My
Commentary On
The Book Of Hebrews
Introduction
First of all, all quotes in this commentary are taken
from the New International Bible, 1994 edition.
The section titles of this commentary are also taken from the section
titles of the same NIV Bible to make for easy reading and comparison.
Concerning the authorship of the letter to the
Hebrews, no one really knows for sure. Some
early church Fathers suggest, Barnabas, Paul, Apolos, or Silas.
There is no historical evidence to say for sure who actually penned this
letter. There is also no internal evidence of who wrote this letter.
It is pretty apparent that this book was written to
Jewish Christians. There are many
Old Testament Scriptures quoted,
along with many references to Jewish Law and tradition.
You might say that as the Letter to the Romans is to the Romans, so
Hebrews is to the Jews. The letter
lays out the gospel in such a way that the Jewish reader will best understand
it.
Most scholars think that this letter was written
between 60 and 70 AD. Of course, if
it was written after 64 AD, we know
that Paul could not have written it. Paul
was executed in 64 AD for his faith in Jesus.
The purpose of this letter appears to be to challenge
and encourage Jewish Christians in their faith.
It appears that they were falling behind in their interest and devotion
to Jesus and His Kingdom. We will
take note of this as we pass through the verses of this letter.
We will also note the use of Old Testament Scriptures
and how it relates to us as New Testament Christians. The writer had good
knowledge of the Old Testament. He
also understood it’s new place in the lives of Jewish Christians. This subject
was extremely debatable in the first century church.
It is also very important for us today.
We do need to clearly understand how the Old Testament relates to New
Testament Christians, especially to Gentile New Testament Christians. I
believe how Christians understand the Old Testament is one of the most
misunderstood things in the church today.
We must remember, the number one internal problem
that the early church faced was the problem between Jewish and Gentile
Christians. How these two groups of
people could live together in unity had to be addressed many times over,
especially by the Apostle Paul. The
writer appears to be addressing this
issue by writing this letter.
Let us now look at the text of the Letter to the
Hebrews and see the good news of Jesus that is found within its pages.
The Son
Superior
To Angels (ch.1:1-14)
If you have studied any of Paul’s writings you
notice right away that the author of this letter does not introduce himself.
In Paul’s letters, he always tells his readers who he is and that he
has been called by God to serve our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yet in this letter, there is no mention of the author.
The letter begins by saying,
“in the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets…”
This sentence tells us something about the writer.
It tells us that he is Jewish because he speaks of “our forefathers the
prophets”. We know that the
prophets were Jewish. He is associating himself
into the Jewish heritage by using the word “our”.
The writer says that in various ways and in many
different times God spoke in times past but now He speaks through His Son.
These beginning verses of Hebrews are one of my favourite verses in the
Bible. They are extremely important
due to the fact that right in the beginning of this letter the issue of who
Jesus is, is dealt with. Remember
that the people reading this letter are Jews.
These people understood that God speaks to people, and that throughout
their history God has spoken to them through prophets.
But now there is a change in direction.
God is now speaking to His people in a new way.
This new and better way is through His Son.
You will notice one of the themes of this book is that there is a new way
of living. This new lifestyle is
much better than the old.
One might take this verse to say that God no longer
speaks through prophets and therefore the prophetic ministry ended in the Old
Testament. That's not so.
There are New Testament prophets mentioned in the Bible. There are even
woman prophets mentioned.
In verse 2 we see the phrase, “heir of all
things” An heir is someone that is
in line to inherit something from their parents.
Notice here that Jesus was to inherit something, and that something was
“all things”. In John 1:1 and 2
we notice that with Jesus’ help, God created all things.
Now Jesus would inherit all things. The
next phrase says the same thing. It
says, “and through whom He made the universe”.
It appears that God made everything that there is for His Son.
God so loved His Son that He worked with Him to create whatever was
pleasing to Him, and then God gave it all to Jesus.
Verse 3 is extremely important.
It tells us that Jesus is in fact God.
This truth is the most fundamental truth of our Christian belief.
It says, “the Son is the radiance of God’s glory, and the exact
representation of God’s being”. Jesus is what man was supposed to be, that
is, “the radiance of God’s glory”. Jesus
is the “exact representation of who God is”.
Jesus is an exact duplicate of God in human flesh.
Simply put, Jesus is God. This
is the main distinction between Jesus and humanity.
Human's were made in God's likeness and image.
That means, by the Hebrew definition of these words, man was made similar
to God and as His shadow. Jesus
wasn't made similar to God. He was
God. New Age teaching suggests that
man is actually little gods. This is
not Biblical thinking.
