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CHAPTER 1

The Eloquence of God

HEBREWS 1:1, 2a

C. S. Lewis memorably portrayed the growing Christian's experience of an ever-enlarging Christ in his Chronicles of Narnia. Lucy, caught up in her spiritual quest, saw the lion Aslan — Christ — shining white and huge in the moonlight. In a burst of emotion Lucy rushed to him, burying her face in the rich silkiness of his mane, whereupon the great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half-sitting and half-lying between his front paws. He bent forward and touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath was all around her. She gazed up into the large, wise face.

"Welcome, child," he said.

"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."

"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.

"Not because you are?"

"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

Expanding souls encounter an expanding Christ! And this is why I am particularly enthused about these study volumes on the book of Hebrews, for that epistle has a double dose of growth-producing power — first, because it presents the greatness of Christ as no other New Testament writing does, and, second, because it repeatedly demands a response from the reader. Seriously considered, Hebrews will make us grow and find a bigger Christ.

No New Testament book has had more background research than Hebrews, and none has spawned a greater diversity of opinion. There is, of course, broad agreement about several of the most important things. Virtually all agree that the grand theme of this epistle is the supremacy and finality of Christ.

A consensus also exists regarding the general identity of the recipients: they were a group of Jewish Christians who had never seen Jesus in person, yet had believed. Their conversion had brought them hardship and persecution with the result that some had slipped back into Judaism. And, thus, the purpose for writing was to encourage them to not fall away, but to press on (cf. 2:1ff.; 3:12ff.; 6:4ff.; 10:26ff.; and 12:15ff.).

There is also universal agreement, first expressed by Origen, that "Only God knows certainly" who wrote this letter. There is also agreement that the author, whoever he was, was a magnificent stylist with an immense vocabulary and a vast knowledge of the Greek Old Testament.

So there is general agreement as to the theme, the purpose, the spiritual status of the recipients, and the anonymity and ability of the author. But from here the mystery darkens, for no scholar has yet proven the exact destination or occasion of the letter — though many contemporary scholars tentatively propose that the letter was written to a small house-church of beleaguered Jewish Christians living in Rome in the mid-sixties before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.

The respected New Testament authority William Lane, employing this thesis, has proposed a brilliant historical reconstruction that I think accords with the internal pastoral concern of the letter and makes it come alive. Hebrews, he notes, was written to a group of Jewish Christians whose world was falling apart. Their Italian locus is most probable because in the closing paragraph of Hebrews the author conveys the greetings of several Italian Christians who were with him (13:24), thus supporting the idea that the harried little church was on Italian soil — very likely in or around Rome.

Their Christianity had not been a worldly advantage. Rather, it set them up for persecution and the loss of property and privilege, and now could possibly even cost them their lives.

We know they had already paid a price for their initial commitment to Christ. As the writer recalls in 10:32-34:

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.

This description of their earlier sufferings fits well into the picture of the hardships that came to Jewish Christians under Claudius in A.D.49. Suetonius' Life of the Deified Claudius records that "There were riots in the Jewish quarter at the instigation of Chrestus. As a result, Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome" (25.4). "Chrestus," historians believe, is a reference to Christ, and the riots and expulsion occurred when Jewish Christians were banished from the synagogue by the Jewish establishment.

Now, as the author of Hebrews writes, fifteen years have gone by since the Claudian persecution, and a new persecution looms. No one has been killed yet, but 12:4 raises the possibility that martyrdom may soon come — "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood."

Lane proposes here that the circumstances accord well with the Neronian persecution that would come with the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64. The historian Tacitus records that Nero made the Christians scapegoats to remove suspicion from himself (Annals of Rome 15:44). Lane concludes, "In the year A.D. 64 martyrdom became an aspect of the Christian experience in Rome. There were several house-churches in the city, and the group addressed in Hebrews had not yet been affected by the emperor's actions. But the threat of death and arrest was real."

