Hebrews 1:1-4

God’s Final Word: His Son
1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. 4 So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.


Dig Deeper
It seems like many years ago now that I was a basketball coach at the high school at which I taught. We went to great lengths every year to make sure that our team was very close knit and spent as much time together as we could. That usually proved valuable when we went into the battle of a game together. But the seasons could get long and were full of pressures both from within the sport of basketball and from outside life. Every now and then during the process of a long season a young man would come to me and tell me that they were considering leaving the team and quitting basketball. In general I don’t think that it’s a good thing to quit what you start and so I would sit down with them and try to encourage them. I would remind them of the benefits and advantages of playing on the team and reminisce with them of all of the fun we had together as well as the hard work they put in. It certainly was not a life and death situation, but giving up was something that I didn’t feel like they should do lightly. I really wanted them to think through what they were doing.

Imagine a scenario that was life and death, though. Imagine being a young person in the first century who grew up in a tight knit Jewish family in Rome. The community of about 50,000 Jews had returned to Rome over ten years ago after being expelled for a time after run-ins with the Roman Emperor. But your community had carved out a pretty comfortable living and a good economic niche for itself since returning and you remember fondly taking part in all of the traditions, holidays, and community life in which you grew up. But then someone had shared the gospel with you and as strange as it sounded, you knew deep down that it made sense of all of the Scriptures that you had grown up hearing, studying, and hoping in. So you were baptized into the life of Christ and joined the Christian community. That was not a decision that you made lightly because you knew it would have huge consequences in your life and you were right. You were pretty quickly drummed out of your job, ostracized from the Jewish community, and most of your family would not even look at you any longer, let alone have anything to do with you. Making a living became incredibly difficult and you could not have made it without the love and support of other Christians who were scattered around Rome and who loved and supported one another as family, just as Christ had called you all to live.

But the long days of demeaning work and being mistreated constantly had begun to grind you down. Doubts began to gnaw away at you. How could Jesus be the Messiah, the King of the world that was sitting at the right hand of the Father ruling in his kingdom over his people and have them being treated like this? How could you really be part of the kingdom people if you were all at the very bottom of society where even many slaves got along better than you did? You would slowly begin to remember fondly the days of your youth in Judaism. Maybe they didn’t have the truth in total but at least they weren’t struggling through life like this. They were being put out of society at every turn, and to make it worse the Emperor Nero had really started to ramp up persecution of Christians throughout Rome, so it really was becoming a matter of life and death. You know that the other Christians are gathering tonight after work to eat the Lord’s Supper meal together, to worship, to sing, to encourage one another, and to hear a word of encouragement from the leader of the medium-sized group of Christians that met together in your leader’s house. Perhaps you wouldn’t go at all. After all, you had already known two people in the group that grew so weary that they returned to their Jewish families and community and life had almost instantly gotten better for them. Maybe the same would be true for you. . . But for some reason you decided to go and as you arrived you heard the leader of the group telling everyone that he had just received a new scroll. It was a sermon of encouragement from a well known teacher. As he unfurled the scroll, you began to hear the words “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoke to us by his Son. . . “

That was something of the situation into which Hebrews was written. It is unknown for sure who wrote Hebrews, to whom it was written, and the specific situations surrounding the purpose and occasion for the letter. We don’t have time for all of the possibilities here but it seems likely that Hebrews was written to the disciples in Rome in the mid 60’s AD just prior to the worst of Nero’s persecutions (perhaps about eight years after Paul wrote his letter to the Romans). The author of Hebrews is unknown and always will be, but if a guess had to ventured based on the internal and circumstantial evidence, it seems that Apollos might be the best candidate. It appears, though, that the letter was written to a church that was starting to falter under persecution and as a result had some who had left Christianity and returned to their Jewish faith (this could have included both ethnic Jews and Gentiles who had converted to Judaism or were God fearing Gentiles before converting to Christianity), and many others who were starting to falter and weaken in their faith in Jesus as the true Messiah.

