Hebrews 1:2b–3 (WEB) “…whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had purified us of our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
Hebrews has already told us that God spoke to the fathers through the prophets and that at the end of these days He has spoken to us in His Son. The contrast is not between false revelation and true revelation.
God spoke through the prophets. The difference is found in the identity of the One through whom He has now spoken. Hebrews therefore moves immediately from the fact that God has spoken in His Son to an explanation of who this Son is.
The description begins before verse 3. The Son is the One whom God
“appointed heir of all things” and the One “through whom also he made the worlds.” Those two statements place the Son at opposite ends of the biblical story. Creation comes through Him, and all things are His inheritance. The history unfolding between creation and inheritance belongs to the One who stands at both its beginning and its goal.
The language of inheritance also connects the Son to the royal promises running through Israel’s Scriptures. Psalm 2 describes Yahweh’s Anointed King as His Son and promises Him an inheritance extending far beyond Israel.
Psalm 2:6–8 (WEB) “Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.” I will tell of the decree: Yahweh said to me, “You are my Son. Today I have become your father.
Ask of me, and I will give the nations for your inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession.”
The Son of Psalm 2 is a King. His inheritance is the nations, and His possession reaches to the ends of the earth. Hebrews will quote this Psalm directly only a few verses later, so we do not need to exhaust its significance yet. It is enough to notice that when Hebrews calls Jesus the heir of all things, it is speaking within a biblical world where sonship, kingship, and inheritance already belong together.
Yet Hebrews immediately says something about this Son that no ordinary Davidic king could bear. He is not merely the heir standing at the end of history. He was present at its beginning. God made the worlds through Him.
The word translated “worlds” is aiōnas, the plural of aiōn. It can refer to ages or periods of time and, by extension, to the created order unfolding through those ages. Hebrews is not merely saying that God used the Son to manufacture physical objects. The whole created order and the ages through which its history unfolds came through Him.
That claim places the Son before David, before Abraham, before Adam, and before the world itself. John describes Christ from the same side of creation.
John 1:1–3 (WEB) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.
John deliberately begins with the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning.” Yet when that beginning arrives, the Word already is. John then draws the line as clearly as language allows. Everything that was made came into existence through Him. Nothing belonging to the category of “made” exists apart from Him. Paul speaks similarly of the Son.
Colossians 1:15–17 (WEB) He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in the heavens and on the earth, visible things and invisible things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.
Paul does not place Christ among the things created. He places all created things in relation to Christ. They were created through Him and for Him, and He is before them. Hebrews begins in the same territory. The Son is heir of all things because all things ultimately belong to Him, and the One who will inherit creation is also the One through whom creation came into existence. That gives enormous weight to what Hebrews says next. The Radiance of His Glory
Hebrews 1:3a (WEB)
“His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance…”
“Glory” appears so frequently in Christian language that familiarity can flatten it. We speak of glorifying God, giving God glory, seeing His glory, and doing things for His glory. In Scripture, however, God’s glory is bound to the manifestation of His presence, majesty, holiness, and character.
One of the clearest places to see those ideas come together is in Moses’ encounter with Yahweh after Israel’s sin with the golden calf.
The covenant has been violated almost immediately after it was established. Moses intercedes for Israel, and the question of whether Yahweh will continue to go with His people becomes central to the conversation.
Exodus 33:12–18 (WEB) Moses said to Yahweh, “Behold, you tell me, ‘Bring up this people;’ and you haven’t let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight; and consider that this nation is your people.”
He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Moses said to him, “If your presence doesn’t go with me, don’t carry us up from here. For how would people know that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Isn’t it that you go with us, so that we are separated, I and your people, from all the people who are on the surface of the earth?”
Yahweh said to Moses, “I will do this thing also that you have spoken; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”
Moses’ request to see God’s glory grows directly from the question of God’s presence. Moses does not merely want Israel to reach Canaan.
Without Yahweh among them, arriving at the destination would not give them what distinguished them from the nations. God Himself must go with His people. Then Moses asks to see His glory. Yahweh answers:
Exodus 33:19–23 (WEB) He said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim Yahweh’s name before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” He said, “You cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live.” Yahweh also said, “Behold, there is a place by me, and you shall stand on the rock. It will happen, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you will see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Moses asks to see God’s glory, and Yahweh responds by speaking of His goodness, His name, His grace, and His mercy. The glory Moses seeks is not an impersonal brightness surrounding God. It belongs to God Himself. The answer continues in the next chapter.
