<- Previous   First   Next ->

the fulfilment of his destiny is not wrought by a moral or spiritual union with God laid open by Christ, or established in Christ, but by a union of humanity with God extending to the whole of man's nature and maintained through death. While the writer insists with the greatest force upon the transcendental action of Christ, he rests the foundation of this union upon Christ's earthly experience. Christ ‘shared in blood and flesh’ (2:14), and ‘was in all things made like to His brethren’ (v. 17). He took to Himself all that belongs to the perfection of man's being. He lived according to the conditions of man's life and died under the circumstances of man's mortality. So His work extends to the totality of human powers and existence, and brings all into fellowship with the divine. Compare Clem. R. ad Cor. 1.49; Iren. 5.1.1; 2.22.4; 3.16.6. The passages of Irenaeus will repay careful study.

Additional Note on Hebrews 2:8. Man's destiny and position.

The view which is given in the quotation from Ps. 8 of the splendour of man's destiny according to the divine idea is necessary for the argument of the Epistle. It suggests the thought of ‘the Gospel of Creation,’ and indicates an essential relation between the Son of God and men. At the same time it prepares the way for the full acceptance of the great mystery of a redemption through suffering. The promise of dominion given in the first chapter of Genesis is renewed and raised to a higher form. Even as man was destined to rule ‘the present world,’ so is it the pleasure of God that he should rule ‘the world to come.’ His dominion may be delayed, misinterpreted, obscured, but the divine counsel goes forward to accomplishment through the sorrows which seem to mar it.

For man, as we have seen (Addit. Note on Heb. 1:3), has missed his true end. He is involved in sin and in an inheritance of the fruit of sins. Born for God he has no right of access to God (Heb. 9:8). For him, till the Incarnation, God was represented by the darkness of a veiled sanctuary. The highest acts of worship served only to remind him of his position and not to ameliorate it (10:4, 11). He was held by fear (2:15). Yet the primal promise was not recalled. He stood therefore in the face of a destiny unattained and unrevoked: a destiny which experience had shewn that he could not himself reach, and which yet he could not abandon as beyond hope.

For man, as he is, still retains the lineaments of the divine image in which he was made. He is still able to pronounce an authoritative moral judgment: he is still able to recognise that which corresponds with the Nature of God (2:10 e[prepen aujtw'/ ), and with the needs of humanity (7:26 e[prepen hJmi'n ). And in the face of every sorrow and every disappointment he sees a continuity in the divine action, and guards a sure confidence in the divine righteousness (6:10).

It follows therefore that there is still in humanity a capacity for receiving that for which it was first created. The Son could become true man without change in His Divine Person, and without any violation of the completeness of the Nature which he assumed. The prospect is opened of ‘consummation through suffering.’

Additional Note on the reading of Hebrews 2:9.


<- Previous   First   Next ->