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THE SON AND THE ANGELS
Hebrews
1:4 - Hebrews 2:18
The most dangerous and persistent error against which the
theologians of the New Testament had to contend was the doctrine of emanations.
The persistence of this error lay in its affinity with the Christian conception
of mediation between God and men; its danger sprang from its complete
inconsistency with the Christian idea of the person and work of the Mediator.
For the Hebrew conception of God, as the "I AM," tended more and more
in the lapse of ages to sever Him from all immediate contact with created
beings. It would be the natural boast of the Jews that Jehovah dwelt in
unapproachable light. They would point to the contrast between Him and the
human gods of the Greeks. An ever-deepening consciousness of sin and spiritual
gloom would strengthen the conviction that the Lord abode behind the veil, and
their conception of God would of necessity react on their consciousness of sin.
If, therefore, God is the absolute Being--so argued the Gnostics of the day--He
cannot be the actual Creator of the world. We must suppose the existence of an
emanation or a series of emanations from God, every additional link in the
chain being less Divine, until we arrive at the material universe, where the
element of Divinity is entirely lost. These emanations are the angels, the only
possible mediators between God and men. Some theories came to a stand at this
point; others took a further step, and worshipped the angels, as the mediators
also between men and God. Thus the angels were regarded as messengers or
apostles from God and reconcilers or priests for men. St. Paul has already rejected these notions
in his Epistle to the Colossians. He teaches that the Son of God's love is the
visible image of the invisible God, prior to all creation and by right of
primogeniture Heir of all, Creator of the highest angels, Himself being before
they came into existence. Such He is before His assumption of humanity. But it
pleased God that in Him, also as God-Man, all the plenitude of the Divine
attributes should dwell; so that the Mediator is not an emanation, neither
human nor Divine, but is Himself God and Man.[8]
Recent expositors have sufficiently proved that there was
a Judaic element in the Colossian heresy. We need not, therefore, hesitate to
admit that the Epistle to the Hebrews contains references to the same error.
Our author acknowledges the existence of angels. He declares that the Law was
given through angels, which is a point not touched upon more than once in the
Old Testament, but seemingly taken for granted, rather than expressly
announced, in the New. Stephen reproaches the Jews, who had received the Law as
the ordinances of angels, with having betrayed and murdered the Righteous One,
of Whom the Law and the prophets spake.[9] St. Paul, like the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, argues that the Law differs from the promise in having
been ordained through angels, as mediators between the Lord and His people
Israel, whereas the promise was given by God, not as a compact between two
parties, but as the free act of Him Who is one.[10] The main purpose of the
first and second chapters of our Epistle is to maintain the superiority of the
Son to the angels, of Him in Whom God has spoken unto us to the mediators
through whom He gave the Law.
The defect of the doctrine of emanations was twofold. They
are supposed to consist of a long chain of intermediate beings. But the chain
does not connect at either end. God is still absolutely unapproachable by man;
man is still inaccessible to God. It is in vain new links are forged. The chain
does not, and never will, bring man and God together. The only solution of the
problem must be found in One Who is God and Man; and this is precisely the
doctrine of our author, on the one hand, that the Revealer of God is Son of
God; and, on the other hand, that the Son of God is our brother-man. The former
statement is proved, and a practical warning based upon it, in the section that
extends from Hebrews 1:4 to Hebrews 2:4. The latter is the subject of the
section from Hebrews 2:5 to Hebrews 2:18.
I. THE REVEALER OF GOD SON OF GOD.
"Having become by so much
better than the angels, as He hath inherited a more excellent name than they.
For unto which of the angels said He at any time,
Thou art my Son, This day have I begotten Thee?
and again,
I will be to Him a Father,
And He shall be to Me a Son?
And when He again bringeth in the Firstborn into the
world He saith,
And let all the angels of God worship Him.
And of the angels He saith,
Who maketh His angels winds,
And His ministers a flame of fire:
but of the Son He saith,
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; And the sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of Thy
kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; Therefore God, Thy
God, hath anointed Thee With the oil of gladness about
Thy fellows.