Exodus 34:5–8 (WEB) Yahweh descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed Yahweh’s name. Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty…”
Moses hurried and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. God answers Moses’ request to see His glory by revealing who He is. He proclaims His name and character. He is merciful and gracious, patient and abundant in covenant faithfulness, forgiving sin without ceasing to be just. Moses’ response is worship.
Yet Exodus also establishes a boundary. Moses cannot look upon God’s face and live. He receives what God permits him to receive, sheltered by God Himself from the fullness of what he has asked to see.
When Moses eventually descends from the mountain, something of that encounter is visible upon him.
Exodus 34:29–30 (WEB) When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mountain, Moses didn’t know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him. When Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come near him.
Moses shines because he has been in God’s presence. The glory is not his own. His shining face testifies to an encounter with Someone greater than himself. That distinction helps us hear Hebrews.
The Son is not described as another Moses who entered God’s presence and returned reflecting what he saw. Hebrews calls Him “the radiance of his glory.”
The Greek word is apaugasma, used only here in the New Testament. It carries the idea of radiance or brightness associated with a source. We should be careful not to construct too much theology from the physical mechanics of a metaphor, particularly because Hebrews immediately gives us another expression to clarify its point. What matters is the relationship Hebrews establishes between the Son and God’s own glory.
Moses reflects glory because he has encountered God. The Son is described as the radiance of God’s glory.
John brings these themes together when he describes the incarnation.
John 1:14, 17–18 (WEB) The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The one and only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.
The contrast with Exodus is striking. Moses asked to see God’s glory and had to be sheltered because he could not see God’s face and live. John announces that the eternal Word became flesh and lived among human beings, and then says, “We saw his glory.”
John also places Moses explicitly within the comparison. The Law came through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Then John returns to the question of seeing God. No one has seen God, yet the Son has made Him known. The word translated “declared” is exēgeomai, meaning to explain, recount, or make known. It is the word from which we derive “exegesis.”
The Son makes the unseen God known, not merely because He has received better information than previous messengers, but because of His unique relationship with the Father and His own identity as the eternal Word. Jesus later makes the same point to Philip.
John 14:8–11 (WEB) Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works’ sake.”
Philip asks to see the Father. Jesus answers by pointing to Himself. That does not collapse Father and Son into the same person. Jesus distinguishes Himself from the Father throughout the passage. Yet the distinction does not weaken His claim. The Son reveals the Father so perfectly that He can tell Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Hebrews expresses the same reality with another phrase. The Very Image of His Substance The Son is not only “the radiance of his glory.” He is “the very image of his substance.”
The Greek expression is charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs autou. Both words have histories that eventually became important in Christian theology, but we should begin with how the language functions here rather than importing later technical definitions into Hebrews.
Charaktēr referred to an impression, engraving, or mark corresponding to what produced it. The image stamped onto a coin provides a useful picture.
The impression bears the form of the die that made it. This background explains translations such as “exact representation,” “express image,” and the WEB’s “very image.” The point is correspondence, not loose resemblance.
Hypostasis can carry the sense of underlying reality, substance, or being. No single English term reproduces every possible nuance, which accounts for the variety among translations. Taken together, however, the words make a remarkable claim. The Son perfectly expresses the reality of God.
This is not something Hebrews could say of the prophets through whom God formerly spoke. Isaiah could faithfully communicate what God revealed without being the exact representation of God’s being. Moses could speak with God and descend from Sinai reflecting His glory without becoming the reality he reflected. The Son belongs to another category.
Paul uses related language in Colossians when he calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” That description becomes even more significant when placed beside the first use of divine image language in Scripture.
Genesis 1:26–27 (WEB) God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
Human beings are made in God’s image. Whatever dimensions we eventually include within that doctrine, Genesis connects image-bearing with humanity’s place and vocation within creation. Human beings are creatures made to represent God within the world He created. Paul speaks differently of Christ. Humanity is created in God’s image. Christ is “the image of the invisible God.”
Then Paul immediately tells us that everything in heaven and earth was created through Him and for Him.
The Son cannot therefore be reduced to the finest example of a creature bearing God’s image. He is truly human, and the New Testament will make much of His faithful humanity, but the One who became human is also the One through whom the human image-bearers themselves were created.
Hebrews gathers these truths into its description of the Son as the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being. That explains why God’s revelation in the Son surpasses every previous messenger. The Son does not merely know more about God. He makes God known because of who He is.
Upholding All Things Hebrews then moves from the Son’s identity to His continuing relationship with creation:
Hebrews 1:3 (WEB) “…upholding all things by the word of his power…” The Son through whom the worlds were made is also the Son upon whom they continue to depend.
