Clough Hebrews Lesson 14
God’s Master Plan – Hebrews 2:9-10
Hebrews 2:1-4, we’ve had a warning passage. Hebrews 2:5-8 we had a section that dealt with the destiny of man to place the work of Christ. Tonight we are going into a very detailed exegesis of verses 9-10; these are difficult, quite difficult in fact, to put together but well worth the time and effort from the benefits that you derive from them. Before we do we want to go back and review once again God’s master plan or the grand strategy that He had for history, so I’m doing these five points again, you should have them down somewhere, but reviewing these five points will bring you up to date on verses 5-8 and prepare you for verses 9-10.
The first point of God’s master plan is that at creation God placed man as a potential king of creation. We say “potential king,” man was made to rule. And this is what makes man always want to rule, this is the force behind his desire to conquer outer space, the desire to climb the highest mountain and so on; always has been, always will be. Man was not man to be ruled by his environment, like all 20th century thinkers teach. This is what’s wrong with all the education theory that you get, most of it and most psychology that you get because all of it is grounded in the premise that man is determined by his environment. But what was the fundamental point of Genesis 1:26? Man is to determine the environment, not that the environment is to determine man. So it’s exactly backwards, and obviously once you start backwards you’re going to wind up backwards. And this is what has happened.
So the first thing about God’s master plan is that man is to be the potential king over creation and it meant “potential” because he wasn’t made as the king, he was made to become the king, and he is going to become the king by development of +R learned behavior patterns. His job was to develop these under tension. And again, we repeat, there is no such thing as evil just because you’re under tension. Tension itself is not evil. If it is, you’ve got a serious problem with the fall because before the fall Adam was under tension. He was under tension as to whether or not he would obey God’s commandment, whether or not he would listen to Satan’s voice, so man was under tension and under the condition of tension he was to develop these +R learned behavior patterns, they did not come from the instant of creation, they had to be developed.
Point two in God’s master plan was that man was to be lower than the angels but was supposed to become superior to the angels morally. Man, though lower than angels in strength and intelligence, was to become superior to angels morally, 1 Corinthians 16 and Hebrews 2:5. So that was the role and the destiny of man; man was to gain moral superiority over angels.
Then point three is that just as man was to gain over the angels, Satan being an angel rebelled against God’s plan because he wanted to acquire a high position himself, and Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, and we had a question someone handed in. What do you mean in the Hebrews series that one of the differences between God and man is that man can improve morally? I imagine what they mean is the difference between angels and man. If angels can learn from us, is that nor moral improvement? No. Angels simply learn in history, they’re not improving at all morally, never have. There’s no indication that angels are being sanctified. The word “sanctified” is not found in the Scripture when it is used of angels. Angels are used as agencies in sanctification but not their own sanctification; man’s sanctification. So it’s not true that angels are morally improving.
I cannot understand from the Bible reference you gave that Satan was trying to get to get a [can’t understand word] for his position; I thought he already had it but he was trying to become higher than God? This is an inference based on Exodus 39:10-14 and Ezekiel 28:13, Satan was installed as a priest but obviously it wasn’t the highest position possible for the creature. Satan was on a scale, so to speak, here’s the top position for a creature, that’s ultimately going to be filled only by Jesus Christ. Satan was apparently right down underneath that and he wanted the next thing up on the promotion list and he was trying to promote himself when he fell.
So the first point is that Satan tempted man in order to stop man from gaining his destined position. Satan tempted man and has always in history tried to prevent man from attaining his destiny; always this is so. Passages: Genesis 3:1-6; Matthew 4:8-9, and 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2. So we have Satan trying to stop man historically.
The fifth point about the angelic conflict is that God always works through the rebellion so that the rebellion, lo and behold, accomplishes exactly what God wanted. That’s the damning nature of rebellion. A creature on negative volition winds up, instead of trying to stop God’s plan actually facilitating the plan. After all, it’s very nice of Satan to crucify Christ on the cross, we got our salvation that way. So this is what always happens with negative volition, it becomes the means of attaining God’s plan.
All right, that’s the plan, that’s the grand strategy of history and it’s that strategy that’s the backdrop for these two verses. And these two verses are so hard to put together that I’ve given you a worksheet, worksheet number four. If you have a friend you’d better take one for them because they’ll be thrown out after tonight. Worksheet number four deals with an analysis, first of Genesis 2:9. Now this is the kind of Bible study, this is what you have to do if you really seriously want to come to grips with the text; you’ve got to take it apart and put it back together again grammatically. Those of you who signed up for the Greek class will find that that Greek that you’ll learn will be a good tool to do this with. It’s not absolutely necessary but it certainly helps a lot.
Hebrews 2:9, after quoting Psalm 8, after quoting man’s destiny, then in verse 9 we have: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, should taste death fro every man. [10] For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the caption of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
Now let’s look at verse 9, “But we see Jesus,” now the “but” is a conjunction of contrast, contrasting to verse 8 which was the application of Psalm 8:5, “You have put all things in subjection under his feet. For that He has put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not ye all things put under him,” that’s under man. And the word to “see” in verse 8 is a Greek word, arao, and arao is a word that means to look on over a long period of time, in other words, generally look; you’d scan a scene, not looking for a detail but the overall picture and that would be arao.