And,
Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation
of the earth, And the heavens are the works of Thy hands: They shall perish;
but Thou continuest: And they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a
mantle shall Thou roll them up, As a garment, and they shall be changed: But
Thou art the same, And Thy years shall not fail.
But of which of the angels hath He said at any time,
Sit Thou on My right hand, Till
I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet?
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to
do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to
the things that were heard, lest haply we drift away from them. For if the word
spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and
disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we
neglect so great salvation? which having at the first been spoken through the
Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard; God also bearing witness with
them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the
Holy Ghost according to His own will" (Hebrews
1:4-14; Hebrews 2:1-4, R.V.).
Christ is Son of God, not in the sense in which angels, as
a class of beings, are designated by this name, but as He Who has taken His
seat on the right hand of the Majesty on high. The greatness of His position is
proportionate to the excellency of the name of Son.
This name He has not obtained by favour nor attained by effort, but inherited
by indefeasible right. Josephus says that the Essenes forbade their disciples
to divulge the names of the angels. But He Who has revealed God has been
revealed Himself. He is Son. Which of the angels was ever so addressed? To
speak of the angels as sons and yet say that not one of them individually is a
son may be self-contradictory in words, but the thought is consistent and true.
From the pre-existent Son, regarded as the idealised
theocratic King, the Apostle passes to the incarnate Christ, returning to the
world which He has redeemed, and out of which He brings[11]
many sons of God unto glory. God brings Him also in as the First-begotten among
these many brethren. But our Lord Himself describes His coming. "The Son
of man shall come in His glory, and all the angels with Him."[12] In
allusion to this saying of Christ, the Apostle applies to His second advent the
words which in the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament are a summons to all
the angels to worship Jehovah. They are the Son's ministers. Like swift winds,
they convey His messages; or they carry destruction at His bidding, like a
flame of fire. But the Son is enthroned God for ever. The scepter of
righteousness, by whomsoever borne, is the scepter of His kingdom; all thrones
and powers, human and angelic, hold sway under Him. They are His fellows, and
participate only in His royal gladness, Whose joy
surpasses theirs.
The author reverts to the Son's pre-incarnate existence.
The Son created earth and heaven, and, for that reason, He remains when the
works of His hand wax old, as a garment. Creation is the vesture of the Son. In
all the changes of nature the Son puts off a garment, while He remains
unchanged Himself.
Finally, our author glances at the triumphant
consummation, when God will do for His Son what He will not do for the angels. For He will make His enemies the footstool of His feet, as the
reward of His redemptive work. The angels have no enemy to conquer.
Neither are they the authors of our redemption. Yea,
they are not even the redeemed. The Son is the Heir of the throne. Men are the
heirs of salvation. Must we, then, quite exclude the angels from all present
activity in the kingdom of the Son? Do they altogether belong to a past epoch
in the development of God's revelation? Must we say of them, as astronomers
speak of the moon, that they are dead worlds? Shall we not rather find a place
for them in the spirit-world corresponding to the office filled in the sphere
of nature by the works of God's hands? God has His earthly ministers. Are not
the angels ministering spirits? The Apostle puts the question tentatively. But
the pious instinct of the Church and of good men has answered, Yes. For salvation has created a new form
of service for which nature is not fitted. The narrative of the Son's
own life on earth suggests the same reply. For an angel appeared unto Him in Gethsemane and strengthened Him.[13]
It is true that the Son Himself is the Minister of the sanctuary. He alone
serves in the holiest place. But may not the angels be sent forth to minister?
Salvation is the work of the Son. But shall we not say that the angels perform
a service for the Son, which is possible only because of men who are now on the
eve of inheriting that salvation?
