“Jesus … Crowned With Glory And Honor”
“JESUS … CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOR”
HEBREWS 2:5-9
We are called to live under the kingly rule of Jesus Christ.
The wonder of the salvation about which he has been speaking now causes the author to bring before us the further surprising truth that “the world to come” about which he is writing, the world that is relevant to salvation, was not subjected to angels but, as 2:6ff. show, to humanity. God has this high destiny for people in Christ. The quotation from Psalm 8:4ff. brings out the high dignity of humanity.
Now comes a different thought. From the fact that we do not yet see everything in subjection to humanity, as the Psalm prophesies, our author turns to what we do see. And what we see is Jesus. The human name draws attention to Jesus the Man, and we may reason that the writer sees in him the fulfillment of the prophetic word. He is the Man made lower than the angels. But he is also the recipient of the highest honor because of what he did when made lower in this way. It was “so that … he might taste death,” and not death simply, but death for every person. We see therefore that early in the letter the point is made that the death of Jesus is necessary if we are to be saved. Paul tells us that death is “the wages of sin” (Romans 6:23), and we cannot doubt that this is the thought here too. Since people’s sin involved them in death, Jesus came where people are and died their death.
“By the grace of God” stresses the freeness of it all. It implies that salvation could not be accomplished by our own efforts. But where we could not prevail, God’s grace could and did. The death of Jesus then was not an accident, nor simply the result of the malice of his opponents. It was the outworking of God’s grace so that the salvation of humanity might be accomplished.