Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
HEBREWS 2:1–4
Let us consider together the first four verses in the second chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews. I want, in particular, to call your attention to that great question which is put to us at the beginning of the third verse: “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” Now here the author of this epistle is addressing his first word of exhortation to the Hebrew Christians to whom he is writing, and in doing so he at once reveals his entire object in writing the whole epistle. “We ought,” he says, “to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.” Some authorities say a better translation would be, “lest we slip away from them.” They say it is a picture of a ship tending to slip away from her moorings. Both translations come to the same thing. The trouble with these people was that they were tending to forget the things they had heard, to the extent that some of them were even looking back to their old Jewish religion. And so he calls them back to the message of the gospel, exhorting them to give more earnest heed to it and to be very careful never to drift away from this great and glorious message.
I am calling attention to these words in Hebrews 2 because, in the first place, many Christians need this same exhortation in this day and generation and, second, because you might not claim to be a Christian and are not a member of the Christian church and I want to give you good reasons for believing this gospel. Let me put it like this: Why should we go on with this business of the Christian church? Why should the Christian church continue? Many in the world today are saying that the church has become an anachronism, that we might as well shut the doors, and that it is almost an insult to modern people to ask them to consider the message of Jesus Christ. So let us remind ourselves of the reasons why we should go on preaching the gospel and doing this vital work that has been assigned to the Christian church. And in these verses we have the answer.
We invite the world to listen to us. Why do we do so? It is because we are preaching “so great salvation.” This is our message. This is why we should hold on to it. This is why everybody else should listen to it and receive it. So let us look at this statement. Is the writer of this epistle justified in describing salvation in this way? What is the message of the Christian church? We can never ask this question too frequently, especially at the present time when there is a terrible confusion as to what the message of the Christian faith really is.
We are at once reminded that the Christian message is a message of salvation. It is deliverance, emancipation, healing, liberty, health, vigor, power. This is the character of the message that we have been given to proclaim. But notice that the writer is not content with merely describing it as “salvation.” He describes it as “so great salvation,” and, of course, he does that quite deliberately. These foolish Hebrew Christians had been tending to lose sight of this. Their whole trouble, really, was that they had not realized as they should have the greatness of this salvation. So he at once reminds them of it—that this salvation of ours in Christ Jesus is the greatest thing the world has ever known or ever can know. And it is to this aspect that I want to direct attention in particular.
Those who are familiar with their Scriptures know that the Bible itself, and the New Testament in particular, always describes salvation in these superlative terms. The very picture of it that is always given to us in the New Testament is of its greatness, its grandeur, its largeness. Take the apostle Paul, for instance, in the second chapter of his epistle to the Ephesians. Language seems almost to fail him. He talks about grace, but he is not content with that. He talks about “the exceeding riches” of God’s grace in his kindness toward us (v. 7). Indeed, in the third chapter of that same epistle, the apostle refers to “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (v. 8) and to “the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge” (v. 19). In verse 20 he writes, “Unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we [could ever] ask or think.” And this language is characteristic not only of Paul, but of all the New Testament writers. No one can read the New Testament with eyes open in the spiritual sense without getting the impression that salvation is something tremendous and magnificent.
That way of describing and thinking of salvation is by no means confined to the New Testament. The really great hymns always do the same thing. Not all hymns are like that. Some are sentimental ditties mostly composed about the middle of the nineteenth century. But the great hymns always bring out this element of greatness. Take a man such as Isaac Watts. When he looks at the cross, this is what he says: “When I survey the wondrous cross . . . .” The cross is not something you can take a fleeting glance at. It is too big for that. When we look at the cross, we are like someone standing on top of a mountain and viewing some great panorama that stretches out almost endlessly. “When I survey the wondrous cross . . .” The bigness, you see, the greatness of it all. Or take Charles Wesley. This is how he puts it: “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.” What is the use of one tongue? What is the use of ten tongues? What is the use of a hundred tongues? “O for a thousand tongues.” Wesley had caught a glimpse of the greatness, the vastness of this “so great salvation.”