We must beware of minimising the significance of the
Apostle's words. If he means by "Son" merely an official designation,
where is the difference between the Son and the angels? The only definition of
"Son" that will satisfy the argument is "God the Revealer of
God." Sabellius said, "The Word is not the Son." The contrary
doctrine is necessary to give any value to the reasoning of our Epistle. The
Revealer is Son; and the Son, in order to be the full Revealer, must be
"of the essence of the Father," inasmuch as God only can perfectly
reveal God. This is so vital to the Apostle's argument that he need not
hesitate to use a term in reference to the Son which in another connection
might be liable to be misunderstood, as if it expressed the theory of
emanation. The Son is "the effulgence" of the Father's glory, or, in
the words of the Nicene Creed, He is "Light out of Light." It is safe
to use such words when our very argument demands that He should also be
"the distinct impress of His substance,"--"very God out of very
God."
The Apostle has now laid the foundation of his great
argument. He has shown us the Son as the Revealer of God. This done, he at once
introduces his first practical warning. It is his manner. He does not, like St. Paul, first conclude
the argumentative portion of his Epistle, and afterwards heap precept on
precept in words of warning, sympathy, or encouragement. Our author alternates
argument with exhortation. The Epistle wears to a superficial reader the
appearance of a mosaic. The truth is that no book in the New Testament is more
thoroughly or more skilfully welded into one piece from beginning to end. But
the danger was imminent, and urgent warning was needed at every step. One truth
was better fitted to drive home one lesson, and
another argument to enforce another.
The first danger of the Hebrew Christians would arise from
indifference. The first warning of the Apostle is, Take care that you do not
drift.[14] In the Son as the Revealer of God we have a
sure anchorage. Let us fasten the vessel to its moorings. That the Son has
revealed God is beyond question. The fact is well assured. For the message of
salvation has been proclaimed by the Lord Jesus Himself. It has run its course
down to the writer of the Epistle and his readers through the testimony of
eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses. God Himself has borne witness with these
faithful men by signs and wonders and divers manifestations of power, yea by
giving the Holy Ghost to each one severally according to His own will. The last
words are not to be neglected. The apparent arbitrariness of His sovereign will
in the distribution of the Spirit lends force to the proof, by pointing to the
direct, personal action of God in this great concern.
But the warning is based, not simply on the fact of a
revelation, but on the greatness of the Revealer. The Law was given through
angels, and the Law was not transgressed with impunity. How, then, shall we
escape God's anger if we contemptuously neglect a salvation so great that no
one less than the Son could have wrought or revealed it?
Observe the emphatic notions. Salvation is contrasted with
law. It is a greater sin to despise God's free, merciful offer of eternal life
than to transgress the commandments of His justice. There may be emphasis also
on the certainty of the proof. The word spoken by angels was firmly assured,
and, because no man could shelter under the plea that the heavenly authority of
the message was doubtful, disobedience met with unsparing retribution. But the
Gospel is proved to be of God by still more abundant evidence,--the personal
testimony of the Lord Jesus, the witness of those who heard Him, and the
cumulative argument of gifts and miracles. While these truths are emphatic,
more important than all is the fact that the Son is the Giver of this
salvation. The thought seems to be that God is jealous for the honour of His
Son. Our Lord Himself teaches this, and the form which it assumes in His
parable implies that He speaks, not as a speculative moralist, but as One Who
knows God's heart: "Last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son." But when Christ asks His
hearers what the lord of the vineyard will do unto those wicked husbandmen, the
manner of their reply shows that they only half
understand His meaning or else pretend not to see the point of His question.
They acknowledge the husbandmen's wickedness, but profess that it consists
largely in not rendering to the owner the fruits in their season, as if,
forsooth, their wickedness in killing their master's son had not thrust their dishonesty
quite out of sight.[15] The Apostle, too, appeals to his readers,[16] evidently
in the belief that they would at once feel the force of his argument, whether
trampling under foot the Son of God did not deserve sorer punishment than
despising the law of Moses. Christ and the Apostle speak in the spirit of the
second Psalm: "Thou art My Son. Ask of Me, and I
shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of
the earth for Thy possession.... Kiss the Son!" Now, if Christ adopts this
language, it is not mere metaphor, but is a truth concerning God's moral
nature. Resentment must, in some sense or other, belong to God's Fatherhood.
