Introduction

Though we don’t know who wrote this letter, we do know its purpose, which “was to persuade and urge the believing Hebrews to remain loyal to the Christian faith and persevere in it despite all the sufferings they might face in so doing.” There are many things in this letter that “are hard to understand, but the sweetness we will find in it will more than make up for all the hard work that is necessary to understand it.”

Hebrews 1:1-4

v1-2a: Now that God has spoken through His Son, “we must expect no new revelation” from God, “only more of the Spirit of Christ to help us to understand better what has already been revealed.” God’s Word is complete, and nothing is to be added to it. We can rejoice that we have in Scripture the full “revelation of the will of God.”

v2b: Here is the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was by Him, God made the creation and “the new creation, and by him he rules and governs both.”

v3: Christ is “the Son of God, the only begotten Son of God, and as such he must have the same nature as God,” and “must bear the same image and likeness.” So, when we see “the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ, we see the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Father, for Christ has the nature and perfections of God in him.”

v4: The Scriptures declared that Christ’s nature and name is superior to the angels. As “we would have known little or nothing of either Christ or the angels apart from the Scriptures, we must therefore be determined by them in our conceptions of both” Christ and the angels.