JESUS LOWER THAN THE ANGELS? SURELY GOD MADE MAN CANNOT BE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS?

The Christians say that God became man in Jesus Christ. Jesus they say was an ordinary low-class man who also happened to be God. The Bible denies this teaching.

Paul said that though Jesus was in the form of God he didn’t cling to equality with God but became a slave. Jesus was in the likeness of God like a mirror reflecting and taking in the glory of God. He didn’t cling to equality with God. In other words, rather than wanting to be God or equal to God or like God he chose to be a slave. None of this indicates that Jesus was God or entitled to seek equality with God, it only says that he didn’t seek it.

The angel in Revelation forbade John from worshipping him but Jesus accepted worship so Christians say that Jesus must be more than an angel and must be God. The angel’s job was to be a messenger of God not to answer prayers and to be worshipped. He doesn’t say he shouldn’t be worshipped but just that now isn’t the time. The angel says worship God only meaning that he was only God’s messenger and it was God who should get all the honour for it was God who was really doing the work. And besides we are never told that Jesus got the worship due to God. Kings were worshipped in a sense. Nothing in the episode defends the Christian belief in a divine Christ.

According to Hebrews, Jesus was made lower than the angels (2:9). Christians say that “this means he was made man and that the angels are stronger than man. It does not mean that he had a lower rank than them for he was really the boss.” But this makes the verse say he only seemed lower!

If Jesus was God then he was stronger for the very power of the angels comes from God who is the supreme power so theirs is second-hand power.

If Jesus had miracle powers, he had something the angels didn’t have even if it was second hand power from God.

So for Jesus to be lower than the angels he had to have no miracle powers and he certainly could not be God.

Hebrews never attributes miracles to Jesus. If you believe in the Bible you have to believe that Jesus did them.

The verse proves that Jesus was not God. The context tells us that the Son of Man has everything in subjection to himself. The verse means that Jesus abandoned his powers. God can’t abandon his powers and is higher than the angels despite how low he looks and if he does not use all his powers. Hebrews 2 confutes the doctrine of the deity of Christ.

Hebrews 4 tells us that in Jesus we have the supreme high priest who has gone through to the highest heaven and therefore we must never let go of the faith we have professed and he felt our weaknesses. That denies that Jesus is God. How? If Jesus were God he would be our helper even if he never went up bodily to Heaven for his divine side is still there in Heaven. But this Jesus needed to be saved himself before he could help us. It is a silly doctrine but nonetheless it shows that Hebrews is incompatible with a divine Christ.

Hebrews 5:1-6 tells us that every high priest has been taken out of mankind to act for men in their relationship with God and to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. So he can sympathise with those he acts for because like them he suffers from ignorance and weakness. Because of his ignorance and weakness he has to make sacrifices for his sins as well as those of others. It then goes on to say that no priest takes this honour to himself but has to be called by God and even Jesus was no exception. Jesus then could not have been God. If he was a man then he had to have been a priest automatically for he would naturally offer his sufferings and works as a man to God.

Hebrews 5:5 says that even Jesus Christ did not take to himself the office of high priest but received it from God when he said to him that he was his son and he had begotten him that day. If Jesus was God then his good works as a man would have had great merit and so he would have been a priest from the first day of his existence as a man. The whole point about his priesthood was that he could offer himself in all his works and his life and death to God in love. To say that the God-man in becoming a man did not automatically and thereby take to himself the office of high priest is ludicrous. Of course he would have just by becoming man. Only if Jesus was an angel who became man could God then make him a priest by adopting him as his son. Now that Jesus is so valuable to God and so loved by him Jesus is able to be a priest and his works meritorious for sinners. Hebrews then says (5:8,9,10) that Jesus learned obedience to God through suffering. God is going to obey God and that is that and so he cannot learn obedience unless he disobeys meaning Jesus did sin and since God being perfect cannot sin it means that Jesus was not God. Hebrews then states that when Jesus was perfected he became the source of salvation and was designated by God as high priest according to the Melchizidek order. Putting two and two together Jesus became the saviour, the son and the priest when he was suffering on the cross. All of these deny that Jesus was God for God made man would have to be inevitably a priest, saviour and Son of God.

You might object that a child can learn obedience without ever disobeying. But is such obedience really impressive? The child never knew any different. To have real obedience you must be able to do wrong and have done so.

Hebrews says that Jesus did not enter any earthly sanctuary to save us as our priest but the very presence of God himself. You cannot enter God's presence if you are God.

The information does not match Jesus being God.