COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
It’s the day after Christmas. All the energy of decorating, shopping, baking, opening presents, and enjoying the yearly festive food has subsided. We’re left with the lights of the Christmas tree and the memories as we snuggle in that new fuzzy blanket and nibble Christmas cookies. The celebration is over—but the event has changed the world.
Who is that Baby we celebrated yesterday?
The Christmas Baby inaugurated a new era in history. Because this Baby came, Love entered the world. Because of this baby’s legacy, we have Western Civilization—a worldview and an organizational structure that was never in the world before Jesus. The singularity of this child changed the trajectory of all creation, bound to decay as it has been since Adam’s fall.
More could be said about this Christmas Child than one article can explore, but I’m looking to the author of Hebrews to help us understand who came that night when the shepherds heard angels sing. The first four verses of Hebrews One tell us who this Baby is, and it’s startling to me how much detail we learn about Jesus from these verses:
God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in [His] Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power; who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.—Hebrews 1:1–4 LSB
God Speaks
It’s important to understand that this epistle is being written to Jews—notice the name of the book: Hebrews—who have become born again believers in the Lord Jesus. Of course, there is SO MUCH application for all of us who believe—even all of us gentiles—yet the terms help us understand the Jewish references.
In verse one we learn that the Christmas Baby ushered in a new way that God speaks to us. “Long ago”, the author tells us—long before there was even a nation of Israel—God spoke to “the fathers”. The fathers is a terms that usually refers to the patriarchs, to the forefathers of the nation of Israel: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. In the context of this text, “the fathers” includes all the Israelites who came before the generation to whom this book was first written.
Look at the shocking thing we learn here: in all the days before the Baby came, God spoke to the fathers “in the prophets”. He sent His own spokespeople to the world for hundreds of years, progressively revealing His will and His plans for rescuing the world from its curse and for opening up direct access to Himself. Prior to the Baby, God spoke only portions of His plans at various times, giving truth and commands to His people through personally selected prophets. Over time more and more details emerged, and we can read these revelations today in the words of the Old Testament. Even God’s plan to send the Baby was foretold through His prophets.
God was not limited to speaking only one way through the prophets, either. In the book of Numbers we read of a pagan prophet for hire, Balaam, who could not deliver the curse he had been contracted to deliver. The Moabite king Balaak paid Balaam to curse Israel—but every time Balaam opened his mouth, he had no choice but to bless God’s nation. In fact, Balaam is the prophet who prophesied that a star would arise “from Jacob”—another name for Israel:
“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; A star shall come forth from Jacob, A scepter shall rise from Israel, And shall crush through the forehead of Moab, And tear down all the sons of Sheth.”—Numbers 24:17 LSB
Daniel, one of Israel’s brightest and best, was exiled to Babylon, likely made a eunuch, and spent his life serving the Babylonian and later Persian kings as leaders of the court magi. Daniel, a God-fearer, received visions of the future of the gentile world. Through Daniel, God revealed to us all the big picture of His plan to save the world. Through David, the great king of Israel who received God’s covenant promise that he would have an eternal throne, dynasty, and kingdom, God revealed the very words and experience his own offspring would utter hundreds of years later as He hung, dying for human sin, on a Roman cross:
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my salvation are the words of my groaning. … My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws; And You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet. I count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots. But You, O Yahweh, be not far off; O my Strength, hasten to my help.—Psalm 22:1, 15–19 LSB
But now, God no longer reveals His will by prophets. Now He has given the full revelation of Himself—His character, His plans, His promises—He has sent the fulfillment of those long-ago prophecies. God sent His Son, and now He speaks to us in His Son! Now God doesn’t reveal portions of His will but the whole reality. His Son has come, and God reveals all we need in Him.
What Do We Know about the Son?
Now, in Hebrews 1:2–4, we see details about the Baby, this Son whom God gave us. The first thing we learn his that Jesus is the “heir of all things”. This phrase isn’t poetic hyperbole; it is a statement of fact. God’s Son, who came to us wrapped in a physical body, entered His own creation and, because He atoned for His human creatures’ sin, He has shattered God’s curse—the Son’s own curse—of death.
Because Jesus identified with His own creation, He, now forever identified with humanity, has become not only the Creator of all things but also the heir of all things. As a Man, the Baby has become the One who redeems all humanity and restores us back to God’s original intention for us: to preside over the earth He made. Now our Lord Jesus is the rightful heir of all creation because He has done what no angel or mere man could ever do: He has paid for sin, and all creation is His!
Furthermore, we learn in verse 3 that Jesus is not only a man, sinless and glorified nonetheless. We learn here that He “is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature”. In other words, Jesus is fully God. If He were only partially God, He couldn’t be His radiance, and he couldn’t be the “exact representation of His nature.” A photograph, for example, cannot fully represent anyone’s exact nature or character. An AI android may look very much like a person, but it cannot be the exact representation of any person.
Jesus IS GOD. Even in His human body, He Himself was always and is forever God. Every attribute of God, including His omnipresence and omniscience and omnipotence, is forever the substance of that Baby who grew up to be our Savior!
