Hebrews 1:1-3

¹ Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. ³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high

In 2021 a (now “former”?) Christian musician shocked his many followers by tweeting the following:

Jesus was Christ.

Buddha was Christ.

Muhammad was Christ.

Christ is a word for the Universe seeing itself.

You are Christ.

We are the body of Christ.

In response to the many outraged comments of his fans, Gungor appealed to the influence of the liberal Franciscan Richard Rohr. Rohr, among other things, has drawn a distinction between “Jesus” and “Christ” and has argued that “Christ” cannot be reduced to and contained only in the historical figure of Jesus.[1] (I note that this distinction between “Jesus” and “Christ” is a favorite of theological liberals and takes many forms.) In Eliza Griswold’s New Yorker review of Rohr’s book The Universal Christ that so influenced Gungor and his tweet, she writes tellingly;

More conservative Christians tend to orient their theology around Jesus—his death and resurrection, which made salvation possible for those who believe. Rohr thinks that this focus is misplaced. The universe has existed for thirteen billion years; it couldn’t be, he argues, that God’s loving, salvific relationship with creation began only two thousand years ago, when the historical baby Jesus was placed in the musty hay of a manger, and that it only became widely knowable to humanity around six hundred years ago, when the printing press was invented and Bibles began being mass-produced. Instead, in his most recent book, “The Universal Christ,” which came out last year, Rohr argues that the spirit of Christ is not the same as the person of Jesus. Christ—essentially, God’s love for the world—has existed since the beginning of time, suffuses everything in creation, and has been present in all cultures and civilizations. Jesus is an incarnation of that spirit, and following him is our “best shortcut” to accessing it. But this spirit can also be found through the practices of other religions, like Buddhist meditation, or through communing with nature. Rohr has arrived at this conclusion through what he sees as an orthodox Franciscan reading of scripture. “This is not heresy, universalism, or a cheap version of Unitarianism,” he writes. “This is the Cosmic Christ, who always was, who became incarnate in time, and who is still being revealed.”

“All my big thoughts have coalesced into this,” he told me. “It’s my end-of-life book.” His message has been overwhelmingly well-received.[2]

The upshot of all of this is tragic. This attempt to dichotomize “Jesus” and “Christ” does great violence to the picture presented us in the scriptures. In the scriptures, Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God and is not merely one manifestation of “Christ” among others. With all due respect to Rohr and Gungor et al. this is indeed heresy and it is indeed universalism. It diminishes Jesus and it guts the great Christian creed, “Jesus is Lord!”

If one were to look for the exact opposite approach to Jesus, one would need look no further than the book of Hebrews. This is a Jesus-entranced book. It is a beautiful book. And it elevates and exalts Jesus as Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Lord, Jesus the Son of God, and Jesus the only hope of the world!

The first three verses of the book are staggering. Ray Stedman writes, “The epistle to the Hebrews begins as dramatically as a rocket shot to the moon.”[3] I love it! Indeed it does! Let’s go…

Jesus: The Final Word

Like all great books, Hebrews begins with a “Long ago…”.

¹ Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets

We begin first with an acknowledgement that God has not been silent. Rohr’s notion that Christians believe that God’s saving plan started two thousand years ago is patently absurd. Hebrews 1:1 contradicts that notion outright. No, God started preparing the world for His great saving work long before Bethlehem. It was always about Jesus, to be sure! But God began to speak of one who would come and save lost humanity the moment humanity fell into sin. He did so, the writer of Hebrews tells us, “at many times and in many ways.” What did He do “at many times and in many ways”? He “spoke to our fathers by the prophets.”

Ah, yes! Yes He did! God sent the prophets to herald that salvation could be found in the Yahweh God and that that salvation hinged on the saving promise of God that would reveal itself in the person of Jesus! Christians believe that the Old Testament saints were themselves saved by Jesus as they look in anticipation for the coming of the Savior whose name they did not know. They trusted in Yahweh God, the one that Jesus would teach us to call “Father,” the one who took on flesh in Jesus.

Not only in the prophets, by the way, but also in the Law and in the sacrificial system did God prepare the hearts of humanity. In the Law He extolled His holiness and revealed our sinfulness. In the sacrificial system He taught us the principle of forgiveness on the basis of the shedding of blood and that He, the Lord God, would provide this. Hebrews will tell us later that all of these sacrifices were themselves preparing humanity for the final sacrifice named Jesus who would put an end to the slaughter of bulls and goats and sheep. But the sacrificial system was preparing Israel’s heart and teaching it about the God who saves.

