“But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. 10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings. 11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12 saying, “I WILL PROCLAIM YOUR NAME TO MY BRETHREN, IN THE MIDST OF THE CONGREGATION I WILL SING YOUR PRAISE.” 13 And again, “I WILL PUT MY TRUST IN HIM.” And again, “BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME.” NASB
“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. 10 In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. 11 Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. 12 He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.” 13 And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.” NIV
We return briefly to verse 9 today for the sake of expanding further on our understanding of what has been said.
In saying that He tasted death for everyone, we must be careful to avoid letting that word, ‘taste’ slide through our thinking virtually unnoticed and leave the sense of someone sipping a small amount of wine or testing a sauce by dipping the tip of a spoon and tasting it.
Let us not think that Christ in some way ‘sampled’ our plight in the way a child might be blindfolded for a brief time that they might get a ‘taste’ of what it is like to be permanently blind.
He experienced death. Jesus tasted, as it were, the bitterness of sin. He drank the cup dry. He took upon Himself all the Father’s wrath against sin and went down into death as our Substitute.
And do not miss that it was according to God’s grace! “…by the grace of God He might taste of death for everyone”.
“But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom 5:20-21
Self-sufficient, man-centered, liberal theology so prevalent in our day rejects this truth. But it is the very heart of the Gospel.
Both the Old Testament and the New explicitly warn of the consequences of sin. Ezekiel 18:4 says, “the soul who sins will die”, and Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death”
We are taught that since all of mankind was in Adam’s loins when he sinned, therefore all who came from him came with a nature to sin and enslaved to the power of sin, therefore, all died.
God’s purpose in sending the second Person of the Trinity, the Anointed Son, was to redeem men back to Himself and the only way to do that was to send a Substitute; someone to die in their place; to taste of death for everyone.
Now don’t be thrown by that word ‘everyone’ either. “For many are called, but few are chosen”, said Jesus in Matthew 22:14, and although the call goes out to everyone to repent and believe the Gospel and be saved, it is the chosen who will respond to the call and live. Since none of us knows who are the chosen and who are not, it is our duty to respond to the call in our own heart and then extend the invitation to all, all around us.
RIGHT AND PROPER
So let’s go to our text and build upon this foundation.
A modern English version of the Bible words verse 10 this way: “It was right and proper that in bringing many sons to glory, God…should make the leader of their salvation a perfect leader through the fact that he suffered.”
Now all other translations I checked used the word ‘fitting’, and a couple of the older ones said ‘it became Him’. These are the more literal translation of the language and they are right. However I appreciated this English version saying ‘right and proper’, because it helps us get a clearer sense of the author’s meaning.
Jesus used this same word in Matthew 3:15 when He encouraged John to baptize Him, saying that it was proper, appropriate thus to fulfill righteousness.
God does not need our defending, but we need to understand clearly that it was proper; it was appropriate, that the leader or author of salvation should be made complete or perfect in that role of Savior, by suffering the pangs of death.
In this very letter the writer states that without the shedding of blood, meaning the death of a sacrifice, a substitute, there can be no forgiveness. In fact, in that chapter we will be going much deeper into this doctrine.
I earlier quoted Ezekiel saying the soul that sins shall die, and Romans 6 and the passage very familiar to us, ‘the wages of sin is death’. Sin is an offense to the holiness of God and He has declared from the very beginning that death is the immediate consequence of sin. We have learned that when Adam and Eve sinned they died spiritually and began to die physically.
All mankind is under the sentence of death for sin and the only way men can be rescued from that destiny is for a substitute to step in for them. No man can die for the sins of another since each has his own sentence stamped on his forehead. Therefore there had to be One who was without sin, yet a man, who could step in and fulfill the role of Substitute.
Hence the wording of our text. It is not teaching that somehow Jesus was less than perfect before He suffered. It is teaching that as fully Man, without sin, His role of Substitute, Savior, Sanctifier, was perfected by His atoning death.
Had Jesus gone back to Heaven without dying, it would have been the cruelest abandonment in history, even though the most deserved abandonment. For if He had never died He would not have been our Substitute and we would still be in our sin, without hope.