The doctrine of the Trinity implies the necessary and eternal altruism of the
Divine nature. It would not be true to say that the God of the Christians was
less jealous than the God of the Hebrews. He is still the living God. It is a
fearful thing to fall into His hands. He will still vindicate the majesty of
His law. But now He has spoken unto us in One Who is Son. The Judge of all is
not a mere official Administrator, but a Father. The place occupied in the Old
Testament by the Law is now filled by the Son.
II. THE SON THE REPRESENTATIVE OF MAN.
"For not unto angels did He subject the world to
come, whereof we speak. But one hath somewhere testified, saying,
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Or the son
of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;
Thou crownedst him with glory and honour, And didst
set him over the works of Thy hands: Thou didst put all things in subjection
under his feet.
For in that He subjected all things unto him, He left
nothing that is not subject to him. But now we see not yet all things subjected
to him. But we behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels,
even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour,
that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man. For it became
Him, for Whom are all things, and through Whom are all things, in bringing many
sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through
sufferings. For both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call
them brethren, saying,
I will declare Thy name unto My
brethren, In the midst of the congregation will I sing Thy praise.
And again,
I will put My trust in Him.
And again,
Behold, I and the children which God hath given Me.
Since then the children are sharers in flesh and
blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same; that through death
He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime
subject to bondage. For verily not of angels doth He take hold, but He taketh
hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made
like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High-priest in
things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For
in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that
are tempted" (Hebrews 2:5-18, R.V.).
The Son is better than the angels, not only because He is
the Revealer of God, but also because He represents man. We have to do with
more than spoken promises. The salvation through Christ raises man to a new
dignity, and bestows upon him a new authority. God calls into existence a
"world to come," and puts that world in
subjection, not to angels, but to man.
The passage on the consideration of which we now enter is
difficult, because the interpretation offered by some of the best expositors,
though at first sight it has the appearance of simplicity, really introduces
confusion into the argument. They think the words of the Psalmist,[17] as applied by the Apostle, refer to Christ only. But
the Psalmist evidently contrasts the frailty of man with the authority bestowed
upon him by Jehovah. Mortal man has been set over the works of God's hand. Man
is for a little inferior to the angels; yet he is crowned with glory and honour. The very contrast between his frailty and his dignity exalts the name
of his Creator, Who judges not as we judge. For He confronts His blasphemers
with the lisping of children, and weak man He crowns king of creation, in order
to put to shame the wisdom of the world.[18]
We cannot suppose that this is said of Christ, the Son of
God. But there are two expressions in the Psalm that suggested to St. Paul[19] and the author of this Epistle a Messianic reference.
The one is the name "Son of man;" the other is the action ascribed to
God: "Thou hast made him lower than the angels." The word[20] used by
the Seventy, whose translation the Apostle here and elsewhere adopts, means,
not, as the Hebrew, "to create lower," but "to bring from a more
exalted to a humbler condition." Christ appropriated to Himself the title
of "Son of man;" and "to lower from a higher to a less exalted
position" applies only to the Son of God, Whose pre-existence is taught by
the Apostle in Hebrews 1: The point of the Apostle's application of the Psalm
must, therefore, be that in Christ alone have the Psalmist's words been
fulfilled. The Psalmist was a prophet, and testified.[21]
In addition to the witnesses previously mentioned,[22] the Apostle cites the
evidence from prophecy. An inspired seer, "seeing this beforehand, spake
of Christ," not primarily, but in a mystery now explained in the New
Testament. The distinction also between crowning with glory and putting all
things under his feet holds true only of Christ. The Psalmist, we admit,
appears to identify them. But the relevancy of the Apostle's use of the Psalm
lies in the distinction between these two things. The creature man may be said
to be crowned with glory and honour by receiving universal dominion and by the
subjection of all things under his feet. "But we see not yet all things
put under him;" and, consequently, we see not man crowned with glory and
honour. The words of the Psalmist have apparently failed of fulfilment or were
at best only poetical exaggeration. But Him Who was actually translated from a
higher to a lower place than that of angels, from heaven to earth--that is to
say, Jesus, the meek and lowly Man of Nazareth--we see crowned with glory and
honour. He has ascended to heaven and sat down on the right hand of the Majesty
on high. So far the prophecy has come true, but only so far. All things have
not yet been put under Him. He is still waiting till He has put all enemies,
even the last enemy, which is death, under His feet. As, then, the glory and
honour are bestowed on man through his Representative, Jesus, so also dominion
is given him only through Jesus; and the glory comes only with the dominion.
