The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews

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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s through like discipline, that, on behalf of G.o.d, He may become their Leader and the Captain of their salvation. It became G.o.d to endow the Son, in Whose Sonship men are adopted as sons of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d's name unto His brethren.

Here the pith of the argument is quite as much in the vow to reveal G.o.d 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 G.o.d. They praise G.o.d 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 G.o.d. So human is He that, conscious of utter weakness, He leans on G.o.d, 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 G.o.d) "which G.o.d 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 a.s.sumes 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 a.s.sumption 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 ill.u.s.tration. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d that they may be sanctified through the Son. Our pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d and on the side of man.

Now to have dwelling in Him the power of consecrating men to G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 antic.i.p.ates 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 h.e.l.l'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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage. 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 G.o.d. 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Col. i. 15, 19.

[9] Acts vii. 53.

[10] Gal. iii. 19.

[11] ??a???ta.

[12] Matt. xxv. 31.

[13] Luke xxii. 43. The genuineness of the verse is somewhat doubtful.

[14] ? pa?a???e? (ii. 1).

[15] Matt. xxi. 33, sqq.

[16] Heb. x. 29.

[17] Ps. viii. 4.

[18] Ps. viii. 2.

[19] 1 Cor. xv. 27.

[20] ???tt?sa?.

[21] Cf. Acts ii. 30.

[22] Chap. ii. 4.

[23] ?e?s?ta? (ii. 9).

[24] John xvii. 5.

[25] ????t?.

[26] ??????? (ii. 10).

[27] d?' ??.

[28] d?' ??.

[29] Chap. xii. 7.

[30] ? ??????? (ii. 11).

[31] Ps. xxii. 22.

[32] Chap. ii. 13.

[33] Isa. viii. 18

[34] Chap. ii. 14.

[35] _Humiliation of Christ_, p. 46.

[36] Chap. v. 4, 5.

[37] ?p??a??eta? (ii. 16).

CHAPTER III.