In the same verse the writer says that Jesus
“sustains all things by His powerful word”.
One of the basic elements of our universe is the atom.
The atom is made up of an electron that is surrounded by orbiting
protons. It is similar to our solar
system. As the planets orbit the
sun, so protons orbit the electron. These
small little things don’t collide because they maintain a constant speed in
their orbit. Another reason why they don’t collide into each other is because
Jesus holds all things together. Jesus is not only the Creator of all things.
He is also the Sustainer of all things.
Verse 3 is a long verse.
It goes on to say, “after He had provided purification for sin,
He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven”.
The reference to purification is speaking about the sacrifice of Jesus
made on the cross. This is a Jewish
term. Jews would understand what
Jesus did. They might not agree, but
they did understand the idea of a sacrifice purifying them of their sins.
This is what was happening in the animal sacrifices in Old Testament
times. The writer of Hebrews is
clearly saying, that Jesus is now the one who has purified you of your sins.
He will elaborate later on this point in detail, but for now he wants to
make this point in the very beginning of his letter.
When it says that Jesus sat down at the right hand of
the Majesty, the people in the first century understood that to mean that Jesus
took a place of authority alongside God Himself.
It does not necessarily mean that Jesus is actually sitting on a big
chair beside God somewhere in Heaven. It
does mean that Jesus now, as a result of His great sacrifice, has been exalted
to a place of ultimate supremacy and
authority over all things. You now
see that Jesus has created all things, sustains all things, and is Lord over all
things. Jesus is indeed central in
all that there is and ever will be.
In these first three verses you see that Jesus is
God. He is the exact representation
of God. He is also Christ or
Saviour, due to His act of purification. He
is also Lord of all things and in the utmost place of authority.
So right off the bat the author tells you who Jesus really is.
There is no doubt that the Jewish people needed to be assured of these
truths.
As a result of all of this, Jesus is much superior
than any angel that these Jewish people might respect, or even worhsip.
The Gnostic Jews believed that Jesus was one of many angels.
They in fact worshipped angels. Here
we clearly see that Jesus is not an angel. He
is far more superior than any angel. Thus
the theme of this book is established in the very beginning,
that is, Jesus is much superior than anything or anyone else in the
Jewish past.
From here to the end of this chapter the writer
quotes a number of Old Testament Scriptures to prove the point that he has just
made concerning Jesus. The first of
these quotes include the words, “you are my Son”.
These words suggest Deity. They
tell us that Jesus was the Son of God, thus at the least, Jesus must have
something of God in who He is.
After repeating a similar
verse concerning sonship, he quotes a verse concerning God bringing His
first born into the world. The
people of the day understood the idea of “first born” as not being born in
the sense that Jesus at one time wasn’t, and then came into existence at His
birth. “First born” was
understood as pre-existing all creation. That
is to say, Jesus pre-existed before anything was created.
In fact Jesus always was. Yet
on the other hand by saying this in such a way, the verse suggests that there
are others to be born, others that are similar to Jesus. This is so with you and
I, those of us who are really born again of the Holy Spirit.
You might call us second born, or third born, and so on.
The writer then repeats an Old Testament verse that
says, “let all God’s angels worship Him”.
He is saying that Jesus is not an angel.
He is one to be worshiped by angels.
He is not on their level, but is superior to them and therefore commands
their worship. In Jewish thinking,
they understood that only God Himself was to be worshiped.
The next Old Testament verse that is used here
says that God makes His angels winds.
Once again, the writer is in the process of making a clear distinction
between Jesus and angels. Here he
says that angels are made like the wind. The
Greek word translated as “wind” is the word “pneuma”.
It simply means a wind, or breathe. This
is the Greek word that is translated as spirit in the New Testament.
I suppose this is the best way to describe a spirit.
A spirit can’t be seen. The
wind can’t be seen. Yet the wind
has certain effects on things around it, and spirits have similar effects.
You might say that the Holy Spirit, is the Holy wind of God.
Actually Jesus Himself relates people born of the Spirit to wind in John
3:8 where He says, “the wind blows where it pleases…”
He is saying that those who are born of the Spirit is like the wind,
because the Spirit Himself is like the wind. You
cannot see where the wind has come from, neither do you know exactly where it is
going. You may know the general
direction of where it came from and where it is going, but you can’t say for
sure. The same with Christians
and the Spirit of God. Not that we
and the Spirit are fickle and don’t have any clue or idea of a plan of action.
The idea in John 3 is that non Christian, non spiritual people, cannot
understand the things of the Spirit. They
can see certain effects that have come about because of Christians and the Holy
Spirit, but to understand the why’s and the wherefore’s of it all are beyond
them.