But this is not confined to the hymnbooks. When you turn to the realm of art, you must grant that some of the finest masterpieces in painting and sculpture have been inspired by this salvation, this gospel. They are but an attempt on the part of the artists to express this greatness. You find it in architecture. Look at those great cathedrals on the continent of Europe. Even the ruins are worth looking at. The men who put up those magnificent edifices with their great vaulted roofs were trying to give an impression of the bigness, the exalted character, the magnificence of the great salvation that was being preached in those buildings.
You find the same purpose in almost every other sphere. If you are interested in oratory and in eloquence—and that is not to be despised—you must agree that some of the most eloquent orations that have ever been delivered in this world have been delivered by preachers. Great preaching, great oratory and eloquence—the modern world knows little about this. Perhaps the greatest preacher that America has ever known was Samuel Davies, and he wrote a hymn that expresses exactly the same sentiment:
Great God of wonders! All thy ways
Are matchless, godlike and divine;
But the fair glories of thy grace
More wondrous and unrivaled shine.
And nobody can dispute this point when we come to the realm of music. Probably the greatest single piece of music that has ever been composed is Handel’s Messiah. What a magnificent piece of work it is! But what produced it? What led Handel to write the Messiah? Fortunately for us, Handel himself has told us. He says that during that extremely short period of time in which he composed this great masterpiece, “I did feel as if I were lifted up into the heavens and did see something of the glory of the great God.” That is the explanation of the “Hallelujah Chorus”—not musical genius, but that Handel had had a glimpse of the glory of the great God. It is all expressive of the greatness and the magnificence of this “so great salvation.”
So I make no apology for putting a question to you before we go any further. Do you habitually think of your own salvation as the greatest and the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to you? I will ask a yet more serious question: do you give your neighbors the impression that you have found the most magnificent thing in the world? I have already said this, but it merits repetition. I have a terrible fear that many people are outside the Christian church because so many of us give them the impression that what we have is something very small, very narrow, very cramped and confined. We have not given them the impression that they are missing the most glorious thing in the entire universe.
That is what the writer to the Hebrews is claiming for the gospel. The whole trouble with those Hebrew Christians was that they had lost sight of this greatness, and so they were going back to something else. So here is the question: is the writer indulging in hyperbole, or is he justified in describing this salvation as “so great”? In what sense is it right to describe it in this way? I shall answer the question for you in the writer’s own terms. It is his answer, not mine. I am simply expounding what he says.
The first answer is that salvation is great in its authorship, great in its origin, great in its genesis. We generally judge the greatness of any book in terms of the authorship. When you go to the public library to borrow a book, how do you decide which book to borrow? I suggest that you usually do so in terms of the author. The author establishes the value of the book. And that is quite right. This applies not only, of course, to books—it is equally true of art. Let me give you a simple illustration. I remember reading in our papers in London about five or six years ago of something that had happened the evening before in Sotheby’s, one of our great auction rooms. A painting had been sold at auction for £136,000. Why such excitement about that? Paintings often fetch tremendous prices these days.
The story is this: the man who had sold that painting had bought it some years previously. One day he had been rummaging around in an antique shop, not looking for anything in particular, when he suddenly saw the painting in a corner. Something about it attracted his attention, and he pulled it out. It was covered with dust, but he dusted it off a bit and looked at it, and he liked it. So he asked how much it was, and he was told that its price was something under £100. He bought it and took it home. He cleaned it up, put it in a new frame, and hung it on the wall with his other paintings. A few years later a friend of his, who was a well-known artist, happened to call on him, and the first man proudly showed his friend his collection of paintings. When the artist came to this one, he said, “Wait a minute, do you know what you have here?”
“Well, no,” said the man. “All I know is that I like it very much.” And he told his friend the story of how he had bought it and how it constantly pleased him. He said he was never tired of looking at it.
