I am compelled to write this because I am in need of being reminded of what I know to be true and to weed out where any lies may have infiltrated my mind via my heart.
“We must, therefore, pay even more attention to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away.”
Hebrews 2:1
When I am not paying attention to what God's voice is saying or that His presence is with me, then it doesn't mean I'm not paying attention to anything. It means I'm paying attention to something or someone else other than God. Don't be fooled into thinking you are doing such a tedious thing as to "pay attention" when it is actually something we are all constantly doing. You paying attention means that you are focusing on something, that could be food, social media, homework, money, work, or sex. You are always thinking about something. Thinking about something means you are giving attention to something...you are paying something your attention as if paying a cashier money for an item, you pay something with the payment of your focus with your thoughts. It's funny that the word used is payment. Our payment, which is something we give to someone or something is in the form of our thoughts rather than dollars. We are paying attention, just like we would dollars, and getting something back in return. So who or what are you paying the most thoughts to? You will know because it will be the one ruling your mind, and if it rules your mind it rules you.
Giving payment back to God, payment of focus and thoughts, is to receive Him as the one who rules our minds and is King of our whole life. We must continue, as Hebrews 2 says, to "pay even more attention (pay more thoughts to God and the Word, Jesus, who spoke to us directly as one of us) to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away." In other words, when we stop paying God we start paying someone or something else, and that becomes our ruler as we drift away from God. Payment is being made today. Who are you paying your attention to? That will be the ruler of your mind.
---
“For He has not subjected to angels the world to come that we are talking about. But one has somewhere testified: What is man that You remember him, or the son of man that You care for him? You made him lower than the angels for a short time; You crowned him with glory and honor and subjected everything under his feet. For in subjecting everything to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him.”
Hebrews 2:5-8
Who is he talking about in this passage? It sounds like it's Jesus because it says he was crowned with glory and honor, but it's not just about Jesus.
He is talking about you and me. We are "man" that God created in the beginning. We are the ones made in His image and given the mandate or the responsibility to cultivate God's creation. God's world. Now when sin came, God had it already in mind to prepare a new world for those who would resist sin and follow God, and this new world is what we refer to as "Heaven" or in Revelations as the "new Jerusalem." (Rev. 21:2)
Here's how I broke it down to show that this is about you and me...it says:
“and subjected everything under his feet.
For in subjecting everything to him,
He left nothing that is not subject to him."
This is what God wrote about man in Genesis 1:26 and in Psalm 8. Everything was put under man's feet. So that it was man's responsibility to rule and cultivate and care for God's creation. All the animals and plants are under our rule. Not that they are obedient to us, but that we are made to care and govern over them as humans because God equipped us to.
"As it is,
we do not yet see everything subjected to him."
This shows that even though that is how God created the order of the world to be, because of sin entering into the world, it is not what we see happening. People neglect plants and animals in favor for their comfort or self-glory. There are numerous places in the world that suffer poverty and malnourishment because humans neglect to care for the lands around them, but rather they care for their own immediate gratifications. It's not so much about governing and cultivating God's creation as it is about securing one's own livelihood. Things, as we see them today, are not the way they're supposed to be according to God's initial Word in the beginning. However, even though we see that not all things are subject to us right now in life, because of the corruption of sin...
"But we do see Jesus —"
We don't see everything subject to man in God's creation at present, but we have seen Jesus in history who came into the world as a man just like you and me. So what does that have to do with us? Why is it that the writer of Hebrews talks about a world in which God has made for people and not Angels? And then says that it's supposed to look like this, where everything is subjected to man, but in actuality we see that it does not look the way it is supposed to be...but that we can look at Jesus? Well, Jesus is the way it is supposed to be.
"But we do see Jesus — (He came in flesh and blood as a baby and grew up to be an adult just like us...He came as a human)
made lower than the angels for a short time (just like us, we are lower than Angels right now because they are spiritual beings which is eternal and we are made of flesh which is temporary)
so that by God’s grace
He might taste death for everyone — (Jesus was a recipient of God's grace, just like us, and he died just like we will all one day die. His death was different from all the others because while He was made into a man like us He remained to be the Word of God, so His death was not only the death of a man but the resurrection of the Word. He might taste death for everyone: he might die as a human so that he knows what it feels like and looks like to die, but having done it himself He shows us that it is finished. Death is no longer a threat to man, because God became man and conquered death as a man who faced it--by dying. He showed us that it is possible for man to now live without the fear of death, because of God. God has saved us through His Son Jesus. Not only by His death as the means, but also by His example, His way of life as a man, and his resurrection life and place next to God as the means to our end. We follow Christ into the way, the truth and the Life.
"crowned with glory and honor
because of His suffering in death."
