Hebrews 1:1-4 Bridging the Gap

The God of the Bible is a God who speaks. He communicates.

God does not leave us in the dark.  He does not keep his distance – even if we have contributed to that distance by our own sin.

In the sphere of human relationships, our speech enables us to create and maintain ties with one another.  As the Apostle Paul observed, “who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? (1 Corinthians 2:11).  But speech bridges the gulf between us, and opens up our inner life to those around us.

In the same way, God speaks to human beings not just to communicate information, but to establish a trusting relationship (or "covenant") between us and Himself.  And according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, he has been at this for quite some time. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.” (Hebrews 1:1)  Yes, God speaks to us in nature (“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork," Psalm 19:1), but he has also spoken to us in our own idiom, in human words.

The basic point of the Book of Hebrews is that whatever God has done in the past, as wondrous as it may be, it pales in comparison to what God has done in Jesus Christ.  Hence, while he had formerly spoken to his people through the prophets, God has now done something new.  He has spoken to us in his Son, incarnate in our midst as one of us.  “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”  He now makes himself known to us, and is present to us, with a new fullness and directness.

The Son is a fellow human being like the prophets before him.  As Hebrews 2 tells us, he was “made like his brothers in every respect.”  Yet he is also the eternal and pre-existent Son, “through whom God created the world,” the “radiance of the glory of God” and the “exact imprint of his nature,” who “upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Again we are nose to nose with the miracle of the Incarnation, of Emmanuel, or “God with us.” Now that God has spoken to us “through a Son,” it is not just we have a clearer and more direct line of communication.  It is not so much that we have upgraded our connection from dial-up internet to fiber-optic cable.  Jesus is not just a better mouth piece than the prophets before him; he is the expression of an entirely different order of divine self-communication.  Jesus is himself the utterance of God.  Jesus is the one who bridges the gulf between us and God, and draws us into an intimate connection with God as His adopted children and fellow heirs with Christ.