So God did indeed speak words to lost humanity leading up to the coming of the Word, Jesus. Thomas Long writes:

Sometimes God speaks through visions and by stimulating flashes of insight, at other times God speaks through political movements and the shaking of the powers. Here God speaks in a dream or a waterfall, there in a prophetic oracle or a pillar of fire, or again in the still small voice, the commandments of the law, the stories of kings, the restless and brooding Spirit at the heart of the creation, or the journey of the sun across the noon-day sky. God speaks in the quietness of prayer and the noise of honest debate. God sometimes speaks in powerful moments of spiritual wonder and also in the seeming humdrum of committee meetings. God’s speech can be heard when nations make peace and when neighbors speak kindness across the backyard fence. God speaks through the Bible and also through the touch of a caring hand at bedside. God speaks in the voices of the choir, the beauty of art, the spangling of the heavens with stars, and the cries of the hungry for food, the lonely for companionship, the sick for healing, the pressed down for hope. God speaks in “many fashions.”[4]

Yes, yes, it is so, but the writer of Hebrews moves on to say that nonetheless the Lord God did speak a final Word, a Word that all His other words were preparing the world for:

² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

I love this! Verse 1 begins, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke…” But verse 2 begins, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…”

Then was the prophets and the sacrifices and the Law…now there is Jesus! “Revelation,” God’s self-disclosure, advanced over the years leading up to Bethlehem, but at Bethlehem, it reaches its exclamation point! God still speaks to His people, but His speech will never look different than the Word “Jesus.” F.F. Bruce writes, “The story of divine revelation is a story of progression up to Christ, but there is no progression beyond him.”[5]

Let us hear that again: “but there is no progression beyond him.”

How could there be? Jesus is the great flowering and culmination of all that God said before! He is not one word among many. He is THE WORD above all others. Michael Card sang in his song, “The Final Word”:

He spoke the incarnation and then so was born the Son
His final word was Jesus, He needed no other one
Spoke flesh and blood, so He could bleed and make a way divine
And so was born the baby who would die to make it mine

And so the Father’s fondest thought took on flesh and bone
He spoke the living luminous word, at once His will was done
And so the transformation that in man had been unheard
Took place in God the Father as He spoke that final word

Jesus is the final word!

Jesus: The Radiant Lord

And then the writer of Hebrews loses himself in words of praise about Jesus.

³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high

Many New Testament scholars believe that the author may be employing hymnic language here: he might be quoting a hymn. That is, he is praising God for the beauty and radiance of Jesus!

He calls Jesus “the radiance of the glory of God.” When God’s glory shines out it looks like Jesus. Jesus is the radiance of God incarnated. Jesus’ words are bathed in divine splendor, saturated with holy fire, illuminated by glory! When God shines it is Jesus who sparkles. Jesus is the shining forth of God!

But Jesus is no mere reflection. No, He is more. He is, we are told, “the exact imprint of his nature.” Here the writer appears to appeal to the wisdom literature of Israel and to ancient coinage. The IVP Bible Background Commentary says:

Jewish authors writing in Greek often said that divine Wisdom was the exact “image”…of God, the prototypical stamp by which he “imprinted”…the seal of his image on the rest of creation (the way an image was stamped on coins).[6]

When making coins, one takes a die and stamps the die’s image into the metal of the coin thereby leaving the exact imprint of the die on the coin. That is the image being appealed to here to help us understand who Jesus is. Jesus is “the exact imprint” of God’s nature.” Ray Stedman writes that “the Greek charakter (‘exact representation’) is a strong argument against the claim of groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses who present Jesus as the highest of God’s creation, but not himself sharing the nature of God.”[7] Yes it is a strong argument against this idea! There can be no other “exact imprint” of the nature of God. Jesus and Jesus alone is it!

Finally, the writer of Hebrews gives us another image of finality:

³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high

This image of Jesus sitting down is strong and powerful and definitive. Christ comes, Christ does His work, then Christ sits down. His work is complete! In saying this, the writer of Hebrews was drawing on Psalm 110, one of the favorite passages of the early church. Listen to what this important psalm says about the Lord who was to come and has now come in Jesus:

¹ The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” ² The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! ³ Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. ⁴ The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” ⁵ The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. ⁶ He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. ⁷ He will drink from the brook by the way; therefore he will lift up his head.

That certainly does not sound like Jesus is one among many, does it? Rather, it sounds like the Lord Jesus is indeed Lord of Heaven and earth, not one among many but the one and only. It sounds like this Jesus is not “a Christ” but “the Christ,” like He is above all powers, like He is Lord of Heaven and earth.

Let us make much of King Jesus! He is worthy! He is God with us!

 

[1] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/universal-christ-richard-rohr/

[2] https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/richard-rohr-reorders-the-universe

[3] Ray C. Stedman. Hebrews. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Vol.15 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p.19.

[4] Long, Thomas G.. Hebrews (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (pp. 9-10). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[5] F. F. Bruce. The Epistle to the Hebrews (Kindle Locations 648-649). Kindle Edition.

[6] Craig S. Keener. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p.651.

[7] Ray C. Stedman, p.23.