5 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. 6 But one testified in a certain place, saying: “What is man that You are mindful of him, Or the son of man that You take care of him? 7 You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, And set him over the works of Your hands. 8 You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him.
9 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, might taste death for everyone. 10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12 saying: “I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.” 13 And again: “I will put My trust in Him.” And again: “Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.”
14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 16 For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. 17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.
Daniel Webster was a 19th century American statesman. He was once at dinner with some very elite figures in Boston, and the conversation turned to Christianity. Webster was a convinced Christian, and openly confessed His belief in Christ and His atoning work. Someone at the table said to him, “Mr Webster, can you comprehend how Jesus Christ can be both God and man?”
Webster replied, “No sir, I cannot understand it, and I would be ashamed to acknowledge Christ as my Saviour if I could comprehend it. He could be no greater than myself, and such is my conviction of my accountability to God, my sense of sinfulness before Him, and my knowledge of my own incapacity to recover myself, that I feel I need a superhuman Saviour.”
Some of you might remember that in 1995, Joan Osborne released a hit song called One of Us.
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
Osborne’s trivial and blasphemous lyrics showed she had no idea of the message of Christianity, of why God did become a man. But I wonder how many Christians would do better, if you asked them, why did God become a man? Why did that have to happen?
The book of Hebrews is very much taken up with that theme. Why did God become man? Why did the Supreme One suffer?
Remember the great argument of this book: draw near to Christ, because He is supreme, and superior, and unsurpassed.
He is still showing us that Jesus is superior to angels. As great and as glorious as these heavenly beings are, Jesus is transcendently superior to them. This is what Tozer said about transcendence:
“We must not think of God as highest in an ascending order of beings, starting with the single cell and going on up from the fish to the bird to the animal to man to angel to cherub to God. This would be to grant God eminence, even pre-eminence, but that is not enough; we must grant Him transcendence in the fullest meaning of that word. Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable. He is as high above an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite, while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite. The caterpillar and the archangel, though far removed from each other in the scale of created things, are nevertheless one in that they are alike created. They both belong in the category of that-which-is-not-God and are separated from God by infinitude itself.”
But having shown that Jesus is superior to these heavenly beings, the writer is now going to shift gears to earthly beings. He showed us that Jesus is the God-Man in the first 4 verses, and the comparison to angels shows He truly is God. But now, he is going to begin to lay the emphasis on the Man side of the God-Man, and for the rest of the book show us why as a Man He is superior to Moses, to Joshua, to the Levites. Hebrews is a powerful theology of the humanity of Jesus.
But the moment you start speaking of Jesus as man, what will the objection be? “How can a man be greater than the angels?” “How could a divine being suffer?” “How could God die?” So what the writer is going to do is explain in these 14 verses why Jesus, the God-Man, became a man, without losing His superiority.
I. Jesus Became a Man to Win Back Our Inheritance
5 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. 6 But one testified in a certain place, saying: “What is man that You are mindful of him, Or the son of man that You take care of him? 7 You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, And set him over the works of Your hands. 8 You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him.
9 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, might taste death for everyone.
The writer tells us that the coming world, is not going to be under the control of angels. As great as angels are, the dominion of the coming kingdom, and possibly of the new heavens and new earth has not been given to them. Who has it been given to? The writer takes us to Psalm 8
3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, 4 What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? 5 For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, (Ps. 8:3-6)
The writer has chosen this text because it relates man to angels. In Psalm 8, David is marveling at the magnitude of the cosmos, and he reflects that man seems so insignificant amidst all this vastness. But David then sees the counterintuitive truth: our smallness is a sign of greatness. We are so tiny, but yet the earth was clearly given to us to manage. We were given the stewardship of the animals, the land, the seas, the air. God made us slightly lower than the angels by making our domain earth and not heaven.
And if we can imagine an unfallen Adam with unfallen offspring, we could imagine a very different Earth. An earth where no droughts, crop failures, or floods affect the food supply, which comes in abundance. A world where no one dies in the womb or in childbirth, and no one is born with any defects, and no pain takes place in childbirth. A world without wildness and danger from animals, a world not subject to earthquakes, volcanoes or some kind of erosive destruction. A world where Adam’s descendants can walk with lions, train Great White sharks, handle black mambas. A world where Adam’s descendants can control the weather, walk on top of the waves when necessary, and tell fish where to swim. That’s what it would look like if all things were under man’s feet.
But what does our text say? But now we do not yet see all things put under him.
Man fell into sin. With sin came a curse on the created order. Man is subject to the earth. Disease, pain, and fear came in. Man murders and steals and kills. Diseases eat away at our bodies. Our lives are in constant peril. Romans 8 tells us that the creation groans, being burdened under a curse that was placed on it because of man, and for man.
