. He is living and continuing to speak to them, continuing to invite them into His rest. It is not too late to turn to Him again. And every day, as God speaks, we hear him calling to us, to strive to enter, to live in, His rest–the rest He is giving us and that He is! Because God is living and speaking, this warning is also full of hope—the hope of our resting and abiding in God’s living, continuing grace.

The early church father, Chrysostom, said of this passage: “He said ‘today,’ that they might never be without hope. ‘Exhort one another daily,’ he says. That is, even if persons have sinned, as long as it is ‘today,’ they have hope; let them not then despair so long as they live. Above all things ended [[??]], he says, ‘Let there not be an evil, unbelieving heart.’ But even if there should be, let no one despair, but let that recover; for as long as we are in this world, the ‘today’ is in season.”

God, in Christ, gives Himself wholly to us. Today, let us give ourselves wholly to Him and live in His rest.

¹² For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³ And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do (literally: with whom to us [is] the word). ¹⁴ Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession. ¹⁵ For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 4:12-16

For the author of Hebrews, the central understanding of what it means to be a Christian is to be one who puts her trust in Christ. I am sure that his readers would have readily agreed with this definition. But while they most likely got the “definition” correct, they did not have a clear grasp of what it means to live by faith in Jesus. For various reasons, they were tempted to put their trust in other places in addition to Jesus. But when they, or we, turn to other people or things in which to place our trust, we actually take a step away from Jesus.

The author is showing his readers how the inadequacy of our trust is directly proportional to the inadequacy of our understanding of Jesus Christ, and therefore of the triune God. To feed their faith, the author focuses on the wonderful person and work of Jesus, the gracious and faithful love of the triune God as revealed in Jesus. The God who is, the author tells us at the beginning of his letter, is the God who speaks, who reveals Himself in addressing His creation. Ultimately God does not choose to continue to speak through His prophets, but speaks most fully and completely by entering His creation himself in His Son. And what we learn in Jesus, what the author wants his readers to carefully consider, is that God speaks in order to give Himself to us in relationship, to make us, His creatures, into His sons and daughters, children of His heart.

In the section previous to the one we are looking at today, the author issued a warning to his readers not to resist the grace of God like the generation that God had redeemed from slavery in Egypt. He ends this warning with the command to deliberately strive to enter the rest that God is giving us.

Now the author ultimately grounds this command in the person and work of Jesus. Jesus is the living word, our great high priest who has gone on our behalf into the presence of His Father so that we can “draw near to the throne of grace.” We can enter and remain in the presence and rest of God because God in Christ enters into our very lives to transform and heal us and to take us to the Father. Let’s take a look at the passage itself.

First of all, the author talks about the living word of God. Most translations line up the adjectives together—the word of God is living and active and sharper. So, often this passage is thought to primarily refer to the Bible. But in the Greek, living is the first word in the sentence and so has a different emphasis that the other two adjectives, active and sharper. “Living is the word of God, active and sharp!” It is the living word of God that is active and sharper than a sword. While putting it this way doesn’t exclude God’s written word (for example, he mentions at the beginning of this letter God speaking to the men of old) I believe that the author is primarily referring to Jesus, the Living Word that God has spoken by to us in these last days (1: ). His focus throughout this book has been entirely on the triune God as He is known in Jesus, our great high priest. He returns to his discussion of the priesthood of Jesus in the following section with the words, “since then we have a great high priest…” So all this points to the Living Word being Jesus.

The author begins this section with the word “for” and so connects it immediately with the preceding section. We are to strive to enter God’s rest because His living word, or personal address to us, is active and effective to work in our lives. Notice the warning that precedes this section, the author tells his readers to take care lest they develop an unbelieving heart that leads them to fall away “from the living God” (3:12). The God that we know in Jesus is not a dead God, an absent God, or a disinterested God. We can strive to enter God’s rest, because God in His word is actively at work in us to transform us and make us able to live continually in His rest.

This passage is good news! Unfortunately, I think we are tempted to think that this is a warning. We may fear that the point here is that we can’t hide from God—He will find us out. And yes, the author states that “before him no creature is hidden” And if you don’t want God to be able to see into your deepest secrets, then this will feel more like a warning. But I think the author’s main intention is to encourage his readers. “Take heart!” he is saying. “God’s address to us is not a dead word, but is living and always at work. And don’t worry, there is no place in you that He cannot reach with his word to redeem and heal.” Think of it this way. What if you had cancer, and it had spread to several organs. Wouldn’t it be great it there was an instrument the doctor could use, that could separate every cancer cell from every place they were attached? And this instrument was so precise that it could divide down to joint and marrow.

Remember that earlier in the letter we are told that God’s purpose in sending Jesus to us is to bring “many sons to glory” and Jesus is described as the pioneer of our salvation (2:10). Jesus, who sanctifies is one with us that are being sanctified (2:11). I think these verses are what the author has in mind when he speaks here of the work of the living word of God. In His sanctifying work, He is able to enter into to all our thoughts, memories, anxieties, resentments, ugly sin. We are not just to be declared new, but truly made new—from the inside out. How wonderful that we can’t keep anything hidden from God. If we could, how could we ever completely live in His rest?

