Jesus, Superior to Angels
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2024 · 23 June 2024
Hebrews is written to primarily Jewish believers, but also to Jewish unbelievers to convince them that the New Testament is better than the Old Testament. That Jesus Christ is the better priest, and the better mediator, and that He is the final priest and the final sacrifice at the same time. So all throughout this book, we have a comparison between Jesus Christ and everybody else.
In our first message dealing with the first three verses, we saw that Jesus Christ is superior to everything and everybody. Then, learning to see what is meant with everybody we come to verses 4-14. Here the Holy Spirit teaches us that Jesus Christ is superior to angels. Now, man is a wonderful and an amazing creation. But above man there is another created group even higher than man.
And that created group are the angels. And Hebrews 2:9, indicates to us that angels are higher than humans, for it says that when Jesus became a man, He was a made a little lower than the angels. And after the fall of a portion of the angels, they were no longer subject to sin. They are holy, they are powerful, and they are wise. They do not suffer the infirmities that men suffer with.
And so, they are specially created spirit beings, made by God before men were ever created. They were in the heavens, watching, when God was doing the creating, when He was making the universe, and they were made higher than fallen men. Now, I want to give you a brief theological look at angels. Now, angels are spirit beings, and Jesus said that a spirit does not have flesh and bones.
But they do have some sort of a body. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15 that there are bodies terrestrial, and there are bodies celestial; so there are bodies of the earth, and there are bodies of the heavens. They are even capable of appearing in a human form. Hebrews 13:2 says, “Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it.”
They also appear in Matthew 28:3- 4 to have a form. Speaking of an angel, at Christ’s resurrection, the one who was there when the stone was rolled away, it says, “His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. 4 The guards were so shaken by fear of him that they became like dead men.” They appeared in a dazzling kind of brilliant, blazing glory.
Now, so when we say that angels are spirits, we do not necessarily mean that they have no form. They have a form that is celestial, and can manifest itself as a human, or in another way. In the Old Testament, we even have the saints wrestling with angels. Now, angels were all created simultaneously. According to Colossians 1:16-17, we believe that angels are unable to procreate.
God made them all uniquely as single identities; they do not cohabitate. Matthew 22:30 indicates that to us. The number of angels has not changed one angel since they were originally created. Though a great number of them have fallen, they still exist as they were created. They are not subject to death. Scripture nowhere indicates that they die. They do not decrease, and they do not increase.
There are 108 references in the Old Testament to angels, and 165 in the New Testament, so angels exist, and that the Old Testament saints were well aware of it. Now, angels render intelligent worship to God and service to God; that’s why they were created. Angels are intelligent. They are also emotional. The Bible talks about angels rejoicing when sinners are saved.
Angels can even speak, according to Galatians 1:8, where the apostle Paul says, “Though we, or an angel of heaven, preach any other gospel unto you.” Angels also, according to Daniel 9:21, have incredible speed. Sometimes they are pictured with as many as six wings. Now, according to Mark 13:32, and to Jude 6, they have a special abode in the heavens. They dwell in all of the heavens.
And we know in the Bible that the heaven where God lives is called the third heaven. The second heaven is the spatial infinite heavens, and the first heaven is that just about the earth. They dwell in all of those heavens. People say, “Are there beings in other parts of the universe?” All over the universe, but not with little things out of their head, flying around in little spaceships.
There are angelic beings inhabiting the universe. There are trillions and trillions of them. And even after numberless hosts of them fell with Satan, there are still numberless holy angels left. In Daniel 7:10 he said, “Thousands upon thousands served Him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him.” In Revelation 5:11 it says, “The number of them was countless thousands, plus thousands of thousands.”
“How many are there?” There are exactly enough to get the work done. There is not one angel not working. They are more powerful than men, and men must call on divine power to deal with them, especially fallen ones. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 6 to be strong in the Lord and the power of His might, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against fallen angels.
They are highly organized, and they are divided into ranks. Some of them are thrones, some of them are dominions, some of them principalities, some of them powers, and some of them are called authorities. There are cherubims, seraphims, and living creatures. Some have names: Lucifer, Michael, and Gabriel. Michael is the head of the armies of heaven, and Gabriel is called the mighty one.
They ministered to Christ in His humiliation. Remember, at the conclusion of His temptation, the Bible says, “and angels came and ministered unto Him.” They ministered to the saved. How? The Bible says that they watch the church, and they watch the preacher. They also aid the church by answering prayers, delivering from danger, encouraging Christians, and protecting children.
Now, that is a biblical look at angels. The Jewish people at the time that this Epistle was written had a different view. As many of their views had begun to wander from the basic Old Testament context, because of all the Talmudic writings and the rabbinical feelings and ideas. And so when the writer of Hebrews is writing, He is writing against the Jewish common concept of angels.
The Jews did believe that they were important to the Old Testament. And they had always esteemed angels as the highest beings next to God. They believed that angels were the mediators between men and God. They believed that God lived surrounded by angels. They believed that angels were really the instruments in bringing God’s word and the working of God’s will in the universe.