“Well,” said the artist, “unless I’m very greatly mistaken, this is a painting by El Greco, the great Spanish master.” And he was so sure of it that they brought the biggest art experts down from London. They treated it with chemicals. They X-rayed it. They did all the things that are done today, and the experts were unanimous in saying that this was undoubtedly by El Greco. Do you see what happens? When nobody knew who had painted the picture, it was worth less than £100. When it was known that it was painted by El Greco, it was valued at £136,000 pounds. It is still the same painting. You estimate the value by the painter, by the author, by the one who has produced it.
That is exactly the argument that the author of the letter to the Hebrews is employing here. Listen: “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord”—that is the Lord Jesus Christ—“and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness”—that is, God the Father—“both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost”—the third person in the blessed Holy Trinity. Why is this so great a salvation? Here is the first answer: it has been produced by the blessed Holy Trinity. That is why you and I should hold on to it. That is why we should ask the whole world to listen to it. Look at the world in its terrible trouble. They have listened to the speeches of statesmen. They have listened to the philosophers, the scientists, the sociologists, the educators. Yet the world goes from bad to worse. What is our challenge to the world? It is this: Come to church and listen to what God has to say about it all. This is not the word of men; this is the Word of God. Listen to it!
This writer is so full of the greatness of this salvation that he cannot contain himself. He does not even trouble to open with the usual salutation as he writes his letter to these people. He bursts upon them with the message. And this is what he says: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (1:1–2). It is God speaking! This is the greatest word in the world. Here we read the explanation of the state of the modern world, the predicament of the individual and the whole of society. This is not man’s diagnosis; it is God’s diagnosis and God’s remedy. It is the authorship that makes it so great. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit cooperated together—the economic Trinity, to use the theological term—to produce this “so great salvation.”
There is the first reason. And, indeed, that is enough. In many senses I might as well stop now. But we are all, like these Hebrews, dull of hearing, so I had better go on and give you further reasons why this salvation is “so great.” But I repeat, that first reason ought to be enough and more than enough for us. It is the word of God and not human words.
The writer has a second reason. He says this is so great a salvation because it saves us from a great and a terrible calamity. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” You measure the greatness of the salvation by measuring the greatness of the calamity from which it saves us. We are familiar with calamities these days, are we not? But these are nothing compared with the calamity that faces the soul that does not accept and believe this gospel. “How shall we escape . . . ?” The calamity is terrible, terrifying. Let me bring out this point by again using a simple illustration.
How do you estimate the value of drugs that are prescribed by doctors? I suggest that you do so like this. Consider the drug known as aspirin, a really useful little drug. If you have a headache, take aspirin. Aches and pains, take aspirin. A wonderful drug. But it is cheap, is it not? You can buy many tablets of aspirin for very little money. Why? Because it only deals with aches and pains, headaches, and things like that. But other drugs are very expensive. These are wonderful drugs. Why? Because they can cure not only headaches and aches and pains but the most terrible diseases. I remember forty years ago, and even later, if a doctor diagnosed a disease like tuberculous meningitis, he might as well have sat down immediately and written out the death certificate. Why? Because tuberculous meningitis was invariably fatal. Nobody could cure it. Nothing could affect it in any way at all. But they have drugs now that can cure tuberculous meningitis. They are called miracle drugs, and they are highly expensive. Why? Because they can cure these deadly diseases. You arrive at an assessment of the value of the drug by considering the lethal character of the disease that it cures.
And that is the very principle that this writer is employing here. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” Did you notice how he brings it home? Listen to the argument of verse 2: “If the word spoken by angels was stedfast”—he is talking about the Mosaic law, the law that God gave to Moses through the mediation of angels—“and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; how shall we escape . . . ?” The writer is saying that the law of God has outlined the calamity and has defined it for us. He talks about transgression and disobedience of the law and the punishment that God has already announced that he will put upon such transgression. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” says the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 18:4, 20). “The wages of sin is death,” says the apostle Paul (Rom. 6:23). The law has pronounced this. And this is the great message of the whole Old Testament, which these people knew in a superficial sense. “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Gal. 3:24). “[The law] was added because of transgressions” (Gal. 3:19), so that “sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful” (Rom. 7:13) and so be brought to the light.
