Today we are beginning a new series based on the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is a letter written by someone who has very close connections to the temple. It is filled with priestly references, images and focuses on a sacred and holy approach to Jesus. We will begin with reflecting on Hebrews 1 The Son – The Eternal One. The author starts by introducing us to God’s Son and who the Son is: heir of all things, the one through whom all things are created, the exact representation of God’s hypostasis or substance and being of God. The Son is eternal and his years will never end. So much to reflect on and think about!
Today we are beginning a new series based on the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is a letter written by someone who has very close connections to the temple. It is filled with priestly references, images and focuses on a sacred and holy approach to Jesus. We will begin with reflecting on Hebrews 1 The Son – The Eternal One. The author starts by introducing us to God’s Son and who the Son is: heir of all things, the one through whom all things are created, the exact representation of God’s hypostasis or substance and being of God. The Son is eternal and his years will never end. So much to reflect on and think about!
The Son – the Eternal One
Hebrews 1
The letter to the Hebrews is a deep rich letter that was already known and quoted in the church as early as the beginnings of the 100s. We’re not exactly sure who the author is, but was likely a respected priest with connections to the temple in Jerusalem. The writer seems to be writing to Jewish converts to the church and very familiar with the temple rituals. There seems to be some suffering happening, and perhaps rumours of persecution on the horizon, but no full-scale persecution such as under Nero was happening yet, and there’s no mention of the destruction of the temple, so likely this letter was written before 70 A.D. when Rome destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and full-scale persecution began to happen against the church.
This letter to the Hebrews is completely Jesus focused; on who Jesus is, what Jesus accomplished, and our response to Jesus. There’s a sense of urgency in the letter, calling the people to hang on tightly to this confession of who Jesus is as the Son of God and source of our salvation and all that this means for our lives as Jesus’ followers, both as the church together and as individuals. This letter begins by describing who the Son of God is, the name Jesus isn’t even used until the middle of the second chapter. The emphasis is first on who Jesus is because there was a whole lot of strange teachings and beliefs out there, and still today, about Jesus and the spiritual world around us. It’s no different today.
God wasn’t silent in letting humanity know who he is and what he expects, “God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” God was speaking through many prophets, and even in different ways since we all experience and hear God differently due to our personalities, places in life, and even culture. The biggest problem is that people often don’t really pay all that much attention to prophets and others God speaks through. God then takes the next step, moving from talking to the people through his servants, and “in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” He sends his son who has all his authority and power, his heir to his people so they’ll pay more attention to what he’s saying.
We hear echoes to the Old Testament like Psalm 2:8, “I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” The term “heir” is a legal term referring to portions and shares that get passed down and how they get passed down. Here, the Son is the primary heir, but the inheritance is much more than simply this earth, it’s all creation and especially the world to come. The Son is the one through whom the universe was made, echoing John 1:3, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” The word used for universe here is “aiones” or “ages,” referring to the whole created universe of space and time, all created through the Son, all the inheritance of the Son.
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory,” a term associated with the coming of the dawn, the brilliance of the sun appearing over the horizon, chasing the darkness away. The Son is the “exact representation,” of the “being” of God. This refers to the royal stamp or seal of the emperor, giving the holder of the seal all the weight and authority of the emperor. The word for “representation” is the word “charaktor” in Greek, referring to who God is and is combined here with the word “being” or “hypostasis” in Greek which means “giving reality to, substance, nature of, and essence,” and becomes an important concept in later church councils when talking about who Jesus is as the Son of God, and in defining how the Trinity of God holds together. The Son gives reality to who God is, he’s the very substance and essence of God. The writer here is shouting out to the church that the Son here is God. As the Son of God, he sustains and maintains the universe and everything in it by his word, echoing John 1 and Genesis 1, and also referring to the work of the Holy Spirit, closely connecting the Father and Son.
Now the writer gets into what the Son did, he “provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Purification connects the Son to the temple and the temple sacrifices which were given to Israel to help them remember who God is, who they are as God’s people, and the rituals given to Israel to stay in relationship to a holy God. The common images for purification involve water and fire and new identity. Water takes us back to the flood because of humanity’s sin, and then to Israel crossing the Red Sea on dry ground and being rescued from slavery into freedom, and then later, crossing the Jordan River as they entered the Promised Land, a place to call home. Jesus picks up the image of water as life in calling himself living water when talking to the woman at the well. These are the images that shape our sacrament of baptism, showing us God as our Father, Jesus as our Saviour, and the Holy Spirit as God’s presence and acts of salvation.
The second image is fire, burning away impurity and sin. when Isaiah encounters God in Isaiah 6, Isaiah cries out, “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” The Son is the purifier from sin, the restorer of relationship with the Father. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes as flames of fire on each of those who believe, a symbol of the purification from our sins accomplished by Jesus on the cross and affirmed in his resurrection.
The writer ends this opening section on who the Son is, “So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he inherited is superior to theirs.” This is a transition to the Son’s status; he and his name is much superior to the angels. The word for name in the Greek is “onoma” and refers also to status, rank, fame, or person and is often used in the New Testament as a pious reference to God or as title for Jesus. Paul also tells us in his letters to the churches in Ephesus and Philippi that Jesus’ name is above every other name. The Son has inherited a rank of power and divinity that belonged only to God before this. Everyone, including the angels, worship the Son, something we see in Revelation 4, “Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.” …. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”
There seems to have been some kind of angel worship happening. The question in the letter is how can anyone worship an angel over the Son of God? Yet it was a time when there was a fascination with the spiritual and mystical, Paul dealt with it, as did other apostles, so it’s not hard to see that some of this crept into the church. We see something similar today, in the postmodern culture, there’s an interest and belief in the supernatural and mystical today. A few weeks ago, I mentioned some of the issues with post modernity, but there are also issues with modernity. Modernity embraced logic and science and tried to explain miracles and the spiritual away, explaining that people in the Bible didn’t know science or psychology like we do today. It tries to take away the mystery of God. Postmodernity doesn’t question the existence of the spiritual or miracles, making them open to conversations about Jesus and the work of God and the Holy Spirit in new ways. This is why Hebrews is so important because it speaks to who Jesus is within the spiritual world.
The Son is superior to the angels, having created the angels. Now even the angels themselves weren’t all the same. There are the cherubim who are hybrid creatures with animal like features and represent power and strength. Cherubim were placed at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to make sure that people couldn’t get back in, the cherubim were represented in the Holy of Holies as carrying the ark of the covenant and God’s throne. Angels come in human form, often being mistaken for people and are messengers who serve God and act as guides and protectors of those who will inherit salvation, those created in the image of God. The Angel of the Lord is how the Lord appears to humanity so that he can communicate directly with people without them dying; think of the visitors to Abraham or Moses and the burning bush. When Jesus was born, the problem of seeing God without dying was solved by Jesus becoming human like us.
Angels don’t even come close to comparing to the Son, God’s first-born, whom God commands the angels to worship. Angels are created beings, created through the Son, compared to flames of fire, images from the Psalms that speak to their devotion and zeal to God and the Son. The Son has been anointed with joy, a sign of being chosen by God, sitting at God’s right hand to rule over a kingdom founded on justice and righteousness. The Son is eternal, and while creation perishes, the Son is eternal and will roll it all up and transform it into a renewed and restored creation at his return.