Chapter 2
2021-2, Outline says we will look at "A greater salvation", and "A greater savior". Chapter 1 established Jesus as greater than angels, now we will see that he is a better messenger, with a better message.
2021-2, From MSB notes, at vss 1,2. He refers back to the chapter intro, and the three groups. This first verse - therefore - is addressed to those who accept intellectually that Messiah was superior to angels, but they had not yet committed to him as God and Lord. That is, they had promoted him not only as superior to all men, but even to being superior to angels. But they had not taken that last step, and made him God incarnate, and Lord of their lives. Vs 2 I find very interesting:
2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, [Heb 2:2 ESV]
2 For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, [Heb 2:2 NASB95]
MSB note says this is based on the role of angels in delivering the Law at Mt. Sinai, and there are several references. This idea - that angels delivered the Law - is brand new to me. So let's look at the references:
First this: 2 He said, "The LORD came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand. [Deu 33:2 ESV]
2 He said, "The LORD came from Sinai, And dawned on them from Seir; He shone forth from Mount Paran, And He came from the midst of ten thousand holy ones; At His right hand there was flashing lightning for them. [Deu 33:2 NASB95] I don't see how this includes angels in delivering the Law at all. They were left behind is how I read it.
This next:
17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. [Psa 68:17 ESV]
17 The chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands; The Lord is among them [as at] Sinai, in holiness. [Psa 68:17 NASB95]
You can infer it here I think, without getting too far out there. But why would Hebrews pick such an obscure reference? The argument has to be that both these passages connect angels to Sinai, in some way. But to me, neither of them has the angels actually delivering any information.
Next:
37 This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, 'God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.' 38 This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us. [Act 7:37-38 ESV] This says "the angel" spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai. This is in Acts. Luke wrote this, as an account of the speech Stephen made before they stoned him. He says a LOT about Moses in this speech. The definite article is present for angel. A specific angel is in mind. Isn't this more likely a Christophany than an angel? MSB notes are consistent that this is an angel. Note at Acts 7:38 says it is like "The Angel of the Lord", as if this is a special and specific angel. It refers back to vs 30, which says "an angel appeared to him in the flame of a burning thorn bush". So this was not God himself in the bush but an angel? Wow...how many times have I missed this:
2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. ... 4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." ... 6 And he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. [Exo 3:2, 4, 6 ESV]. It was an angel that appeared, and then when Moses got there, God spoke to him. But the angel more or less "announced" God. That bush was on Sinai. If this is the only verse Stephen is referencing, then does that angel have anything to do with delivering the Law? This angel delivered no actionable message.
Last:
19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. [Gal 3:19 ESV]
19 Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. [Gal 3:19 NASB95]
This verse, Paul now, clearly implies that the Law came through angels to Moses. I don't think this is about the 10, but about what came after. I have never understood it this way before. The Law was put in place by angels. Violation of the Law gets punished. Does this commonality between Paul's understanding in Galatians and the understanding of the writer of Hebrews give us a clue about who wrote Hebrews? The MSB note at 3:19 says this, in part: "The Bible teaches that angels were involved in the giving of the law (Acts 7:53, Heb 2:2) but does not explain the precise role they played." Well MSB got that one right!
I had thought this passage might be referring to the reliability of the angel who spoke to Mary, the one that spoke to Zachariah, and the one that spoke to Joseph. These accounts would have been well known. But that whole "every transgression..." part defeats that idea and puts us onto the declaration in Galatians. The OT references are, I believe, pretty obscure. I would never have picked those out as declaring that the Law was delivered to Moses by angels. Never. Is this where Gabriel talking to Mohammad and Joseph Smith's angel came from? Because messages are delivered from God by angels, even something as important as His Law?
SO....that was along way to go to verify that the message here is that angels, at least "The Angel of the Lord", was worthy enough to deliver the Law to Moses, in some manner. If angels are trustworthy to deliver such a foundational message to the Hebrews, then what shall we think of a message delivered by one even greater than the angels? Wow. What an incredible bit of logic! What of Messiah's message???
2021-2, We have to take a closer look at vs 3, because now I think I understand it:
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, [Heb 2:3 ESV]
Pressing the point still further...If neglect of the message delivered by mere angels brings retribution when violated, how severe will the penalty be for neglecting a message from an even higher source? Again, wow is all I know to say! How penetrating is this question, even before we establish that Messiah is also God! Even if he weren't, what penalty should there be for ignoring one greater than the angels!?!?!?
Chapter starts with "therefore".
