After He accomplished redemption by suffering death, Jesus was glorified in His resurrection (Luke 24:26) and in His ascension to the heavens was crowned with glory and honor (2:9). Although the Lord Jesus is both the Son of God and Son of Man, when we come to the matter of His being crowned with glory and honor, we must pay special attention to His humanity, to His being the Son of Man. In Hebrews 1, He is God; in Hebrews 2, He is man. When we are reading Hebrews 1, we must pay our full attention to the Lord’s divinity. However, when we come to Hebrews 2, we must pay our full attention to His humanity. It is in His humanity that He is crowned with glory and honor. As a man in His ascension to the heavens, He was crowned in this way.
Where is Jesus crowned with glory and honor? In the third heavens. The little Jesus who was born in the manger, who was raised in a poor home in Nazareth, and who had no beauty or comeliness, in His ascension to the heavens has been crowned with glory and honor. What is glory and honor? Glory is the splendor related to Jesus’ Person; honor is the preciousness related to Jesus’ worth, value (1 Pet. 2:7 precious in Greek is the same word as honor here), and dignity which is related to His position (2 Pet. 1:17; Rom. 13:7).
Jesus was crowned with glory and honor to be the Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36; 10:36b). Before His incarnation, He was the Lord. However, as a man, He was not the Lord. Now, in His ascension, He, as a man, has been crowned to be the Lord. This is a great matter. On the one hand, He already was the Lord because He was God; on the other hand, in His humanity, He was crowned to be the Lord of all. He is also the Christ, that is, the anointed One. The Lord means that He is the Lord ruling over all, and Christ means that He is the anointed One who has been appointed to accomplish everything for God’s plan. The anointed One is the appointed One, and the appointed One is the One who runs God’s universal corporation, Christ and the church.
Christ has been exalted to be a Leader and a Savior (Acts 5:31). The Greek word for Leader, translated “Prince” in the King James Version, is the same Greek word that is rendered as “Captain” in Hebrews 2:10. The Greek word may also be rendered as “author, originator, inaugurator, or pioneer.” There is no one equivalent of this word in English. Christ has been crowned with glory and honor so that He might be our Captain. As the Greek word indicates, He is also our Leader, Prince, Pioneer, and Forerunner. Jesus is the One who fights, takes the lead, moves ahead, being the first to reach His destination. He has cut the way into glory and we are now taking the way He has cut. Hence, He is not only the Savior who saved us from our fallen estate and from all the negative things, but He is also the Captain who, as the Pioneer, has entered into glory that we might be brought into the same estate. The Lord Jesus today is the Lord, the Christ, the Captain, and the Savior.
Chapter one of Hebrews reveals that Christ is the Son of God coming to speak, declare, and express God. As such a One He is superior to the angels. Here, in chapter two of Hebrews, He is the Son of Man going to be the Lord, the Christ, the Captain, and the Savior. His being our Lord, Christ, Captain, and Savior is not mainly based upon His divinity but upon His humanity. This is a very practical matter. Why is Jesus our Lord? Because He is a man. Why is He the Christ, Captain, and Savior? All because He is a man. Angels, who do not have humanity, can never be our Lord, Christ, Captain, and Savior. Only Christ in His humanity can be such a One to us. Furthermore, this humanity is not a natural humanity; it is a resurrected, uplifted, and ascended humanity, a humanity that is crowned with God’s glory and honor. Because these concepts are not natural, but are new and fresh to us, we need to spend considerable time on them in order that we might see more.