First And Final Word

“Anyone who has seen me,” said Jesus to Philip, “has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Our world is full of people trying in an amazing variety of ways to experience something beyond ordinary experience—seeking transcendence, the “other,” the answer to the enigmas of existence—to see God, in other words. This opening to the letter to the Hebrews states categorically that this is only possible in full authenticity and integrity through the unique Jesus. In Jesus, we find not just an undefined experience of God, but God himself, communicating and acting. How can we be sure in our last days that this is also the final word of truth? Because the Son is not just a messenger from a God but the all-powerful co-creator and sustainer of this universe, one with the Father in all dimensions of glory and authority. We can be fully satisfied with this revelation. It comes from God and is graced with an explanation—Jesus’ atoning death, attested to by his resurrection, is sufficient for our purification (3). This first paragraph is worth reading time and time again, experiencing in its language something of the wonder of our salvation and committing the words to memory so that the Holy Spirit can bring them to mind when we feel alone or insignificant. It is an opening that sets the pattern of the whole epistle. Treasured Old Testament references are the beginning but they leave us wanting something more. That “more” is Jesus who, understood through the earlier “God-breathed” revelation (2 Tim. 3:16), nevertheless fulfils it so completely that he is the final word. Attending to that word is the first instruction in Hebrews and the key to our spiritual perseverance and maturity.

Does knowing that Jesus is on the “right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (3) influence your confidence or actions?