They believed that angels were created. They believed that they did not eat and drink, and they also believed that they did not have little angels. They believed that angels were God’s senate, and that God never did anything without asking the angels. They were His council. And they believed that when Genesis says, “Let us make man,” that the one God was speaking of His angelic senate in the word us.
They believed there were seven angels, who stayed in the presence of God at all times. And they named them Raphael, Uriel, Thanuel, Gabriel, Michael - and the el is a name of God. They believed that there were 200 angels who controlled the movements of the stars and kept things on course. And they believed that there was one super-special angel who controlled the days, months, and years.
They believed that there was a mighty angel who took care of the seas. They believed there were angels of rain, snow, hail, thunder, and lightning. There were also angels who were the wardens of Hell and the torturers of the damned. They believed also that there were recording angels, who wrote down every single word every person spoke. They also believed that there was an angel of death.
They believed that every nation had a guardian angel, as well as every child, and there were so many angels that one rabbi said, and I quote, “Every blade of grass has its angel.” So, they believed in angels. Now, I’ve given you a backdrop, both scripturally and in the mind of the Jewish people, as to their concept and understanding of angels. They believed that they mediated between God and men.
The Jews also knew believed that the Old Testament was brought to them from God by angels. And this, above everything else, exalted the angels in the mind of the Jews, the children of Israel. They believed that the angels were the mediators of their covenant with God; that angels kept the administration running between them and God, all the time, and so they had a lofty view of angels.
Some of them believed in angels such that they actually worshipped angels. This developed into a heresy known as Gnosticism. And Gnosticism reduced Jesus Christ to an angel. In Colossians 2:18, Paul says, “Let no one condemn you by delighting in ascetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm. Such people are inflated by empty notions of their unspiritual mind.”
Now, if the writer of Hebrews, is to present to the Jews that Christ is the mediator of a better covenant, then he will have to show that Christ is better than angels. Do you see that? And that becomes his whole purpose from verse 4 to 14. He must show that Christ, is the bearer of the New Testament in His blood, one sacrifice, one priest, believing in Him by faith, receiving Him as your Savior.
From now through verse 14 is the sermon itself. That’s the proposition that he seeks to prove. “So He became superior to the angels.” Who is He? Jesus Christ, who is the subject of verses 1-3. And then he goes on from there, to show all of the proofs, and all of the reasons, all from the Old Testament, that Christ is better than angels. Now, I want to point out one thing that has caused problems.
A lot of cults, and a lot of other religious organizations, at this point deny that deity of Christ, and they very often come to this passage to prove that Christ was not God, but that He was a created being. And they start in verse 4, with the statement, “Being made superior to the angels.” And they say, “See? Christ was made. But the word there is not poieō, to create; it is ginomai, to become.
Jesus Christ became better than the angels in His exaltation - inferring at one time that He had been lower than the angels, and that’s exactly what it says in Hebrews 2:9. It’s talking here about Christ as the Son. He was made lower than angels, but because of His faithfulness, obedience, and the work He accomplished as a Son, He was exalted back up above angels, where He was before.
These are the points of the sermon of the Holy Spirit, of Becoming so much better than the angels. First, His title was better, verse 4, “Becoming is so much better than the angels, just as the name He inherited is more excellent than theirs. Verse 5, “For to which of the angels did he ever say, You are my Son; today I have become your Father, or again, I will be his Father, and He will be my Son?”
To no angel did God ever say that. The angels are ministers and messengers, Christ is the Son. The angels are servants, Christ is a Son. Now, in our culture we don’t put a lot of stock in names. But in the word of God, God has chosen specific names that have to do with character, or have to do with some aspect of the individual’s life. And frequently, the outward name spoke of an inward reality.
And so, says the writer of Hebrews to the Jews from their own Old Testament, Jesus Christ is greater than angels, because He has obtained a greater name. God never called any angel Son. Secondly, He is greater because of verse 6, “Again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, He says, “And let all God’s angels worship Him.” And if angels are to worship Him, then He must be greater than they.
And because He’s greater than they, His covenant is greater than the one they brought. Christianity is greater than Judaism. Now, that’s also a quote from Psalm 97:7. The Jews should not be surprised at this. It comes right out of their own text. Didn’t angels always worship Him? Yes, they did. They worshipped Him as God. But they are now to worship Him as Son. He’s showing that this Son, is higher than angels.
But it says that Jesus was the firstborn from the dead. You know what it means? He was the chief one of all who had ever been raised. It can’t mean time, or that verse would be a lie. Prōtotokos means He is the main one. He is the most honored one, the most dignified one, the highest one, the most powerful one; that in resurrection, of all those who are resurrected, He is the greatest.
Please notice the word again in verse 6. “And when again He brings His firstborn into the world.” When is the again going to happen? Second coming. Do you know that right now, angels didn’t understand the whole picture well enough to give Him full worship? They were looking to see the things until our time, when Christ had come, the gospel took place, and the Holy Spirit preached.
And so, it is at the second coming that He is revealed in full glory as Son, as prōtotokos. And even angels will see it all then, when they see Him come as King of kings and Lord of lords. So, He is greater than angels, because God commands angels to worship Him. And, if God, in the Old Testament, commanded the angels to worship His Son, then His Son must be God. Let’s pray.