The One True “Man”
The name for himself most often upon the lips of our Master was “the Son of man.” A notable Greek scholar has recently pointed out that this expression means far more than a son of a human parent. It rather suggests that gathered up into this Son of man are all the qualities of what “man” is. So, may we not say that as the fulness of God dwelt in him bodily so did the fulness of man dwell in him?
Some one has suggested that God did wonderful things through the Lord Jesus not because Jesus was God, but because he was perfect man. What does this really mean in terms of our everyday life?
Nowhere in Scripture is there such a remarkable setting forth, first of the deity of our Lord, then of his humanity, side by side, as in the first and second chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews. “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in a Son.”
“Very God of Very God”
Thus the wonderful epistle opens; and then that Son is presented first as one who expresses the very image of the substance of God. He is compared with angels, and shown to be infinitely above them. God the Father speaks of his angels as messengers; he addresses the Son: “thy throne, O God.” In the second chapter again are angels compared, this time with man. The same Son is shown to be made for a little while lower than the angels, taking the form of man.
In this first chapter of Hebrews the Holy Spirit, when he seeks to attest the truth that Jesus is God, calls the Old Testament to witness, and two groups of three quotations each are made, each time the words being put in the mouth of God the Father. In the second chapter when the Spirit seeks to press home the parallel truth that Jesus is a man, one with us, he uses a group of three quotations from the Old Testament. In these quotations we shall discover something of the preciousness for us of the truth that the Lord Jesus was a man, one with his brethren. “For both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying...” (Heb. 2:11).
Then there follow in the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the second chapter of Hebrews the three quotations from the Old Testament.
This is the first:
“I will declare thy name unto my brethren,
In the midst of the congregation will I sing thy praise.”