I Have Christ; What Want I More?

The Epistle to the Hebrews seems to have been written in view of the fall of Jerusalem, and the removal of the established form of religion initiated by Jehovah when  Israel was delivered from Egypt. The holy places made with hands—the altar, the sacrifices, the priesthood, the covenant to which these things were attached, and the law which foreshadowed good things to come—were all passing. In place of the whole system of material things, hallowed by the history of centuries, the Hebrews were called on to realize the blessedness of the Person who is the antitype of it all.

Instead of the temple, the hierarchy of priests, the impressive ritual, the charm of instrumental and vocal melody, they were to find themselves outcast, ill-treated, defamed, poor, despised—with Christ (see Heb. 13:13). Were they losers?

The Hebrews Epistle is the answer. They exchanged the transient thing for the eternal. The types were superseded by the antitype. The partial communications from God through the prophets were more than eclipsed by the full revelation of God in the Son.

The object of much that is written in this epistle is to set forth the greatness of the person of Christ. We have also the greatness of the presence of God as it is now opened to believers, and the greatness of Christian privilege, whether inside the veil or outside the camp. But let us consider the first as it is presented to us in the first four verses of chapter 1.

It is evident that the Holy Spirit intends to emphasize the fact that the Messiah of the Jews is divine, in contrast with prophets who were not so, though divinely inspired. This is necessary, for in whom could God speak adequately to reveal Himself except in a divine Person? When the time came for Him to fully reveal all that He is, He spoke in the One who is “Son.” Neither prophet among terrestrial beings nor angel among celestial beings would have sufficed to bring to light all that is in the heart of God, to express all His character, nor to establish God’s promises and purposes. The Son was the language in which God spoke. It is not that God spoke merely by the Son as He had spoken by the prophets; it is more justly rendered in (the) Son. He was the interpreter of God; and he who imagines that one of lesser glory than the Son could interpret God does not know God.

In two or three verses the writer is empowered by the Holy Ghost to utter seven of His glories. They bring the majesty of the Godhead into contact with the creature’s littleness, the purity of the throne into contact with the creature’s sin for its removal. They look out from the present world with all its problems to the righting of all things under Christ. The writer knows no object and no joy that he can compare with Christ and communion with Him.

The Heir of All Things: After the indication of His glory as Son, this is the first assurance given to our faith—that God has appointed Him heir of all things. He became poor for our sakes, and instead of being accepted by Israel was cut off. But His rejection only served for the accomplishment of God’s will that He might atone for sin and make the love of God known. Now He has risen, and it is decreed that all things shall come into His hand. It will be the pleasure of God to see His Beloved in possession of all things.

In the present confusion, and amid the blindness brought about by Satan’s malignant power, men are toiling to take possession of the earth for themselves. Nation intrigues against nation for the widest possible power on land and sea; company vies with company for the possession of wealth and influence; individual competes with individual in the struggle for recognition and ease. All are being swept along in the pursuit of pleasure, fame, riches, honor, power; but each for himself and none for God. The thought of interference from the Supreme Being is resented; man wants to evolve himself, to work out his own redemption. There is less and less time for thinking. A feverish haste to be rich, a lust for human learning and research, a mad race for sport and pleasure, control the masses today.

But we look ahead. There in the future is the hope of our hearts—Christ, Heir of all things. Everything will revert to Christ. Power has been perverted to man’s own ends; it will come into Christ’s hands for the execution of God’s will. Riches have been abused by man to the furtherance of carnal lusts; they come to Christ for the service of God. Wisdom will be at His disposal. All the forces of education, though more and more perverted from their right use now, will suddenly come under Christ’s control, and He will not fail to use it all for God. Glory—only stained by corruption in the fallen creature—will be rightly centered in the person of the Lamb once slain. The future is filled with Christ.

The Maker of the Worlds: If we look into the past eternity, even as we have looked forward, we see the Son’s glory resplendent and eternal. The personalities in the Godhead were distinguishable in the ages previous to all time. “By whom [the Son] He [God] made the worlds.” This teaches us clearly that in the Godhead glory, before all time the Son was distinguishable as Son. This is enough, for if we have Son, we have Father, and if we have Father and Son, we have also Holy Spirit. These are not merely names connected with the revelation made in time, but are subsisting and related glories in the Godhead outside of all time. It served the divine purpose to withhold this as a revelation until Christ came, who fully revealed God; but when the Godhead was fully revealed, we find Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (see Mt. 28:19).

By the eternal Son then, before all ages, God was pleased to make the ages, or worlds. Of Christ it is said, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Whatever there is of beauty or glory in things great or small, in all the wide universe of God, it has derived its shape, its beauty, its luster, its functions, from Him. And He is greater, more glorious, more beautiful, than all that He has created. The glory of the eternal Son fills up the vision of our faith as we gaze backward into eternity.

The Upholder of All Things: Passing for a moment the two glories in between, we reach the middle of the third verse, and find Him to be the One who upholds all things by the word of His power. This spans the time which we call present, arching over from eternity past to eternity to come. It is the third phase of His glory in relation to the created scene through which we are passing. He did make the worlds; He now upholds all things; He shall come into the full inheritance of all.

What a vast range of His creatorial power and wisdom does this open up to us. The law of gravitation explains that the moon revolves around the earth according to that law, the earth round the sun, the sun possibly around some “fixed” star in the Pleiades—what then? What holds up the Pleiades? If we go farther afield and in our imagination create some yet more distant center around which ten thousand universes roll, it only makes more vast and stupendous the system which demands some fixed point capable of sustaining the whole. The mind of man reels, and is baffled. Faith, guided by inspiration, quietly points to Christ, the Son, and utters the only possible solution—He upholds all things “by the word of His power.”