The nature of this living word is that He is active, He is fully able to do a complete work in us, and He is sees us better than we can see ourselves. That is the nature of this word. I include the literal translation of the last phrase in 4:13. The author repeats the Greek word logos, translated “word” in verse _____, but left untranslated in this later verse. It is a difficult phrase to translate and there are differing opinions on what the author is getting at. I don’t think it is insignificant that the author repeats logos here. The verse literally reads “all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom to us [is] the word.” This one who is the living word of God to us, He is the One who clearly sees us is how I would translate it. The word in a way “reads” us, interprets us, helps us see our selves and see what God will do to sanctify us by that very word.

The author follows his description of the living word by continuing his earlier discussion of Jesus as our high priest. He continues to focus his readers’ gaze on the incredible person and work of Christ. We’ll look first at what he tells them here about Jesus and then at the two imperatives that he gives. First he calls Jesus a great high priest “who has passed through the heavens.” This may seem at first like a strange phrase. What could the author mean? Well, it is connected with the image of Jesus as our great high priest.

Remember the high priest was the one who entered the holy of holies. This was the innermost place in the tabernacle (or temple) and was understood to be the very throne room of God. This is where God dwelt with His people. But He was both with them and separate. The Israelites were reminded of the complete otherness and holiness of this God who had drawn near to dwell with them. A heavy curtain hung between the holy of holies and the rest of the tabernacle. Only the high priest could enter the holy of holies and he could do this only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. He had to go through special preparations before he could pass beyond the curtain, to stand in the very presence of God on behalf of all of Israel. Jesus, our great high priest, who became like us and suffered death for us and our sins, has now not just passed through the curtain in the tabernacle, but through the heavens to the very presence of God, not only as “the Son of God”, but as Jesus, our true brother, on of us.

Now, in his description of Jesus, our author turns to this high priest’s ability to sympathize with our weaknesses. This one who has passed through the heavens is not one who stands over or above us, helping at a distance, with no real knowledge of what our lives are like. No, He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, because “in every respect [He] has been tempted as we are.”

In English we often think of the word “sympathize” in terms of “feeling sorry for” or “pity,” but the Greek word is much stronger than this idea. It literally means “to suffer the same suffering with or alongside.” This kind of sympathy comes from a full acquaintance with the seriousness of the situation (Kittel). Jesus knows our particular weaknesses and suffers with us, takes on our suffering and makes it His own to heal us from the inside out. Far from distancing Himself from our sins and brokenness, God, in Jesus, comes all the way to us and shares our weaknesses.

He has been tempted in all the ways we are, the author tells us. Clearly, though, they are our temptations and sins because He does this without any sin Himself. He has grabbed a hold of our actual fallen humanity, our actual sins and temptations and atoned for it all, passing through the heavens having now healed and redeemed us. This is our great high priest! This reminds me of the stunning earlier verse, “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters” (2:11).

So, in light of all of this, what does the author tell his readers to do? First, he encourages them to “hold fast the confession.” Confession means “to say with” and means to be in agreement with someone or something. The readers had confessed, agreed, that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and our great high priest, but they are tempted not to continue to live as if it were true or real. The author wants them to understand that by looking at angels or the Old Testament regulations as other “keys” to living well or rightly, that they were no longer holding fast to their confession, to their trust in the completeness and goodness of God’s work in Jesus.

The second command is, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” What are we to do with our understanding of the living word of God who is our great high priest? We are to draw near. Because God in Christ has drawn so very near to us, we can now draw near to Him, with confidence. And do you see where we are to draw near?—to the throne of grace. Remember that the ark in the holy of holies was thought to be God’s throne. So with Jesus as our high priest, we ourselves can now “go behind the curtain” and be in the very presence of God. Amazing! And we do not approach in a cringing, fearful way. We come with confidence. In other words we go as if we belonged there, because with Jesus as one of us, we do belong there.

We draw near so that we can receive grace and mercy to help in time of need. So, what is the reason the author tells us that the living word is active and sharp and can divide between bone and marrow? Why does he emphasis that nothing is hid from this word? And why does he remind them that the glorified high priest is the one who understands our temptations and sympathizes with us?–So that they will run to the throne of grace to receive mercy and grace. We don’t approach God because we don’t need grace, but quite the opposite. So where does our confidence come from? How can we be confident that God desires us to draw near to Him so that we can receive His help over and over again (the verb is present tense and so denotes continually drawing near)?

Our confidence lies completely in the character and work of God Himself. God speaks to us in His Son, coming to us, grabbing a hold of our fallen, sinful humanity so that, amazingly enough, we can always draw near and know that He will graciously and mercifully help us. He intends to make us His sons and daughters, who share in His real glory as children of his with Jesus as our actual real flesh and blood brother. Knowing us better than we know ourselves, the triune God is committed to making us fully who we are created to be in and through our Great High Priest.