Sunday Hebrews: Expository Notes on 2:5-9

I thought I would do the Preaching Notes on all chapter 2 next week and continue through the exposition of 2:5-18.
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5 For it is not to angels that [God] has subjected the coming world of which we speak...

The author now shifts back to teaching, after telling the audience the importance of heeding the voice of Christ. The angels are powerful and important, but Christ is even more significant. If punishment under the angelic Law was severe, just imagine what lies in store for those who neglect the word through Christ.

Hebrews leaves it to us to determine who is in mind, to whom the coming world is subjected. The context thus far leads us to think it is to Christ that the coming world will be subjected. This is certainly true, although the author may have even more than this in mind.

The coming world here is the unshakeable kingdom to come, which confirms that the author had in mind the heavenly world or the world of the eschaton when he speaks of God leading His firstborn Son into the "inhabited world."

6-8 For someone, somewhere has witnessed saying,

What is a mortal that You remember him,
or the son of a mortal that You look on him?

You made him a little lower than the angels;
you crowned him with glory and honor;
you subjected all things under his feet.

The author's introduction of Psalm 8 does not reflect a lapse of memory--"someone, somewhere." Like the Jewish author Philo, this style of reference says that Scripture is not simply the words of a human author. Rather, Scripture is a medium of the voice of God. God's word is bigger than Scripture, but Scripture is God's word as He speaks through it.

So the author will later locate Psalm 95 "in David" (4:7), but what he doesn't say is that David says something (cf. Rom. 4:6). In other places in Hebrews, it is God (1:5), the Holy Spirit (3:7), or Christ (10:5) who speaks through the words of the Bible. Since Psalm 8 is a human inquiring of God, the author distances the human author from the text by speaking of David anonymously.

Were 2:5 expected the author to go on to speak of Christ, Psalm 8 of course makes us think of humanity in general. The psalm can refer to Christ of course, as Paul's writings show. However, we get a sense that the author is saying something deeper here that implies a solidarity between humanity and Christ, between humanity's problem and Christ's solution.

8b For when [God] subjected all things to him [mortals], He left nothing unsubjected. But now not yet do we see all things subjected.

We are getting a sense that God created humanity with the intent that humans would have glory and honor over the creation, that all things would be under humanity's feet. The problem is that we do not see this intent fulfilled. All things are not yet under humanity's feet.

This statement evokes images of Romans 3:23--"All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God." God intended humanity to have glory and honor in the creation, but because of Adam's sin, this situation is not the case.

9 But we do see one who was made a little lower than the angels--Jesus--who was crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every [mortal].

The author unfolds the solution to the human problem artfully, suspensefully. Humanity was unable to attain God's intended glory. But one who became lower than the angels did for us. By the grace of God, we no longer need be defeated by death.

more to come...