Munching on some good ole 'letter to Hebrews' cookin

One of my break-up-the-routine tools for taking in Scripture is listening to an audio bible.  Can't afford to buy the bible on cd or mp3?  No problem--www.biblegateway.com has the entire bible on audio.  Just go to the chapter you want and click on the little 'volume' icon.

Here's a nugget from my time in Hebrews today:

At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.  But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of his suffering and death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

This text is so pregnant, its shocking.  Let me try to scratch the surface...

First it gives a scriptural answer to the question, "why hasn't God rooted out all evil yet--why do people suffer and God doesn't fix it?"  Because everything that will be under Jesus authoritative control is not yet under His authoritative control.  In other words, it is not time yet to root out all evil.

The follow up question is, "well doesn't God care about the evil suffered by people in the world?"  Yes! is the unequivocal answer of the text.  Jesus expressed God's depth of concern for suffering and death by... suffering and dying!  In doing so he tasted death for everyone.  That word taste is important--it means Jesus ingested the suffering and pain of all of humanity in a personal and experiential way.  So when suffering happens in any human life, Jesus does not merely understand and care--He experientially feels the pain in His person because He has already tasted that person's pain and suffering.

Isn't that profound to consider?  It places a totally different face on Jesus' view of suffering.  His waiting is not from the callous distance offered by an aloof, hard-hearted deity but His waiting is filled with the pain of sin and the offered Grace of Jesus toward sin's pain and suffering.