The Book of Hebrews
Chapter 2
If we place ourselves as the recipients of the Living Word (of which we truly are, for who else did God intend to speak and teach?), we find that although priests have far more responsibility in preaching and teaching and guiding souls, we each and all are called to more faithfulness.
All the more we must heed and enact what we are told by His Real Presence, the Living Word. We know that the angels’ proclamations are accurate; those that fell receive their punishment, and those who obey receive reward. Then likewise, we must not ignore the reality of what is our recompense if we disobey—nor what is given us in our obedience to God: salvation.
Jesus taught all these realities to us in His Words and His actions. We know also from the testimony of those people who were His companions as well as the general public who happened to hear Him or heard of Him. God added to the truths spoken—of our just recompense in abasement or salvation. The choice is ours. God made these truths all the more noted through signs, miracles, acts of power, and bequeathing gifts to His Son and also then to His followers—gifts of the Holy Spirit—given according to God’s will.
God did not create the world for the pleasure and salvation of angels. He created this world for us, each of us. Yet we do not know how to live in this world as subjects of God. So He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to demonstrate for us, how it is to live in subjection to Him, to be subjects of God of which all things are to be subject to Him.
For us to grasp and learn, to approach some sort of understanding of how to navigate this world and to live as all the world is to live, in subjection to God—Jesus was made man. He became our leader but not a political leader or a regime leader. He is the leader of our souls’ salvation. He is the leader who demonstrates in every temporal and spiritual detail, how to live in subjection to God yet exist in this world, among people and creatures, plants and things.
What is it that differentiates this created world from heaven? What is it that distinguishes our human lives and that of God’s existence? It is suffering. So even in suffering God partook of the toils and tribulations of what we experience here on earth. Jesus, from His mortal birth onward, met with the various hardships and trials, the persecutions, the evils, the humiliations and sacrifices, the physical pain and mental torment, the emotional sorrows, and the heartbreak of shattering disappointments of deception.
Jesus’ existence as God and as man, seals our consecration. God is the only One Who can consecrate, can make holy and sacredly divine our soul’s existence, to bind our soul in Him. Through His Son, God consecrates us and gives us one origin: holy, in God.
That is how Jesus can call us His own, the children God has given Him, His brothers and sisters. We are not only called as Christ’s own; we are made His own, become His own. By the grace of God, Jesus tasted life and swallowed death, like us, doing so for everyone.
Each of us humans share with one another blood, flesh, thoughts, emotions, outer and inner senses, and even each have souls—so also did Jesus share each human aspect with us. There is one major difference, though, and that is what we humans ought hold near and dear when we live out or lives on this earth, amidst earthly creatures and creation.
Jesus as God’s Son, in union with God and the Holy Spirit, as God has power over the one who causes pain and destruction, chaos and despair, tears and deception, in our lives: the devil. It is all that can mean “death” in our lives that we people fear throughout life. We fear death for ourselves and for others, as well, and we fear all the accompaniments of death that the devil begets in our daily lives.
These deaths are wrapped up in our wickedness to others and to creation, our deception, our pride and willfulness, our selfishness and sinfulness. The devil preys upon our weaknesses—physical ailments, emotional hurts, mental sickness, weariness, innocence, confusion, doubt, sexuality, doubts, age. The devil takes advantage of any of our disadvantages. The devil plants seeds of greed and various vices in our tired or tepid minds. We become slaves to death rather than subjects of God and glory!
But through Jesus Christ, God made man, God came to rescue us, to help us, to give us a pathway—a means of consecration—to holiness and eternal salvation. No matter what we humans may suffer or experience in this life and in this world, no matter the time period or country or under whatever earthly ruler, no matter the devil itself, Jesus has suffered likewise in each nuance and situation. Jesus, the merciful and faithful high priest before God, expiates our sins.
One must hope, even when he devil seems to have won out over a soul in this life, that Jesus in His mercy and faithfulness expiates that soul’s sins. Even when a priest, a minister of the Living Word, an alter Christus or anyone who espouses that he or she is a follower of Jesus Christ, falls short and fail but one or many of the various tests we face in life—we must have hope and faith that Jesus, the high priest, Son of God and One with the Father and Holy Spirit—expiates our failings. He ever helps those of us who are being tested.
God grant us redemption and salvation. Jesus, help us to endure this life.
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