What is true in things great is true also in things small. The exquisite composition of the air that envelops our earth, the rotation of the globe that produces alternating day and night, the orbit it pursues to give us the changing seasons of summer and winter, the evaporation from the water surface of the globe balanced so beautifully with the flow of rivers to the sea—all speak of supreme wisdom and power in the One who directs and upholds the whole fabric. All things serve Him. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Jesus (Jehovah-Saviour) of the New, as Isaiah 50 clearly shows. The very beating of our hearts, the breathing of our lungs are only explained by the same wonderful fact: He upholds all things “by the word of His power.”

The Brightness of God’s Glory: We come now to something different from the relations in which He stands with created things for He is the shining forth of glory. All that can be called glory in God shines out in Him. Our Lord wears human form now, and His humanity has served to bring out in the most illuminating way all the attributes of God, which, when viewed together, compose glory.

What is glory? And what are the elements in God’s glory, its constituent parts? We take a prism, and allow light to fall upon it. Instantly that which is diffused as light becomes broken up into its component parts, and we discover the beauty of the various rays which, when blended, form light. Even so, with reverent hearts may we study Christ in whom the varied rays of God’s glory are discerned. His character and ways bring before us the exact delineation of God’s holiness, righteousness, truth; they utter to us His grace, goodness, longsuffering, and mercy; they set forth those divine perfections of obedience, dependence, humility, meekness, lowliness, which could be discerned only in such circumstances. Moreover, in the cross of Jesus we find every ray converging; the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. Never was all that God is so seen as in that wonderful moment.

Nor is this all. Raised from the dead, triumphant over death and sin and Satan’s power, Jesus has become in heaven the complete expression, the effulgence, of all that God is. What would be to us otherwise unknowable is resolved, and in the face of Jesus we behold the glory of God. That face is language that our ransomed hearts can understand. It makes our own will appear loathsome; it makes the world appear a poor selfish system without God,;it attracts our affections, expands our minds and stirs our energies for God as nothing else could. It makes the presence of God our home, and the glory of God our goal.

The Image of His Person: More correctly, it is “the expression of His substance, or Being. The mind of man craves for some representation of the being he worships. From the degraded savage who tries to represent the supernatural forces around him by amulets and charms, to the idolater who invests his carved or molten image with divine powers, or the devotee who vainly prostrates himself before crucifix or images of saints, all betray this instinct for a tangible representation of the object of worship. Christ is the Image of God. An image of Christ is therefore absurd, and a negation of all that He is; for if He be the Image of God, why require an image of Him?

God as God is invisible. No finite creature could take account of so glorious a Being whose time is eternity, whose dimension is space, whose being is Spirit. There was every necessity why He should be represented to us. But who among created beings could be the embodiment of the Uncreated One?

All that God is in His own being is adequately set forth in Christ. There was no deficiency in Him; He brought down here the entire fullness of the Godhead—setting it forth without flaw. There is no one else capable of compassing in his own person all the majesty and the nature of God. Jesus is the Son; there is therefore no disparity between Him and God. Never, in any religion or philosophy before has it been written “God is love.” But the truth is out now—in Jesus. God’s nature is disclosed, revealed in the Man who is also, and must be, eternal Son.

The Sin-Purger: Now, think what it must be if such an One take up the sin question. Supposing such an One came down, unaided and unasked, for reasons of His own, to apply all His infinite resources of wisdom and power and love to the sin question. What must be the result for Himself first, and then for those who believe on Him? Being the full representation of God, the Son knew all God’s unsullied holiness and purity, all the claims of His throne, all His wrath against and judgment upon sin. Being very God in His own essential nature and being, though become Man for the accomplishment of all God’s will, He knew all that sin is in its varied forms and in all its ramifications. Moved by unutterable love, and jealous for the majesty of the supreme Being, the sinless Son made purification of sins at Calvary, dying to remove them, to vindicate God against them, dying to reveal God in His grandest glories at the moment of His putting them away.

That I, believing in Jesus, benefit by it goes without saying. My sin has been unearthed, weighed in divine scales, repudiated, judged, execrated, damned in His death. The wrath of God has found it out, fallen upon it, burnt it up, made an end of my sins—through the death of the One who died for me. But it was not only a question of me. He did this for Himself, from Himself, by Himself. He took it up as a matter in which His own glory was involved, and for His own sake made purification of sins. All the perfection of His person was thrown into the work He did; and the sins have been perfectly purged as only a Divine Person could have done it. I am benefited infinitely indeed, for I stand in the presence of a glory that has removed all my sins, and has declared itself infinitely, but in such a way as to be more than friendly to me. My God is the best Friend I have; and I know Him, for He is fully revealed in the One who put my sins away.

The One at God’s Right Hand: This is the seventh glory of this all-glorious Person. Would it not have been a grief to us had the Lord in some way been deprived of His right to sit there? Could His contact with our sin, His undergoing the judgment of God and death for us, have resulted in some loss of dignity, some diminution of glory? How our hearts would have chided us for eternity to think of it. But this is not so. So completely has sin been judged, so entirely has God been glorified as to it, that the Son—now wearing man’s form to be the Image of God forever—has gone back to the height from whence He came. But He is now seated there as Man. There is a Man on the throne of God. That Man is the Son, who put my sins away.

May God fill our hearts with worship as we think of Him. May He also teach that even if for His sake we become poor, despised, isolated, outcast, we are—in having Christ—more than well off indeed.