Reading: Hebrews 2.
"The Son of man made a little lower than the angels". This
is with a specific object in view, because angels cannot die, they
are not mortal beings, therefore He was made a "little lower"
because of the suffering of death. So that Christ was brought into
line with the race which had been created with the possibility of
suffering death - as that possibility had become actual in the
race of Adam, death became actual. And "He tasted death for
every man." He partook of flesh and blood and by that was
brought into vital relationship with the children, sharers of
flesh and blood. Partaking of flesh and blood always involves
responsibility with others. And God looks upon the race as a
corporate whole, one, represented by one Man. That old race
represented by Adam is called Adam - man. It is one by reason of
the nature of flesh and blood it shares.
In the new creation, one Man is its corporate nature, the Man
Christ Jesus. Sharing in the risen life of Christ, not blood now
as in the old race, but oneness of life in Christ Jesus. In eating
of His flesh - one corporate Man - He in partaking of flesh and
blood involved Himself in responsibility for others, for the race.
He took that which was the corporate life of the race by sharing
that which made the race one corporate entity, flesh and blood.
This involves the principle of responsibility. He took that on
when He was made a partaker with them of flesh and blood.
Man was created for dominion and Adam failed in that Divine
destiny; but in the Son of Man the Divine desire that was missed
and lost in the first man, is gained, attained unto in the "second
Man", the "last Adam". In the course of the Divine destiny there
is training for dominion by obedience and suffering. And finally
man is designed by God to attain unto bodily glory. The Lord Jesus
represents the meaning of bodily glory; in the mount His
transfiguration came by the very perfection of His humanity. The
Lord Jesus as Son of Man gathers up all the Divine thought
concerning man and realises it in Himself. God's thought for man
is secured in Him in glory, and the Holy Spirit is given to
produce that in the "children", "brethren", "sons".
The apostle draws on the Old Testament very freely by which to
introduce the family in the House of God. The Lord Jesus as Son of
man had to be glorified before He could be crucified. After His
crucifixion He entered into His glory permanently; the death of
the Lord Jesus takes its character from the fact that He had
already been glorified on the ground of His perfected Manhood, His
sinless humanity. If the Lord Jesus had gone to the cross before
He had reached His perfection, He could not have answered the
accuser, could not have met the prince of darkness. In His manhood
He was perfect before He reached the cross, before He met and
overcame all the powers of darkness. It was necessary for God to
be able to say to the full, "a man after My own heart".
The transfiguration of the Lord Jesus was on the ground of the
perfecting of His humanity; He was also representing the destiny
of the race in Christ attaining unto the glorified body. The
physical body is not glorified; it is a spiritual body that is
glorified. That destiny was reached in the Mount of
Transfiguration in the Son of Man; to make possible the mighty
impact of that perfect humanity upon the powers of darkness.
What is before us in these seven things, is the Son of Man in
representation. When God, having created a man without a sinful
environment, but in which everything was to call out the best in
him and with nothing in the strain of his blood to work against
him, and yet with all these advantages, and in direct
communication and fellowship with God Himself, and being the
highest creation outside of God, he had utterly failed, God said,
"There is nothing for it but for Me as man to reveal My thought
for man". So God accepted the limitation and dependence and came
to live upon man's level of life, in weakness in Himself, in utter
dependence of Life from above.
Here in Christ as Son of Man you have God setting up His standard
in Christ as Man, and going through triumphantly where the best
man in a perfect environment had failed. All God's thoughts
concerning man were wrought out in this Man, and then He went back
to the glory with that perfection and the Holy Spirit was sent out
to bring others with that moral glory wrought into them. In the
exaltation and exalting of the Lord Jesus as Son of Man, the race
has been enthroned and put into its destined position. The racial
Man is there in the glory at the right hand of the Majesty on
High.
Ezekiel brings that in very much. How many times in that book
comes the phrase, "son of man"! And Luke is peculiarly the gospel
which presents the Lord Jesus to us as the Son of Man; and then
that is also so very fully in the letter to the Hebrews. We have
got to see more of the content that is "in Christ" as the
Corporate Man in the House of God. When God comes in Christ into
this world He approaches the race, approaches man along the line
of priesthood. When God approaches man to recover His original
design for man, it is always along the line of priesthood. Now the
Son of Man came in to recover the original destiny for man.
The exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt is a microcosm of
the whole thing. Here we have a people sold to sin, under the
bondage of darkness, who have lost their life of freedom in God.
This is a type of the race in sin and under the power of darkness,
in bondage to Satan, in spiritual death. God regards that nation
in the light of one man, a corporate entity in him, and says to
Pharaoh: "Let My son go that he may serve Me". So we see
God's thought from eternity has always been the same: a corporate
people, one man. It is important to notice the tenses of God's
utterances. When dealing with the lamb of the Passover, hundreds
of lambs were slain that night, but God speaks of it as the
lamb; there is only one Lamb in the thought of God. Israel was not
regarded as so many people, but as a race.
When God comes to bring out a man to Himself with that thought in
it: "to Himself", to make of them a people having dominion in the
earth, subjecting all things under them, He says to them, "I
would have you above only, not beneath". In that typical movement
of God which is a type of a greater thing, to be representative of
His thought - world dominion - He approaches along the line of
priesthood. For in Israel that night the head of the house became
a priest. And the threshold of every house became the altar, the
most sacred part of the house. The threshold was a marked place,
even a robber would climb up by some other way! Because of the
sacredness of the threshold, some people have the custom of hanging
up horseshoes etcetera for protection. The blood was taken from
the threshold and sprinkled on the two side posts and lintel and
so you had a complete circle of blood; thus passing through an
encircling of blood from death unto life. And God was approached
along the line of priesthood in virtue of shed blood - to secure
His end.