But when we come to verse 9 he’s saying look, as a general rule you… obviously man is not superior to his environment; man is not ruling in any sense of the word today, he can’t even rule himself, leave alone his environment. So man is not in a position of ruling and that is a general observation. So he says “we see not yet all things put under him.” So there’s no quibbles about that, that’s just a general observation. “But we see,” now the verb to “see” in verse 9 is [can’t understand word], it looks like this blepo, and this is a different Greek verb although it’s translated the same way in your English and this verb means to look at a particular detail. And so in the big picture we look and we see a particular thing that catches our attention, “Jesus.” Now, the word “Jesus” without “Christ” or without “Lord” occurs in the New Testament when His humanity is emphasized. You will not find the word Jesus alone when it’s about His office, so obviously if the word Jesus is alone in this text it’s talking about Jesus in His humanity, and that’s very important for what’s coming up now.
“We see Jesus,” and then the fun begins, because we now have two clauses or phrases really and you’ll see them on the worksheet as one and two. Both of these phrases are participial phrases or clauses, one, “having been made a little lower than angels,” the verb, “having been made” is a perfect tense in the Greek, it means an action has been accomplished and results continue. The “having been crowned” is also perfect tense, act in the past, results that continue. So now we have these two phrases. Let’s look first at the first one, go to the second one and then we’re going to try to fit the two together.
“Having been made a little lower than angels,” now that is almost… almost a verbatim quote of Psalm 8:5 which is requoted in verse 7 of this chapter. “You made him a little lower than angels, You crowned him angels, You crowned Him with glory and honor and did set him over the works of Thy hands.” “You made Him a little lower than the angels,” the word “made” there is aorist, so in verse 7 it’s a point act, indicated by the aorist tense. “You made him” but in verse 9 when the author of Hebrews requotes Psalm 8 he changes the tense of the verb. Now this is what shows you what he’s trying to get across. If he wasn’t trying to get across something he would have quoted it just the way it originally was written.
So the fact that this writer now takes a clause out of the Old Testament, then he shifts the verb tense and then he gives it out indicates that we ought to pay attention now because there’s a point, a detail, a point of doctrine, that’s coming up. “Who has been made,” now that means the author isn’t looking just at the “us,” see, the original, in the aorist tense, God made man lower than the angels, that would be the point of creation. With Jesus Christ that point would be the point of the virgin birth. But the author isn’t looking at one point, he’s looking at the results of that one point, “but we see Jesus who has been made,” meaning that the results of the virgin birth continue or that Jesus Christ’s humanity goes on and on and on and on and on.
[tape very difficult to hear] Now the tendency, if you don’t keep balance in this doctrinal area is to so emphasize the deity of Christ that after the death, after the resurrection, after the ascent to heaven, [can’t understand word] at the Father’s right hand, after all this we tend to think of Jesus again as God. Now the author here intends us that we don’t do this, stop, and think of the humanity of Christ as continuing forever and ever. So the perfect tense means that though Jesus Christ, right now, see the point tense would be, say in 7 BC or whenever Christ was born, and right now say it’s 68 AD, so that’s 75 years have elapsed for the humanity of Christ’s existence.
So that’s why he can say as though Christ still has His humanity, Jesus received, present tense, right now, “we see Jesus” with His humanity that He picked up in a moment of time. He will have been made lower than angels. So that is a fulfillment of Psalm 8:5. See, he’s quoted Psalm 8:5 in verse 7, now he’s studying the Psalm, he’s exegeting the Psalm and applying it to Jesus Christ. And so he says, “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels,” and so he takes this on and he says look, Jesus Christ was man and still is man and therefore the destiny of man equals the destiny of Jesus. So to understand the destiny of Jesus you have understand the destiny of man, that’s who He is, the Son of man, He shares the destiny of the human race. If that’s the case, that also shows you the importance of a literal Genesis. Only if you take Genesis literally do you have the proper destiny of man set forth. If you don’t believe in a literal Genesis what are you going to do about the destiny of mankind? And if you don’t know what to do with the destiny of mankind, then what does it mean to you when it says Jesus is the Son of man, Jesus is identified with man. So “made a little lower than the angels” is a phrase he takes out of Psalm 8 and he says yes, this applies to all men, but in particular it applies to the Son, Jesus in this case.
Then he takes another one, “crowned with glory and honor,” and again he changes it; it’s not an aorist, it’s a perfect, meaning that at this point Jesus Christ was “crowned with glory at honor” at, say 30 AD or 33, whichever chronology you use, and now it’s 68 AD and so we have 38 years. So, Jesus Christ was crowned with results that continue; He has been crowned with glory and honor for these 38 years. And again, it’s a shift from aorist to perfect to emphasize the continuing character of Jesus Christ. But notice something else, what, do you remember is the definition of Christ’s person worked out by the great Council Chalcedon. Do you remember that? Jesus Christ is true humanity and undiminished deity united without confusion in one person forever. Now in 451 AD the Council to the Church worked that definition out and it’s never been improved upon. [tape very hard to hear] There has never been any denomination, or an [can’t understand word] or any church that has come up with a better one than that one. That’s a fantastic definition, a summary of the teachings of Scripture, it’s not just some theologian’s invention, it summarizes; Jesus Christ is undiminished deity and true humanity united in one person without confusion forever.
