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Only One Real Answer


          It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking.  But there is a place where someone has testified:
“What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him?
You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor
 and put everything under their feet.” 
                In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them.  Yet at present, we do not see everything subject to them.  But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:5-9)
                One of the teachings that I discussed with the women who stopped by last week was Jesus’s nature. They believe that Jesus was just a man. God has rewarded him greatly, but he was just a man. They aren’t alone in this thinking, but it doesn’t agree with what we’ve seen so far in Hebrews. Today’s passage would be one they like. Man is a little lower than angels, and Jesus was made a little lower than angels. See? Jesus was just a man. 
               But that doesn’t work. If someone who was just a man could live a perfect life, could achieve salvation by his own efforts, then God didn’t need to send His Son to die. If a man can pay the price for sin on his own, then Jesus’ death and resurrection were superfluous – even a sham. We can return to religion as usual for the rest of the world. Salvation is by works. It is something we can earn. If Jesus was just a man, then Christianity and all its derivatives are jokes. 
                It does not help to say that after Jesus lived a perfect life (though he was just a man) and died unjustly as a sacrifice, he became God’s Son. For one thing, He was proclaimed God’s Son back at the beginning of His ministry. John proclaimed Him (admittedly after the fact) to be the very Word of God. Jesus claimed that He and the Father are one. If He had only meant that they were in accord, the Jews wouldn’t have wanted to stone Him. They understood that He meant more than that. He told them that “before Abraham was, I am.” Such claims are blasphemy, sin, unless they are true. So unless they are true, Jesus saying them would disqualify Him from having lived a sinless life and therefore earning the right to become the Son of God. 
                The only way for God to fulfill His promise to provide a savior, the only way that Jesus could say, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) is if He was and is God.

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