Verse 8 is extremely important as well.
It says, “about the Son He says, “your throne O God will last
forever’”. This is one of a few
Scriptures that specifically says that Jesus is God.
Understanding that Jesus is God is the most fundamental truth that we
must believe as Christians. This
truth separates us from all other religions in the world.
The last half of this verse says that “your
righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom”.
The Greek word translated as “scepter” is “rhabdos”.
This word simply means a staff, or a rod.
Scepters are often symbolic of authority.
The writer is basically saying at some future point righteousness itself
will have authority over all things. This
will happen of course when Jesus returns for those He loves and for those who
have not rejected His love. When He
returns, He will put all things under His feet, resulting in the rule of
righteousness.
Verse 9 says that “you (Jesus) have loved
righteousness and hated wickedness”. Does
Jesus actually hate something? You mean Jesus doesn’t love everything.
That is right. Jesus does
hate wickedness. Some may debate
what is wicked and come up with varying ideas on what is right and what is
wrong, but we should stick to Scripture, which is pretty clear on what is
wicked. It is when we depart from
the Bible that we begin to have our own private definitions of certain words.
This should never be the case. We
should never redefine what the Bible has already defined.
The next phrase says that God has set Jesus above His
companions. The Greek word
“metochos” is translated as companions.
This word means “to share, or to partake”.
Therefore the writer is saying that Jesus is set apart, a major step up
from the rest of us who share in the preaching of the gospel, who share in the
Kingdom
of
God
.
From verses 10 through 12 Scriptures are quoted
showing that Jesus was involved in the creation process.
These Scriptures say that what was created “will perish”, and that
Jesus “will roll them up like a robe”. Even
though creation will undergo a major roll-up, Jesus Himself will live forever.
Verse 13 says that Jesus will sit at God’s right
hand until all of His enemies become His footstool.
To what angel did God ever say such a thing. Non of course.
This ends various quotes declaring that Jesus is far
above any angel. He is in a class of
His own. He is not one of many, but
He is one of a kind. The writer then
closes this chapter by saying what the roll of angels really are.
They are “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit
salvation”. (ch.1:14) First of
all, angels are spirits. Then they
are ministers, or servant to those of us, who will inherit salvation.
The writer is clearly stating that angels have a place, but it is not a
place of authority as is the place of Jesus Himself.
They are spirits, who are also servants.
They should be thought of in this light and not worshiped, as some were
promoting in those days.
One thing I note here concerning angels is that they
are in reference to spirits. Some
people believe, and it might well be true, that angels are spirits.
When angels appear to humans, they appear in a form recognizable to
humans, but what humans see is merely an appearance of a spirit with some kind
of recognizable body. Without
appearing this way, we could not see them because they are spirit, that is, they
are invisible.
Chapter 2 opens this way.
“We must pay more attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that
we do not drift away”. This is
obviously an admonition to stay on track. This
could suggest that some of the Jewish Christians were being led astray from the
true faith. Yet still this
exhortation should mean a lot for us today.
Man has always the tendency to drift away from the truth.
Everything that is needs to be maintained, or looked after, or it will
decay and fall apart. Our trust in
Jesus is no different.
The phrase ,“to what we have heard” refers to the
gospel that these people heard from the apostles, and for some, from Jesus
Himself.
In the first chapter, the writer of Hebrews refers
back to Old Testament thinking to make and to prove his point.
His exhortation to pay careful attention to what they heard, meaning the
gospel was very important. “For if
the message spoken to angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience
received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great
salvation”. This verse is packed
with good things.
The writer is referring to the Law of Moses when he
speaks of “the message of angels”. If
one violated or disobeyed the Law, there was serious consequences.
The just punishment for such violations was eventually experienced by
Jesus on the cross. Yet now that the
Law has been replaced with Jesus and His act of love, what greater consequences
will one have if he ignores this great salvation.
I have said this before, God is just.
If He was angry enough to execute His own Son in order for us to
experience salvation, how much more
angry will He be towards those who reject this great salvation.
This is one very serious matter in the eyes of God.
We see the words “just punishment”
here in verse 2. The word
“just” is very important when it comes to God.
Our present secular world has absolutely no idea what this means.
They view God as being loving, and tolerating
everything because of His great love.
This is far from the truth. The
words “just punishment” say a lot. The
word “just” means that God is just and cannot and will not tolerate that
which is wrong in His sight. The
word “punishment” means that God will punish those who do wrong.
