The Cosmic Throne Becomes the Throne of Grace

“Our subject is the divinity of Christ, not his humanity, and so here I merely mention the way Hebrews portrays Jesus as the high priest who can fulfill his ministry only by sharing fully the human condition, becoming like his brothers and sisters in every respect, tested in every respect through suffering and death, so that he understands human weakness and now, from his heavenly throne, exercises mercy and grace to sinners. What is perhaps less well recognized is the connection between lordship (the subject of chap. 1) and high priesthood (the subject that chap. 2 begins to treat) that the author achieves by his use of Ps. 8. 

The latter is used to show that it is only through incarnation, humiliation, and everything it means to be mortal humanity that the Son could attain to his eschatological lordship over all things. This is because his lordship is exercised for the sake of his human brothers and sisters. It is now no longer simply the sovereignty he shared with his Father from eternity, but now a sovereignty exercised in human solidarity with humans. The cosmic throne is now also therefore the throne of grace that sinners can approach with boldness (4:16). So the high priestly work of atonement is the way in which he comes to exercise his sovereignty in the the way that he does — salvifically.”

[Richard Bauckham, “The Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in Bacukham, ed., The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, 26–27]

Here an Apostle Speaks

“Overtaken as we are by such apostolic witness, we surely find that one way of proceeding has been irrevocably barred from us. We are no longer entitled to take up a position vis-á-vis what is said, to handle it as a possible but not inescapably necessary object of our acknowledgement. Still less are we free to peer behind it and give ourselves a satisfactory account of its background and genesis, or to transcend it by conceptual translation. Here an apostle speaks, and what is said transcends and encloses us. It also transcends and encloses our exegetical and dogmatic labours, which will remain disordered until directed by the confession that in these last days God has spoken to us by one who is Son. The historical, literary, and speculative virtues of exegetes and dogmaticians are therefore subordinate to spiritual graces: faithfulness to the apostolic gospel, attentiveness, perseverance, charity in debate and humility under correction, openness to the gifts of God, a desire to serve the church.”

[John Webster, “One Who Is Son” in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, 96]

The Ground of Israel and the Church is God

“Yet there is more: this continuity-within-contrast [found in the exordium to Hebrews, 1:1–4] is grounded in God. What gives shape, direction, coherence and climax to the ‘great drama of history of revelation’ is God as its enduring subject. The simple, absolute noun θεος, unadorned by epithet or appositional phrase, not only holds together the participial statement and the main clause; it announces the fundamental reality in which all else in the exhortation has its ground.…

God as the single speaking subject in the history of revelation is the ‘pledge and ground’ of revelation’s historical unity It is because of God, therefore, that the church cannot overlook ‘the fathers,’ that is, Israel. This history of divine revelation, at whose latter end stands the church, includes the existence of Israel as the sphere of prospect and promise. This means, therefore, that the church’s continuity with Israel is not simply at the level of the history of religions; it is, rather a theological state of affairs which must be elucidated out of the fact that at different points in the sequential history of revelation both israel and the church are addressees of God’s speech.”

[John Webster, “One Who Is Son: Theological Reflections on the Exordium of the Epistle to the Hebrews” in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, 75]