Now in Ezekiel you come into the book by way of the priest: "The
word came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest" (Ezek. 1:3),
and in that book you pass on in a very full way to the House of
God. The Divine thoughts are expressed in that house in every
detail; it is the corporate people. In Ezekiel you have the House
of God with Life; predominant Life is everywhere in Ezekiel. In
the very first chapter, mighty, victorious Life is brought into
view. You have a four-fold representation of the Son of Man, with
the features of the four gospels, and this is carried on into
Revelation and the four Living Creatures. This is a representation
of Christ the Son of Man, but ultimately the whole creation in
relation with Him as the Son of Man. "Full of eyes" signifies
perfect spiritual vision, perfect cognisance, and moving in
perfect Life! Then later on you have the "dry bones" coming forth
out of their graves and Life given to them. And in Ezekiel 47 you
have the river coming out from the threshold of the House of God
by way of the altar, till there are "waters to swim in" and on
either side of the bank of the river trees bearing fruit; a
beautiful picture of Life.
The book opens with priesthood, and how frequently to him is
said, "son of man". He is a representation of God's thought, and
the House is seen coming in as God's thought; yes, but the way of
God's approach is by priesthood.
In Luke, the key word is "Son of Man". It is used twenty-five
times of our Lord. The Lord Jesus is a representation of God's
thought. God is approaching... in Christ as Son of Man. Where does
God begin? With the priest Zacharias (there are two dozen
Zacharias priests). Priesthood is the way of approach.
Come over to the letter to the Hebrews. The basic thing in the
letter is priesthood, and the House of God is brought in by way of
the priesthood; the Son of Man is there as the, "High priest
who sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high" (Heb.
8:1). Why all this? Firstly, the priesthood always carries with it
the principle of sympathy. We have this in this very letter
clearly stated, "Jesus the Son of God... we have not an High
Priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our
infirmities, One that hath been tempted in all points like as we
are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:14-15). This is said of the
faithful High Priest having understanding; the priesthood always
carried with it that element of understanding sympathy.
Aaron added the sympathy side to the administrative side carried
out by Moses; they two made one man. This is a very helpful truth
for us, that when God comes in to seek to recover that which has
been lost and missed the way, He always approaches man along the
line of sympathy. Priesthood is always the way of God's approach
to man. How different is man's thought of God, and the adversary
has made it his continual business to malign God. We see this in
Psalm 2, quoted by the little company in Acts 4 verse 26, when men
provoked by the devil take counsel "against the Lord". The
adversary has been against God from the time that God cast him out
of heaven and his whole intent and purpose is to injure God. He
presses that in with the saint more than with the ungodly and he
never gives up hope of provoking thoughts against God, raising
questions about His love, or doubts concerning His dealings with
us in some subtle way. And he will try to use that which comes out
of our experience to make us bitter against God. In order to
malign God, the enemy will give a complexion to anything that is
not true, such as: "The Lord is against you, the Lord is displeased
with you. He has left you, He does not hear you". In this way he
seeks to inject his own malignity into our hearts. The more
saintly the Lord's people are, the more they know the intenseness
and agony of this conflict. Those who go on most with the Lord
will know more of this battle. Sometimes faith is so tested by the
enemy, as he pounces upon everything God intended to bring us to
overcome, that it becomes the very thing that destroys us, casts
us down, nullifies our fighting force and our ascendency in
spirit.
God has not come in judgment, He has come in sympathy, "The
Son of man is not come to judge the world but to save the world",
the keynote of Luke; not to judge, but to save. The Lord is
seeking to recover us; we may have to suffer, but it is along the
line of sympathy. "My son regard not lightly the chastening of
the Lord... for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom He places at His side" (literal
translation). And the word "chastening" is more truly rendered
"child-training". God comes along the line of sympathy; priesthood
is sympathy. This is one more of those secrets of victory!
In His priesthood, by the offering of Himself, the shedding of
His blood is a demonstration of the love of God. To overcome is to
apprehend the truth about God in Christ, and to see this
approaching in sympathy. By so doing we have undercut the
malignity of the devil and destroyed his power. Satan has a ground
in our fallen soul to work upon. And the way of victory is faith
in God as approaching us along the sympathetic line. It is God
taking the initiative in sympathy, and He Himself stretched out in
love to recover man. In that shed blood we have the expression of
love coming to recover. His recovering love does not mean there
may not be scourging, but when we can see it is all in love and
unto the ultimate of love, the ground is taken from the feet of
the devil and we go through the chastening in triumph and obtain
God's purpose for us in it.
The sharing of this world dominion with the Son of His love is
along the line of chastening. What has God in view in relation to
our suffering? The throne! The most successful way of preventing
that man-child from coming to the throne is to get doubts about
God's goodness to us in our hearts. Satan lost his throne and
turned against God. He saw God's intention to bring a race to that
place which he himself lost, and even higher than that, "in
Christ". Then he set about how to defeat that intention. He will
put antagonism into the heart of man concerning God's chastening
in love to bring him into that state and position.
If, in the chastening, (and "all chastening for the time
seemeth not to be joyous but grievous") we would say, "The
Lord has some loving and higher purpose in this, the Lord has some
glory in this, and I am out after that", and faith lays hold of
God's intention, then we have qualified in that measure for our
Divine destiny: 'world dominion in fellowship with the Son of Man
through the Cross'. Dominion is a moral and a spiritual thing.