by the apostles and other witnesses.
The language of verse four is reminiscent of the Acts of the Apostles. In Acts the message of the gospel is confirmed by the presence of supernatural phenomena. It was the same signs of God’s breaking into the world with the coming of the end of the age in the ministry of Jesus. The beginning of Hebrews 2:4 reads, “God added his testimony by signs (Gk. sēmeion) and wonders (Gk. teras) and various miracles (Gk. dunamis).” Compare this to Acts 2:22: “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power (Gk. dunamis), wonders (Gk. teras), and signs (Gk. sēmeion) that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know.” Hebrews says the Holy Spirit was distributed (Gk. merismos) among those who were the first witnesses. The narrative of Acts deals with the sign of God’s acceptance of Gentiles by the giving of the Holy Spirit. It is first signified at Pentecost with the image of the lightning that forked like tongues of fire and spread itself to each of the apostles. Acts 2:3 says, “Divided (Gk. diamerizō) tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” The wording of this text and Acts 2 clearly shows a connection between these texts. For the author of Hebrews, there should be no doubt what has happened is the real thing. Jesus said it, the apostles confirmed it, and God corroborated it with supernatural signs.
When new things happen to us, we sometimes become disoriented and wonder if it can be true. When my wife and I traveled to England, it just didn’t seem real. You wake up in the morning, and you have to remind yourself, I’m really here. You walk outside, and the signs are everywhere. Cars—mainly small cars—are driving on the left side of the street. Double-decker buses are swinging their way through round-abouts. There’s no mistaking the signs that this is not just a fairy-tale land, but it’s a real place, with real people, living real lives.
We need reminders sometime that our lives are not just an illusion. Christian faith is not just religious practice intended to give life added significance and a way to cope with the pressures of life. If we do not pay attention to Christian teaching and practice, we can be distracted into thinking that this mortal life is all there is. We might tell ourselves, if we have one chance, only a limited time to experience life, why shouldn’t we take the greatest advantage of it for ourselves: Seek the greatest pleasure, the least suffering and effort, and get as much as we can from life?
Take a closer look. This world still remains the only sign of life in the universe. As violent as our earth seems to be at times, as weak and prone to illness as our bodies are, as evil as some people can act, there’s no escaping the conclusion that this is an immensely complex and ordered world guided by physical laws that the most intelligent people still can’t quite fathom. And this world is not a permanent place: Our lives, even the existence of our world, is a whisper of time, a tick of the universe’s clock. It’s all designed with a beginning and an end, and we have been given the capacity to try to understand its meaning.
Two thousand years ago Jesus changed the course of human history. Real people in a real place said that Jesus really rose from the dead, providing a way to experience the reality of eternity with God. Millions of people have had their lives changed, become much more than they would have been, and have experienced a life filled with love, joy, peace, and hope. It doesn’t get much more real than that.
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We are admonished to persevere, warned about being neglectful, and reminded exactly what this salvation is that we have received. Our school teachers have tried to get us to pay attention. Suann and I were in a class in high school with a substitute teacher. It was geometry, as I remember. I don’t remember any of the geometry, but I remember that teacher. When we would begin to get noisy, she would bark out the same order as if the two words were one, “Quiet please.” Every time, it was the same thing, “Quiet please.” It became fun just to get rowdy so she would say, “Quiet please.” We had another teacher who liked to use the same corny phrase, “Be Alert. America needs more ‘lerts.’” It could have been worse. Funny and corny is better than loud and mean.
Our faith deserves our attention. As nice as we want church to feel and as positive as we want people to feel about their Christian faith, there are real consequences to our failure to take seriously the very real demands of a righteous God. The message of Hebrews contains the promise of a second chance for God’s people, but with it comes the responsibility to live up to the challenge of faithfulness to God.
Who’s in Charge Here? (2:5–9)
In times of crisis, we want to know who’s in charge. That’s what people in New Orleans were wondering after Hurricane Katrina blew threw and left such devastation: “Who’s in charge here?” When the levees collapsed and parts of the city began to flood, people sat on roof-tops or wherever they could find to be out of the water, and they waited for help to come. Their signs and their screams were asking, “Who’s in charge here?” As rescue workers began to gather and try to coordinate their tasks, they were asking, “Who’s in charge here?” A month later and two more hurricanes, Rita and Stan, and a devastating earthquake, people of Earth are wondering, “Who’s in charge here?”
Some scientists blame the increased hurricane activity on human action in the production of carbon gases that are thought to be raising the earth’s temperature. Some Christians want to insist that in spite of the terrible and evil things that happen in our world, God is in control, God is on the throne, and we have to accept what happens—at least those things beyond our control. But the New Testament repeatedly teaches that the world has not yet been brought under complete control.
The audience of the book of Hebrews includes people who have experienced subjection under the Roman empire. Each day brings another crisis, another upheaval in the order of life; another blow to their ability to cope with the rigors of work and the struggle to survive; another moment of exasperation when they ask themselves, “Is God really in control, is Jesus really reigning with God in heaven? Why is the world like this if Jesus is God’s Son, the appointed heir to rule with God, who has been exalted to the heavens beyond the angels.”
Who’s in charge? Scripture says it’s not the angels (2:5–8). In fact it doesn’t look like anyone is in charge right now (2:9), but it does look like Jesus is taking charge (2:9).
Scripture Says It’s Not The Angels Who Are In Charge (2:5–8)
The author of Hebrews has been comparing Jesus to the angels. They have not been appointed and exalted (1:2, 4); they are wisps of wind and fire (1:7, 14); they minister on behalf of God for the benefit of humans (1:14). The angels have had a significant role to play in God’s redemptive work in the world. They even took part in the greatest moment of Israelite history, when God gave them the instructions for civic and religious life of their new nation under God (2:1). Now God has done something even greater by appointing and exalting Jesus as God’s Son (1:2–4). We would be foolish to ignore this great thing God is doing, because with greater reward comes greater responsibility (2:1–3).
In the rest of chapter two, the author is drawing a connection a step at a time between the concept of Jesus as Son, who has a familial relationship with humans as a brother, to Jesus as High Priest, who performs that function well because of his empathy with humans. Although Jesus shares human experience for a time, he is ultimately exalted above them (2:9). Jesus functions as a pioneer of human experience and will bring sisters and brothers along with him in this victory over death (2:10–16). Because of his sharing in human experience, Jesus is able to serve as an effective high priest (2:17–18). In this way the rest of chapter two is a transition to the next comparison.
In verses 6–8a, the author quotes from Psalm 8. But he introduces the quotation as though he doesn’t know who said it or where: “someone has testified somewhere.” Perhaps the quotation was part of a collection of quotations from the Old Testament which describe the coming messiah.