He was saying they needed to pay closer attention - to hold fast - to the original message they received and NOT drift away from it. Seems to be a warning that the teachings of the apostles were not "evolving doctrines" subject to the changing culture and external pressure pushing on the church. It was unchanging. Then as a sort of summation of Christ's position, he recounts the "witnesses". Declared by the Lord (reference to Jesus baptism and the Transfiguration?), attested to by people who saw him and knew him - eyewitnesses. Signs, miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed. So the deeds Jesus did were widely known and believed, and the apostles and others were also given ability to attest to Jesus and to their own designation as preachers and teachers of the true word from God. There are many reasons to believe in Jesus. Here is an outline for how to argue that He is the Son, and He is God, and He was sent by God, and His Word is true.
2021-2, in connection with the above, look at the list here, starting at 3b:
Declared by the Lord.
Attested to by first hand witnesses
God confirmed by signs and wonders. Undisputed at that time.
The saved at the time Hebrews was written received undeniable gifts from the Holy Ghost. Miraculous gifts like healing, tongues, and prophecy.
All these things were known, and widely accepted as factual. All this is to drive home that they ought to be taking apart and inspecting and abiding by every little thing that Jesus ever said. Look at the confirmations of his message!
This verse:
8 putting everything in subjection under his feet." Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. [Heb 2:8 ESV]
An interesting point. God put everything under Christ, but we don't see it. Not yet. No....per MSB, God put everything under man. Man in general. Given authority over the earth. That was Adam's job. But sin came, and polluted Adam and the earth with him, and so man has been incapable of fulfilling that divinely ordained position. Until Jesus came. By his perfect life, he was the man God intended all men to be. He fulfilled God's divine purpose for man.
2021-2, Here is the whole quote:
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 made 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." Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. [Heb 2:6-8 ESV]. This quote is from Psa 8:4. As interpreted by the writer of Hebrews - and MSB - vs 6 is about man in general. Adam was given dominion over all. Vs 7, by using the phrase "for a little while", means temporarily lower than the angels...instead of above them as was his natural state. So vs 7 is about Messiah. The further argument is that we have never seen - at least since the fall - everything under the control of man. Man could not fulfill the commission given to him by God to be caretaker of all that is. Since man cannot do it, who can? Vs 9 drives it home.
2025 - In vs 8, all things in subjection to man. That is how it was in Eden. Obviously this is changed such that at present, things are NOT in subjection to man. All in subjection means NOTHING NOT IN SUBJECTION. I think that means all creation. I think Adam and Eve, in the garden, had been given the kind of oversight of nature itself that previously belonged to Jesus, by whom and through whom it was originally created. Jesus put it all together. He made it work. The environmental systems, the trees making oxygen consumed by the animals that returned it as CO2...Jesus fed the will donkeys, he brought t he "seasons" on animals so they could reproduce. Jesus invented all of that...an THEN God made man, and put all that Jesus had made in subjection to Adam. Adam's job was to keep nature going in all respects. Imagine the knowledge required, imagine the power and ability wielded by Adam to accomplish his role as master of all creation.
But now look. We don't control anything we just act like we do. We claim to be stewards of all nature and say we can "fix" global warming and seed clouds and predict earthquakes...but here we see why we cannot actually do any of those things. At the fall, Adam was cursed. That subjection of nature to him was entirely withdrawn, so that we no longer see all things in the power of man.
My gosh! Look how much the fall cost us!!! This is why the curse of the ground was so appropriate! Adam had previously been discerning and controlling of nature itself, and after the fall, he couldn't even stop thorns from growing. Instead of fruit ripening in sequence to feed him all year round, he had to plant and grow and harvest and process.
Now...think of the rapture, and our resurrection in perfected, restored bodies! Jesus is now in charge of all these things, but our discernment of what is involved in all that will return! We will understand how it all works, and with that knowledge we will have an understanding that is currently not possible, not fathomable to us in our fallen state.
We have no way even to imagine how far below our potential sin has brought us. God made us WAY WAY BETTER THAN WE ARE NOW!!! What we are now is a shadow of his intentions for us. No wonder we sin. No wonder we struggle. No wonder we have diseases. No wonder people starve. We lost our understanding, which had insured our health and well being, and that of all nature around us. That is gone. And we cannot imagine how much we will gain after passing through the doorway that Christ opened for us by leading us through physical death to spiritual life everlasting!!! No matter how amazing we think it will be, we cannot begin to appreciate what is coming.
vs 9 is where Jesus is first mentioned.
