PERSONAL JOURNAL/MEDITATION AND REFLECTION: Hebrews 1:5-14

5 For to which of the angels did He ever say,

“^You are My Son,

Today I have begotten You”?

And again,

“I will be a Father to Him

And He shall be a Son to Me”?

6 And ^when He again ^brings the firstborn into ^the world, He says,

“And let all the angels of God worship Him.”

7 And of the angels He says,

“Who makes His angels winds,

And His ministers a flame of fire.”

8 But of the Son He says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

And the righteous scepter is the scepter of ^His kingdom.

9 “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;

^ Therefore God, Your God, has ^anointed You

With the oil of gladness above Your companions.”

10 And,

“You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,

And the heavens are the works of Your hands;

11 They will perish, but You remain;

And they all will become old like a garment,

12 And like a mantle You will roll them up;

Like a garment they will also be changed.

But You are ^the same,

And Your years will not come to an end.”

13 But to which of the angels has He ever said,

“Sit at My right hand,

Until I make Your enemies

A footstool for Your feet”?

14 Are they not all ^ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit ^salvation?

The preacher continues his great pursuit of encouraging the brethren to draw near to Christ in times of struggle and persecution with “chain quotations”. Here the preacher takes seven Old Testament passages and strings them together with the hope of making the listener stand awe and in full agreement with everything he has said thus far, marveled by the Old Testaments beautiful portrayal of the Messiah. To do this he takes three pairs of text revealing the Son and ends with a climatic quotation about His current status.

Hebrews 1:5

He starts off right where he left off in verse four where He compares the Son to angels. “For to which of the angels did he ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten You’? And again, ‘I will be a Father to Him and He shall be a Son to Me’”? The preacher wants to contrast the relationship of the Son and angels to God, seen here as Father. He shows the uniqueness of the relationship that they have so that when the Son is compared to the angels, a great difference will be seen.

Though it is obvious that the preacher sees these text as pointing to Christ and Psalm 2:7 is even used by Paul as a Messianic text, it is helpful for us to uncover the meaning of these text for the people of that time as they represent a foreshadow of what is to come. Psalm 2:7 is a psalm of David where he says that God said to him, “You are my son, today I have begotten you” and in 2 Samuel 7:14 the Lord tells David referring to Solomon, “I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me.” What we have here then is the Lord proclaiming over his anointed, “You are my son, my anointed, my chosen one, the king I place over the nations.” The reason to make such a point is otherwise we might be faced with those who say that Jesus was not always the Son, but became the Son.

This however if faulty because we have already noticed that the Son was present in the creation of the cosmos, He was Son in the incarnation, and now He reigns as Son after His exultation. Therefore, “today” refers to God’s open testament that Christ in the glorious king of the nations who now rules over heaven and earth when He was exulted at His enthronement. By this Christ shares a special relationship to the Father foreign to the angels.

Hebrews 1:6-7

The next pair of texts reveal the position of angels to the Son. The preacher refers to the Son as the firstborn. In the Hebrew context much is meant by one being first born, such as its consecration to God, the love of the father for the firstborn, sharing in the authority of the father, and inheriting a greater portion of the father’s property. Thus, the Son as firstborn speaks of His preeminence in the cosmos, and with regard to the church in association with the resurrection. Thus it says, “And let all the angels of God worship Him” because it is the Son “who makes His angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire.” The fact that the angels worship the Son implies His deity because only God is worthy of worship and even more worthy is God alone of angels worship. Therefore, the Son stands as equal in essence to the Father.

Hebrews 1:8-12

The preacher’s final pair of text brings our attention to the Son to notice His deity, eternality, and everlasting reign. The Lord decrees that the Son will reign forever because He is righteous, having loved righteousness and hating lawlessness. Therefore God has anointed the Son with gladness above His companions. The preacher then pushes forth the eternality of the Son by proclaiming, “You…laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of Your hands; they will perish, but You remain…they will all become old like a garment…You are the same and Your years will not come to an end.” Because Jesus is God He will never come to an end and thus His reign will last as long as He.

Hebrews 1:13

Thus the preacher ends his argument by asking, “to which of the angels has He said, ‘Sit at My right hand’?” The preachers chain of text come to its zenith with Psalm 110:1. Thus the end of comparing the Son to angels has ended with his readers having not doubts that Jesus is more exulted. Angels, though mighty and powerful, are not God, but are “ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation”.

Thus the preacher ends by making two things clear for his reader: (1) Christ is more exulted than the angels because He is the Son who is to be worshipped by angels because He is God and it was by His hands that they were created and (2) angels are to be respected and honored, but not worshipped because God alone is worthy of worship and they are sent as ministers for us who will inherit salvation. Thus the opinion of angels is not attacked, but rightly elevated to its place below the Son. Therefore we must follow the example of the preacher who (1) uses the Old Testament to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God, who is God by giving the most explicit reference to Jesus as God in the Bible: “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever…Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You”; and (2) make sure that people understand the nature of angels and their relationship to the Trinity and us.