Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The New Testament Book of Hebrews may take us into the theological stratosphere in the knowledge of God, but it is also written for the little child to learn to know the Lord who saved us on His cross.
Paul says, "We see Jesus"! (Heb. 2:9). That's what we want above all else! Not big heavy books that no one can understand, but something we can grasp.
John the Baptist said, "Behold! The Lamb of God" (John 1:29). That's the same as Hebrews says, "we seeJesus."
How do we see Him there?
"[He] was made a little lower than the angels" (Heb. 2:9), madeto be what He was not by nature.
But because He bore that cross on which He died our terrible second death, Jesus is forever "crowned with glory and honor" (2:9).
Jesus was born for that very purpose; our children grow up expecting to live; but this Boy grew up expecting to die--and not our ordinary death, but the death which lasts forever in hell.
Hebrews tells us here that Jesus "took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham" (2:16, King James Version). Thus, specifically, Hebrews tells us that the nature which Jesus "took" in His incarnation was our fallen, sinful nature.
But the glory of it all is that in that fallen, sinful nature like we all have, Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life. "We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (4:15, KJV).
If you can think of any temptation that is alluring to you, that you think it's impossible to say "No!" to, read again. "In all points like" as we are. Our salvation is not our work, it's His work.
It's great Good News: He will have 144, 000 (maybe a figurative number) at His second coming who will welcome Him in joy, "without fault before the throne of God" (Rev. 14:1-5).
It's not a legalism contest; it's the "much more abounding grace" of Jesus.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 23, 2008.
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