Now notice the word “true humanity.” The reason they put that in there was because there were a group of people, we call them the Docetists; the Docetists argued that Jesus humanity was mere vision, that Christ never really took upon Himself a true humanity, and therefore they thought that you just saw this, this was just the appearance of, hence their name the Docetists. Now the Docetists down through church history was Satan’s henchmen, and they have their allies today but they served the Church a very good purpose because in the debates [can’t understand phrase] it became obvious why we had to have a Savior with true humanity… true humanity and undiminished deity. Why do you suppose? Is anybody familiar with that era of history, and the ideas floating around in the first three or four centuries of the Church, why do you suppose that the Docetists did what they did? What do you suppose, why they argued that Christ couldn’t be true humanity? [someone answers] Okay, the Docetists came out of a platonic thing where you have a split between matter and the immaterial. And these people argued that the immaterial was good and the matter was evil.
By the way, this is also Gnosticism and the
epistle to Colossians was written to attack these people. In
But Gnosticism and Docetism also developed another heresy and that was the opposite; licentiousness or hell-raising and this was done in [can’t understand section] because it’s a lot more [?] than asceticism, and the reason for it though was the same reason. The same reason because matter was evil, it didn’t matter what you did with your body. So obviously, if you’re going to say that the body, because it’s [been created?] automatically wrong, the whole thing goes. It doesn’t matter any longer what you do with your body.
Now it was that belief that eventually led
to Jesus Christ doing what He did in a revelation to the Church through
Now, the true humanity of Christ means a lot more than this… a LOT more than this and we’re going to see how the ramifications that come out of this epistle are fantastic. But there is the true humanity and both the clauses, clause one and clause two, refer not to Christ’s deity, but to Christ’s humanity; both of those. The crowning, Jesus Christ didn’t have to be crowned in His deity? Why’d He have to be crowned in His deity. What is one of the attributes of God? One of the attributes of God is immutability. Jesus Christ is immutable as God, His glory never changed as God. So He couldn’t be crowned as God, He could only be crowned as man. So all this crowning business that goes in this epistle has to do with Christ’s humanity.
All right, now the crowning says He was “crowned with glory and honor,” now if you look up at verse 7 where that originally occurred, notice what the next clause is: You “crowned Him with and honor, and you set Him over the works of Your hands.” But verse 8 says that that isn’t true of man today, but as Jesus Christ has been crowned with glory and honor it means that He now, tonight, occupies a position that all mankind was destined to occupy. We don’t tonight, only He does tonight, but tonight Jesus Christ stands in a position for which man has been destined. That’s the importance of this. The crowning means He has arrived, if you want to put it in 20th century…
Now we have the exegetical problem, and that is the phrase, and if you look on your sheet, “on account of the suffering of death,” now that is a [can’t understand word] phrase, it means that what that phrase has to do, it has to explain a cause of something. The cause, “on account of the suffering of death,” does it go with the first clause or does it go with the second clause? And if it goes with the first clause what does it mean and if it goes with the second clause what does it mean? Now the only way you can decide this is read it for yourself. You’re going to sit there and look at it for a moment, and read it. “We see Jesus, having been made a little lower than the angels on account of the suffering of death,” or read it the other way, “But we see Jesus, having been crowned with glory and honor on account of the suffering of death.” Now the first thing to ask, is either one of those wrong? Can we eliminate either one of those possibilities as reason of teaching something that’s contrary to the rest of the Word of God? Could someone summarize the meaning if we attach the phrase “on account of the suffering of death” to phrase one, “but we see Jesus having been made a little lower than angels on account of the suffering of death.” What would that be teaching? That’s teaching the necessity of the incarnation. “Having been made a little lower than angels,” He died. Or because of, because of the plan, because of the plan He [can’t understand phrase].
Now phrase two, “having been crowned with glory and honor on account of the suffering of death.” Is there anything wrong with that? [someone answers] However, look at Hebrews 1:3-4, “Who, being,” there’s His deity, “being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power,” then it shifts and the last part of verse 3 deals with His humanity, “when He had,” point act, aorist, “by Himself purged,” point act, aorist, “our sins, He sat down,” point act, aorist, “on the right hand of the Majesty on high, [4] Being made so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” There’s the problem. So ideally you’re right, but we’ll have to say in the light of God’s overall full plan there’s nothing wrong with attaching that to either one of those phrases.
Now the question comes, is it the possible in the Scripture to attach this kind of phrase to both? Yes, grammatically it is possible that this phrase modifies both clauses, clause one and clause two. Now I’m belaboring the point here for a doctrine I want to bring out. [can’t understand phrase], “he has been made lower than angels and has been “crowned on account of the suffering of death.” That would teach that God had a plan, the suffering of death and that plan caused the incarnation of Christ and caused the session. That was the ground underneath these two point events in Christ’s death. Jesus Christ came into the world to die for sin, and He Himself said that during the Gospels. But even a little bit more, going back a little bit, the incarnation is equivalent to what as far as all men are concerned? Creation, right. That’s Jesus creation right there. Now the session is equivalent to what, as far as men are concerned? The resurrection and phase three. All right, now if you don’t catch all this don’t worry about it, Hebrews is the hardest epistle that I know of in the New Testament. The first time I’ve taught it through and so I’m rough on it myself.