Not only did man lose his dominion of the world, a usurper took his place. The Bible is clear that Satan is the prince of this world (John 12:31, 14:30). We even read in the book of Daniel that there is some kind of rule over the world exercised by angelic beings: we read of the prince of Greece, and prince of Persia. This world, right now, is subject to both holy and unholy angels.
But it will not always be so. Because the writer is here telling us that there was a Second Adam, a Man who did fulfill Psalm 8, and has done so for those in his family.
9 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, might taste death for everyone.
Jesus, superior to angels in essence and being, was made a little lower than the angels, by submitting to the Incarnation, so as to experience suffering and death. And unlike fallen man, He is now crowned with glory and honour, in his Resurrection and Ascension, and all things are under His feet. He has defeated the curse by defeating its primary weapon: death.
It was man who lost the dominion, and it is now a man who restores it.
21 For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. 23 But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. (1 Cor. 15:21-23)
The plan of God in Jesus’ coming is not merely a plan to save our souls. It is a plan to save creation, to restore and redeem what was cursed. The great story is God redeeming a fallen race so that they have more glory, and more authority than the first Adam had.
That leads us to the second reason God the Son became a man.
II. Jesus Became a Man to Wipe Out Our Iniquities
9 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, might taste death for everyone. 10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
To turn back the curse, to give mankind his inheritance back, God had to deal with the source of the curse: sin. Romans 6:23 tells the wages of sin is death. So for there to be a Saviour from sin, that saviour needed to be able to face the consequence or the judgement for sin: death. He needed to taste death for everyone. By the way, here is a brief statement about the extent of the atonement. Christ has made a provision which is sufficient for all men. His death is a provision for all.
Now the problem is this: God is the only true Saviour. Hosea 13:4 Yet I am the LORD your God Ever since the land of Egypt, And you shall know no God but Me; For there is no Savior besides Me. But a saviour from sin must die. But God cannot die. First Timothy 6:16 tells us that God alone has immortality in Himself. In God is life. You can no more kill God than you could put a stop to time. He has always been and always will be. He did not gain His life from anyone. He has no origin. His is the only underived life there is. All other life received its awakening breath from Him, the self-caused life, the life that lives by Himself and through himself.
So how was the problem solved? By God becoming man. By having him join the human race, a little lower than the angels, and by being human, he could die.
10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
God the Father, for whom are all things and from whom are all things, saw a poetic fittingness in this: you have these cursed sons of Adam, who are suffering and dying. They must be brought to glory, to that glory of having dominion over nature, to having glory and honour. And so, the captain, or the author, of their salvation, the one who was going to get them to glory, who was not under the curse, was completed in his humanity by experiencing the suffering that man feels. He was not going to get a suffering race to glory by bypassing suffering. He was going to be human in every way, including suffering.
So much so, that Jesus has joined the human family.
11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12 saying: “I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.” 13 And again: “I will put My trust in Him.” And again: “Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.”
Verses 11-13 speak of our union with Christ. He quotes three Scriptures: Psalm 22, Psalm 16, and Isaiah 8:18. These Scriptures say, Jesus is the older brother of a new human race, the eldest and first of a humanity that will again inherit the world. Jesus has joined the human race by becoming man.
Why did He do this?
Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Humans are material and immaterial, and subject to death. Jesus added to Himself this true human nature, so that He could also die.
But his death would be different. He had to not only die but survive his death. The writer says that Jesus, through his death on the cross destroyed the devil, who held men in bondage through their fear of death. This doesn’t mean he put Satan out of existence, it means Jesus destroyed Satan’s dominion and hold over the world, by how He died.
A psychologist recently wrote a book in which he traced all of the diagnosed anxieties and fears to one fear: a fear of death. Our fear of our lives ending, our fear of not knowing what is on the other side leads to every manner of sin. It’s in thinking that I only have a few decades left to live that leads people to be greedy for pleasure and fame, and fortune, and health, and happiness. And in their lust for that, they commit every manner of sin against God and their fellow man. Man knows he must die, so he lives in a kind of denial of it, by acting as if he has no life beyond that. Or he accepts that he will live on, but acts in defiance of what God has revealed in His Word. This comes back to fear of death. And through it, Satan has ruled this world, and directed men into unbelief and pride, whether or not they realised it.
Verse 15 actually shows how powerful this is. Man is actually a slave to this reality. His whole life is controlled and mastered by his mortality. He is in bondage to the fear of death.
