More firmly, then, than ever must we hold to the truths which have now come to our hearing, and run no risk of drifting away from them.

The old law, which only had angels for its spokesmen, was none the less valid; every transgression of it, every refusal to listen to it, incurred just retribution;

and what excuse shall we have, if we pay no heed to such a message of salvation as has been given to us? One which was delivered in the first instance by the Lord himself, and has been guaranteed to us by those who heard it from his own lips?

One which God himself has attested by signs and portents, manifesting his power so variously, and distributing the gifts of his Holy Spirit wherever he would?

We are speaking of a world that is to come; to whom has God entrusted the ordering of that world? Not to angels.

We are assured of that, in a passage where the writer says, What is man, that thou shouldst remember him? What is the son of man, that thou shouldst care for him?

Man, whom thou hast made a little lower than the angels, whom thou hast crowned with glory and honour, setting him in authority over the works of thy hands?

Thou hast made all things subject at his feet. Observe, he has subjected all things to him, left nothing unsubdued. And what do we see now? Not all things subject to him as yet.✻

But we can see this; we can see one who was made a little lower than the angels, I mean Jesus, crowned, now, with glory and honour because of the death he underwent; in God’s gracious design he was to taste death, and taste it on behalf of all.✻

God is the last end of all things, the first beginning of all things; and it befitted his majesty that, in summoning all those sons of his to glory, he should crown with suffering the life of that Prince who was to lead them into salvation.✻

The Son who sanctifies and the sons who are sanctified have a common origin, all of them; he is not ashamed, then, to own them as his brethren.

I will proclaim thy renown, he says, to my brethren; with the church around me I will praise thee;✻

and elsewhere he says, I will put my trust in him, and then, Here stand I, and the children God has given me.✻

And since these children have a common inheritance of flesh and blood, he too shared that inheritance with them. By his death he would depose the prince of death, that is, the devil;

he would deliver those multitudes who lived all the while as slaves, made over to the fear of death.

After all, he does not make himself the angels’ champion, no sign of that; it is the sons of Abraham that he champions.✻

And so he must needs become altogether like his brethren; he would be a high priest who could feel for us and be our true representative before God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.

It is because he himself has been tried by suffering, that he has power to help us in the trials we undergo.