Week 49 Hebrews
Right away the writer starts dividing things up into Thens & Nows.
Then: God…spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways.
Now: in these last days (God) has spoken to us in His Son.
Of the two you get the sense pretty quickly that the writer’s big concern is the Now – by the time he’s thirty words in he starts giving details about the Son, about Jesus Christ.
If I’d decided in August to jot down all the other things I found about the Lord after I’d finished the gospels I’d definitely be writing down things from Hebrews 1:
(God) has spoken to us through his Son
God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance
Through the Son (God) made the universe and everything in it
The Son reflects God’s own glory
Everything about (the Son) represents God exactly
(The Son) sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command.
These aren’t simple ideas. But this kind of information really bulks up what I learned about Jesus in the gospel stories. And since the gospels already showed me a pretty muscular Lord, some of this post-gospels material really piles on substance, complexity, and dimension. The outside-the-gospel writers supplement what I learned about the gospel-Lord. There’s more to him than meets the eye.
[I’d like to be more alert to that next time through.]
Note: quotes from Hebrews 1:1-2 (NASB) and 1:2-3 (NLT)