The Son-Word

From Hebrews: The New Testament Everyday Bible Study, with questions by Becky Castle Miller.

The Faithful God and the Son-Word

Hebrews 1:1-4

^1:1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

³ The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. ⁴ So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

God has always communicated with humans. But God only fully communicated with humans in the face of God’s Son. We can call the Son here the “Son-Word of God.” In Jesus Christ we see the fullness of who God is, what God does, and what God wills for all creation. As the Son-Word of God, Jesus is unlike anything else that reveals God and unlike any other human. As the Son-Word of God, Jesus is better than various features in the story and practices of Israel.

Lines as aesthetically designed as these are deserve more than an ordinary paragraph of prose. Unfortunately, most translates do just that. To echo the aesthetical beauty of these opening verses to the Sermon, I reformatted the NIV in a way similar to my own translation (The Second Testament). In Greek the entirety of verse one is the subject of the verb in verse two! That is, “The God who spoke [back then, in all those ways] spoke to us in these last days.” One more feature of this beautiful introduction: the following words all begin with the Greek letter “pi” (p, π): “past” and “ancestors” and “prophets” and “many times” and “various ways.” David deSilva reproduces those p’s in his translation: “piece meal and partial were God’s past pronouncements to the patriarchs through the prophets” (deSilva, Hebrews, 19).

God spoke

Though the NIV starts with “In the past God,” the original text begins with “in many places and in many patterns.” This will set up the time of God’s multivariant speaking to humans, which was “in the past” (1:1). The Instructor does not care about what God communicated in creation or in the heart of humans. His concern is God’s multivariant speech “through the prophets.” That is, the prophets in the Instructor’s Bible, roughly equivalent to our Old Testament. Robert Alter’s magnificent translation of the Hebrew Bible is in three volumes: the law of Moses, the prophets, and the writings. The Instructor has Alter’s second volume in mind. Yet, because the Instructor cites texts from throughout all three of those sections in the Old Testament, we are wise to think he saw the entire scriptures as written by prophets.

Only in grasping God’s speaking through God’s prophets can one grasp either God’s communication to humans or God’s communication in the Son. The revelation of God in the Son fulfills, expands, and extends what God had said in the past through the prophets. Yet, what God speaks in the Son is entirely consistent with what God has said in the past. The Old Testament then is not some relic nor is it of interest for nostalgia. Rather, it is God’s communication that alone makes sense of the Son-Word of God. The New Testament is to the Old Testament what a computer is to a typewriter – the same and altogether new all at the same time. (Just ask those of us older than sixty.) As Amy Peeler has written, “this filial speech, speech in a person who is God’s begotten, is not a response to a failure of communication in the prophetic mode but the goal for which all the other communication was preparing” (Peeler, Hebrews, 41). If we diminish the Old Testament we degrade God, the Son, and the Spirit. If we diminish the Old Testament we degrade the New Testament.

The Son-Word of God

That complex communication from God to God’s people through prophets came to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Son-Word of God (1:2-4). If we let them, these verses will probe us to ask ourselves what we think of Jesus. In particular, we will ask if we think of Jesus in as exalted of terms as the Instructor lays out in the lines of today’s reading. The exalted Son-Word of God remains faithful to us, and with such an exalted person at our side we can live a long faithfulness.

Let this then be said: the Instructor opens by magnifying Jesus Christ as God’s Son, the very Word spoken by God. He doesn’t begin this Sermon by talking about himself; he doesn’t emote his feelings for his audience; and he doesn’t outline what he’s about to say. He brags about Jesus. Nothing else, nothing less, nothing more. If we follow the Instructor’s strategy, we will always begin with Jesus. The Word of God has a face, and it’s the face of Jesus. We need to wonder what God is saying to us, and we don’t need to wander into our own thoughts and discernments about what God is saying. God has spoken and the Word spoken is “Jesus.” As Eugene Peterson once preached, “Mary’s firstborn is God’s last word” and that what Israel’s long and longer story “needed was not another commentary but a conclusion – not another book but a last chapter to the book they already had” (Peterson, Lights a Lovely Mile, 23, 26). This opening paragraph to the Sermon ought to prompt each of us to spend more time with Jesus by reading the Gospels, and the Old Testament Jesus himself knew.

