HEBREWS 2
Ques There is no epistle where the Spirit of God calls such attention to the glory of Christ as Hebrews. We are told to consider Him. Is He presented personally here so that we may learn the grandeur of the christian position?
CAC Yes, the primary object of the epistle is to deliver Hebrew believers entirely from the old religious associations.
“Crowned with glory and honour” is connected with Christ’s exaltation: the whole position depends on the fact of His being at the right hand of God. The point of His being “crowned with glory and honour” is that it is a peculiar moment now between His establishing His moral title and having the inheritance. Faith enters into it now. Personally He is at the right hand of God; it is there that we view Him, but the point is not where we see Him, but how we see Him. We see Him in all the glory and holy splendour of the moral title which He has established through death. There is nothing more wonderful in the history of eternity than this parenthesis between the cross and the glory. His title to everything is established, though possession is not entered on, but we see Him crowned with glory and honour. God has crowned Him; God has done it to Him as Son of Man. Christ has come in as Son of Man to inherit all that is in the thought of God for man. All has come to light as to the Person to whom the world to come is to be in subjection. The peculiarity of this moment is that things are not subjected, but everything has come to light in regard to the Person. It is interwoven with the whole [p. 10] teaching of the epistle that He is at the right hand of God, but the point is here, How do we see Him? not, Where do we see Him? It is a great thing for us to apprehend the title of the Son of Man. He has moral title to have everything subjected to Him because He has tasted death — no angel could — and the grace of God has come out in the universe through His tasting death for everything. There was a moral blot, a stain in the universe, and One has come to remove it; and the Person who could remove the moral stain is entitled to be in the place of supremacy. That is His glory.
In this particular passage, we are considering the death of Christ in its widest bearing: He tasted death for everything. Man had brought in a moral stain on everything. How could God take up a stained inheritance? How could He set up His own order in the universe while that stain was there? So the Son of Man came in to remove that stain by going into death.
Now something appears that did not appear in creation. The grace of God did not appear in creation, but it does appear in the death of Christ. If something came in displeasing to God, it must be removed either in grace or in judgment; if in grace, what God is in His nature comes to light. The death of Christ is infinitely great because it has provided an outlet for all that there was in the blessed God to come out in His universe that had been stained by sin. It is an immense thing to be in the light of a Person who could do all that. We are in the light of the glory of the Son of Man. The power to do it was always in His Person, but now it has come to light.
There are two aspects in which the Lord is pre-eminent in this scripture, a very wide aspect in relation to all things, and a more limited aspect in relation to a sanctified company whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. We get the wide aspect of His death, when He tasted death [p. 11] for everything; as Lamb of God He is the Taker away of the sin of the world (John 1). He died to remove all the stain from God’s universe which will all be subjected to Him. He is morally entitled to have the supreme place. It puts you in touch with an immense sphere of things.
Ques Is it that He has won all this glory and now He wants companions?
CAC Yes. God is doing everything on moral grounds. The place the Son of Man will take is not only due to Him according to the greatness of His Person, but it is due to Him on account of all that He has done. God is bringing many sons to glory through a path of sufferings. You would not want a leader perfect through sufferings if you were not going to move along a path of sufferings.
Ques What does His being made perfect mean?
CAC That He is qualified in every way to lead.
Ques Is the position of sanctified ones given to those who do not suffer?
CAC I am sure the sanctified ones do suffer. The point is that there was nothing here for Christ but suffering. The sons are Christ’s brethren morally; that is, they have the same character. It is not here the thought of companions but brethren. What God is doing is bringing many sons to glory along the road of suffering. If they are Christ’s brethren they are like Him morally. When He was on earth He looked around on people and owned them as His brethren; it was because they were morally like Him, that is, they heard the word of God, and they did the will of God. You cannot go along that line without coming in for sufferings at once, but we have a Leader in it who has experienced every kind of suffering that can come upon His brethren. He is perfect as Leader; He understands every bit of suffering they can come through. We have all the long list of persecutions, and the register of the sufferings of God’s servants going on for centuries; then [p. 12] Christ came into the same line of sufferings, and the cross was in keeping with it all. The sufferings were meted out to His own after, and each has a share. No saint is great enough to have the whole path of sufferings, but the whole path is known to Him; every detail that could come upon any saint who is set for God in this world came upon Him.
In verse 14 we see that He went into death to dispossess Satan of a certain right which he possessed over the children. It is not so much what the devil does to people generally, but to the children. The children were those who were kindred with Christ; He had a household when here on earth, no natural household. He was not Head of a natural household but of a spiritual household. They are delivered now; it is not the portion of children to fear. When we think of death now, we do not think of it as a dread power — the judgment of God — we do not think of it as caused by the power of Satan, but we think of it as the place where Jesus went.
Ques What is the household?
CAC “I and the children which God has given me”.
Rem It has been said that God desires creature companions.
CAC It is right in principle that God has desired to have a creature who could walk with Him and with whom He could walk. God has sought a family. The Man who was Jehovah’s Fellow now has fellows, but it would be blasphemy to say we were God’s fellows. God walked in the garden, and in that sense man might have been a companion of God if he had remained in the state suited to his creation, but he left it.
Rem Many dread death who are real believers.
CAC I think no believer who has peace with God has the fear of death in the sense of this scripture. Every one fears death naturally, but this is a moral fear. The devil had the right of death and used it as a reign of terror. The [p. 13] more man feared God, the more he feared death. Now when you think of death you do not think of the devil’s power, but that Jesus has been there. I remember there was a time when I had to contemplate death, and I well remember the exercise of it; then the thought came to me as a burst of sunshine, that whatever death was, Jesus had been there! When you think of death as where Jesus has been the fear is gone.
Ques Does my death testify to the power of the devil?
CAC I should not like to think the death of a christian testified to that. It is the fact that it is the judgment of God that made it such a tyranny in the hands of the devil; he could use it over man’s conscience, but now that Jesus has been there it is different. “Christ has died and lived again, that he might rule over both dead and living”, Romans 14 9. So you reach the domain of death and find in actual supremacy there — JESUS. If we were to pass into the domain of death tonight, we should find Jesus absolutely supreme on this side and on the other side; so that He can succour the saint on this side, in the moment of nature’s absolute weakness, and He is supreme on that side too. Death came in by sin, but something else came in by the love of God.