The good news is that God punished Jesus instead of us, the ones who
really deserved the punishment. Yet
once again, if we ignore or neglect what Jesus has done for us by receiving our
punishment, then we will be receive eternal punishment.
This is also why I say that people will not be eternally punished for
their sins, or wrong doing, but for their rejection of Jesus.
Jesus has already been punished for our sins.
Unbelievers will be punished for their unbelief, for their rejection of
Jesus.
In verse 3 we read that Jesus Himself
“first announced” this great salvation and then it was confirmed by
others, those who heard Him with their own ears.
The writer does not include himself in this group, which would rule out
people like Peter and James as authors of this letter.
Another way of confirming this good news was through
“signs, wonders, and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit
distributed according to His will”. (ch. 2:4)
This sounds a little like Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.
Here we see the importance of the miraculous in the early church in
confirming the gospel. Some
use this verse to state that these gifts of the Spirit were for the early church
only to confirm the gospel that Jesus preached.
I do not draw such a conclusion. First
of all, it does not say this in the text. It’s merely conjecture.
Second of all, if the church needed such confirmation, only a few short
years after Jesus’ earthly existence, how much more do we need such
confirmation today.
The writer has not yet left the topic of angels that
he began in chapter one. Angels were
important to the Jewish people. They
stood between them and God and performed a variety of duties.
Trying to explain to the Jews who Jesus was, in His
essence was not easy at times. In
verse 5 it says that the world to come is not gong to be subjected to angels.
Angels will not be the final authority.
Of course today, we know that Jesus will be that final authority.
The Jews back in the first century had to be convinced of this, thus the
reason for this letter.
Beginning in verse 6 the writer quotes more Old
Testament Scripture. “What is man that you are mindful of him”?
Man is next to nothing in comparison to God Himself.
Even more so, when you study Romans 1 and 2 you see that man is really
less than nothing He is simply
worthless. Yet God cares for man,
and He cares for the Son of Man, meaning Jesus, as the quote goes on to say.
Jesus was born of a woman.
Jesus was God in a human body. Man,
as the Old Testament verse says “was lower than angels”.
That means that Jesus, while in His earthly body was lower than angels.
You might want to refer to Phil. 2 and see the steps of humiliation that
Jesus went through in becoming a man. Even though God humbled
Jesus by becoming a man, He “crowned Him with glory … and put
everything under His feet”. (ch.
2:7-8) In doing this, Jesus was
exalted to a place far above the angels. This
would be a hard thing for the Jews to understand.
That is, how can a man be higher than angels?
The answer is in the fact that God made Jesus higher than angels by
crowning Him with final authority. The
other fact is that even though Jesus became a man, He was also God, and by
virtue of this He would be higher than anyone, including angels.
In verse 8 we read that “by putting everything
under Him, God left nothing that is not subject to Him.
Yet at present we do not see everything subject to Him”.
This is very clear in today’s world and somewhat paradoxical.
Yes Jesus is the final authority over all things at this moment, yet all
things are not under His control as yet. There
still remains an element in the context of all things that is outside of His
authority. The time will come when
this element also will be under His control
Until that day Jesus is still “crowned with
glory”. (ch. 2:9) Why is He so
crowned? Because in verse 9 it says,
“He suffered death … so
that He might taste death for everyone”. Death
is the final thing that needs to be put under the feet of Jesus.
Jesus tasted death and overcame it, thus at a future point in history He
will do away with all aspects of death.
He will do this for us, so that we might be free from the curse that came
on man when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden.
Verse 10 starts with this phrase, “In bringing many
sons to glory…”. What does this
mean? Who are the many sons?
The many sons are those who have trusted Jesus for their salvation.
We are now sons of God. We
are brothers for Jesus Himself. Paul
says in Rom. 8:29 that we are the “firstborn
among many brothers”. If by
trusting Jesus we become sons of God, it is also clear that we become brothers
to Jesus.
The next phrase tells us once again, as we saw in
chapter 1 that through God all things exist.
Yet it also says “for whom all things exist”, meaning that God made
all things for His pleasure. He made
all things for Himself to enjoy.
The next phrase in verse 10 is a little hard to
understand. It says, “the author
of their salvation was made perfect through suffering”.
First of all, the word translated as “author” is the Greek word “archegos”.
This word means “a leader”, or “one who takes the first step in a
new direction”. Thus we get our
word “author”. Jesus is the
author of this new existence for us since His resurrection.
He has gone ahead of us and is preparing a place for us as He said He
would in John 14:1-3.
To understand this phrase we need to understand what
the Greek word for “perfect” means. The
Greek word translated as “perfect” is “teleioo”.