But what this is teaching is there is one reason the Bible gives why mankind was built the way it’s built. In other words, angels were built discretely, in other words, angels don’t have babies, angels are built as individuals, and they all decide for themselves. No angel decides and then angels under him are affected by that decision, they all choose their own [can’t understand word] like this, but man isn’t built that way because Adam and Eve chose and we were affected by it. We are racially… we are racially, like father-son, father-son, father-son, father-son, father-son, father-son, we are linked to Adam in a race. Angels are created discretely, man is created racially.
Now why is man made this way? The Bible testifies here and it testifies in Romans 5:12 the same thing, that man is structured because of… God knew that man would have to be redeemable and whereas the skeptics at a moment of depressing, you and I can say damn it, why did God make us so we had to suffer in a fallen world because of Adam and Eve? And the answer, biblically, to that is that if He didn’t make us this way there would be no way we could be saved. The very process that pardons us to sin and sorrow and suffering with Adam and Eve, imputation, is the same mechanism that God is using to bring about our salvation. [someone asks question] Right, I see no evidence whatever in Scripture that salvation is ever offered to the angels. I see no evidence whatever that the angels understand grace except as they look down. [more said] Right, they all start as individuals and all are damned as individuals.
Now this is why the angels, demon powers, for example, the principalities and the powers of darkness cannot stand the word “grace” because they have never been shown grace and they cannot stand to have you and me be the recipients of grace in our lives. They argue that it’s unfair of God to show grace to some and not grace to all. By the way, what’s wrong with that argument? That’s an argument we hear? [someone answers] All right, [can’t understand words] telling God something but what’s wrong with… there’s a hidden fallacy right in the argument, what’s the hidden fallacy in that argument, that it’s wrong for God to show grace to some and not to others?
[someone answers] Okay, grace, by the definition is undeserved, so the argument falls as internal and consistent argument; to argue that it’s unfair for God to show grace to some and not to others, why is it? Because by definition what have we always defined grace as? Undeserved. All right, then what’s unjust by God showing undeserved attention to one creature and not another? None of them deserve it that’s the whole point. Nobody deserves that attention and love after we’ve rebelled. But God shows it anyway, and that’s His prerogative in [can’t understand word]. So it’s a false argument, to argue that it’s unjust for God to show affection in a gracious way to one creature and not show affection in the same gracious way to another.
Now I don’t know of anything in Christian theology that antagonizes men more than that one. That is the most antagonistic thing in the whole Christian system of doctrine, than the fact that the sovereign God chooses whom He will show attention to and whom He won’t. The reason, I’ve thought long and hard about this because in my discussions with people this always comes up and I have learned over the eyras not to compromise it because if you back up here you lose the respect of your hearer. I’d lot rather have a man so mad he’s about ready to fight me physically because at least I know he’s got the point, than to have somebody sit around fuming, you know, that kind of thing. And what I think so antagonizes men about this one point is that it clearly says that the final deck of cards God plays, man does not play, and he can’t even get at the hand. God has the hand and He has the cards. [can’t understand phrase]
“…on account of the suffering of death,” then, goes behind those great clauses, both clause one and clause two. “On account of the suffering of death Jesus Christ” worked through the same destiny of all men. Now comes our second problem in verse 9 and that is where do we hook the next clause, there’s a whole long one, it’s a purpose clause, “in order that He might taste death by God’s grace on behalf of each man.” The problem is, what is the antecedent to the purpose clause. You’ve got to take this clause, “He does it for this reason,” but what does He do for this reason? And the way we handle this is to show that the purpose clause, everything on your work sheet that says “in order that” and everything under that, which is the purpose clause, is an expansion of that phrase we just dealt with, “on account of the suffering of death.” This is called exegetically epexegetical clause, that means that it expands, it’s like you’d write… today you’d write a parenthesis and you’d expand something; [can’t understand sentence] end of sentence.
All right, this “in order that” thing expands the suffering of death; it expands this clause, “the suffering of death” clause. “In order that He might taste death by God’s grace on behalf of each man.” “By grace” is another interesting thing, usually in the Bible it’s “by the grace,” with the article. Those of you who signed up for the Greek one of the most important things you will get out of that, even if you don’t know the vocabulary is to look and to see whether the noun has the article or it doesn’t. Very important. Usually charis, has the article. Now without getting involved in all the fine points, why do you think some nouns have articles and some don’t? Now remember, Greek doesn’t have “a,” we have an article called “a” in the English and it fouls things up because the Greek is real nice, it only has that, “the,” that’s a demonstrative article. Now what do you mean when you have put an article like t-h-e, the on the front of a noun? What are you doing that noun versus this? [writes something on overhead] What does the article do to the noun? Just kind of say it through your mind, what’s happening? How do you take those two things differently.