The word translated “upholding” comes from pherō, a common verb carrying ideas such as bearing, carrying, or bringing. We can easily picture
“upholding” as though the Son were simply preventing creation from collapsing, but the expression is more active than a cosmic support beam. The Son bears creation along by His powerful word.
Creation therefore depends upon Christ for more than its beginning. Colossians makes the same point in different language:
Colossians 1:17 (WEB) He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.
Scripture does not describe God as a builder who finished the universe and then stepped away while creation continued independently. The created order remains dependent upon its Creator. Its regularity does not imply autonomy.
Psalm 104 describes that continuing dependence vividly. Psalm 104:27–30 (WEB) These all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season.
You give to them; they gather. You open your hand; they are satisfied with good. You hide your face; they are troubled. You take away their breath; they die and return to the dust. You send out your Spirit and they are created. You renew the face of the ground.
The creatures God made continue to receive from Him. Life is given, sustained, and taken away under His rule. Creation possesses no independent reservoir of existence by which it can continue apart from the One who made it. Paul makes a similar point when speaking in Athens.
Acts 17:24–25, 28 (WEB) The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath and all things.
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” The Creator receives existence from no one. Creatures receive everything from Him.
Hebrews places the Son within that continuing divine work. He upholds all things by the word of His power. The scope is the same creation that came through Him in verse 2. The One through whom creation came into existence continues to bear it along.
That makes the incarnation more remarkable, not less. The Son did not cease to be the One Hebrews describes when He became human. The One who walked within creation was the One through whom creation had been made and upon whom it remained dependent.
Hebrews says that He sustains creation “by the word of his power.” Scripture has already connected divine speech with divine authority from its opening chapter. God speaks, and creation responds.
Psalm 33 makes that connection explicit. Psalm 33:6, 8–9 (WEB) By Yahweh’s word, the heavens were made, all their army by the breath of his mouth.
Let all the earth fear Yahweh. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood firm.
The authority of God’s word belongs to the authority of the Creator over what He has made. Hebrews now describes the Son exercising that authority over all things. The Son who perfectly reveals God is also the One through whom creation exists and by whose powerful word it continues.
Then Hebrews moves from the Son’s relationship to the whole created order to His work for sinful human beings. Purification for Sins
Hebrews 1:3 (WEB) “…when he had purified us of our sins…” The language of purification opens a biblical world that will become increasingly important as Hebrews develops its argument about priesthood, sacrifice, sanctuary, and access to God. We should begin opening that world here without attempting to finish an argument Hebrews itself will spend several chapters developing.
Purification language is deeply rooted in Israel’s covenantal life. Under the Mosaic covenant, categories of clean and unclean regulated Israel’s relationship to the holy presence of God dwelling among them. Those categories cannot simply be equated with moral goodness and moral evil. A person could become ceremonially unclean through circumstances that were not themselves sinful, including contact with death or ordinary bodily conditions. The underlying concern was holiness.
Leviticus 11:44–45 (WEB) For I am Yahweh your God. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy… For I am Yahweh who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
Israel had been redeemed to live as the people among whom Yahweh dwelt. His presence meant that approaching Him could not be treated casually. Clean and unclean, holy and common, sanctuary and camp formed part of a covenantal system teaching Israel what it meant for the holy God to dwell among sinful and mortal people. Leviticus states the danger directly:
Leviticus 15:31 (WEB) “Thus you shall separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, so they will not die in their uncleanness when they defile my tabernacle that is among them.”
Purification provided the means by which uncleanness could be cleansed according to the provisions God had established. The specific rites varied depending upon the source of uncleanness, but the larger pattern remained: access to holy space required cleansing.
The Day of Atonement brings sin, impurity, sacrifice, and purification together with particular clarity. Aaron entered the Most Holy Place under carefully prescribed conditions, offered sacrifice for himself and for the people, and made atonement because Israel’s uncleanness and sin affected the sanctuary in which Yahweh dwelt among them.
Near the conclusion of the ceremony, Leviticus explains its purpose:
Leviticus 16:29–30 (WEB) “It shall be a statute to you forever: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and shall do no kind of work, the native-born, or the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you; for on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you. You shall be clean from all your sins before Yahweh.” Atonement and cleansing belong together. Israel’s problem is not described only in terms of guilt requiring forgiveness. Sin also defiles, and sinful people require cleansing before the holy God.
That is the world Hebrews invokes when it says the Son made purification for sins.
Later the author will explicitly compare Christ’s work with Israel’s purification rites:
Hebrews 9:13–14 (WEB) For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Hebrews does not dismiss the Mosaic rites as meaningless. They accomplished the covenantal purification God appointed them to accomplish.