Now the law has described and shown sin and its punishment, but, says the writer of Hebrews, the gospel shows it even more clearly. But taking it even at the level of the law, this message is needed by the modern world. Why is the world in general not interested in the gospel of Christ? There is only one answer to that question. People have never seen their plight and predicament as they are without the gospel. They think that as long as they live in an affluent society, as long as they have plenty of money and can enjoy themselves, all is well. They never stop to think of death and the judgment beyond it. And so they are uninterested and see no need for the gospel. They never see the calamity, the awfulness, the last judgment, and an eternity of misery and wretchedness outside the life of God. But that is the destiny of men and women who die in their sin and without believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. The law has already established this. Our Lord repeated it. He said that he had come “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He and he alone can do it. Nothing else can save. And that is this writer’s whole argument. The law itself seemed to be enough. But now Christ has come, and he is the only way of salvation. If you neglect this, oh, the terror, the awfulness of the calamity and the fate that awaits you!
There, then, is the second reason for regarding this as so great a salvation. Here is something that can save you from everlasting and eternal misery and wretchedness and deadness outside the life of God, from the most awful calamity and fate conceivable—it can save you even from that. But that is negative, and this author is concerned to put it positively as well. This is a great salvation not only because of the greatness of what it saves us from, but because of what it saves us to, what it saves us for. It is still greater when you notice that to which it brings us and what it gives us. And that is the subject matter of the remainder of Hebrews 2.
What does this gospel give us? Someone may say, “Why should I believe that gospel?” Well, listen to the answer. The first thing that it gives you is pardon and forgiveness of sins. Notice verse 17: “Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.” Reconciliation! There is nothing in the whole world today as valuable as this. To be reconciled to God! To know that our sins are forgiven! The wealth of the universe cannot purchase this. There is nothing more valuable.
Let me tell you the story of a man who once came to see me in London. I had never met the man, but he had asked if he could come and see me. I noticed from the address on his notepaper that he was obviously prominent in the great city of London, in the financial world. I could not understand why he should want to see me, but when he eventually came, he told me that he was following the advice of his physician. He had been seeing this great doctor, who happened to be one of the royal physicians, and this doctor could do nothing for him. What was the matter with the man? Well, he had been suffering from insomnia and from a lot of pain in different parts of his body. He had been to his local doctor and to the specialists, and none of them had been able to do anything for him. He had actually taken a world cruise twice, but he was none the better; if anything, he was worse. He was now in such a bad state that he could not do his work properly.
What was the matter with the man? He told me what it was. Twenty years earlier, in order to make a lot of money quickly, he had done something that was dishonest. At the time it had not worried him at all; in fact, he had thought it rather clever. He had made a lot of money and had gone on enjoying it. All had been well until five years ago, fifteen years after he had done this thing, when suddenly it came back to him. He did not know why, but he began to think about it. Something had resurrected it, and he could not get rid of it. So he began to develop these physical symptoms, these functional conditions of the body. Nobody and nothing could help him. He had plenty of money. If it were only a question of paying for physicians or world tours, there would have been no problem. But he could not find peace—peace of conscience, peace of mind, peace of heart. He could not put his head on the pillow at night and go to sleep, the sleep of the innocent. That was his trouble—his annoying, condemning conscience. And all the money in the world and all the libraries of the universe could not help him.
But thank God, a little preacher could help him, because he could tell him of a way whereby he could know for certain that his sins were forgiven. He could tell him about the Son of God who had come down from heaven to earth to deal with this very problem. He could say, as Paul and Silas said to the Philippian jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). If he but believed, he would know that his sins were forgiven, blotted out, and he would put his head on the pillow and go to sleep like a newborn babe.
