For it was fitting for Him… simple words.. but so true. It was fitting for Him b/c He was God’s Son, b/c He was a man, b/c He was crowned with glory and honor, b/c He might taste death for everyone.
He was the only One fit for doing what He did. Christ alone, accomplishes this…
Need reminder… tend to think we can do it once we are “in Christ.” Fool ourselves into thinking: “Yes, I’m in Christ, now I can take over and do the rest.” We will see that this is NOT true… It is Christ alone.
For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one…
Even He is sanctifying us… Christ alone… this is why it was fitting for Him to do what He did. His death was successful… He set out to achieve a purpose and He did accomplish that purpose… no more need for wonder… salvation is accomplished in Christ.
Christ is fit to be our Savior
This is why writer attributes to Him deity status when He writes: for whom are all things and by whom are all things… This is a statement that can only be made about God. Only God holds all things together… Only God holds all things together. This points to His sovereignty once again… need to be reminded that nothing comes to pass without His decree being fulfilled.
When His decreed will is fulfilled, we can take comfort in that which comes to pass, knowing that for some reason, God wanted these things to fall out as they have. God is ordering all events to unwind as they do. We may not understand the events, or control them, but we can control our reactions to them. But we see Jesus… (9) looking unto Jesus (12:2) therefore trusting in Our God, Jesus Christ…
What is His purpose here?
V. 10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Christ leads His children into The family.
Bringing sons to glory – salvation open to all. Makes us a family… brings us together in a way that was impossible before Christ.
Adoption… WCF only confession that deals with adoption… being adopted into the family. Eph. 1:4-5 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that (purpose) we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
Ordo salutis… order of salvation: effectual calling, regeneration, faith, repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification. All happening simultaneously… but the order helps us understand what takes place… key here is adoption.
Jesus sets out to bring us into the family.. we are in the family.. as rightful heirs by way of adoption…He knew what we were… and still adopted us… have all the rights and privileges as the any other child… (Why do adopted children look for original parents??? Your parents are those that adopted you… not a second-class child. No second-class citizens in the family of God).
How did He bring us into the family?
Through His leadership and suffering … in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Through His sufferings He accomplished our redemption. He took on our sins… making Him the captain of (our) salvation… He is going ahead of us in bringing about salvation.
(Good Shepherd) John 10:3-4 To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
He is the captain of our salvation in that He leads us in our salvation. He is not One to leave us alone, but goes on ahead of us to help us and comfort us. (Not like the Imams of Islam that are encouraging their young men to blow themselves up… while they remain comfortably in their mosques.)
Hebrews 12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Just as God brought Moses and Joshua to deliver the people of Israel to the promise land, so too does He provide His incarnate Son to deliver us safely into the enjoyment of salvation. He does the work… not striving in order to find the Father’s good pleasure, we find it because we are in the One who has found it…
O the freedom this is… think of our strivings for perfection in this fallen world, and when it comes to the one area where we need to strive the most, yet have the least amount of ability… He provides for us… He has given it to us!
Not only captain, but He also suffered.
Suffered pains of death… for us… substitutionary atonement. Given righteousness apart from ours… take on our sins for us… by His sufferings, He pays our debts. This is why He is author and finisher of our faith.
BTW, notice His form of leadership… through humility and suffering… not something you will find in the board room of a Fortune 500 company.
Problem
to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings
Term perfect in Hebrews is to be understood as achieving the highest goal. It does not mean that He was less than perfect and become perfect. He was already without spot or blemish…
“In the context of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the term to make perfect signifies that Jesus removed the sins of his people from the presence of God and thus His sacrificial death on the cross consecrated the ‘many sons.’”
For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Christ not only leads His children into the family, but He also sanctifies His family.
Christ sanctifies His family.
For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
What is sanctification?
This is at the heart of so much understanding in Christian circles… what is it? WCF, LC answers it this way:
Sanctification is a work of God’s grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of his Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their whole man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life.