To break the chains of the fear of death, we needed someone to go into that grave from which no one returns, and return. That’s exactly what Jesus did. The God-Man died and survived. How did he do that? Because He was the God-Man; sinless and holy. He could die, but unlike the fallen race of Adam, he didn’t have to die. He was able to die, but He was not in debt to the grave. The wages of His life was not death. The wages of His life was life. So when the only human being in history who does not have to die, chooses to voluntarily die, do you know what happens? Death spits Him back out. He rises again. He goes into the grave with the sin of others, pays the debt, and then because of His own perfection, comes back out.
The grave has had only one permanent survivor – Jesus Christ. But because of him, millions, billions will follow. That means our Saviour is alive to save us. If Jesus had gone down into death, and stayed dead, He would not have destroyed the Devil’s power or released us. But now the world has a message, Good News. Yes, you will die. But on the evidence of the One who died and survived, so you also will die and survive, if you place your trust in Him. If you believe, embrace, trust Christ as your Saviour from sin, you will die and survive.
So you don’t have to live like those whose only hope is in this life. You don’t have to try to gather up as many possessions as possible. You don’t have to fear that you won’t see all the beautiful sights in the world before you die. You don’t have to fight to gain money and power so as to get your way in this world. Fear of losing out, missing out, being hurt, harmed, fading, weakening, no longer has to trouble you. Why? Because in Christ, you will live forever.
And this is a staggering thought: that on the cross, the Person of God the Son experienced death. No you cannot kill God. But what died on the cross was not just a human nature or a human body. The Person who was Jesus Christ, God the Son, by His union with moral human flesh, died.
But without Him being both God and Man, He could not have delivered us from the fear of death. Without the Incarnation, there would be no resurrection, and so no salvation.
But this Incarnation went even further.
III. Jesus Became a Man to Witness Our Infirmities
16 For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. 17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.
Again, the contrast: angels are not helped by Him. In fact, angels help us. But He, this one superior to angels became man so He could lend aid to the descendants of Abraham.
To give this aid, He had to be completely and fully human in every respect. To be the propitiatory sacrifice, He needed to be able to suffer and die, to die and survive, but in order to be a High Priest, He needed to be able to sympathise. A true biblical priest was someone who placed his hands on two parties: on the people, and on God. He had to be loyal to both sides.
On the one hand, as the Scripture says, the priest needed to be merciful to the people. He needed to want to see the people forgiven. He needed to have himself experienced the suffering that takes place because of being in a sinful world.
So, He was made like us in all things. He did not share in our sin nature, or else He would not have been faithful to God, nor could He have defeated death. But in every other point, He truly experienced humanity. He experienced our limitations. He experienced our frustrations. He experienced our weaknesses. He experienced our pain. He experienced our temptations. The difference with Jesus is that He was never tempted from within, as we are. We are tempted both from within and from without, but Jesus was tempted only from without. And in doing so, He experienced what an unfallen Adam would have experienced to live through a fallen world, under the curse.
He witnessed to our infirmities.
In 1961, a journalist named John Howard Griffith wanted to experience what it would be like to be a black man in the south of the U.S.A. He visited a dermatologist, had his skin darkened, shave his head, and lived as a black man would in the South of the U.S. He experienced all kinds of things, hatred from some, kindness from others. He wrote his experiences in a book Black Like Me.
Even though he could have interviewed black people and probably gained the same information, it wasn’t the same as actually living that way. He gained a different kind of knowledge by doing so.
When God became man, and experienced suffering, and experienced death, and experienced weakness, and experienced pain, and experienced temptation, it was a different kind of knowledge.
Now perhaps someone says, why was that needed? Since God knows all things, why would he need to experience an Incarnation to know our weaknesses? Surely His omniscience could have given Him that knowledge.
First, if Scripture says the Incarnation gave Him deeper sympathy with us, then we will take that and believe it. Perhaps there is a kind of knowledge that could only be gained by the Incarnation. Second, this sympathy with man was not once-off. It is not a memory to Jesus. Even though He is glorified and without the limits He had in Nazareth, He is forever the God-Man. He has chosen to add to Himself a perfect human nature which God the Son shall always have. And because of His eternal union with humanity, He is eternally sympathetic with us. We are part of him. We now share the same family. He belongs to the family of Adam, and through Him, we belong to the family of God the Father.
Isaac Watts said
Touched with sympathy within,
He knows our feeble frame;
He knows what sore temptations mean,
For He hath felt the same.
Robert Murray McCheyne, the Scottish minister of the 19th century, wrote, “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet the distance makes no difference. He is praying for me!”
Jesus became a man to win back our inheritance, to wipe out our iniquities, and to witness our infirmities. You know what’s amazing about these three things. Each one is entirely gratuitous. None was essential to God. None had to be done. Each is a gift, a grace gift, from a loving, overflowing God.