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.