For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. But one testified in a certain place, saying:

For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.

Hebrews 2:5-9 (NKJV)*

When I was a teenager, this passage grabbed my imagination and really locked me in as a follower of Jesus; “you have made him a little lower than the angels…” Wow!

At any rate, our author is moving on from our last tour segment, and he is making the case that Jesus is superior to the angels.  In verse 5 he mentions that the “world to come” is not in the subjection of the angels, but it is made subject to a man.  Then he quotes Psalm 8 which is an amazing journey into God’s purpose. Beginning with the great and wonderful question What is man that You are mindful of him, Or the son of man that You take care of him?  Obviously questions such as this have gone through all of our minds, but there is an amazing answer, and answer that blows us away every time we consider it. Yes, God made us “a little lower than the angels” but He also put the world under us in His hierarchy; amazing. 

Recall that back in the Garden, God gave Man “dominion” over all of the creatures of the earth; that “dominion” was not given to angels, nor was it given to any “fallen angel” for it was given to the Man.  Of course we know that particular man went astray, but there is another Man who would change that.  God put all things under Mankind, but we don’t currently see that having entirely come to pass because of what happened later, the Fall…

But we see Jesus!

Jesus, that second Man, who has changed everything, yes, we see Him! Yes, He was made a little lower than the angels, so that He could suffer death for everyone, yes, this Jesus is now crowned with glory and honor, for He has tasted death for all of us.  What a glorious sight that is! It is our deliverance! Jesus, remember who He is?  He is the One through whom all things were made, way back in the very beginning. In the fullness of time, when God saw that the right time had come, Jesus was made a little lower than the angels, which is to say that He took on the form of a human body, being entirely human and entirely divine, this amazing Jesus came to earth to take away the problem of sin and shame to restore Mankind to the purpose for which God had created Him to fulfill.

Jesus, who is in every way superior to the angels, allowed Himself to be humbled greatly to accomplish the purpose of God, and soon in God’s time, all will be returned to God’s original design. How is it that God even takes notice of Man?  Yes, it still blows my mind, but He does, for He has big plans for us!

WOW!

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*   You might notice that I used the NKJV for this text today rather than the NIV, which is hilarious timing after yesterday’s post about NIV and KJV; it wasn’t planned!  It is a good case in point in the discussion about translations, though.  The “new” NIV in my view renders this section poorly because it looses the distinction between subject and pronouns, making it unclear who the “he” refers to.  I considered retyping manually the “old” NIV, but I usually screw that up, so I checked some other versions, beginning with the KJV.  The KJV has some amazing old grammar in it in various places, this being one of them, where the subject and verb are reversed.  Good German grammar, but confusing (modern) English grammar.  It’s like the old joke: “I threw my mother from the train, a kiss.”  Not bad German, but in English it leaves you wondering who or what was tossed from the train!  KJV does this some times because English is a Germanic language, and the farther back you go, the more similar they are. I settled on the NKJV because it corrected the grammar and left the pronoun clear. Oh let’s face it, this is a hard section to translate because of the Psalm quote.  The Psalmist was referring to Mankind and the Hebrews author is interpreting the old text as it relates to the Savior of Mankind as a representative of all of us, a theological interpret on that wouldn’t have been present at the original writing, but which by nature of its divine inspiration is important for us to grasp, but tough for a translator to deal with, as you might imagine if you’ve ever studied a foreign language.