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To Which of the Angels, Ever?
Jesus out of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (Hebrews 1)
8 min read
Who is like You?
a related question"to which of the angels has God ever said what He says to this Son?"
Heb 1:5the writer of Hebrews, to weary believers
He [the Son] sits higher than the seraphim and bent lower than the dust.
There is a letter written to people who were on the point of giving up. Jewish believers, sometime in the first century, who had confessed Jesus and paid for it with mockery, exclusion and loss. Tired and afraid, they longed to go back to the old and familiar, to the temple and the angels and the law without the cross. The letter to the Hebrews does not begin the way letters are supposed to begin. No greeting, no "grace and peace," no name of the sender. It comes crashing in like an orchestra in mid-crescendo, with one long, breathless sentence that grabs the reader by the collar: before you go back, look first at Whom you are turning your back on.
In many portions and in many ways, God spoke long ago to the fathers through the prophets, he writes. That happened in bits and pieces: a vision here, a law there, a promise somewhere else, a portrait built up stroke by stroke over centuries. But now, in these last days, He has spoken to us in a Son. God's last Word is a Person. Everything the prophets stammered now stands before you, in flesh and blood.
Who that Son is, the writer says in a single breath. God has appointed Him heir of all things, and through Him He made the worlds. He is the radiance of God's glory and the imprint of His being, and He upholds all things by the word of His power. After all that height comes one sentence that pulls everything to the heart: after making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. He who made the worlds bent down to wash away your sins, and then sat down, because the work was finished.
The writer opens the scrolls. From the Law, the Prophets and the Writings he lets seven voices speak, and beneath all seven sounds the same question: to which of the angels has God ever said what He says to this Son? You are My Son. Your throne, God, is forever and ever. Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet. No angel has ever heard that, not even the highest. About them God says something else: He makes His angels winds, His servants a flame of fire. They stand and serve. The Son sits and reigns.
A page later something happens that no angel saw coming. The Son above all angels descends to those who stand far below them. "For surely He does not take hold of angels," the letter says, "He takes hold of the offspring of Abraham" (Heb 2:16). It is the same verb the letter later uses for the day God "took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt" (8:9). The hand that once pulled the slaves out of Egypt, the Son now stretches out to us. He shared in flesh and blood, to set free all those who through fear of death had been slaves their whole lives (2:14–15). The God who in the psalms stooped to raise the poor from the dust now stooped all the way into a mother's womb. He is not ashamed to call them brothers, and in the middle of their assembly He sings a song to His Father (2:11–12). He could have stayed among the wind and the fire. He chose dust.
What that choice cost stands in one sentence you would not expect from someone who has just sung of the throne. "In the days of His flesh, He offered up prayers and pleas, with loud crying and tears, to Him who was able to save Him out of death" (5:7). The Greek word for that crying is an outcry, the sound of someone screaming. The angels are wind and flame, and a flame does not weep. The Son they worship cries out, with tears running down His face. It says He was heard because of His reverence, and yet He died. The answer came on the far side of the grave: He was not spared from death, He was saved out of death. Although He was the Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered (5:8). That is why He can sympathize with our weaknesses (4:15). Whoever muffles a scream in the pillow at night is praying to Someone who once prayed like that Himself.
For the weary readers who were thinking of slipping back to the temple and the angels, this was the answer, and it still is. Angels can tell you how holy God is; they cover their faces before Him. No angel ever took a human being by the hand and shared his death. Why go back to the servants, when the Son they worship has already taken hold of you? He sits higher than the seraphim and bent lower than the dust. On the highest throne in heaven sits Someone who knows the taste of tears.
ExpertThe chain of quotations
Hebrews 1:5–14 strings together seven quotations, each showing that the Son stands above the angels. They are drawn from all three parts of the Hebrew Bible. From the Law: "let all God's angels worship Him" (Deut 32:43, in the Greek text; cf. Ps 97:7). From the Prophets: "I will be a Father to Him, and He will be a Son to Me" (2 Sam 7:14, the promise to David, which Ethan sang of in Psalm 89 when it seemed to lie in ruins). From the Writings: "You are My Son, today I have begotten You" (Ps 2:7); the angels as wind and fire (Ps 104:4); "Your throne, God" (Ps 45:6); "You, Lord, laid the foundations of the earth in the beginning [...] they will perish, but You remain" (Ps 102:25–27); and "sit at My right hand" (Ps 110:1).