Reconciliation. It is more precious than the whole universe. Even millionaires commit suicide. You cannot buy happiness. You cannot buy peace of conscience and of mind and of heart. Money will not enable you to face death triumphantly. There is only one way whereby that can happen, and it is through this “so great salvation.” That is the first thing that salvation does, but that is only the first.
Having reconciled us to God and having given us pardon and forgiveness of our sins, the gospel then goes on to do something that is almost incredible. It actually makes us children of God. We are not merely introduced to God and enabled to speak to him, but God adopts us into his family. Notice the greatness of the statements in this chapter:
For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. (v. 10)
Now listen to this:
For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me. (vv. 11–13)
But the amazing statement is this: “Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.” What does this mean? Who is “he that sanctifieth”? The Lord Jesus Christ. Who are “they who are sanctified”? You and I who believe in him. We are “all of one,” but one what? One nature! We are born again. We are born of the Spirit. We are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). “For which cause [Christ] is not ashamed to call them brethren.” My dear friends, that is why the author of this letter says, “so great salvation.” You are not only pardoned and forgiven, but you are adopted into the royal family of heaven. You have become a child of God. You belong to the heavenly family.
There are people in London who want to mix with great people and who pay large sums of money in order to get an entrée into some exclusive club. There was a time when the thing to do was to be presented to the Queen, and it used to cost thousands of pounds. People would pay this amount of money just in order to have the privilege of shaking hands with the Queen of England. But after they had paid the thousands and after they had shaken hands with Her Majesty, they were still the same people. They were still commoners. They were not taken into the royal family. They were not adopted. But here is what the gospel offers you—and for nothing—that you will become a child of God. You become someone of whom it can be said that the Lord Jesus Christ is not ashamed to be called your brother. Oh, the greatness of this salvation! The dignity of the position into which it puts us!
And not only that. On the writer goes. While you are still left in this world, you are a child of God, but you must still fight the world and the flesh and the Devil. Temptations are powerful and hot and strong, and how can you deal with them? The great salvation has an answer: “For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (v. 18). The Lord Jesus Christ not only dealt with the problem of the guilt of sin, he deals with the problem of the power of sin. And so, believing in him, in the heat of temptation you can turn to him and say:
I need thee every hour;
Stay thou nearby;
Temptations lose their power
When thou art nigh.
ANNIE SHERWOOD HAWKS
“Cleanse me from its guilt and power,” says the hymn-writer Augustus Toplady. Our Lord does that. This is a part of the great salvation. He will be with you. He will lead you. He will guide you. He has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5). He will go with you through all the trials and the troubles and the calamities, all the way through your earthly course. These are some of the things that this “so great salvation” gives us, but it does not even stop at that.
In many ways the greatest thing of all is what the writer describes in verses 5–8: “For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak,” says the writer in verse 5, and then he goes on to quote the eighth psalm. Now in the King James Version the translation in verse 5 is unfortunate. The writer is saying that the world to come, of which he has spoken and of which his readers have heard in the preach ing, is not being prepared and reserved for angels but for us. In the last verse of the first chapter, in dealing with angels, he has said, “Are they [the angels] not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” And ultimately the salvation is this world to come, of which he is speaking. What does this mean? This, to me, is the most glorious aspect of all in our great and glorious Christian faith.
We are living in such an uncertain world. We are here today; we may be gone tomorrow—consider not only hurricanes, not only tornadoes, but the bombs and all the horrible possibilities. How long is the world going to last? Nobody knows. But it is an insecure world. You cannot of a surety base anything on anything. Everything is shaking. And to me the most wonderful thing of all is that as children of God we already belong to the world to come. Our citizenship is in heaven. We are only strangers and pilgrims here, as we are told later on: “Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb. 13:14). We are like Abraham. In Hebrews 11 we are told this about Abraham: “For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker [architect and artificer] is God [himself]” (v. 10). A city with foundations, not a city that can be suddenly demolished by a hurricane or by bombs or anything else, but the city of God that is eternal! The eternal city. And “the world to come, whereof we speak” (Heb. 2:5) is not being prepared for angels; it is being prepared for us! Or as Paul puts it in Romans 8: “if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (v. 17). And in 1 Corinthians 6: “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? . . . Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (vv. 2–3).