Much is said about the Son in these three words, beginning with (a) Jesus being God’s communication “in these last days” (1:2). This doesn’t mean the end of time. Rather, it means the last message God has for God’s people in this world. In Jesus the last days begin, and the next moment in God’s plan is the kingdom of God’s full arrival. God not only speaks the Son-Word but God “appointed” Jesus to be (b) “heir of all things,” which will be on full display when the final kingdom arrives. From the final future to the beginning of beginnings, the Instructor then says of Jesus that God “made the universe” (c) through him. But, the translation “universe” suggests the materiality of creation when the term itself suggests time itself. The Instructor chose a term better translated as “Eras” or what is often translated as “ages.” The Instructor wants us to keep our minds fixed on the plan of God in history, the unfolding of time and God’s redemptive plan, and he wants us to know that Jesus is both the origin and the goal of all time!

Sidebar: The Wisdom of God in the Wisdom of Solomon and Hebrews 1:3

The following text is found in the Old Testament’s apocryphal text called “The Wisdom of Solomon,” and what is said here of wisdom shows parallels with what the Instructor says about Jesus.

For she is a breath of the power of God

and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;

therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.

For she is a reflection [same as radiance in Hebrews] of eternal light,

a spotless mirror of the working of God,

and an image of his goodness.

Although she is but one, she can do all things,

and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;

in every generation she passes into holy souls

and makes them friends of God and prophets,

for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.

She is more beautiful than the sun

and excels every constellation of the stars.

Compared with the light she is found to be more radiant,

for it is succeeded by the night,

but against wisdom evil does not prevail

She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,

and she orders all things well (Wisdom of Solomon 7:25-8:1, NRSVue).

End

From these three observations about Jesus, the Instructor moves to terms about Who Jesus is in this Son-Word of God (1:3). He is (d) the “radiance of God’s glory” and (e) “the exact representation of his being” (1:3). Radiance can be active in the sense that the Son radiates the glory of God (cf. 2 Peter 1:19). But it could also be passive in the sense that the Son reflects the glory of God. Since the second term (“representation”) evokes the passive sense, it is more likely that Jesus here actively radiates the glories of Who he is. Somewhat the way lava in a volcano radiates the heat and colors of what lies below the surface of a volcano. As the one who represents, Jesus is a precise and perfect depiction of the very “being” of God. What makes God God is Who Jesus is. He is like a stamp’s impression on wax, with God as the stamp and Jesus as the impression.

The Instructor cannot say enough so he moves on: the Son-Word of God (f) is “sustaining all things by his powerful world” (1:3). The Son is not only the creator and the goal, but the Son radiates and depicts who God is throughout history and in the middle of that history, in these last days, the Son has “provided purification for sins,” accomplishing what the law required (1:3). In “purification” we meet a term (cf. 9:13, 14, 22, 23; 10:2, 22) that will be but one term among many about purity, the temple, sacrifice, priests, and the redemption the Son provides. Purity describes a condition (a person) or a setting (the temple) or a thing (altar) or an animal (lamb) fit for the presence of God. To purify then is to clear the way for God’s presence. Jesus purifies to make us fit for God’s presence, which is the final end to our journey of long faithfulness.

In these last days the Son not only revealed God and accomplished redemption, but then capped it off when he “sat down at the right of the Majesty in heaven” (1:3). Once again, the time element mentioned above comes to the fore. The Instructor provides for his audience a sketch of the major moments in the life of the Son-Word of God. As I mentioned in the introduction, the redemptive work of the Son cannot be reduced to his life, to his death, or to his resurrection. His work is finished only when he takes the seat next to the Father.

Because of Who he is and What he has accomplished, in sitting at the right hand of the Majesty, the Son “became as much superior,” or “so much better” (Second Testament) than “the angels as the name he has inherited” “carries so much more weight than theirs” (1:4, Second Testament). No other creation sits at the right hand of God, and no other creation can be called “Son” by the Father. The word Son is found twenty-one times in Hebrews. Notice especially 1:5, 8; 3:6; 4:14; 5:5, 8; 7:3, 28. Jesus alone is the Son of the one and only Father.

1. As you begin this study, what are your first impressions of the idea of living a long faithfulness as a Christian?

2. How did the prophets function as conduits of God’s speech to God’s people in the past?

3. How does the Son communicate God’s words to God’s people?

4. What does it mean for Jesus to be the radiance and representation of God?

5. In what ways do you need the purifying work of Jesus in your life as you seek to live out long faithfulness?

Eugene Peterson, Lights a Lovely Mile: Collected Sermons of the Church Year (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2023).