Two of these quotations are the sharpest. Psalm 45 addresses the Son directly as God. Psalm 102, a hymn to YHWH the unchanging Creator, is placed by the writer in the mouth of the Father, addressed to the Son; what that psalm says about the eternal Creator is thereby spoken over Christ. While the highest created beings serve, the Son shares the throne.
Paul does with one quotation what Hebrews does with seven. At the climax of the hymn in Philippians 2:6–11 he quotes Isaiah 45:23, where YHWH claims all worship for Himself ("I am God, and there is no other," 45:22), and applies that sentence to Jesus. Every knee "in heaven and on earth and under the earth" bows before Him, the heavenly beings included, and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Kurios, the word the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses to render the divine Name (Phil 2:10–11). In Paul, the Name that could be shared with no one thereby rests on Jesus, without His becoming a second, lesser god alongside God. The word harpagmos (2:6) is interpreted in different ways: as a prize still to be seized, or as something already possessed and clung to. Chapter 21 follows the second reading; the first remains a real counter-voice.
ExcursusRadiance and imprint
Two Greek words in Hebrews 1:3 hold the christology of this chapter. The first is apaugasma, "radiance": the glow that streams from the light itself, as the sun cannot be separated from its rays. The Son is therefore not a second lamp burning next to God. The second is charaktēr, "imprint," the word for the stamp a signet ring leaves in wax, or the image struck into a coin. Where a sketch only resembles, the imprint gives the contour itself; whoever sees the Son sees God as He is.
A third detail is tucked into a small phrase: after making purification for sins, He "sat down" (1:3). There was no chair in the sanctuary. Every priest stood day after day at his service, offering the same sacrifices again and again, because the work was never finished; the Son sat down after a single offering (10:11–12). That posture says without words that the work is complete.
HeartGod's last Word has a face
Whoever wants to know what God is like often pieces together stray impressions: something of the thunder on Sinai, something of a judgment they fear, something a parent or a church handed them. The result is a God they don't dare trust. Hebrews puts an end to that piecing-together. The Son is the imprint of God's being.
So you don't have to guess at God's character. Look at Jesus, at how He treated the broken, the afraid and the ashamed, at whom He touched and whom He brought home. That is what God is like, down to the smallest feature. This week, take one story from the Gospels, a leper, a widow or a tax collector up a tree, and read it with one question: if God is like this, what does that mean for me?
*A note on the source text. The opening of the letter to the Hebrews, 1:1–4: God who formerly spoke through the prophets and now in a Son (1:1–2); heir and Creator of the worlds, "radiance of the glory" (apaugasma) and "imprint of His being" (charaktēr), "upholds all things by the word of His power," and "sat down" after making purification for sins (1:3); the standing priests and the Son who sits: 10:11–12. The chain of seven quotations, 1:5–14: Psalm 2:7; 2 Samuel 7:14 (cf. Psalm 89); Deuteronomy 32:43 (Greek text; cf. Psalm 97:7); Psalm 104:4; Psalm 45:6–7 (the Son addressed as God); Psalm 102:25–27 (the Creator-hymn to YHWH, addressed to the Son); Psalm 110:1 ("sit at My right hand"). The same worship in Philippians 2:6–11, with Isaiah 45:22–23; Kurios as the rendering of the divine Name; harpagmos: Philippians 2:6. The Son who descends to His brothers: Hebrews 2:11–12 (with Psalm 22:22), 14–16; "He takes hold of the offspring of Abraham" (epilambanetai, 2:16), the same verb as in 8:9 (Jeremiah 31:32): God taking His people by the hand out of Egypt; "with loud crying and tears": 5:7–8; sympathizing with our weaknesses: 4:15. The God who stoops and raises the poor from the dust: Psalm 113:6–7. The divine Name as YHWH.*