This glorious world which is to come is for us. We are given it and made heirs of it, all for nothing, by this so great and glorious salvation. It is the free gift of God’s grace to us. That is what salvation saves you to. It saves you from hell; it saves you for this everlasting and eternal glory that we shall enjoy with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and all the spirits of just men made perfect and angels and archangels and cherubim and all the heavenly host forever and forever. That is why it is so great a salvation, the greatest thing in the universe.
But I have not yet mentioned the greatest thing of all. I reserved this to the end. Salvation is great in its authorship, great in what it saves us from, great in what it saves us to. But if you really want to know its greatness, you must understand the way in which it has been made possible for us, how it came into being. And this is what the writer of Hebrews elaborates. The point of the whole epistle, in a sense, is just to show us the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the writer does that here.
We are living in an age when people are very fond of drama. People no longer go to places of worship on Sunday night because they are at home watching television—the drama, the play. Wonderful! And then they talk to one another about what they have seen. And they go to their theaters and do the same thing. You hear one saying to another, “You know, it was most moving. There was a man there—a great man, came of a great family, acquired a great name and great wealth. Do you know, in order to help other people he pretended that he was a nobody! He dressed badly. He mixed with ordinary people. He suffered indignities, suffered even the lack of food. He did all this and endured this great self-abasement and sacrifice. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for them.” And the speaker gets eloquent: “I was weeping. I was moved to tears as I watched it. It was all so marvelous and so wonderful and so moving and so loving. There was only one thing wrong with the play—it was too short. It ended too soon. I wished it had gone on.” Drama!
Are you interested in drama? Well, if you are, let me in a few sentences hold before you the greatest drama that the world ever has known or ever can know. It is all described here. What is it? Listen to this writer as he puts it in the ninth verse of chapter 2 of Hebrews: “We see Jesus”—it is a drama about someone called Jesus—“who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” But who is Jesus? Here is the great question. Who is Jesus? He has already been described in the third verse: “The Lord.” Jesus the man, Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter. Jesus, yes. But more than that, he is the Lord! Ah, the writer has already said it, has he not, in the opening verses of the first chapter. He cannot contain himself. He is amazed at these Hebrew Christians. What? Turning back? Going back to the old Jewish religion? Why? You have not understood who Jesus is.
Listen: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets . . .” The writer is not derogating from the greatness of the prophets. They were great men. All right. But put them by the side of this one and they are nobodies. “. . . hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son . . .” Who is he? He is the one “whom he [God] hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” So who is Jesus? “. . . who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:1–3). This is who Jesus is. This is what he was from all eternity, “the express image” of God’s person, the effulgence of God’s eternal glory, the express image of it all. He is the one through whom all things are made and who sustains all things “by the word of his power.” He created everything, even angels.
The rest of chapter 1 goes on to tell us more about the angels and to contrast them with the Son. The Lord Jesus is the author of life. And yet listen again to verse 9 of chapter 2: “We see Jesus”—this glorious, blessed person by whom the angels and everything else was made—“who was made a little lower than the angels”—that is the drama. The apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but [humbled himself and] made himself of no reputation” (Phil. 2:6–7). The Lord of glory was born as a helpless babe. He who gave the law was “made of a woman, made under the law” (Gal. 4:4). Here is the drama—the incarnation, the drama of dramas, Jesus’ divesting himself of the insignia of his eternal glory. He could not divest himself of the glory nor of the deity. He divested himself of the signs, the trappings, the external manifestations. He did that in order to take on human nature.