Let me make clear that when I say the cruelest abandonment, I mean that if He had come and done and taught all the things that He did and taught, telling us about the Kingdom of Heaven, letting us taste it briefly, then leaving us lost, only a cruel God could do that. But He is not cruel, He is Love, and it was fitting, proper, appropriate for Him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, for the purpose of bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the originator, the initiator of our salvation through the suffering of death.
THE MAN OUR BROTHER
Now I don’t want to go too fast and have you miss something here. Verse 11 says “For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren”
I want you to see that phrase, ‘are all from one Father’.
There is a misapplication of that phrase which causes presumptuous men to call Christ our “Elder Brother”, or even more pretentiously, ‘Big Brother’.
I want you to see that He is not ashamed to call us His brethren, but no where does the Scripture encourage us to call Him anything that would impose upon Him an Adamic nature; that would give us leave to consider Him or approach Him in any posture less than as worshiper to Lord and Master.
Having said that, what I want you to see is that He came from the Father as Son by origin so that He might make us sons by adoption – all from One, so that He might call us His brethren, declaring us so for the glory of the Father.
We need to step outside of our text for a little while today because I think we need to have this truth of the incarnation of Christ impressed upon us.
Turn to John 18:37 with me and look for yourself at these words. Now there is a great deal to be said about this encounter of Jesus with Pontius Pilate and there is a temptation to begin commenting on other things said here. Perhaps at another time if the Lord wills.
But just look at this one verse and let’s take a note or two from it relating to our HEBREWS text today.
“Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
In saying, ‘For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world’, Jesus is not being redundant. In saying ‘for this I have been born’, He referred to His humanity. In saying ‘for this I have come into the world’, He referred to His divinity.
Now there may be a few people now and then who have such a strong conviction about their life’s purpose that they will say “I was born for this”. But in every case, for those very few who find that kind of focus in life, it had to be realized at some point as they grew and developed.
In the case of Jesus, when He says ‘for this I have come into the world’, He is talking about a deliberate plan that He determined and was aware of before coming into the world. For Him, saying this can be likened to one of us saying, ‘I came here today to hear a sermon’.
And I want you to notice also that He is responding to Pilate’s question as to whether He is a king.
“For this I was born”. He didn’t inherit the position, He didn’t take a crown by conquest, He was born King because He is the King of Creation. He is King of the ages. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, coming into the world to bear witness to the truth.
Coming into the world, indeed, to sanctify His brethren.
SONG OF THE RISEN CHRIST
The Holy Spirit in verse 12 has quoted Psalm 22 and attributed the words of the Psalmist to Messiah. So let’s go to Psalm 22 and read from the beginning.
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. 2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I have no rest. 3 Yet You are holy, O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. 4 In You our fathers trusted; They trusted and You delivered them. 5 To You they cried out and were delivered; In You they trusted and were not disappointed. 6 But I am a worm and not a man, A reproach of men and despised by the people. 7 All who see me sneer at me; They separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying, 8 “Commit yourself to the LORD; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.” 9 Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. 10 Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb. 11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near; For there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have surrounded me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. 13 They open wide their mouth at me, As a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted within me. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws; And You lay me in the dust of death. 16 For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; 18 They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots. 19 But You, O LORD, be not far off; O You my help, hasten to my assistance. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, My only life from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion’s mouth; From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.”
That is the first part of the Psalm and it predicts the suffering of the Messiah on the cross. Then the second part of the Psalm begins, and what we have before us is the joyful song of the risen Messiah.
22 I will tell of Your name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You. 23 You who fear the LORD, praise Him; All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel. 24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard. 25 From You comes my praise in the great assembly; I shall pay my vows before those who fear Him. 26 The afflicted will eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live forever! 27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations will worship before You. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S And He rules over the nations. 29 All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship, All those who go down to the dust will bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep his soul alive. 30 Posterity will serve Him; It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation. 31 They will come and will declare His righteousness To a people who will be born, that He has performed it.”
The letter to the Hebrews is about the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ. Therefore the author goes straight to the second part of this Messianic psalm and gives us this song of our resurrected and glorified High Priest, who calls His redeemed ones His brethren, and leads them in praises to the Father.
That the writer is correct in doing so is doubly confirmed if we look at what the risen Lord said to Mary outside the garden tomb.