Every honour that falls to man's share is won for him by the victory of Christ
over an enemy. This is the nearest approach in our Epistle to the Pauline
conception of Christ as the second Adam.
But is there any connection between Christ's victory and
His being made lower than the angels? When the Psalmist describes the great
dignity conferred on frail man, he sees only the contrast between the dignity
and the frailty. He can only wonder and worship in observing the
incomprehensible paradox of God's dealings with man. The Apostle, on the other
hand, fathoms this mystery. He gives the reasons for the strange connection of
power and feebleness, not indeed in reference to man as a creature, but in
reference to the Man Christ Jesus. Apart from Christ the problem that struck
the Psalmist with awe remains unsolved. But in Christ's incarnation we see why
man's glory and dominion rest on humiliation.
1. Christ's humiliation involved a propitiatory death for
every man, and He is crowned with glory and honour that His propitiation may
prove effectual: "that He may have tasted[23]
death for every man." By His glory we must mean the self-manifestation of
His person. Honour is the authority bestowed upon Him by God. Both are the
result of His suffering death, or rather the suffering of His death. He is
glorified, not simply because He suffered, but because His suffering was of a
certain kind and quality. It was a propitiatory suffering. Christ Himself
prayed His Father to glorify Him with His own self with the glory He had with
the Father before the world was.[24] This glory was
His by right of Sonship. But He receives from His Father another glory, not by
right, but by God's grace.[25] It consists in having
His death accepted and acknowledged as an adequate propitiation for the sins of
men. In this verse the great conception of atonement, which hereafter will fill
so large a place in the Epistle, is introduced, not at present for its own
sake, but in order to show the superiority of Christ to the angels. He is
greater than they because He is the representative Man, to Whom,
and not to the angels, the world to come has been put in subjection. But the
Psalmist has taught us that man's greatness is connected with humiliation. This
connection is realised in Christ, Whose exaltation is the Divine acceptance of
the propitiation wrought in the days of His humiliation, and the means of
giving it effect.
2. Christ's glory consists in being Leader[26]
of His people, and for such leadership He was fitted by the discipline of
humiliation. There is no incongruity in the works of God because He is Himself
the ground of their being[27] and the instrument of
His own action.[28] Every adaptation of means to an end would not become God,
though it might befit man. But this became Him for Whom
and through Whom are all things. When He crowns man with glory and honour, He
does this, not by an external ordinance merely, but by an inward fitness. He
deals, not with an abstraction, but with individual men, whom He makes His sons
and prepares for their glory and honour by the discipline of sons. "For
what son is there whom his father does not discipline?"[29] Thus it is
more true to say that God leads His sons to glory than to say that He bestows
glory upon them. It follows that the representative Man, through Whom these
many sons are glorified, must Himself pass through like discipline, that, on
behalf of God, He may become their Leader and the Captain of their salvation.
It became God to endow the Son, in Whose Sonship men
are adopted as sons of God, with inward fitness, through sufferings, to lead
them on to their destined glory. Perhaps the verse contains an allusion to
Moses or Joshua, the leaders of the Lord's redeemed to the rich land and large.