The writer of Hebrews was writing to admonish and encourage his friends, a small group of Jewish Christians who were scared stiff! Some had begun to avoid contact with outsiders. Some had even withdrawn from the worshiping community altogether (10:25). The author feared there might be those who, if arrested, would succumb to the conditions of release — a public denial of Christ (6:6; 10:29). The tiny home-church was asking some hard questions: Did God know what was going on? If so, how could this be happening to them? Did he care? Only God could protect them, but where was he? Why did he not answer? Why the silence of God?

The letter arrived, and word was sent out. The congregation gathered. Perhaps no more than fifteen or twenty were seated or standing around the house. All were quiet. The reader began what has been called "the most sonorous piece of Greek in the whole New Testament": "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (vv. 1, 2a). Through these magnificent words the beleaguered church was brought face to face with the God who speaks — the eloquence of God. God spoke in the past, and he speaks in the present in his Son. And this eloquence, the ultimate eloquence of the final word in God's Son, would bring them comfort in the midst of life's troubles.

GOD'S ELOQUENCE IN THE PAST

Cosmic Eloquence

Even before the prophets of old, the cosmos was filled with God's eloquence. One summer one of my associate pastors and I were walking home together on a particularly clear night. We looked at the North Star, the Big Dipper, the Pleiades. My fellow-minister identified the Dog Star Canis Major (Sirius), the brightest star in both hemispheres. Then we began to joke about how all this happened "by chance." The vastness and precision of our cosmos declares the necessity of a magnificent God!

The argument from order is overwhelming. If I put ten pennies in my pocket and number them one to ten, then put my hand back in my pocket, my chances of pulling out the number one penny would be one in ten. If I place the number one penny back in my pocket and mix all the pennies again, the chances of pulling out penny number two would be one in a hundred. The chances of repeating the same procedure and coming up with penny number three would be one in a thousand. To do so with all of them (one through ten in order) would be one in ten billion! Noting the order and design of our universe, Kepler — the founder of modern astronomy, discoverer of the "Three Planetary Laws of Motion," and originator of the term satellite — said, "The undevout astronomer is mad." David sang:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)

The cosmic eloquence of God is deafening, but many will not hear it. And even those who hear, hear partially. As Job said, "And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?" (26:14). The eloquence of God is always there for the believer willing to hear it. So often those who have heard it best have heard it when life was darkest — perhaps while persecuted or in prison. Bunyan, Rutherford, Bonhoeffer, Solzhenitsyn, Colson —

all looked through the bars and saw the stars.

Prophetic Eloquence

God's people have always had more than the eloquence of the heavens, for they have had the prophets. "In the past," says the writer, "God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways" (v. 1) — literally, "in many parts and many ways." The emphasis here is on the grand diversity of God's speech in the Old Testament. God utilized great devices to instruct his prophets. God spoke to Moses at Sinai in thunder and lightning and with the voice of a trumpet. He whispered to Elijah at Horeb in "a still small voice" (1 Kings 19:12, KJV). Ezekiel was informed by visions and Daniel through dreams. God appeared to Abram in human form and to Jacob as an angel. God declared himself by Law, by warning, by exhortation, by type, by parable.

And when God's seers prophesied, they utilized nearly every method to communicate their message. Amos gave direct oracles from God. Malachi used questions and answers. Ezekiel performed bizarre symbolic acts. Haggai preached sermons. And Zechariah employed mysterious signs.

The significance of this immensely creative and variegated communication is that it dramatically demonstrated God's loving desire to communicate with his people. It was never hackneyed, never boring, never inscrutable, never irrelevant. It was always adequate for the time. It was always progressive, revealing more of God and his ways. It was always in continuity with the previous words of God.

Through God's cosmic and prophetic eloquence men and women rose to live life on the highest plane. Abraham achieved the faith to offer his own son. Moses withstood Pharaoh through mighty miracles. David slew Goliath. Daniel achieved and maintained massive integrity in Babylon. But in all of this (its adequacy, its progressiveness, its continuity, its power), God's eloquence was never complete. As grand as it was, it was nevertheless fragmentary and lacking.

GOD'S ELOQUENCE IN THE PRESENT

But no more! For in Christ came an astonishing eloquence, the ultimate speech of God — "but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (v. 2a). Jesus is God's final word. The Greek here is simply in huios, "in Son" — emphasizing that the person of his Son contains everything. He is the ultimate medium of communication. God has spoken to us in his Son!