[someone answers] All right, when you put the article… articles always definitize the noun. In other words, there’s a definite point of grace, which would be used of the cross, “by the grace.” But here, in one of those rare cases really, it doesn’t occur too often in Scripture, there’s no article; even though it says “by the grace” it means by grace of God, and you see, the translator supplies the article because it sounds funny, to translate this by grace of God. What he could have done, he could have just said by God’s grace, like I did on the worksheet. But “by grace” means the emphasis isn’t on when the grace was shown, the emphasis is just on the fact that there was any grace at all. See? That’s the point. God is just showing grace, period. The issue isn’t where or when or the circumstances, the issue is just the bare fact that God would even bother to show grace. That’s the point. In other words the whole ministry of Christ is a manifestation of the fact that God showed grace, God showed mercy toward us by this man, Jesus Christ, “that He might taste death.”
Now the expression, “taste death.” The word “taste death” ever since the church father Chrysostom, has been taken to mean that Jesus didn’t really die, all He did was He kind of tasted it, in other words, it was just a little bit. And therefore he didn’t fully die. And this has led to a lot of problems down through church history. But let me showed you, it could have been solved it they’d just look back at two verses. Turn to Matthew 16:28, the exact phrase is used, Jesus is at the end of this discourse, talking about, He’s actually predicting the Mount of Transfiguration, “Verily I say unto you, There are some standing here, who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom.” Now does that mean they don’t really die? Obviously it’s an idiomatic expression that means to die. That’s all, it’s just simple.
It appears again and here’s a little bit more informative illustration, John 8:51. And here it’s used in conjunction with another idiom and this tells you a little bit more why they said… instead of just saying why they just died, why did they say “taste death?” Verily, verily,” Jesus said, “I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he will never see death,” see the verb “see death,” but then when the Jews come back at Him in verse 52, “Then said the Jews unto Him, Now we know that You have a demon. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and You say, If a man keep My saying, He shall never taste of death.” So the two idioms are used synonymously and what does it means? What do you suppose this idiom is trying to emphasize, “taste death,” “see death?” It means experience it. It’s a poignant way of saying experience death. So instead of meaning that Jesus didn’t really die, it means exactly the opposite, it means He experienced death and everything that goes with it. He tasted death, He experienced it.
Now this is going to be something
tremendous because in theology this is known as the doctrine of the
substitutionary atonement… the substitutionary atonement and that means that
Jesus Christ tasted death on behalf of you.
He experienced God’s judgment on behalf of you. This is a tremendous gospel verse, that He by
grace, God’s grace could taste death, experience it, for everyone. That means that Jesus Christ experienced, on
the cross, the judgment that was due by means of the curse, because man was
cursed by Genesis
… if you can conceive of it in quantity, which I’m not sure is the proper way to do it, here’s the cross of Christ, and on this cross He experienced God’s judgment and if you can visualize it, your little piece is right there, my little piece is right here, the person next to you is right there, our areas of judgment He experienced. In other words, you and I had a piece, our judgment He tasted, because it doesn’t say here “He tasted death for all,” it’s far more personal than that in the original language, “He tasted death for every individual man,” that’s what it’s saying here. It’s a powerful reference to the substitutionary atonement of Christ. It’s not just a blanket, oh, He saved…, He’s the Savior of the world. All the while I was growing up as a young person that’s all I heard, Christ was Savior of the world, it didn’t mean a thing to me because nobody told me that He was my Savior as much as Savior of the world. But this “taste death for every man” means every individual man. He experienced it, and it’s a powerful verb here.
Now what does this mean practically? It means every time you walk around guilty for your sins you are blaspheming the finished work of Christ. You are trying to set up agony that is totally unnecessary. I don’t care what sin you’ve done, people always talk about certain language from the pulpit, now it’s been interesting to me to read works like Martin Luther. Do you know what Luther said: I don’t care if you fornicate a thousand times a day you can’t lose your salvation. I didn’t say that, Martin Luther said it. And the reason that this language is used is because it’s the only way to cut through this religious crud that runs six feet deep through areas like this, where people have this thing that they’ve got to feel guilty for their sins, they’ve got to make atonement for it.
Somebody’s written a book called The Politics of Guilt and Pity and one of the themes of the book is that American politicians have thrived for the last fifty years at creating a guilty image of making the voter feel guilty so the voter will do kind of a self-atonement by voting for a particular program. We had it right here, vote for the poor people, vote for these other people to get such and such an issue across. Always the politics of guilt and Christians who know the doctrine of substitutionary atonement just walk right ahead and never even be phased with it; they’re not interested in the politics of guilt, my guilt was taken care of at the cross. I don’t have any guilt, period. It immunizes you against this guilt pitch of the human viewpoint politicians, and it immunizes you against personal guilt, depression and so on.
