"Made Lower - but Only for a While"
Note David's statement in Psalm 8:5 that man has been made "a little lower than the angels" or "heavenly beings," as the English Standard Version translates it.
As mortal, material creatures, it would seem that we are in fact far below the power and glory of spirit beings in the heavenly realm. So instead of "a little lower," perhaps a better rendering is the translation of the quoting of David in Hebrews 2:7 in the ESV: "You made him for a little while lower than the angels."
This makes even more sense when we realize that in Hebrews 2 Jesus Christ is being shown as the representative human being inheriting what God has promised. Man as a whole has not yet been exalted to such a high position, "but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor" (Hebrews 2:9, ESV). Just as Jesus is no longer lower than the angels, being resurrected into divine glory, so will other human beings destined to follow Him no longer be lower than the angels when they are resurrected in the future.
In fact, in the Hebrew of Psalm 8, the word translated "angels" or "heavenly beings" is elohim—a word typically translated as "God." The book of Hebrews uses the Greek word for angels instead—likely in following the common Greek translation of the Old Testament in existence at the time and also in making the case for Christ's superiority to the angels. The wording in Hebrews is not wrong, but is essentially a paraphrase that likely does not encompass all that was implied by David in Psalm 8. What David seems to have been saying is that man was made for a little while lower than God. This means that man would not always be lower than God—just as Jesus is not now lower than God, having returned to divine glory with the Father.
This is truly staggering if we grasp what this entails!
[ Read the article: The Mystery of Human Existence: Why Are You Here? ]
Course Content
Tom Robinson
Tom is an elder in the United Church of God who works from his home near St. Louis, Missouri as managing editor and senior writer for Beyond Today magazine, church study guides and the UCG Bible Commentary. He is a visiting instructor at Ambassador Bible College. And he serves as chairman of the church's Prophecy Advisory Committee and a member of the Fundamental Beliefs Amendment Committee.
Tom began attending God's Church at the age of 16 in 1985 and was baptized a year later. He attended Ambassador College in both Texas and California and served for a year as a history teacher at the college's overseas project in Sri Lanka. He graduated from the Texas campus in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in theology along with minors in English and mass communications. Since 1994, he has been employed as an editor and writer for church publications and has served in local congregations through regular preaching of sermons.
Tom was ordained to the ministry in 2012 and attends the Columbia-Fulton, Missouri congregation with his wife Donna and their two teen children.