An unbeliever was once musing about what he considered to be the impossibility of knowing God. His thinking was that as Creator, God created us in the same way as a dramatist creates his characters and that the gap was so vast between God and man that men could no more know God than Hamlet could know his author-creator Shakespeare. But as the man thought further, he realized that his analogy suggested just the opposite: for Shakespeare as creator could make it possible. Extending the analogy, Shakespeare could, in principle, write himself into the play and dialogue with Hamlet. The "Shakespeare" would of course be both Shakespeare and one of Shakespeare's creatures. It is an imperfect analogy, but God the Father did write himself into life in his Son, making the ultimate communication.

This amazing eloquence of God is substantially the same as that described in the chain of thought in John 1, which begins, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (v. 1). Jesus here, of course, is "the Word," and though much more can be said about this term because of its rich history in Greek literature, its main significance here is that Christ has always sought to reveal himself. An interpretative paraphrase could well read, "In the beginning was the Communication." From eternity, Christ as the Word has always longed to communicate himself.

Through the Incarnation God wrote himself into life — "The Word became flesh and lived for a while [literally, made his dwelling] among us" (v.14). He put on skin, so to speak. He made it possible for us to know him as we never before could. God in the flesh was the height of communication.

God hath spoken by His prophets, Spoken his unchanging Word; Brightness of the Father's glory, With the Father ever one;

Spoken by the Word Incarnate,God of God ere time began, Light of Light, to earth descending,Man, revealing God to man.

What is the result of all this eloquence? We meet God the Father! "No one has ever seen God," says John, "but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made him known" (John 1:18). Jesus exegeted God. That is some communication! The astounding eloquence of God!

Ingmar Bergman, the celebrated Swedish filmmaker, recounts that one day while he was listening to Stravinsky, he had a vision of a nineteenth-century cathedral. In the vision Bergman found himself wandering about a great building and finally coming before a picture of Christ. Realizing its importance, Bergman said to the picture, "Speak to me! I will not leave this cathedral until you speak to me!" But of course the picture did not speak. That same year he produced The Silence, a film about characters who despair of ever finding God.

Bergman's problem was, he was looking at the wrong picture. Rather, he needed to listen to the massive eloquence of the Christ of Scripture — "in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son." He needs to see the eloquence of Christ's character and speech and actions and, above all, the sublime eloquence of the cross, for there he speaks salvation.

The apparent silence of God in the face of imminent persecution that troubled that tiny house-church two millennia ago provides a touch-point with today, for Ingmar Bergman well-represents our troubled world that bristles at the imagined silence of God. God has eloquently spoken to us in creation and through his prophets in the Old Testament and now, most of all, through the awesome eloquence of his Son.

The healing method of the writer of Hebrews, as we shall see, is to lift the Son higher and higher and higher. He is sure that the eloquence of Christ's person will help his readers meet the challenges ahead. For him, holding up Christ is the most practical thing on earth. Indeed, Jesus, understood and exalted, eloquently informs every area of life.

There are only two kinds of people who hear God's Word: those who are not yet his children, and those who are. True, some are nearer than others on the road to Christ. But nevertheless there are only these two categories.

To those who are not yet true children of God, I give this challenge: Read one of the Gospels through, sincerely praying the essence of Bergman's prayer over it as you go: "Speak to me! Please speak to me!" I also challenge them to carefully study the book of Hebrews, for in it they will find life-changing thoughts that are unique to the New Testament.

I challenge those who are God's children with the thought that Hebrews is a practical book. They may be beleaguered, perhaps even wondering if they can continue on with life. Perhaps they are looking for a manual that will help them handle stress. Hebrews is the "manual" they are looking for, because the essential answer is in the supremacy and finality of Christ.

In the midst of the battle, may this be our lot:

"Lord ... you're bigger."

"That is because you've grown my child."

"Not because you are?"

"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

For a time Lucy was so happy that she did not want to speak. But God has spoken. Oh, the eloquence of God!

... but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (1:2, 3)

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Excerpted from "Hebrews, Volume One"
by .
Copyright © 1993 R. Kent Hughes.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
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