Jesus Christ has tasted death for you, He has experienced death for you. And notice, “for every man,” that means also another doctrine in here. We’ve got a lot of doctrine in these verses. The doctrine of the unlimited atonement; not only the substitutionary atonement but the unlimited atonement. That means that Jesus Christ died for non-Christian as well as Christians; it doesn’t mean the non-Christian is saved automatically but it says that when the non-Christian goes to hell he goes to hell not because of his sins; he goes to hell because he has rejected God’s gracious work in Jesus Christ on behalf of his sin. So what does this do to the non-Christian? Here is a person on negative volition, before Christ died he could argue look, I wound up in hell because of my sin. Now after the cross he can try to say that again; he can say I am in hell because of my sins and the answer is going to be, oh no you’re not, you’re in hell because you had a chance to do something about it, God gave you that chance in Jesus Christ, God died for you in Jesus Christ and you did nothing about it except reject it so you’re in hell, not because of your sins, you’re in hell because in spite of the fact that God was trying to be gracious to you, you could care less.
So what it does, it increases the intensity and clarity of rejection, the doctrine of the unlimited atonement. It shows you very clearly why men wind up in hell. They wind up in hell not because of their sins, they wind up in hell simply because they’re not interested; they continue to rebel against God. It’s not because they’re paying consequences of an act for which they’re now sorry. It’s because they have no intent whatever of repenting of the former act at all, by coming to Christ. Okay, unlimited atonement.
Now Hebrews 2:10, verse 10 is a little bit easier but nevertheless, it has a lot of doctrine in it. This is why Wednesday night is the hardest class of all. I talked to several people last Wednesday who were concerned that they weren’t getting it all and I asked them how long have you been a Christian? A month and I said well don’t worry about it, this kind of book you don’t go through after you’ve been a Christian only a month.
Let’s look at verse 10, “For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the caption of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Now, “For,” what does that little particle mean, very important. “For” always refers to explanation; explanation of what has gone before. What has gone before? The work of Jesus Christ. “For,” obviously then is going to explain something about the work of Christ and in particular verse 10 is going to explain one word in verse 9, “suffering.” Why did God allow His Son to suffer so? Why? All right, here’s why. “For it became Him,” now the Greek has words for should, or it was necessary, one is dei, and that is a logical necessity and an illustration of that was 2:1, “it is logically necessary for you to do this in order to get that.” That’s the logical necessity, not used here. The Greek has another word, opheilo and that means moral necessity, “because you’re saved you ought to do something.” But that’s not the word used here.
There’s a third word, it occurs very rarely, prepo, and prepo means empirical necessity. In other words, because somebody has a certain character that’s been shown to you, you would expect that person to act in such and such a way. In other words, his previous actions ought to fit with his later action; there ought to be an empirical consistency here, “because of His character, therefore this ought to happen.” Now I spend time on this one because it looks like we’ve got an error in the Bible here. Because if you just take the first four words of verse 10 you have there described an argument used by unbelievers on a human viewpoint basis, “it became Him,” it was fitting to God to do thus and such.
Now let me give you how this usually comes across and then you’ll catch on, it’s an argument put out to you all the time by unbelievers. It is unrighteous for God to send people to hell, that argument; it is unrighteous for God to do this, it is righteous for God to do this. Or if God was really love He’d do this; human viewpoint has what we call legislative logic, in other words, finite man, with no absolutes, because he has none of himself, finite man, very limited, on a human viewpoint basis, rejects God’s authority. He puts it away from himself, so since he doesn’t want God’s authority he has to generate his own absolutes. And so he legislates outward from himself what must and must not be. We call that human viewpoint legislative logic and it’s totally invalid, yet everybody you meet does it all the time. They’re making all these profound statements about what must and what must not be true of God. How do they know what must be true of God and what must not be true of God? Do they have infinite knowledge? There’s no way that statement can be made. So what it looks like this passage is arguing, and by the way, this is the only place in the Bible this occurs, this kind of an argument only occurs at this verse at this point, nowhere else in Scripture. It looks as though we’ve lost ground and the author here has gone over to a human viewpoint base of argument of saying “because in my view God ought to do this, that’s why Christ suffered so.”
Now this is why we have boxed in on your work sheets that next phrase, “For whom are all things, and through whom are all things.” Now what do you think that refers to? God the Father or God the Son? It’s obviously the same as “him,” under clause 1, “for it was fitting for Him,” but who’s “Him” there, the Son or the Father? What do you think? [someone answers] Father, what would lead you to believe it’s the Father. Okay, and God is being used as the Father. [someone else] You say it had to be the Son because of verse 9, verse 10 being an explanation of verse 9. All right, but just notice, what’s the main verb of verse 10? He perfects, see, the subject perfecting something and the object of perfection is the Son, to perfect the founder of their salvation. So who is it that’s doing the perfecting. Who’s the subject of the verb; it would be the Father. Now another key you have on it is that phrase, “for whom are all things and through whom are all things,” the general context, which is also the exact phrase used in Romans 11:36 for God the Father, “of whom and through whom and to whom are all things.”
Now here’s a most peculiar thing and it’s the solution to the whole dilemma I just put forward. Again, to sharpen you the dilemma is this. Why, out of all the pages of Scripture, do we seemingly have a radical break with the Bible’s logic and now we suddenly have man saying what must and must not be true of God. In other words, do we have a real break or is there some connection with that dilemma in this phrase, “for whom are all things and through whom are all things.” Our time is getting short so let me answer it. “Him” in verse 10 refers to the Father and you would normally expect the next word to be Theous, God or in this Theou, “it was fitting for Him,” and you’d expect God there, but instead of putting G-o-d, or T-h-e-o-u-s in the Greek, instead of putting that, the author stopped, and then put this big long phrase in there, “for whom are all things, through whom are all things.” Why do you suppose he does that?
