The Mystery and Majesty of the God-Man

The author goes on to cite a series of Old Testament passages to undergird the greatness of Christ and then issues one of his many words of exhortation. In fact, he thinks of this book as a short word of exhortation to God’s people, and then he continues in chapter 2, verse 5: For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. [00:01:57]

And so the author begins to mediate on this. He thinks about the way in which in relationship to God, He demonstrates the very attributes of deity. He is here at the beginning, the very radiance of God’s glory. God does not give His glory to another, but the Son is the very radiance of His glory. [00:20:45]

And then he says not only is He to be worshipped, but all things are to be His. Look at what he says in verse 2. He says this is the Son whom He appointed heir of all things. Do you ever think about that, my friends, that all of this is Christ’s? And this is what he is saying. [00:25:17]

And yet, of course, the truth is that we don’t see any of this by nature. Our minds are darkened in their folly, as Paul says. We have rejected Him. He came into the world unrecognized. He came to His own, who had a whole Bible to help them understand that He was Himself God, and they failed to recognize Him. [00:27:53]

You see here’s our problem. We are not amazed by the question, why the God-Man? We assume, of course, He would come. The gospel begins to amaze us when we learn who it is who has come. It’s staggering to the intellect. Indeed, I think one can say, if your intellect has never been staggered by the reality of the incarnation, you don’t know what incarnation means. [00:30:19]

And so this is what Jesus has to repair, which is why, of course, in the New Testament and not least here in the letter to the Hebrews, one of the great things that we see worked out is that the Son of God has come into the world, yes, to bear the divine judgment on all that Adam’s sin brought into the world in terms of alienation from and rebellion against God. [00:38:17]

But the vision of the author of Hebrews is that this is the one thing necessary in a vast vision. If I can put it this way, – I hope you won’t misunderstand me – the work of Jesus Christ to expiate our sins is a divine means to the divine end of restoring us and the world to God’s purposes. [00:39:23]

And so Hebrews is marvelously concerned in its description of the incarnate mystery of the God-Man to show us how the Lord Jesus comes as Paul puts it, as a second Man, and as a last Adam, because there is no other man who can do this. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. [00:40:31]

And this is why according to the author of Hebrews it is so vital that the Lord Jesus Christ should come from heaven in His infinite deity and take our humanity, in order that in that humanity He might do all necessary to bring us and the world back to God, when that day comes, when He will be seen crowned with honor and glory because of His suffering of death. [00:42:18]

And the letter to the Hebrews is so marvelous in helping us to understand that the Christ who stands at the right hand of the Father is still the God-Man and will be throughout all eternity. God assumes our humanity without diluting His deity, without mixing humanity into deity, or deity into humanity, but He has pledged Himself to remain forever the God-Man. [00:51:20]

Let me just say a word about the extremity of the temptation the Lord Jesus experienced, so that we may know that we never experience the depths of temptation the way He did, that we understand that in the Garden of Gethsemane particularly. R.C. was referring earlier on to Edwards’ great sermon on Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. [00:53:04]

You know there’s a very famous line in Anselm’s book, Cur Deus Homo. I’ll give it to you in English in case I stumble over the Latin at the end of the address. When Anselm’s sparring partner, a man, a fellow monk called Boso, keeps asking him fairly elementary and somewhat dim questions, and Anselm says to him, “Your problem Boso is you have not yet considered the greatness of the weight of sin.” [01:02:23]