Jim Staley on Hebrews 2

Now, I'm not here to debate the Trinity or to even prove the deity of Christ. But for these points here, I want to just point out that the author is trying to make a point that there's only really three options here. You've got God, you've got angels, and you've got men. He can't be just a man, or you could never represent God. It's not possible. And if He's only a man and even a perfect man, He could only forgive the sins of the people of His generation, which, by the way, is exactly what the Essenes and the Qumran community believed. They believed that there was going to be a man that was going to be a perfect high priest, and He would pay for the sins of the people of that generation. That's exactly what would happen if it was only a perfect man. He can't be an angel because it says right here that He was higher than the angels, is far greater than the angels. The only other option is part of God. Now, we may not understand it, but like I said before, it's very similar to the ocean —the ocean being God the Father, the Son being the waves and the mist being the Holy Spirit. They're all connected. You can't take one and make it without the other. You can't have the ocean without waves and the waves without the ocean. And the mist comes from the waves that come from the ocean. So everything is interconnected. And at the end of the day, we don't have to understand it fully. We just know that we see it all throughout scripture, that God manifests Himself in the form of an angel in the Old Testament. Matter of fact, when He came to Moses for the first time, what did He manifest Himself as? A fiery bush? And the scripture actually says it's the Angel of the Lord. Doesn't say that it's Yahweh. It says it's the Angel of Yahweh. And that The Angel of Yahweh and the Angel led the Israelites out through Egypt, led them through the desert for 40 years. And that same Angel ends up coming and manifesting in Bethlehem in the form of a baby called Jesus or in the Hebrew tongue, Yeshua. So getting back to Philippians two here, before we go back to Hebrews, it says that He was found in appearance as a man. That means that He wasn't like every single regular man that was born on earth that was there for the very first time, that He was somewhere else because He had an appearance as a man. He humbled Himself. That means He came down. He became obedient to the point of death, even a death of a cross. And He was in the likeness of men. And He did not consider His position before as something that we could even wrap our brain around, which is why He never really went around. I'd never talked about it too much because, and when He did, He ended up getting killed. But furthermore, the very next verse in Philippians two says this in verse nine:

The Name Above All Names: Yahweh in Biblical Context

Now, I'm going to share with you a thought and a concept and a Hebraic linguistic idea that maybe you've never heard before, but I'm going to suggest to you that the name that's above every name is not Jesus. It's not even Yeshua. There's only one name above all names. The Bible says in the Tanakh and the Old Testament that it's Yahweh. Isaiah 45:23 says this. It is the quote that Philippians is quoting from: “23 I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone out from My mouth and righteousness and shall not return that to Me, every knee will bow and every tongue confess and take that oath.” Now, if you go back to Philippians, Yahweh just got done saying that everyone's going to bow to My name. Grammatically, “at the name of Jesus,” that phrase “at the name of Yeshua,” it refers to the name that belongs to Christ. In the Greek, it's the possessive genitive. This could mean that it's talking about the name Yeshua, but the phrase “the name above every name” would be very strange to describe Yeshua as the name, because it's a common human name in the first century. Probably thousands of people were named Yeshua, but because this is a direct quote from Isaiah 45, where there is only one name that every knee bows to, and the author just said that He came out of heaven and was cloaked in human form, it makes far more sense, in my opinion, that He's given back His authority, which is always found in a name. That's why I would say “Yeshua ben Joseph.” It's Yeshua, the son of Joseph. His authority came from His father, that came from His father, that came from His father. This is why Yeshua could not have a human father, because the authority comes from the father, not the mother. That's why it's Yeshua that only has a mother that's on earth. It's “Yeshua ben Yahweh.” He's the son of Yahweh, so His authority comes from His name. Today, everything is about our last name. In that time period, everything was about your father and His character. So I'm going to suggest to you that it is all about the name, and the name that was given above all names. Jesus was given the name of His Father, and it's at that name that every knee will bow. Revelation chapter 5, verse 13 says it this way: “13 Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.” This would be blasphemy in many minds of a Jewish person, that God would be honored along with His Messiah and be worshipped the same way. But this is exactly what Revelation says, that the honor and glory that's given to God will be given to the Lamb as well, because the Lamb came from the Father. The Father stepped down out of heaven, manifesting Himself in the form of a Lamb, in the form of a human, and it was Him who came and died for His bride. No one else could die for the bride except for the bridegroom. The Old Testament says that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He's the bridegroom. It's the bridegroom that died for His bride and set her free from the law of adultery, so that He could rise from the dead and offer Himself as an eligible bachelor once again.

Yeshua being connected to deity does not make Him another god. It doesn't break the Shema. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The word “one” in Hebrew, “echad,” does not mean singularity but rather a unified connection of one, like a cluster of grapes is one cluster, it doesn't mean it's one grape. It's many grapes, one cluster. The body of Christ is “echad.” It's many members, one body. The brain is “echad.” It's two hemispheres with a connector, one brain (left Father, right Son and in the middle the Spirit connecting both sides). If we look at it that way, then we have God Himself manifesting in the flesh as the Bridegroom, laying His own life down for His bride. He doesn't have a mere human do it. It wouldn't even work. It would only pay for the sins of that generation. But because Yeshua came from God, He's that side of the brain. He's the creative side of the brain, which is why all things were created by Him, by the right side of the brain, and through Him. Nothing was created outside of Him. It just makes sense. But because He came from eternity, for eternity on the timeline of man, He can pay for all sin from Genesis to Revelation and beyond. And I'm so grateful for that.

Let's finish up. “14 Inasmuch as the children have partaken of flesh and blood,” verse 14 “He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil.” Amen for that. “15 And release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage,“ meaning that those that were afraid of death, we don't have to be afraid of death anymore. “16 For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He gives aid to the seed of Abraham.” Who were the seed of Abraham? Those that live by faith. “17 Therefore in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people,” to make sacrifice for the sins of the people, to make payment for the sins of the people. “18 For in that He Himself had suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.”