If so, the author is preparing his readers for what he has yet to say.
3. Christ's glory consists in power to consecrate[30]
men to God, and this power springs from His consciousness of brotherhood with
them. But, first of all, the author thinks it necessary to prove that Christ
has a deep consciousness of brotherhood with men. He cites Christ's own words
from prophetic Scripture.[31] For Christ has vowed unto the Lord, Who has
delivered Him, that He will declare God's name unto His brethren. Here the pith
of the argument is quite as much in the vow to reveal God to them as in His
giving them the name of brethren. He is so drawn in love to them that He is
impelled to speak to them about the Father. Yea, in the midst of the Church, as
if He were one of the congregation, He will praise
God. They praise God for His Son; the Son joins in the praise, as being
thankful for the privilege of being their Saviour, while they offer their
thanks for the joy of being saved. That is not all. Christ puts His trust in
God. So human is He that, conscious of utter weakness, He leans on God, as the
feeblest of His brethren. Finally, His triumphant joy at the safety of His
redeemed ones arises from this consciousness of brotherhood. "Behold, I
and the children" (of God) "which God hath given Me."[32]
The Apostle does not fear to apply to Christ what Isaiah[33]
spoke in reference to himself and his disciples, the children of the prophet.
Christ's brotherhood with men assumes the form of identifying Himself with His
prophetic servants. Evidently He is not ashamed of His brethren, though, like
Joseph, He has reason to be ashamed of them for their sin. The expression means
that He glories in them, because His assumption of humanity has consecrated
them. For this consecration springs from union. We do
not, for our part, understand this as a general proposition, of which the
sanctifying power of Christ is an illustration. No other instance of such a
thing exists. Yet the Apostle does not prove the statement. He appeals to the
intelligence and conscience of his readers to acknowledge its truth. Whether we
understand the word "sanctification" in the sense of moral
consecration through an atonement or in the sense of
holy character, it springs from union. Christ cannot sanctify by a creative
word or by an act of power. Neither can His power to sanctify be transmitted by
God to the Son externally, in the same way in which the Creator bestows on
nature its vital, fertilising energy. Christ must derive His power to sanctify
through His Sonship, and men must become sons of God that they may be
sanctified through the Son. Our passage adds Christ's brotherhood. He that
consecrates, therefore, and they that are consecrated are united together,
first, by being born of the same Divine Father, and, second, by having the same
human nature. Here, again, the chain connects at both ends: on the side of God
and on the side of man. Now to have dwelling in Him the power of consecrating
men to God is so great an endowment that Christ may dare even to glory in the
brotherhood that brings with it such a gift.
4. Christ's glory manifests itself in the destruction of
Satan, who had the power of death, and his destruction is accomplished through
death.[34] The children of God have every one his share of blood and flesh,
which means vital, mortal humanity. Blood signifies life, and flesh the
mortality of that life. They are, therefore, subject to disease and death. But
to the Hebrews disease and death involved vastly more than physical suffering
and the termination of man's earthly existence. They had their angel, by which
is meant that they had a moral significance. They were spiritual forces,
wielded by a messenger of God. This angel was Satan. But, following the lead of
the later Jewish theology, our author explains who Satan really is. He
identifies him with the evil spirit, who from envy,
says the Book of Wisdom, brought death into the world. To make clear this
identification, he adds the words, "that is, the devil." The
reference to Satan is sufficient to show that the writer of the Epistle means
by "the power of death" power to inflict it and keep men in its
terrible grasp. But the difficulty is to understand how the devil is destroyed
through death. Evidently the death of Christ is meant; we may paraphrase the
Apostle's expression by rendering, "through His death." At first
glance, the words, taken in connection with the reference to Christ's humanity,
seem to favour the doctrine, propounded by many writers in the early ages of
the Church, that God delivered His Son to Satan as the price of man's release
from his rightful possession. Such a notion is utterly inconsistent with the
dominant idea of the Epistle: the priestly character of Christ's death. A Hebrew