Why doesn’t he use the regular word for God? Why does he… he stops and then drops this whole phrase into the sentence, blow the whole thing up and then he goes on. He’s got a reason why he dropped that right in there and did not use the normal word that you’d expect him to use. That’s to safeguard against this dilemma that I’ve just said. He is saying it befits the God is the sovereign, eternal Creator. In other words, his argument in verse 10 is not at all like the human viewpoint argument that God must and must not be like this. No-no, he’s arguing the God from whom are all things and through whom are all things, that God, the God that we’ve already known through Scripture, it behooves that God to work this way. So he is not legislating what God must and must not be, he’s simply saying the God of the Bible that I know just doesn’t work that way.
Now this is what we call spiritual common sense. And as you mature in the Lord you should gain this. You may not know exactly what’s wrong with something but you’ll walk into a situation some day and hear some teacher, or see something going on, and you can’t put your fingers on it, there’s something wrong. But you just know that the God of the Bible just doesn’t work that way, there’s something screwy. All right, that’s the kind of argument that’s used here except it’s reversed in the sense that the God of the Bible would normally work this way, this is how he usually worked. That’s his argument, and I point that out to you because it gives us an opportunity to refresh our apologetics a little bit. Nowhere does the Bible ever tell you to argue to the unbeliever that isn’t it reasonable that God might be this way. The Bible never argues this way. The Bible says God is this way, and here’s the evidence for it; boom, boom, boom, boom! But the Bible never says consider the evidence and draw you own conclusion. It’s a completely different argument. The Bible says this is the conclusion, do you see it or are you blind. That’s the way the Bible argues.
“It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things,” now the verb, the main verb is to “perfect,” now this is the first time this occurs in the epistle, it’s going to occur dozens of times and it’s going to be used of us later on, so let’s get the first usage down. “To perfect,” this is a word, teleiou, it means to complete the goal. It means a lot of other things but that’s the easiest definition. It means to arrive at the goal that you’re shooting at. You won the football game, teleiou, you arrive at your goal to win. And it can be used at any goal, little goal, bit goal, eternal goal or temporal goal, whatever the goal is in mind, you’ve arrived.
So what does “perfect” mean in this context then. It is befitting for the Father, in other words, the Father would work this way, “to perfect the founder.” Now the word teleiou is also used and here’s a very good example from the Old Testament. When a priest would have his clothes put on and then he’d anoint, he’d put the garment, the priestly garment on and then he’d be anointed. Now the Old Testament would have an expression, “fill his hand,” “fill his hand,” and the word “filling the hand means that the priest, although he was consecrated, and he wasn’t offering sacrifices yet, or he wasn’t going before the altar of incense, it wasn’t until he actually picked up the sacrifice and sacrificed would the Old Testament say he “filled his hand,” and that phrase, “fill his hand,” is the word that comes over in the Greek as teleiou, he has arrived at his functioning office. The priest may have his garments on, he may be consecrated, he may be anointed, he may be set apart for the office, but he hasn’t filled his hands until he actually does the sacrificing, then he is a functioning priest.
Now that’s the word here, “to perfect the founder,” in other words, put Christ into the position where He has arrived as the functioning founder of the faith. What is it that God has used to perfect? Perfect the founder of their salvation through sufferings. In other words, Jesus Christ had to be developed through category four, five and six type suffering; that means, category four suffering, He suffers as a [can’t understand word] Satan in Satan’s world; category five suffering is that He suffers in order to learn. And category six, Jesus Christ suffered as an example. He did not suffer under categories one, two and three, but he did under categories four, five and six. Jesus Christ suffered and it was through His suffering that He arrived at the goal. This means that Jesus Christ, He was minus personal sin and He was minus the sin nature, but even though Jesus Christ was lacking in all these things, you say well He had it made… He did not! What didn’t Christ have at the time He was a young child. What was it He needed? Discipline in righteousness. Jesus Christ had to get +R learned behavior patterns and notice the way God taught Him; through suffering. His own Son was taught godliness through sorrow, through pressure, through adversity. Now isn’t this stupid when the Christian says oh God, why does He make me suffer so? He made His Son suffer that way, that’s the only way you’re going to learn.
Now if it took suffering something to teach His Son suffering, then how much more will it take suffering because we have this problem, we’ve got this, –R learned behavior patterns that we’ve got to get rid of and then on top of that we’ve got to add on the +R. Now Jesus Christ, to learn this had to suffer and suffer and suffer; notice it is plural, “sufferings,” and that means many times in His life He suffered and every one of those sufferings was designed to bring about godliness and righteousness, to make Him perfect, make Him arrive at the goal. Jesus Christ would not have been qualified to be your Savior unless He personally went through the pressure and the adversity and the heartache and the sorrow, moment by moment, year by year in his life.