2021-2, 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. [Heb 2:9 ESV]
So much in this verse. "Mankind" could not attain to fulfill God's purpose. Mankind succumbed to sin, knowingly so. Adam was not deceived, he chose to sin. How then was God to reinstate His plan? He had to make someone, NAMELY JESUS, lower than angels - so make him human - so that through his willingness to die he EARNED the glory and honor necessary for the one who would put everything under his feet. No unworthy can be given so great a role. God substituted one man for all mankind so that this position could be filled! And if Jesus could substitute for mankind in this role God had intended for mankind, then Jesus could also substitute for mankind in fully paying the penalty for wanton rebellion against God, starting with the forbidden fruit, and infecting us all right down to this day.
2022 - This verse:
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. [Heb 2:10 ESV]. Once again in the NT we see Jesus referenced as the creator of all things. It is referenced so often that it is no wonder we can find it in the OT if we're just looking for it. I don't know how I missed the importance of this before. If it was by the Son that all things were created - things originally put under subjection to man - how fitting is it that the Son, taking on the form of the man he created, should be the means by which creation is restored!? Come on! This is not a fictional, unreliable, "doubtable" collection of very nice moral stories from the past. It is SO MUCH MORE than that. The connections are just too complex, complete, and numerous to have been assembled by many alone! Tags "Jesus as creator", creation.
2022 - This verse also:
11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, [Heb 2:11 ESV]. Isn't this saying that Jesus is "the same" as men. He sanctifies - so he is God, but is of the sanctified, who are men. "The same source..." surely makes Jesus fully man, and the creator of man, and who better qualified to assume the "nature" of man than the one most intimately acquainted with how men are put together- he created us from dirt, he knows how to "be" us. He formed us as beings capable of perfection, capable of complete obedience to the will of the Father. The Son who created us knows that potential for perfect obedience is inside us because he put it there. So he became man KNOWING BEFOREHAND that a perfect life was possible because he put that possibility into us. Again, look how absolutely beyond the creativity of man this whole "system" is!
2022 - This whole thing of Jesus creating - of God creating THROUGH Jesus - where God designs and Jesus executes - gives us insight into the roles within the Trinity. I don't want to blaspheme or commit heresy, but can I say that Theos conceives and Kyrios executes? Can I say that Theos is the "head" and Kyrios is the "hands"? God drew up the blueprints and Christ built the machine? What then of the Spirit? The user? The tester? The proof of concept? Maybe I don't have an answer because my whole premise here is wrong. But I'm leaving it here anyway.
2021 - Just reading through it from here. (2021-2, Picking up the pace this time also, as my brain is tired. But I got oh so very much more out of vss 1-9 this year than I ever have before!) There is just too much for me to understand. Here is what I mean:
This book by Pink, just on Hebrews, has 1,307 pages. And I'm supposed to read and digest the whole book in the Chronological Bible in 3 mornings. So that's over 400 pages/day of explanation for what I am supposed to read each day. Going with a different plan next year. Can't say that enough. Very anxious to get moving on that as the NT readings in the Chronological are becoming frustrating because of the brief time allotted, instead of getting more priority. This is my third time to use the Chronological. It's been great to read things in order. But it is time for a different approach - one that emphasizes the NT more.
Proofs offered that Jesus was made flesh not to benefit angels, but to benefit man. Jesus became a man and was unashamed to call them brothers, and to call us his children. (?) Am I reading that right? Each of the verses quoted seems to have been picked out...and I don't know the context of most. This is Scripture, so they are not out of context, but it would be good to go back and see the material from which they came. This is written as if the readers will be very familiar with these quotations - or have access to study them.
2021 - These profound verses:
14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. [Heb 2:14-15 ESV]
Our fear of death comes from Satan. He has pounded that fear into us so that he might better control and manipulate and deceive us. The fear of death is his greatest weapon against man. That is why Jesus chose that battleground to destroy him - he was defeated on his most favored ground, and lost. While I believe that self-preservation is in our genes (which God created, and so that is built into us in my opinion), after reading this it seems to me that we need to overthrow/confront/desensitize ourselves to fearing death, even though we seek to avoid it in any reasonable way. We know that fear can be overcome, because we consider those who die for their country, who die for their children, and who die for their friends to be a special kind of hero. We admire these people who conquered their fear of death for the sake of others. The "new" part of this to me is that we should not fear death, though avoiding death is "built in".
What a FB post, if I can work it out....
