How the Writer of Hebrews Reads the E-book of Psalms

The Psalms

The Psalms have all the time been on the coronary heart of Christian worship. Believers sing, pray, and meditate on the phrases of the Psalms week in and week out, they usually have performed so because the basis of the church. This frequent devotion, nonetheless, is usually solely partially fashioned. We go to the Psalms seeking to discover ourselves, to place phrases to the feelings we already really feel or hope to really feel. We go to the Psalms as a voice for our coronary heart, as a counselor, as a consolation. None of that is flawed—it’s a part of why God gave us the Psalms—however it’s incomplete.

If we glance to the best way the New Testomony makes use of the Psalms, we’ll uncover that along with an emotional outpouring to God, the New Testomony authors discover a wealthy theology of God within the Psalter. The Psalms, within the New Testomony’s studying, are the songs of the Son. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks in return.¹ It isn’t simply that some psalms predict issues about Jesus; it’s that in most of the psalms, we hear the voice of Jesus talking and the Father chatting with him. The Son speaks in his preincarnate glory. He speaks in his earthly life and struggling. He even speaks within the function of his individuals, taking their sin and their struggling onto himself.

Paul, the unknown writer of Hebrews, and Jesus himself all go to the Psalms to seek out Jesus, the Son of God, talking and being spoken to. In earlier eras, the church has been extra acutely aware of this, singing the Psalms recurrently and discovering the phrases of Jesus of their mouths at the same time as they noticed Jesus singing their very own ideas, feelings, and confessions via the Psalter. Greater than another e-book of the Outdated Testomony, the Psalms presents us with the unity between Christ and his individuals because the psalmists shortly shift between talking of the Son in his glory, in his humility, and in his illustration of his individuals. Theophylact, a medieval Greek bishop whose New Testomony commentaries proved influential in each the Western and Jap church buildings, would generalize from particular quotations and declare that Paul learn whole psalms as being about Jesus. This was doubtless uncontroversial. This isn’t to say that an interpretation is true as a result of it’s previous or was extensively accepted; however on this case, these Scripture-saturated Christians have been extra delicate to the Bible’s personal approach of studying itself. The Psalms are, of their fullness, the songs of the Son, the hymnbook of the better David.

That is plain all through the New Testomony, however it’s significantly poignant within the epistle to the Hebrews.

Learn by the Writer of Hebrews

Within the e-book of Hebrews, we’re offered with the God who speaks. He speaks to us in his phrase and in his Son. However this isn’t all we see. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks again. The writer finds all through Scripture, however significantly within the Psalms, this name and response inside the Trinity. A divine dialog performs out earlier than our eyes because the world is made, as salvation is completed, and as all issues are made new within the Son of God. Our God is a talking God, and earlier than he ever spoke to us, God has all the time been the one who speaks inside the Trinity. As this talking God turns to that which isn’t himself, all creation bursts into being and is sustained by that very same phrase. Inside historical past, God speaks time and again, till eventually that Son is available in whom God communicates completely and eventually. By grace, Hebrews provides us glimpses of this divine dialog. To take action, the writer turns to the language of the Psalms.

Inside historical past, God speaks time and again, till eventually that Son is available in whom God communicates completely and eventually.

Whereas any e-book of the New Testomony may very well be used to assist us perceive God’s revelation within the Outdated, few books provide as prolonged, deep, and specific an interplay with the Outdated Testomony as does the epistle to the Hebrews. Particularly, on this one letter, we’re proven repeatedly how the Psalms type our understanding of Jesus: his nature, his work, and his relationships. By means of paying shut consideration to how Hebrews causes with the Psalms, we’ll see Jesus extra clearly and study to learn the Psalms the apostles’ approach, because the songs of the Son.

Greater than another impressed author, the writer of Hebrews develops his argument by reasoning with the Scriptures of Israel and significantly with the Psalms. Excess of merely quoting the Psalms as illustrations or proof texts, the writer of Hebrews composes his whole letter as a collection of arguments from the Psalms and different Outdated Testomony texts in gentle of Jesus’s life, demise, resurrection, ascension, ongoing work, and coming return.

Nowhere else do now we have such a dense and sustained interplay with one e-book of Scripture by one other. Whereas the writer weaves collectively texts from all the Outdated Testomony canon, deftly synthesizing the Legislation, the Prophets, and the Writings as he demonstrates the prevalence of Christ, it’s to the Psalms that he returns time and again. At essential factors in his argument as he explains or applies or clarifies, the writer of Hebrews reaches persistently for the Psalms. Since that is the case, it’s significantly useful for us to discover how the writer reads the Psalms.

It’s my conviction that if we learn the Psalms with the writer of Hebrews, we’ll study to learn the Psalms for what they really are. Their meanings will unfold as we see exactly how they witness to Christ: not solely as predictions to be fulfilled but in addition as testimony to the very voice of God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Within the voice of the psalmists, the Son reveals his nature, his mission, and his relationships along with his Father and his individuals.

This text is customized from ​​​​Songs of the Son: Studying the Psalms with the Writer of Hebrews by Daniel Stevens.

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