From the very start, then, the primary purpose of Hebrews is to call the people of Jesus back to faith in Christ by seeing that he is the superior, and the only mediator between God and man. In the past God worked through a variety of methods to communicate his word to men including, says commentator George Guthrie, “commands, exhortations, stories, visions, dreams, mighty act, breathtaking theophanies, and a still small voice to name a few.” But now God has spoken definitively, completely, and with finality through his Son. Jesus Christ is the word of God in the flesh (Jn. 1:1-14) and is the purest form of God communicating with humans. Our author contrasts the old methods of communication with the superior and complete method of the Son in four respects. The first is in regards to era: the past versus the last days (a term that early Christians believed was the time between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all believers). The second is in regard to the recipients of the revelation: our forefathers versus “us”. The third is in regards to the agents of communication: The prophets versus his Son. And finally, in the past he communicated in “various ways”. The author never explicitly states what the contrast is there but the obvious implication in the introduction and throughout the sermon of Hebrews is that now God has communicated in fullness in one way, the most excellent way. That, of course, is through his Son.

In this short but incredibly majestic introduction which consists of one expertly crafted sentence in the original Greek, Hebrews affirms seven important aspects concerning the Son. The first is that he has been appointed heir of all things, an allusion to Psalm 2:8. The inheritance of all things by the Son has begun but will only be consummated at the second coming and resurrection of the believers. The second thing is that the Son was the agent through whom the Father, the source of the creation, created the universe (Jn. 1:3; Col. 1:16). The third aspect is that he is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of God. “Exact representation” is a translation of the Greek word “charakter” which referred to something that was stamped with the exact impression of the original. In other words, the Son is the manifestation of God’s presence, his glory, and the one that provides a perfect picture in the flesh of the Father. The fourth aspect is that the Son is the one that sustains all things by his word. This is not in the sense of Atlas simply holding up the world in Greek mythology but in the sense of keeping the created order together and continuing to operate. Fifth, through the Son the purification for sin has now been made available. This is a concept that the author will unpack later in the sermon (Hebrews, after all, is really more of a sermon or teaching lesson in written form than a letter), but the point is that the forgiveness of sin found in the Son is permanent and would lead into the presence of God. The sixth element is that the Son is seated at the right hand of the Father, indicating both his closeness to the Father which signified his ability to rule, and the fact that he was indeed ruling over the kingdom in the present time (this is an allusion to Psalm 110:1).

Finally is that the Son was shown as superior to the angels by having a superior name to the angels. In much first century Jewish thought the angels were seen as mediators of the covenant between God and man, having, among other things, brought the Law directly to Moses. They continued to maintain the status of mediating the Law between God and Israel down to the present time of the first century. Many have concluded from the first two chapters of Hebrews that the author was addressing some specific angel worshipping cult, but that is speculative and it is far more likely that he was simply referring to the status of angels as mediators. The Son, however, was a unique and superior mediator in that he was given “the name.” There is probably a dual inference going on with this statement. The first point is that “name” referred to the whole of a person, or their “life”. Certainly the life of Christ is unique. The disciples would have recognized the fact that hey had been baptized into the life of Christ, the resurrection life. This (not just future but also present) hope was something that no other belief, certainly not a Christ-free Judaism, could offer. The second aspect wrapped up in the “name” of Christ was that this was a title or designation that was typically reserved for God. God was called “the name,” and so that title had rightly been inferred on the Son according to Hebrews.

The original audience of Hebrews might have been going through trying times and were tempted to walk away from the family of Christ to return to their old life, beliefs, and practices that were safer and easier, but they shouldn’t because if they did it would be clear that they were taking their eyes off of who Christ really was. He is superior in every way and although it might not seem like it, God was still in control. Jesus really was on the throne as the rightful ruler of the world. As this sermon unfolds, Hebrews will brilliantly and practically lay out the reasons for following Christ alone and clinging to him like a “bridge over troubled water.” At the same time, he will give hope to the hurting and show them, and us, just how it works out that Jesus really is the rightful king of the world ruling from his throne in the very midst of struggles, trials, and persecutions. That was the message to the Hebrews that we will unpack: Christ is preeminent and he reigns today and forever!


Devotional Thought
You most likely aren’t facing the kind of harsh life and constant persecution that the first recipients of Hebrews were but that doesn’t mean that you don’t regularly face trials that leave you considering whether following Christ is worth continuing to follow? Imagine that these opening lines of Hebrews were written to you during those times of struggle. How do the words of the author help you to remain faithful to Christ?