Next we learn that the Christmas Baby “upholds all things by the world of His power”. That is a shocking statement: the One who created all things upholds all things by that same creative word. The Christmas Baby is the one within the Trinity whose job it is to uphold all things by the word of His power.
The implications of this fact are enormous. Think about it: while He was in the womb, while He was a helpless Babe being cared for by Jospeh and Mary and worshiped by the shepherds and also by the angels—even then He was upholding all things by the word of His power. Later, when He died on that cross and was laid in the tomb, He was still upholding all things by His word and His power. His identity as God the Son did not cease to exist when His body died. In Him all things are secure, because He eternally upholds all things by the word of His power.
He Has Cleansed Us
The next phrase in Hebrews 1:3 is perhaps even more astonishing than the assertions of His creative, sustaining, eternal power: that Christmas Baby is the One who “accomplished cleansing for sins”. This is truly shocking. The Baby Jesus grew up, appearing in His village to be a normal Jewish boy, but as He revealed His true nature and ministry when He became a man, he confused and enraged His own people. Only a handful of men and women actually believed that He was who He said He was.
Significantly, Jesus revealed His true identity by systematically fulfilling those Old Testament prophecies that God had revealed to His people. Jesus healed the sick, made the blind see, made the deaf hear, made the lame walk, and He even raised the dead. Jesus came and revealed that He was the ONE to whom all those prophecies pointed.
Jesus came and revealed that He was the One whom God was preparing His people to receive—and then, His own received Him not. They turned against Him and called for His death. Together with the reigning Romans, Jesus’ own people orchestrated His crucifixion.
Jesus took our sin and died our death—and all of this was in fulfillment of those words of God given through hundreds of years in various portions and ways through prophets whom the Lord God chose.
Three days after His crucifixion, the Lord Jesus rose from death. His sacrifice had fully propitiated for human sin, and fifty days later He ascended back to His Father. Jesus went to heaven in a glorified, resurrected, human body—the sign to us that our own resurrections are sure. We know what to expect because the Lord Jesus has already experienced resurrection as a Man—and His disciples recorded exactly what that “looked” like.
Hebrews 1:3 gives us one more detail—our resurrected Lord Jesus “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. That description is so significant! No levitical priest in the Jewish temple ever sat down on the job. Never did a priest sit in the temple in the presence of the shekinah glory!
Jesus sat down because HIS WORK WAS DONE!! He is a SEATED priest! This fact alone proves that the investigative judgment is false!
The work of Jesus’ atonement is 100% complete. He is not applying His blood or atoning for our sin in any way. Now, we all can enter the very presence of the Father on the basis of Jesus’ blood which was shed ONCE and which covered sin once for all!
Now, whenever we place our faith in the Lord Jesus and His finished work, we are reconciled to God. Jesus’ work is done. He is a seated priest at the right hand of the Father!
Finally, in verse 4 we see one more important fact about our Christmas Baby, our Savior who came to us as a newborn but who ascended to our Father as a glorified victor: His work of atonement has placed Him, as a Man, in a position so much better than the angels that He has a “more excellent name than they.”
Jesus has exalted humanity to a position over the angels—and because of His work of atonement as the God-Man who propitiated for our sin, He has inherited a name far more exalted than merely “angel” or “archangel”. His name is SON!
Christmas Reflections
As you bask in the warmth of Christmas which lingers after the wrapping paper is recycled and the Christmas feast is put away, I invite you to ponder Hebrews 1:1–4. God sent us His SON that first Christmas night.
Astonishingly, because God sent His Son and because the Son “accomplished cleansing for sins” and “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” we who believe are also called “sons”! Look at what Paul tells us:
For as many as are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received [the] Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, also heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with [Him] so that we may also be glorified with [Him].—Romans 8:14–17 LSB
When we trust the Son and His finished atonement for sin, God literally adopts us! We will never be God—Jesus is God’s only begotten son, the unique Son whom the Father sent to rescue us. But when we believe, we pass from death to life. We receive spiritual life because Jesus’ resurrection shattered our curse of death.
When we become alive with the life of God on the basis of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are adopted and become joint heirs with Christ!
This miracle is the plan of God that He revealed in the fulness of time. From eternity God sent His Son. From eternity the Son protected sinners from the holiness of God (see Hebrews 10:20). From eternity the Spirit has brought fallen humans the ability to believe God and ultimately makes us alive when we believe Him and trust His revelation of Himself to us in our need.
Ponder the fact that God sent a Baby to change the world. In this Baby God smuggled Life into the domain of darkness, a human baby who was never dead in sin. This Baby revealed God’s sacrificial plan to rescue us from our rebellion and death, and on that cross, He completed His eternal plan of atonement.
Now we wait for the plan to culminate in the return of the Lord Jesus. He WILL reign over His people on the throne of David, and all of us who believed and received His life and forgiveness will rejoice with Him and enjoy His kingdom. Because God sent the Baby, this is true:
He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.—2 Corinthians 5:21 LSB
Merry Christmas—and Happy New Year. The Baby has changed history, and our future is secure!
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