V. 4.— Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
Being made so much better than the angels.— It is abundantly manifest that the title of the Son of God, who is said to be appointed heir of all things, to have been the brightness of God’ s glory and the express image of His person, purging our sins, and sitting down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, is descriptive of Immanuel, God manifest in the flesh. God is invisible, and could not be the image of Himself; and the Son, in His Divine nature, is as invisible as the Father. Besides, where was the necessity for proving God to be superior to angels? But the Divine and human natures were united in the one person of Christ, and it is in this character that the Apostle establishes His superiority to angels.
As he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.— Angels are, indeed, termed by courtesy the sons of God, but to Christ this name belongs by inheritance. [This is illustrated by a passage in English history. Henry II., having admitted his son to a share of the sovereignty, caused him to sit at table while he waited on him, at the same time observing that never king was more royally served. The prince pleasantly replied, that there was nothing extraordinary in the son of a Count serving the son of a king. The son’ s rank came to him by inheritance, the father’ s by conquest.] He is possessed of the Divine nature, as a son partakes of the nature of his father, while from His mother Christ equally partook of human nature. Hence He is indifferently described as the Son of God, implying His Divinity, and as the Son of man, implying His humanity. God does nothing in vain; He accomplishes His purposes by means exactly adapted to the end He has in view. In the first creation He spoke and it was done, He commanded and all things stood fast; but to reconcile justice with mercy, to destroy the works of the devil, the Son of God was manifested, and suffered, and died, and revived, that He might be the Lord both of the dead and the living.
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