BUT WE DO SEE HIM
WHO HAS BEEN MADE FOR A LITTLE WHILE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS NAMELY, JESUS: blepomen (1PPAI)
ton de brachu ti gar aggelous elattomenon (RPPMSA) Iesoun :
More literally it could be
rendered...
And Him who was made some little less than messengers we
see -- Jesus -- because of the suffering of the death, with glory and
honour having been crowned, that by the grace of God for every one he
might taste of death.
Click
for comments by F B Meyer on Hebrews 2:9 (from The Way into
the Holiest)
Spurgeon explains that...
We see not yet man the master of
everything, not even Christ, the model man, the Head of all men. While He
was here below, He was not a ruling Lord, but a suffering Servant. He said
to His disciples, “I am among you as He that serveth.” Yet it is in Him
that the dominion once given to man is to be seen most clearly displayed.
Man does not yet rule the world. Wild beasts defy him. Storms vanquish him.
There are a thousand things not at present submissive to his control.
Here is the representative Man who is
supreme over all: “We see Jesus,”
We see that by faith. We see Jesus, not
merely as God, but as the God-man exalted “far above all principality and
power, and might, and dominion.”
Oh, how glorious it is to realize our position in Christ, and to see how He
has lifted us up, not merely to the place froze which the first Adam fell,
but He has made us stand so securely there that we shall not again descend
around the ruins of the Fall! Glory be to His holy Name!
See (991)
(blepo) means to see frequently in the sense of becoming aware of or
taking notice of something. Blepo denotes voluntary observation. The writer
uses it in the sense of urging his readers to "take care" (see to it) later
in the letter writing...
Take care, brethren, lest there should be
in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the
living God. (see note
Hebrews 3:12)
In another usage of blepo that
somewhat parallels the sense of the use in
Hebrews 2:8 (note) the writer exhorts
his readers to not forsake their...
own assembling together, as is the habit
of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see
the day drawing near. (see note
Hebrews 10:25) (Comment: What
day do they "see" drawing nigh? The return of Christ, at which time
we will also "see" Him Who tasted death for all).
In Hebrews 11 he uses blepo in the
well known definition of "faith" (and illustrates it with Noah building the
ark despite never having seen rain) writing that...
Now faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (blepo)( see note
Hebrews 1:1)
By faith Noah, being warned by God about
things not yet seen, (blepo) in reverence prepared an ark for the
salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an
heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. (see note
Hebrews 11:7)
Made lower
(1642) (elattoo
from from elattôn = less) means to lessen, to decrease in status or rank, to
make less. There are only three NT uses, the present verse and the following
two verses...
He must
(dei
= an obligation, not an option = it is necessary;
present tense
- = continually!!!) increase, but I must (added by translators)
decrease (elattoo in the
present tense
= continually) (John 3:30)
Comment: John the Baptist gives us
the "secret" to a powerful, purposeful life. Observe the order - Jesus
first
and foremost. Why? When we see Him in this manner, we have but one choice if
we are rightly related to Him - to bow, to fall on our face, to submit to
His will rather than our own. If we "invert" the order and it's us
"decreasing", the trap is that "we" become the focus rather than Jesus. And
we can begin to "try to decrease" by setting up rules, etc (and fall into
the subtle trap of legalism). The verb decreased here is in the
middle voice,
indicates the special interest {reflexive = "I myself decreased"} John had
in his own decrease, e.g., in authority and popularity.
But we do see Him who has been made for a little while lower (elattoo)
than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned
with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He might taste death for
everyone. (See note
Hebrews 2:7)
We do not see man triumphant, but we do
see Jesus. How? Moses gives us a clue...
By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the
wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen. (see note
Hebrews 11:26)
Jesus - as noted by Vincent "the
use of the human name, Jesus, at this point, is significant. In this epistle
that name usually furnishes the key to the argument of the passage in which
it occurs. See notes
Hebrews 3:1;
Hebrews 6:20;
Hebrews 12:2)
Also imagine yourself as a Jewish reader
and here for the first time you encounter the name Jesus.
Wuest goes on to add that a Jewish
reader...
would say to himself that the name Jesus
in the Greek text is just the transliteration of the Hebrew name Jehoshua,
the name of the God of Israel that points to His distinctive nature as the
One who saves. The idea of Deity would come to his mind. But as he read on,
he would see incarnation in the words, “who was for a little time made lower
than the angels.” And that would lead him to the Person who in the Gospels
was spoken of as Jesus of Nazareth. Up to this point, the writer has not
mentioned the name Jesus to his Jewish readers. He was well aware of the
fact that they were in a frame of mind in which they would be hard to
handle. The controversy centered around the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to
the Messiahship. At one time some of these Jewish recipients of this letter
had acknowledged Him as such, with an intellectual assent to the fact, but
not a heart acceptance of His Person and Work. Now, they were drifting away
from their former position. The writer up to
