Perfect Through Suffering

Hello everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed going through old blogs while I was away and I do see that several of you appreciated my tribute to the Curtmudgeon. We all miss him and we’ll see him again someday, but I am sure if there’s one thing he’d want, it’d be for me to keep going on my blog and teach the Trinity. He was always caring for others after all. I thank you all for your prayers as well as I’m having to overcome a lot of self-doubt and fear and anxiety and other such things. I ask for your continued prayers as I overcome this greatest hurdle in my life. For now, let’s get to the Trinitarian text for tonight, Hebrews 2:10-13.

¹⁰In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. ¹¹Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. ¹²He says,
“I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.” ¹³And again,
“I will put my trust in him.” And again he says,
“Here am I, and the children God has given me.”

Perfect through suffering? It’s a thought we don’t like to think about. When you are going through suffering, it isn’t always comforting to know that this will be used for good. Many of us would say “Forget the future good and just end my pain now!”

But how is Jesus made perfect? Jesus is made perfect not in an ontological sense but in the sense that he is entirely human and undergoes the gamut of human suffering. He is the one who truly lives a human life and he lived one of intense suffering. The very Son of God in Isaiah 53 after all is described as a man of sorrows.

We are also of the same family as we are called the brothers of Christ. Now this is not in the sense of brothers by nature but brothers by adoption. He is holy and we are made holy. He is holy by his nature as the Son of God and we are made holy by participating in his holiness.

Jesus is seen as the missionary here as it were coming to his brothers and saying that he will declare God’s name to them. Jesus was the only one who could truly do this because he is the only one who truly knows the name of God.

The next two verses go together. They are from Isaiah 8 calling the people of Israel to remember that their God is the one they are to regard as holy. Holiness as we will see is a constant theme throughout the book of Hebrews as it should be a theme throughout the life of the Christian. It is by putting our trust in YHWH that we are made holy and then are made children of God that come before him through Christ.

We shall continue with more in Hebrews tomorrow.