Hebrews 2:5-18

Having sufficiently brought out the permanence and sovereignty of the Son by contrasting them with the fleeting personality and ministerial function of angels, the author now proceeds to bring the supremacy of the Son into direct relation to the Messianic administration of “the world to come,” the ideal condition of human affairs; and to explain why for the purposes of this administration it was needful and seemly that “the Lord” should for a season appear in a form “a little lower than the angels”. The world of men as it was destined to be [ἡ οἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα] was a condition of things in which man was to be supreme, not subject to any kind of slavery or oppression. And if the Jew asked why, in order to bring this about, the appearance of the Son in so apparently inglorious a form was necessary; if he asked why suffering and death on His part were necessary, the answer is, that it was God's purpose to bring, not angels, but many human sons to glory and that as there is but one path, and that a path of suffering, by which men can reach their destiny, it was becoming that their leader should act as pioneer in this path. His path to glory must be a path in which men can follow Him; because it is from the human level and as man that He wins to glory. More particularly His sufferings accomplish two objects: they produce in Him the sympathy which qualifies Him as High Priest, while His death breaks the power which kept them enslaved and in fear. [On this section Robertson Smith's papers in the Expositor, 1881 2, should be consulted.]