“Jesus said to her, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’ ”
Behold the grace of our High Priest, who having been deserted and denied by the ones who still cower in a closed room for fear of His enemies, calls them ‘My brethren’ and His Father, ‘your Father’ (their Father).
And He calls them such because He has made them such. They just didn’t know it yet.
Christian, He has made you, by His death, God’s child and His own brother or sister. Acting as your great High Priest, He has entered within the veil with the sacrifice of His own blood and purchased you, sanctified you, brought you into the Kingdom.
Acting as a human, a Man, He has died to pay your debt and identified with you so that you could be identified with Him.
As a Man identified with us, though now glorified, He stands joyfully in the midst of the congregation. That word ‘congregation’ is in the Greek, ekklesia. It is the word we also translate as ‘church’. Not the building, as you understand already, but the whole of the Lord’s redeemed from the beginning of time to the end.
He stands joyfully in our midst leading us in praise, and I have just a few more words to say about that before we close, but look briefly at verses 13 and 14, because here also He speaks as a Man among His brethren.
“And again, ‘I will put My trust in Him’.” It is man who needs to trust God. It is man who is helpless without the help of God. So the author attributes the words of the prophet Isaiah (8:17) to the Messiah, who has put His trust in God and come down. We saw that in the Psalm we read.
“Thou didst make me trust when upon my mother’s breasts” (Ps 22:9b)
Jesus Himself spoke of His deliberate and total dependence upon the Father during His earthly life.
“Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” Jn 5:19
He trusted the Father even while on the cross. His enemies even said so in mockery, but spoke truth nonetheless. “He trusts God…” And He even trusted the Father from the grave, for He said beforehand through the Psalmist (16:10),
“For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.”
Family, if the One who calls us His brethren trusts so much and so completely, so should we.
Once, more, speaking as a Man, He says, “Behold, I and the children whom God has given Me”
Jesus is the perfect example of all that He calls us to, believer. He says to have faith in God and He demonstrated that call by the exercise of faith. He is not a teacher who teaches what He cannot do Himself. In the opening of the Acts, Luke reminds Theophilus that in his previous letter, the Gospel of Luke, he explained all that Jesus came to do and to teach, and he did not prioritize his words accidentally. Jesus first did, and only then did He tell His students to go and do likewise.
In honor of His trust the Father brought Him up from the dead and gave Him the church.
Listen to Isaiah 53:10
“But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.”
“Behold, I and the children whom God has given Me”
SONG OF THE RISEN PRIEST
As a Man He stands in our midst, as one who has fully trusted the Father and makes us to trust also, and with brotherly pride declares us to the Father and the Father to us.
As a Priest, and this is what I mentioned earlier that I would come back to, He leads us in singing praises to God.
Now this is significant, because it is not only now that He will do that. He does not lead us in praise only until we leave this world and go home to Heaven. Listen to Newell’s words on this:
“The question instantly comes, when and for how long will this praising be? Some have thought it will cease when all the redeemed are brought to glory. With this we cannot for an instant agree. Will Christ ever cease to lead the praise of His blood-bought saints? Will He ever cease to be the Lamb ‘that hath been slain’? It is the glorified saints whom Christ is leading in praise, and will lead forever!... Is His priesthood only to last until He gets us all to Heaven? Nay, it will be fully active then! Remember, God is infinite, infinite, infinite, (How lame is language!) Shall we ever come to know Him so fully that there will be no further need of our Great High Priest’s ‘declaring God’s Name’ more deeply and fully unto us? Is not the Lamp of that city to which we are going the Lamb Himself? ‘In the ages to come’ God will indeed ‘show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us,’ but it will still be ‘in Christ Jesus’! (Eph 2:7) HEBREWS Verse by Verse, W.R. Newell, Moody Press, 1947
What grace this is! What a wonderful and marvelous God we serve – Who deemed it right and proper that He would send the author, the originator, the initiator of our salvation, to suffer and thus be ordained our perfect Priest and Sanctifier, bringing ‘many sons to glory’!
How was it fitting? How was it right and proper? Well the author has told us at the very beginning of our text. All things are for Him. All things are through Him. Christian, you are among the ‘all things’! You are for Him. You came through Him. You, by the suffering of Christ, are brought to Him. Because His is all the glory forever and ever – infinitely, infinitely, infinitely!