Their limitation was that they could not cleanse the human problem at its deepest level. Hebrews will spend considerable time explaining that distinction, so we do not need to settle every dimension of Christ’s priestly work here.
For the moment, the claim of Hebrews 1:3 is already enormous. The Son made purification for sins.
The One described as the radiance of God’s glory enters the problem created by human sin and accomplishes the cleansing sinful people need.
The connection between those statements should not be missed. Exodus showed us a God whose glory Moses could not look upon unveiled. Israel’s entire sanctuary system taught the danger of uncleanness in the presence of the holy God. Hebrews now tells us that the Son who perfectly expresses that divine glory is also the One who provides purification from what makes human beings unfit for God’s presence. And then He sits down. At the Right Hand of the Majesty
Hebrews 1:3 (WEB) “…sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Sitting at God’s right hand is not merely a picturesque way of saying that Jesus returned to heaven. Hebrews is drawing upon royal language already established in Israel’s Scriptures, especially Psalm 110. Psalm 110:1 (WEB) Yahweh says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.”
The right hand is the place of royal authority and honor. The figure addressed by Yahweh does not merely enter heaven; he is invited to sit beside the divine throne while his enemies are subjected beneath him. Jesus applied this Psalm to the Messiah.
Matthew 22:41–45 (WEB) Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “Of David.”
He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”
Jesus does not deny that the Messiah is David’s descendant. He exposes the inadequacy of treating that fact as the whole story. David calls the coming Messiah “my Lord.” Hebrews has already given us categories capable of explaining why. The Son enters David’s line within history, but His existence does not begin there. The worlds themselves came through Him.
Peter then applies Psalm 110 directly to the risen and exalted Jesus.
Acts 2:32–36 (WEB) This Jesus God raised up, to which we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted by the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you now see and hear. For David didn’t ascend into the heavens, but he says himself, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit by my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” Let all the house of Israel therefore know certainly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
For Peter, Psalm 110 describes something that has happened. Jesus has been raised and exalted. The crucified Messiah now occupies the position promised in the Psalm.
Hebrews says the same thing with extraordinary economy. The Son made purification for sins and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Later Hebrews will develop the significance of His sitting in direct contrast with the repeated ministry of the Levitical priests.
Hebrews 10:11–14 (WEB) Every priest indeed stands day by day serving and often offering the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God, from that time waiting until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
At this point in Hebrews 1, these elements already stand together.
Purification is followed by enthronement. The Son who dealt with sin is now seated at God’s right hand.
His sacrificial work and His royal exaltation belong to the same story. This also means Christ is not presently waiting to become King. Psalm 110 does not picture the Messiah waiting outside the throne room until every enemy has disappeared. He sits at God’s right hand while His enemies are being made His footstool. Paul uses the same pattern when discussing resurrection.
1 Corinthians 15:24–26 (WEB) Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
Christ reigns until His enemies are subjected. The reign precedes the final destruction of the enemies rather than beginning afterward. Death itself remains to be destroyed, but the continuing existence of that enemy does not mean Christ has not yet been enthroned. Hebrews will soon express that same already-and-not-yet tension. All things belong to the Son, yet we do not presently see every enemy visibly subjected beneath Him. The answer will not be that Jesus is waiting for His reign to begin. Hebrews has already told us where He is.
He is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The Son in Whom God Has Spoken Hebrews began by telling us that God has spoken in His Son. Verses 2–3 explain why revelation in the Son cannot be treated as simply one more message added to the long sequence of prophetic revelation.
The Son is the heir toward whom history moves and the One through whom the worlds came into existence. He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being. The created order continues to depend upon His powerful word. The One through whom creation came and by whom creation continues is also the One who entered the human problem and made purification for sins. Having done so, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Hebrews has therefore moved from creation to revelation, from revelation to providence, from providence to purification, and from purification to enthronement without changing its subject.
The Son stands at the center of all of it. That gives greater depth to the opening declaration that God has spoken in His Son. God has not merely sent another prophet with another portion of revelation. The prophets could reveal God because God gave them words to speak. Moses could encounter God’s glory and descend the mountain reflecting what he had seen. The Son reveals God because He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being.
The One who makes God known is also the One through whom creation exists.
The One who sustains creation is the One who made purification for its sinful inhabitants.
The One who made purification now sits enthroned at God’s right hand. Hebrews has told us who the Son is before it asks
That comparison follows directly:
Hebrews 1:4 (WEB) “…having become so much better than the angels, as he has
The author states his conclusion before opening Israel?s Scriptures to demonstrate it.