We acknowledge that Christ is alive and seated next to God, crowned with glory and honor because He is sitting next to God! If you're anywhere near God you must be crowned with glory and honor for such a position. We all say we believe that Jesus is Lord, meaning that He is crowned with glory and honor. But we often leave out the second part that says: "because of His suffering in death." Death might be powerless now in terms of keeping us down and doomed, but it does not mean it can't still produce feelings and sensations of suffering both mentally and bodily in us. Yet Christ was crowned with glory and honor--seated in the presence of God--because He suffered in death. The reason He got to where He is now is because He defeated Death by suffering it. By going through it. By not fearing its power.
And we draw near to God in just the same way.
It is through our suffering that feels death's approach or threat (getting old, losing fleshly value, pain, loss of memory or strength, loss of life itself) that we gain our life in the presence of God for eternity, crowned in glory and honor just as we profess to believe for Jesus. Jesus is our way, our truth about who we are and who God is, and our life eternal not our life in the temporary.
If Jesus suffered in death to bring glory to God, then our suffering in moments where Death is imminent also is our action of giving glory to God! How passive it might always feel! To never actively give God glory in the way we think it means to give God glory, just as it feels quite passive in acknowledging our ruler being the one we give payment of our thoughts to! It is so subtle yet it is so true. Nobody means to be governed by their thoughts of lust or beauty, but it is exactly what happens when a person is always concerned about having affection or sex or a younger more perfect looking image. Such a person can be spotted as obviously as a tiger among fish.
You are what you think about--
even if you don't think so.
Yet Christ is not only the way to life but He also showed us the way by becoming one of us, entering our story, and making it His-story. We are people of experience and we love to read stories about how things happen for people. We understand life through stories. Showing us by His-story that life was in dying, not in suicide but in the facing of death, because death approaches all of us. We are all getting older, weaker, and coming to an end in the flesh. For some that might look and feel sooner than it does for others (for example I feel like I am going to just die if I never get certain things in life like the perfect job or a family of my own or some kind of purpose for my existence, but that is all the threat of everything soon reaching an end revealing that it will all be over soon and I will no longer have that chance at having what was, for the moment, life for me). Christ showed us that the approach of death would feel painful, because it will look like the end of life and all the possible joys within it--vanishing--but Christ's story reveals that in it (suffering in the face of these Death threats and in death itself) there we would find our greatest source of true life.
"For in bringing many sons to glory, (many sons means you and me! That's not talking about Jesus because Jesus is not plural.)
it was entirely appropriate that God —
all things exist for Him and through Him — (whether we agree with that or not)
should make the
source of their salvation
perfect through sufferings.
For the One who sanctifies
and those who are sanctified
all have one Father."
I loveeeeee this verse right here. This is like...so logical haha. I love it because it makes sense. It's not abstract or fuzzy, but it's so clear. God had Jesus suffer not because He's a mean and cruel God but because That's the only way we get to life. Sin makes us die, death threatens us, and we suffer because of sin having brought death to us. So it makes sense that God would have His Son suffer death for us not only because He saved us in doing so, but also because like Father like Son they are consistent with the truth the way and with life. If God suffered His Son dying for us, then as newly redeemed children of God we also suffer death approaching as we are also being brought into adoption as God's children. Jesus is our brother. And what our big brother went through is what we are also going through because we are family. We experience the same things, we gain the same things, and we have the same Father.
"That is why Jesus is not ashamed
to call them brothers,”
Hebrews 2:8-11
You and I are called the brothers of Jesus.
As a woman, I don't find that odd at all. I find the word "brother" to mean something beyond a male, but to be defined by relationship. A brother is kin, it means we are family. Jesus came as a man, born of a virgin woman, and if I live in His existence (or His presence) then I live in Him who was a man which makes me a brother too. Not that it makes me male, but it makes me family.
“Again, I will trust in Him.
And again,
Here I am with the children God gave Me."
Trust and being present is something we do again and again and again. We trust and then we trust again. We stand in the presence of our family of God again and again because we will forget who these people in the church are.
"Now since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these,
so that through His death He might destroy the one holding the power of death — that is, the Devil — and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.”
Hebrews 2:13-15
Now, I'm at the point where my brain feels like it's going to explode or fry out. Haha. I can't think straight. So even when I want to pay my thoughts to God there are times I am unable to do so. When I am unable I enable grace. When I am able I think about God because in doing so He governs my life with love and joy and peace that surpasses understanding. But when I am unable I enable grace which awes me into praising God for who He is and for who I am because of Him.
Man.
Crazy.
God.
Amazing.
Fearless yet suffering,
Jmegrey
No comments:
Post a Comment