Now one final thing and we’ll terminate here. The next problem and the last one for the night is what do we do with the last clause, “leading many sons to glory.” Now who’s leading? Well, does it go with one or two, in other words, is it the Son that’s leading many sons to glory or is it the Father that is leading many sons to glory? The answer is it is the Father, the same one who is leading sons to glory is the same one who is perfecting their founder. Now out of this comes a very interesting thing, we can only touch on it tonight, but this whole thing [can’t understand words] will revolutionize your Christian life in the area of sanctification.
But this is setting up for some amazing verses that are going to follow on the sanctification of the Christian. But it starts it out by this, “the Father, in bringing,” the main verb is to perfect, let’s look at the main verb, “to perfect,” there’s your main verb, it’s aorist. That’s referring to all points in time from the time Jesus Christ is virgin born until the time He died on the cross, summarized as a point, “to perfect.” Then “leading” is a participle but it’s an aorist participle and an aorist participle is always simultaneous in its action to the main verb; which means something very interesting. That there were two profits that were simultaneously place, not only was God… God is super efficient, he never does just one thing, He’s always doing a thousand things with one stroke. If you were as efficient as God you could do all your work in one week in about a second because it’d all happen simultaneously.
What this verse is teaching is that while God was bringing you to salvation, and while He was bring me to salvation, He was at the same time, while He was doing that He was also perfecting Jesus Christ, so two things are going on simultaneously. He was leading us to Himself by means of providing the cross, by means of providing an example, that could be preached to us later in the centuries, through which the Holy Spirit would call us back to God the Father. He was providing all this material for you, to call you back to Himself and while He was doing that, at the same time He was perfecting His Son, and the two processes were the same process. While His son was being perfected He was setting up the material to lead you to Himself; while He was setting up the material to lead you to Himself, He was being perfected Himself. These two things are going on simultaneously.
Now normally you think of Jesus Christ suffering as securing your salvation. You think of… here’s Jesus and here’s the believer and you think well Jesus suffered in order to win that person to Himself, to provide for his salvation. That’s true, but Jesus also suffered for Himself, so that He could sanctify, not just save but sanctify the believer. The sufferings of Jesus Christ lay the grounds for all sanctification in the Christian’s life. The doctrine of sanctification, from on we’re going to hit in this epistle over and over and over and over again, rest stuff, training stuff, it all flows historically from Christ’s sufferings in His humanity. Jesus’ sanctification is a model for our sanctification. If we have taken upon us the nature of Christ, if we have taken upon us by regeneration Christ’s nature, that means that we have also undertaken to take upon ourselves the way that same nature was historically sanctified, through suffering. If we are identified with Christ in the cross, we’re identified with Christ in His sorrow, we’re identified with Christ in the pressure. So now the sanctification of the believers simply a reduplication, thousands and millions of times in history, a reduplication of the same process that went on in Christ’s humanity, over and over again.
Now one last word, and that is the “son,” a very startling word to be used here because when was the last time we saw the word “son” in this epistle. It was used of Jesus and when it was used of Jesus Christ the son emphasized the same nature with the father, remember, Hebrews 1:2, “God has spoken unto us by a Son,” … by a Son He spoke to us. And I said at that time the Son and the Father always when used of the Trinity means they both share the same nature. It’s not a simple thing, the Son is born at a point in time, that’s not what it’s talking about. The Son shares the same nature with His Father. Now how can we adjust that for this usage of the word “son,” it can’t mean that we share Christ’s deity. But do you know what it means? When it says “He brings many sons to glory” it means we are going to share what we can, as creatures, of Christ’s nature, which means we share His humanity.
Now we don’t go so far as the Roman Catholics do that when you take communion you’re eating Christ’s body. But there’s something very good in the mass at that point; now the mass is radically wrong, in fact the book of Hebrews is used by Calvin to undermine the whole Catholic doctrine of the mass. But there’s something that the Catholics have caught there, but then they’ve gone astray in trying to picture it, and that is that there is something very intimate between Christ’s humanity and ours and what it is, is that it’s the seed that’s put in us at regeneration; here we are, and it’s like a little seed that’s put in there, the Bible calls it that, God’s sperm, 1 John 3, and that seed is the new nature, and because that seed is Christ’s nature, God the Father, who is immutable, now begins to operate on that seed, just like 19 centuries ago He began to operate on His Son. Same seed, same nature, to develop the glory the same way through suffering.
And he is going to be brought to glory and
he is going to share with the Son, not the infinite attributes but His personal
attributes, sovereignty in the sense of a strong volition, the ability to
control situations for God, the ability to subdue the earth, righteousness, He
will share with Jesus Christ; justice, he will share with Christ; so that as a
believer matures he will have a sense that what is wrong must go even if it’s
his, because what is the definition of justice?
Irrespective of person. And so as
a believer acquires more of Christ’s nature in a more profound way he is going
to have a just attitude toward himself.
And then love, seeking God’s will above all things, and not omniscience
because we’re finite but we will have a divine viewpoint framework. So they are
sons because they share Christ’s nature as much as it is possible for a finite
creature to share the character of the infinite God. Next week we’re going to go on, we had to
take a long time this week because 9 and 10 are very, very detailed verses but
they’re very important because if you look in the next verse, verse 11, you see
the word “sanctify” and that’s where we start picking up the whole thing of the
Christian life.