Christian could not conceive the high-priest entering the holiest place to
offer a redemptive sacrifice to the spirit of evil. Indeed, the advocates of
this strange theory of the Atonement admitted as much when they described
Christ as outwitting the devil or escaping from his hands by persuasion. But
the doctrine is quite as inconsistent with the passage before us, which
represents the death of Christ as the destruction of the Evil One. Power faces
power. Christ is the Captain of salvation. His leadership of men implies
conflict with their enemy and ultimate victory. Death was a spiritual
conception. Here lay its power. Deliverance from the crushing bondage of its
fear could come only through the great High-priest. Priesthood was the basis of
Christ's power. We shall soon see that Christ is the Priest-King. The Apostle
even now anticipates what he has hereafter to say on the relation of the
priesthood to the kingly power. For as Priest Christ delivers men from guilt of
conscience and, by so doing, delivers them from their fear of death; as King He
destroys him who had the power to destroy. He is "death of death and
hell's destruction." It has been well said that the two terrors from which
none but Christ can deliver men are guilt of sin and fear of death. The latter
is the offspring of the former. When the conscience of sin is
no more, dread of death yields to peace and joy.
In these four ways is the glory of Christ connected with
humiliation, and thus will the prophecy of the Psalmist find its fulfilment in
the representative Man, Jesus. His humiliation implied propitiation, moral
discipline, conscious brotherhood, and subjection to him who had the power of
death. His glory consisted in the effectiveness of the propitiation, in
leadership of His people, in consecration of His brethren, in the destruction
of the devil.
But an interesting view of the passage has been proposed
by Hofmann, and accepted by at least one thoughtful theologian of our country.
They consider that the Apostle identifies the humiliation and the glory. In the
words of Dr. Bruce,[35] "Christ's whole state of exinanition was not only worthy to be rewarded by a subsequent state of
exaltation, but was in itself invested with moral sublimity and dignity."
The idea has considerable fascination. We cannot set it aside by saying that it
is modern, seeing that the Apostle himself speaks of the office of high-priest
as an honour and a glory.[36] Yet we are compelled to reject it as an
explanation of the passage. The Apostle is showing that the Psalmist's
statement respecting man is realised only in the Man Christ Jesus. The
difficulty was to connect man's low estate and man's glory and dominion. But if
the Apostle means that voluntary humiliation for the sake of others is the
glory, some men besides Jesus Christ might have been mentioned in whom the
words of the Psalm find their accomplishment. The difference between Jesus and
other good men would only be a difference of degree. Such a conclusion would
very seriously weaken the force of the Apostle's reasoning.
In bringing his most skilful and original argument to a
close, the Apostle recapitulates. He has said that the world to come,--the
world of conscience and of spirit,--has been put in subjection to man, not to
angels, and that this implies the incarnation of the Son of God. This thought
the Apostle repeats in another, but very striking, form: "For verily He
taketh not hold of angels, but He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham."
Though the old versions were incorrect in so rendering the words as to make
them express the fact of the Incarnation, the verse is a reference to the
Incarnation, described, however, as Christ's strong grasp[37]
of man. By becoming man He takes hold of humanity, as with a mighty hand, and
that part by which He grasps humanity is the seed of Abraham, to whom the
promise was made.
Four points of connection between the glory of Christ and
His humiliation have been mentioned. In his recapitulation, the Apostle sums
all up in two. The one is that Christ is Priest; the other is that He succours
them that are tempted. His propitiatory death and His bringing to nought the
power of Satan are included in the notion of priesthood. The moral discipline
that made Him our Leader and the sense of brotherhood that made Him Sanctifier
render Him able to succour the tempted. Even this also, as will be fully shown
by the Apostle in a subsequent chapter, is contained in His priesthood. For He
only can make propitiation, Whose heart is full of tender pity and steeled only
against pity for Himself by reason of His dauntless fidelity to others.
Thus is the Son better than the angels.
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