Christ is doing the work in making us holy, and we follow in obedience for we know that this process of becoming holy is not a one-time event, but a life-long event. “The path of sanctification lies in obedience to doing God’s will, and that obedience is out of gratitude.”
In Christ, we cannot lose our holiness, but we can soil it. When we sin, we soil that which God is doing in us, and this, of course, bring the necessity for repentance. We repent and Jesus Christ stands ready to make us clean. He is doing the work to cleanse us, and we are willingly accepting that work upon us.
There is a lot of confusion on this issue, for many feel that there are two different levels of sanctification, one for those who are really filled with the holy spirit, thereby they enter into full time-ministry or go over seas, and then the rest of us… who just barely get into heaven.
What is taking place here is confusing indicative and imperatives.
Imperative: Girls: stop living with your boyfriend. That’s imperative.
The appeal here is to the indicative. Paul asks: How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Not invited to die to sin… or to a higher level… We are invited to live in gratitude of who we are, therefore we quit living in sin.
“The believer has died, is buried, is raised, is seated with Christ in the heavenlies, and so on. These are not plateaus for victorious Christians who have surrendered all, but realities for every believer regardless of how small one’s faith or how weak one’s repentance… Thus, we must stop trying to convert believers into these realities by imperatives: “Do this,” “Confess that,” “Follow these steps,” and so on. Union with Christ ushers us into conversion and conversion ushers us immediately into all of these realities so that, as Sinclair Ferguson writes; ‘The determining fact of my existence is no longer my past. It is Christ’s past.’”
Therefore we are to live as we are, not as we use to be… and in the process He cleanses us… How?
Ephesians 5:26 … that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water by the word…
Paul is speaking of Christ’s bride, therefore Christ is going to do what is best for His bride… cleanse her…
The indicative also helps us understand the reality of who we are as believers. We are those who have been set apart by God, to live under His domain in the world, being rescued from the domain of Satan and his power. This frees us up to enjoy the fellowship and freedom we have in serving Christ in every realm of our existence. While others are still under the darkness of Satan’s rule, Christ has freed the believer for special fellowship and service. This does lead to the imperative.
Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Let us live in light of the reality of who we are: God’s servants.
Yet, the writer here is not telling us to do anything, but helping us see the wonderful position we have in Christ. This is why He sanctifies us. Jesus is set apart and holy. This is who He is. Since we then belong to Him, He is making us more like Himself.
Why?
Because we are one.
For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
This speaks of our union with Christ. When we believe, we are grafted into the vine through conversion and baptism. We are made a part of the vine, of which, we are never to separate ourselves.
Only those, out of a love for the pleasures of the world, perish. Those who refuse His leadership and His sacrifice are lost, because they do not believe… But for those who do:
For which reason He is not ashamed to call (us) brethren.
WE are His family. Since this is true, it is fitting that He would clean us up. He is the One working in us to make us complete. Not only does He clean us up, He boasts about us as well.
Christ Boasts About His Family….
At first we might be struck by what Christ does because of our sinful nature. We know how sinful we are, and if that sin is exposed, we would be rightly ashamed. We know that if we look at our lives from the stand point of the imperatives, this is the case.
This is why the indicative is so important. Christ views us from the lens of who we are in Him. He is not seeing us apart from His glory or His righteousness. Just as the Father does not see us in that light any longer. God sees us in the light of who we are in Christ.
It is because of His righteousness and His atoning work that Christ can and does boast about us. His work has taken that which is sinful and despicable and cleaned us up to make us presentable to the Father.
“(The Christian) does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” – C. S. Lewis
Ephesians 5:26-27 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.
Because of His work, we are presentable to the Father. Because of His work, we are worth boasting about. Not that we boast, but He boasts in that He has taken fallen men and women and made them into something worthy of praise.
This seems odd to us, but we must remember who is doing the boasting and why. Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Conclusion — With Christ going to all this trouble to make us His family and to make us His brethren, can we really say that our earthly family comes before our heavenly family? Can we really think of the church as just a group of people we get together with on occasion, when in reality, we are bound together by faith for eternity?