2023 - So those who say that the curse - that you "die" if you eat, and yet they didn't die - was not about physical death at all but spiritual death only, miss the whole point. Not only is it about physical death, but the real part of the curse is the lifetime of fearing death. How much worse to know that you will die than to just die. If you didn't expect death until it happened, would death - physical death - have any power over us at all? No. But that fear, that can own us. So then, should we say that at the fall, the spirit was separated from god, but lived, immortal as it was before, and the curse was physical, on our bodies, were made a little lower than the angels. So when the Bible says we are dead in trespasses and sins, it means our spirits are dead in the sense that they are separated from God and cannot have any interaction directly with God. But the "dead" it is talking about there is NOT literally about a dead spirit that must be resurrected at salvation. We have to keep in mind, to always ask ourselves when we read these passages, if we are talking about the death of separation from God, or the death of the body that we fear so much, even after salvation. The eternal life we receive at salvation is to be eternally in the presence of God in our physical bodies free from the fear of ever dying physically OR being separated from Him.
2022 - Vs 14...Satan has the power of death. Jesus, through death, destroyed Satan AND delivered us from the lifelong slavery of death. How much is in this construction? How is it that Satan has the power of death? How did Christ's death destroy Satan - it says it destroyed both Satan AND fear were destroyed.
First then, how is it that Satan gained the power of death? Is it that by inducing Adam to sin, and so corrupting the whole human race for all time, he insured man's eternal separation from God? In that case this would mean that Satan has the power over spiritual death. Destroyed Satan would then be more metaphorical than physical in that Jesus removed ALL of Satan's power, his primary weapon, his threat. After Christ, Satan no longer stood between man and God, keeping us forever separated from him instead of in His presence as it was in Eden.
Second, the "lifelong" slavery of death? Another way to put it:
15 Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. [Heb 2:15 NLT]. Read this way, this second part is about the fear of physical death. So..first Satan is unseated from his position between us and the presence of God (which analogy I do not like, but am leaving it here as I struggle to comprehend this verse), so he no longer wields power over spiritual death, and then, because we have the hope of an eternal existence with God after our physical death, we no longer need see physical death as the end of all that is good.
Jesus suffering paid for the sins of all mankind, and so restored all mankind - through Jesus - to an eternal perfect relationship with God. Justice had to be done in suffering, so that sin was in fact erased, paid in full, "the time was served".
This is why Jesus is the one way. The one who created man became man and suffered and died as man in order to "undo" the sins of all time and restore us to the state we were in when he created us in the first place. ONLY Jesus, incarnate, could ever have done this. Oh wow! Only by demonstrating through his perfect life that a perfect life was possible for man could he prove to the heavenlies that his original creation was indeed potentially perfect. It COULD be done, but Adam failed, and Jesus did not. This showed that though we were not robots but had a choice, it WAS possible to get it right. We just failed.
This verse:
17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. [Heb 2:17 ESV]
The Son became flesh - the same flesh as those to whom he was sent, so that he could become our high priest. He is merciful because he has experienced life in the flesh. Faithful because he is from God. Makes propitiation - that is, he offers/officiates over the sacrifice of atonement - on our behalf, because he is qualified for that position.
2021-2, I can only summarize vss 10-18, I did not go into them vs by vs in great detail. The idea is to establish, by OT scripture, that Jesus was of the same stuff precisely as mankind. Since he was exactly like us, it was "allowable" for his death to cleanse all of sin, so that we no longer need fear the everlasting death that sin requires. Instead, through Jesus' death as a man, we overcome eternal death - which is Satan's ultimate weapon. He can still kill our bodies, but that is no longer automatic eternal punishment. We no longer need fear death, but can instead welcome it as we go from life into the presence of Almighty God, who sent Jesus to save us and make that "reunion" possible. Since Jesus death removes our sin, he is positionally in the role of High Priest, making propitiation to God on our behalf, as the OT priests sacrificed each year for the atonement of the sins of the people.
Come on! How in the world could man EVER fabricate such a system? WHY would man do so, for he has absolutely nothing to gain by perpetrating a fiction like this. This plan is rigorously logical, rigorously consistent with what the Bible had proclaimed for millennia. No discrepancies. How can anyone not believe?
2022 - Jesus life as a man proved that his creation was not just theoretically capable of perfection but also practically capable of perfection. I wish I had a metaphor for this. I keep thinking of a watchmaker. A watchmaker can make a watch, but the watch is not proved workable until it's works are put into motion? That doesn't work. I don't know...but again this year I think I made a lot of progress in understanding more of this chapter.