This word simply means “to bring to completion”, or “to finish what
was started”. This verse is not
suggesting that Jesus was not perfect. This verse is not saying that Jesus was
imperfect and therefore needed to suffer to get perfect.
What the writer is saying is that Jesus’ duties as being Saviour could
only be complete by His suffering unto death.
His death completed, or perfected His work of salvation.
In verse 11 we see that those of us who have been
made righteous by Jesus’ sacrifice have become part of the family of God,
resulting in Jesus being our brother. When
I say that we are “righteous”, I
mean that we are totally right in every aspect of our lives, just as God Himself
is totally right in every aspect of who He is.
This is how God views those who have placed their trust in Jesus.
Here's my clearest definition of being righteous, and
I say being righteous, because righteousness is more than doing right things,
but being right. Righteousness is the state of being perfectly right in the
essence of who one is, just as god Himself is totally and perfectly right in the
essence of who He is. By faith, by
trusting Jesus, God declares us to be righteous, even though we aren't righteous
by nature.
The next couple of verses are more Old Testament
Scriptures that support the author’s position on the family of God.
Whoever wrote this letter was quite familiar with the Old Testament.
In verse 14 we see that the devil holds the power of
death. In the very beginning of time
God told Adam that if he disobeyed he would die.
Mankind died in three aspects. He
died spiritually, socially and physically. Who
was behind man’s decision to disobey? It
was the devil. The devil had the
ability to sway Adam and Eve in making the wrong choice.
His power influenced them. His
power led to their death. Because of
the devil, death came to mankind. By
becoming human, Jesus could win the battle for mankind.
Mankind is the spiritual battle ground between God and the devil.
When we think of wars in a particular country, that particular country is
the battle ground. Well, the battle
ground between God and the devil is mankind himself.
So God became a man. He got
right into the thick of the battle, the only place where He could find total
victory.
The resurrection of Jesus has caused God to win the
battle over death. As Paul says in 1
Cor. 15:26, the last enemy of God is death.
On the Resurrection Day this victory that took place on the cross will
finally be realized. Death will have
been conquered forever. As a result,
we will not have to fear death any longer as the author says here in verse 15.
Even now, before that day comes, we do not have to fear death, because we
know our destiny as Christians.
Verse 16 introduces Abraham into the picture by
saying God has not helped the angels
but “Abraham’s descendents”
This would catch these Jewish people’s attention right away, because of
their great respect for Abraham as being their father.
Because God wanted to bring salvation to Abraham’s descendents Jesus
had to become a man like these descendents as the writer goes on to say.
In becoming a man, Jesus is then referred to as a “high priest”.
The writer of this letter is a Jew and is writing to Jews, so this whole
book is filled with Jewishness. High
Priests were part of Old Testament Judaism.
They stood between God and man. They
came to God on the behalf of man.
By saying that Jesus Himself has become a high priest
says a lot to the Jews. The reason
being is because high priests “make atonement for the sins of the people”.
(ch. 2:17) What does “atonement”
mean? The Greek word that is
translated as “atonement” here is “hilaskonai”.
This means that God’s wrath has been appeased.
The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross satisfied God’s justice and
therefore His wrath and anger dissipated. As
a result, God can “reconcile” us, or can bring us back into a real
relationship with Himself. The words
“reconciliation” and “atonement” are similar, but not exactly the same.
Atonement is the act of God’s wrath being taken away.
Reconciliation is us being made friends with God as a result of
His wrath being appeased.
So Jesus “made atonement for the sins of the
people” (ch.2:17) His sacrifice
pleased God. It took away His wrath
and anger He felt towards us because of our sins.
As a result we can be united with Him.
The sacrifices that the high priest used to do in Old Testament times was
meant to do all of this, but we know that those sacrifices were only a shadow,
only a picture of the real thing that would come, and that was the sacrifice of
Jesus.
I have just said that atonement was the act by which
God’s anger was appeased. Some say
that atonement is the process by which Jesus took away our sin from the eyes of
God. The two thoughts are close yet
different. The first is that God’s
anger is appeased, the second is that our sin has been taken away.
I tend to say that because
our sin was taken away from God’s eyes, His anger can be appeased.
It is a combination of both.
Verse 18 ends this chapter by saying that
because Jesus suffered with temptations like you and I, He can help us in
our temptations. He is not one that
looks on us without having experienced each and every temptation that is common
to mankind. That means that Jesus
was tempted to steal, tempted to commit sexual sins, tempted to unjust anger,
and tempted to be proud and arrogant. The
list could go on forever.