Now the writer of Hebrews goes into detail over this. Note how he puts it in verse 16: “For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” Translate it, if you like, as, “He did not stretch out a helping hand to angels but to the seed of Abraham.” He did take upon himself human nature. He was truly man and still truly God. But he humbled himself, he made himself of no reputation, in order to do this. He not only became a man, but he also became a servant. Here is the drama.
God not only cannot tempt anybody, he cannot be tempted (James 1:13). But as this writer goes on to say, here is one who “himself hath suffered being tempted” (v. 18) and, as he puts it in verse 15 of chapter 4, “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Try to conceive of this. This blessed, holy person, this “holy thing” (Luke 1:35) born of Mary, this one who had looked eternally into the eyes of his Father and to whom sin was utterly abhorrent, was literally tempted “in all points like as we are.” He humbled himself to this.
But wait a minute. We have not finished. “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels.” Why did he do all this? What is the meaning of the incarnation? Did he come merely to teach us or to give us an example? No, no. “. . . for the suffering of death . . . that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Heb. 2:9). Drama? “From the highest throne of glory to the cross of deepest woe.”7 The author of life being put to death: this is the drama of dramas. Nothing is worth talking about side by side with this. From the very height of glory he not only came into the world but went to death, even the death of the cross, and he died, and they took down his body, and they laid it in a tomb. The author of life, the sustainer of the universe, was buried in a grave. But thank God, that was not the end. Here is the drama.
It starts in heaven. It comes down to earth. It goes down to the grave, to Hades, as it were. What then? “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.” But he burst asunder the bands of death. He rose triumphant over the grave. He could not be held by death. He arose “and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). He ascended, and he took his seat at the right hand of God. The writer of Hebrews has said it all in the third verse of the first chapter: “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” And there he is now, having come from heaven, down to the depths and back again to the glory. And there he lives and reigns, and history is in his hands. He is but waiting “till his enemies be made his footstool” (Heb. 10:13). And he will come again, riding the clouds of heaven, surrounded by all the holy angels, to judge the world. In all the panoply of his eternal glory, in all the majesty of his glorious deity, he will come, and every eye shall see him. But those who believe in him will rise to be with him and will share in his glory and will enjoy his presence and the indescribable blessings of the eternal kingdom forever and forever.
My dear friends, he did all this so that you and I might be saved from the calamity of hell, that we might be reconciled to God, that we might become the children of God, that we might share glory with God throughout the countless ages of eternity. Great salvation! Is anything else worth talking about? Do you apologize for being a Christian? Do you attend the house of God grudgingly? Are you giving people the impression that you have something small and narrow? Shame on you! If that is so, it is simply because you have never seen the greatness of this “so great salvation.”
Do we not all need that “eyesalve” about which the Lord himself spoke to the church at Laodicea (see Rev. 3:18)? You can get it for nothing. Pray for it. Pray that the Holy Spirit may enlighten the eyes of your understanding, that you may see this “so great salvation” and especially the Savior himself, the Lord of glory, who came down and endured such shame that you and I might live. The Son of God, as John Calvin put it, became the Son of Man so that the sinful sons of men might be made the sons of God. “So great salvation.” What can we say as we look at it? There is only one thing to say.
Crown him with many crowns,
The Lamb upon his throne.
Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns
All music but its own.
Awake, my soul, and sing
Of him who died for thee,
And hail him as thy matchless King
Through all eternity.
MATTHEW BRIDGES
Have you seen the greatness, the glory of it all? Give yourself no rest or peace until you find yourself lost in wonder, love, and praise at so great a salvation and especially as you look at him and fall at his feet and look forward to the day when you will cast your crown before him.
O Lord our God, we again beseech you to have mercy upon us—for our smallness, for our ignorance, for our folly, O God, but above all for the harm we do to the gospel with our small notions and ideas and our pettiness and our concern with small, immaterial things. Open our eyes, we humbly pray. Give us a glimpse of him, the Lord of glory, who so loved us that he gave himself for us. Open our eyes, O Lord our God, that we may ever live to the praise of the glory of your grace. We ask this in his most holy name. Amen.