Hebrews 3:2
The Son remained faithful to the Father who sent Him.
Before Moses saw the golden calf, he heard what the people had done.
On the mountain, the Lord told him that Israel had turned aside and made an idol. God spoke of His anger and of making a great nation from Moses. But Moses pleaded for the people God had brought out of Egypt. He spoke of what the Egyptians might say, and he remembered the promises God had made to Abraham, Isaac and Israel.¹
The Lord relented from the disaster He had spoken of bringing upon His people.
When Moses came down and saw the calf and the dancing, he burned with anger. The next day he returned to the Lord, acknowledged the people’s great sin and asked Him to forgive them.¹ He did not call their sin small. He still brought their need before God.
A Faithful Servant
Hebrews has invited its readers to consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest they confess. Now it says that He was faithful to the One who appointed Him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.²
The words about Moses reach back to Numbers. When Miriam and Aaron spoke against him, the Lord called them and Moses to the tent of meeting. There He spoke of the place Moses held among His servants: Moses was faithful in all His house.³
Moses had been entrusted with a people, not merely with a building. He carried God’s words to them and led them through the wilderness. At the mountain, he pleaded for them even after they had made the calf.
His faithfulness was not the same as a life without failure. Later, at the waters of Meribah, Moses and Aaron did not trust God enough to honour Him as holy before the Israelites.⁴ Scripture records that failure, and it also remembers Moses as faithful. Hebrews does not need to erase one account to speak of the other.
The letter honours the servant before it speaks of the greater glory of the Son.
The One Appointed
What does it mean that Jesus was faithful to the One who appointed Him?
In the movement of Hebrews, the Son has been sent and has become a merciful and faithful high priest. He carries out the work given to Him by the Father. The One who calls His people brothers and sisters is also faithful in His service to God.⁵
The first chapter has already said that God made the universe through the Son and has spoken through Him.⁶ The second has shown the Son sharing human life and suffering death. Now the letter asks its readers to consider this same Jesus: the glorious Son who came near and remained faithful to the Father.
His faithfulness is more than the completion of a task viewed from a distance. The Gospels allow His people to see Him praying, teaching, healing and walking toward the suffering He knew lay ahead. In His life, the will of the Father was not an interruption to His purpose; it was at the heart of it.
In the Garden
On the night before His death, Jesus went with His disciples to the Mount of Olives. He withdrew from them, knelt down and prayed.⁷
He asked the Father, if He was willing, to take the cup from Him. Then He submitted His desire to the Father’s will. Luke describes His anguish and His earnest prayer. The words are brief, but they do not make the moment easy or the suffering unreal.
When those who came to arrest Him arrived, a disciple struck the servant of the high priest. Jesus stopped the violence and healed the man.⁷ In Matthew’s account, Jesus said that He could ask His Father for more than twelve legions of angels.⁸ He did not ask for them to prevent His arrest.
Hebrews does not quote these scenes when it calls Jesus faithful. They help illuminate the obedience of the One the letter describes. His faithfulness was lived in a human body, through prayer and suffering, as He continued in the work given to Him.
The letter later says that although He was the Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered.⁹ It does not mean that He had once been disobedient. It speaks of obedience lived through suffering by the Son who had entered human life.
Over God’s House
Moses and Jesus are both called faithful, but Hebrews does not leave their roles indistinguishable. Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house. Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. The letter then tells its readers that they are His house, if they hold firmly to their confidence and hope.²
God’s house is a way of speaking about His people. Their hope rests on the Son through whom God has spoken, who shared their humanity and made atonement for their sins. His faithfulness to the Father serves the very purpose in which God is bringing many children to glory.⁵
Moses returned to the Lord after the people had sinned and asked for their forgiveness. His prayer reminds us how much they needed mercy.
Hebrews directs attention to Jesus, who offered Himself and lives to intercede for those who come to God through Him.¹⁰ The faithful Son has not left His people without a high priest.
In the garden, He knelt and prayed to the Father. His disciples slept nearby. When the hour came, He rose and went to meet those who had come for Him.⁷
Scripture References
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