Saturday 24th December
Read Hebrews 2:5-9
“It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. 6 But there is a place where someone has testified:
‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
a son of man that you care for him?
7 You made them a little lower than the angels;
you crowned them with glory and honour
8 and put everything under their feet.’
In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. 9 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
The pastor to the Hebrews can’t quite remember that David wrote Psalm 8 but he definitely understands how it relates to Jesus. He considers humanity, just as David did, and he acknowledges that not everything is under mankind’s feet quite yet. There is a mismatch between what is promised and what is real. But when he considers Jesus he realises that Jesus was human but is now crowned with glory and honour – as the Psalm describes. Jesus is the first human to whom the Psalm truly points – He fulfils it.
The means to that glory and honour though was not through military victory, or inspiring speech, or creative scientific breakthroughs, but death. Through humiliation and suffering. And that began at Christmas – the beginning of the grace God showed to everyone. Death was the final enemy to be defeated and he tasted it for us. As Paul writes, again quoting Psalm 8, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he ‘has put everything under his feet’. Now when it says that ‘everything’ has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15:25-28) (NIVUK).
So both Paul and the pastor to the Hebrews look at Psalm 8 and see it fulfilled in Jesus – the man to whom everything has been made subject. The one in whom creation will be restored and in whom we will rule as promised from the very beginning. But all of that started with Christmas, the creator became created in order to restore all things. He is the True and Better Adam indeed…
