Lower than the Angels – Part 2
HEBREWS 2:5-9
LET’S LOOK MORE CLOSELY AT OUR SELECTED PASSAGE, VS. 5-9…
NAS Hebrews 2:5 For He did not subject to angels the world to come, concerning which we are speaking.
ONLY GOD WILL RULE THE WORLD TO COME. Angles do not have authority unless God gives it to them for a special purpose. Angels are messengers, servants of God. If the Hebrew Christians to whom the writer is writing somehow thought that angels would be in control of the future, these opening chapters certainly would set them straight. In the great Millennial Kingdom to come when Christ returns to earth, angels will be servants, not rulers…
THIS IS IN THE WORLD TO COME, BUT IN THE PRESENT WORLD, angels may be seen as rulers. Satan is an angel, a rebellious, fallen angel, and he is ruling the inhabited world today…
NAS John 12:31 “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world shall be cast out.
NAS 2 Corinthians 4:4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
THE GOD (LITTLE “G”) OF THIS PRESENT WORLD IS SATAN. He rules the hearts and minds of unsaved mankind through the demons he controls…
NAS Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
HEBREWS 2:5 TELLS US THAT ANGELS – WHETHER GOOD OR BAD – will not be in authority in the wonderful world to come…
ONE FINAL WORD ABOUT THE WORLD TO COME. Yes, it is, of course, future. It will not be actualized until the Second Coming of Christ when Jesus sets up His earthly Millennial Kingdom. But Christians today can, to some extent, claim to be experiencing the joy of heaven now…
NAS Philippians 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;
BACK TO OUR TEXT IN HEBREWS… V. 6…
NAS Hebrews 2:6 But one has testified somewhere, saying, “What is man, that Thou rememberest him? Or the son of man, that Thou art concerned about him?
“SOMEONE HAS TESTIFIED SOMEWHERE. Does that sound a bit strange to you, coming from the Bible? It did me. It sounds vague. It almost sounds as if the writer has not done his homework and is not certain of the facts he is presenting. But that’s not the case at all. “This was a familiar Alexandrian (that’s in Egypt where a large population of Jews lived in ancient times – TR) manner of introducing Scripture. The absence of the name of a human author enforced the theory of inspiration which the author held. The name of the human speaker (and precise biblical verse – TR) was not as important to him as was his belief that it was God who was really speaking” – Broadman Bible Commentary. I read also that Philo, the famous ancient Hebrew philosopher, who also was from Alexandria, was fond of using this clause in his writings…
“WHAT IS MAN THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM?” The preacher of the book of Hebrews (Hebrews is as much a sermon or treatise as it is a letter) makes direct reference to Psalm 8…
NAS Psalm 8:4 What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him?
SOME HAVE THOUGHT THAT THE TERM “SON OF MAN” REFERS TO JESUS, as it often does in Scripture, but it is clear, I think, that the reference is to man in general. The term “son of man,” while used to describe Christ, as in Matthew 24:27, 30, 37, 39, is also used repeatedly to describe the O.T. prophet Ezekiel (2:1, 3, 6, 8; 3:1, 3, 4).…
NAS Matthew 24:27, 30-31 “For just as the lightning comes from the east, and flashes even to the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. 30 and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. 31 “And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.
NAS Ezekiel 2:1 Then He said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!”
BUT HERE IN HEBREWS 2:6, “SON OF MAN” REFERS TO MAN – US!
IN THE NEXT VERSE, IN V. 7 OF OUR PASSAGE, THE PREACHER OF HEBREWS again quotes from the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) translation of Psalm 8. First, let’s read v. 7 of Hebrews 2, then Psalm 8:5-6…
NAS Hebrews 2:7 “Thou hast made him for a little while lower than the angels; Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor, And hast appointed him over the works of Thy hands;
KJV Psalm 8:5-6 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
REMEMBER THAT THE READERS (MOST) WERE JEWS FAMILIAR WITH THE O.T. Scriptures. The writer of the book of Hebrews was using their own Scriptures to argue his points about Jesus.
IN OUR PASSAGE WE WILL SEE THAT BOTH MAN AND JESUS WERE made temporarily lower than the angels. Maybe you didn’t think of yourself in this way before, in the way presented by both these N.T. and O.T. passages. But we must remember that God original intention was than man should have dominion over the things of the earth…
KJV Genesis 1:26-28 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
BUT MAN SINNED AND FELL FROM THAT POSITION. Now we are struggling with our lives on earth. We don’t feel like we have dominion over much if anything these New Age, anti-Christian days…
WHEN THE BIBLE SAYS, “MAN IS LOWER THAN THE ANGELS,” it does not mean that we are lower than the angels spiritually. It also does not mean that God loves angels more than he loves us. The only way we are lower than the angels, and the only way that Jesus was lower than the angels, is physically. Angels are spiritual; we are physical and Jesus became physical. And both of those situations – ours and that of Jesus – are or were temporary. There will come a day when we physical humans will be elevated to spiritual beings above the angels. When that day comes man will take his rightful place, the place that was ordained originally by God, as ruler over all of God’s creation. The destiny that was lost when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden will be reclaimed by man and all things will be in subjection to us…
KJV 1 Corinthians 6:3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
LISTEN TO VERSE 8 OF HEBREWS 2…
NAS Hebrews 2:8 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.
IT WAS GOD’S INTENTION FOR MAN TO BE IN AUTHORITY ON EARTH… Everything was originally meant to be in submission to man. But we can look around and see that this has not been fulfilled completely. Man is at times in control of little…
NAS Hebrews 2:15 and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.
PSALM 8 IS USUALLY CITED IN THE N.T. IN ASSOCIATION WITH PSALM 110:1…
NAS Psalm 110:1 A Psalm of David. The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand, Until I make Thine enemies a footstool for Thy feet.”
BOTH O.T. PSALMS speak of subjecting everything under the feet. In ancient times this would easily be understood in reference to a king and his subjects. Nothing was placed above the king. When the person addressed the king he was standing below the feet of the king, the king, of course, sitting on an elevated throne. The person would also bow before the king and often kiss the feet of the king. Interestingly, this image is the prominent image of one of the main words interpreted “worship” in the Bible (προσκυνεω pros-ku-ne-o)…
OUR FINAL VERSE, VERSE 9, a stunningly beautiful verse…
NET Hebrews 2:9 but we see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by God’s grace he would experience death on behalf of everyone.
“BUT WE SEE Jesus.” Isn’t that beautiful? Death has conquered man, but Jesus has conquered death. We are not what we were intended to be, “but we see Jesus.” I almost titled the sermon that. We can say today in the midst of the madness of life, “My life has not worked out, my life is not working out, like I thought it would; the world is a frightening place sometimes to contemplate and I admit I am fearful of death, but I see Jesus.” “I just lost my beloved husband or mother and I can hardly get through each day, but I see Jesus.”
“WE DO NOT SEE MAN IN POSSESSION OF EARTHLY SOVEREIGNTY. No, but we see Jesus, whose humiliation fulfilled the conditions of manhood, crowned with glory and honor, and thus constituted the Head of our race, so that His death and sufferings were our deliverance and our perfecting.” – Henry Alford
IN JESUS GOD’S PLANS FOR MAN WILL BE FULFILLED. Through Christ we are more than conquerors…
NIV Romans 8:37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
NAS Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.
MY LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THAT GREAT VERSE WOULD BE (reflecting the present tense of the verb and the participle involved, as well as carefully interpreting the verb) “I continually have the strength, the power, the might to do all things by means of the One continually strengthening me.”
MANKIND FAILED AND FELL INTO SIN, “BUT WE SEE JESUS!” God sent Jesus to rescue us. God became a man to pay the ransom of our slavery to Satan and to sin, and through Him we will fulfill God’s original plan for us. One day, through Christ, all things will be under our feet and we will reign with Him…
NAS 2 Timothy 2:11-12 It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him; If we endure, we shall also reign with Him;
JEWS THEN AND JEWS NOW CANNOT CONCEIVE THAT GOD WOULD become a man. They have even more trouble with the overwhelming thought that God as man could die. Certainly we must be sympathetic: it is an almost inconceivable reality. But that is what happened, and that is what the Scripture clearly teaches.
JESUS WAS MADE FOR A LITTLE WHILE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS in order to die on a cross that through the shedding of His blood He might take away your sins and mine and give us eternal life. You could say that He was “born to die”…
KJV Matthew 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
HIS BIRTH, AND HIS PREDETERMINED DEATH… Jesus was born to die so that we might live forever in heaven with Him. The death of Christ was and is directly connected to salvation. There is no salvation without the death of Christ. God became a man in Jesus in order that He Himself might pay the penalty for all of mankind’s sins.
PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME. May His name be always hallowed…
CHRIST’S EXALTATION AND PREEMINENCE over the angels was won through humiliation and death suffered while on earth in His humanity…
JESUS CHRIST, THE DIVINE SON OF GOD BECAME MAN – The Scripture, with even more emphasis that its declaration of Jesus’ divinity, declares Jesus to also have been Human. “Christ possessed a true humanity not only in its material aspects as indicated in His human, but in the immaterial aspect specified in Scripture as being His soul and spirit. It is therefore not sufficient to recognize that Jesus Christ as the Son of God possessed a human body, but it is necessary to view Him as having a complete human nature including body, soul and spirit. For those who accept the Bible as authoritative, there can be no question that Jesus Christ was in all reality a genuine Man.” – Walvoord
IN JESUS WE SEE EXHIBITED HUMANITY’S TRUE VOCATION. There is nothing comparable in all of history. To use the words of Lane again, “In an extraordinary way Jesus fulfills design for all creation and displays what had always been intended for all humankind, according to Psalm 8. He is the one in whom primal glory and sovereignty are restored. His experience of humiliation and exaltation guarantees that the absolute subjection of everything envisioned in Psalm 8:7 and promised in Psalm 110:1 will yet be achieved.”
WE ARE NOT WHAT WE WILL BE – BUT WE SEE JESUS!
“IN JESUS WE SEE EXHIBITED HUMANITY’S TRUE VOCATION. In an extraordinary way He fulfills God’s design for all creation and displays what had always been intended for all humankind, according to Psalm 8. He is the one in whom primal glory and sovereignty are restored. His experience of humiliation and exaltation guarantees that the absolute subjection of everything envisioned in Psalm 8:7 and promised in Psalm 110:1 will yet be achieved.” – Lane
LET US END OUR STUDY TODAY WITH THE SUBLIME THOUGHT OF Christ’s unique magnificence… This doctrine of the hypostatic union of the Lord Jesus Christ affords us an unequalled opportunity to contemplate His unique magnificence. He is the one like no other, the matchless One. He is the God-Man possessing two distinct natures, fully divine and fully human. We are so privileged to serve Him as Lord!
WE ARE NOT WHAT WE WILL BE – BUT WE SEE JESUS!
(In addition to the sources named, I wish to give due credit to Vincent’s Word Studies of the New Testament, Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament, Volume II, and Ellingworth’s commentary The Epistle to the Hebrews, from which I took several clauses and ideas for expressions I wrote.)
– Professor Thomas A. Rohm
