All Scriptural references are to the Christian Standard Bible (CSB).
Do you ever want the second-best thing? If finances or any pious excuse were genuinely not your limit, would you want the second best? Personally, I know that if I’m offered either a brand-new Honda Accord or a Porsche 911 (even with the maintenance) with no strings attached, I’ll take German engineering every day. On average, it’s not controversial to say that we want the best. It’s usually when we start thinking about the “yeah…but” that problems come in. Exceptions are made. Finance are mentioned. Our “facts and logic” lead us toward second-guessing.
New Testament believers, particularly Jewish believers, faced a problem: this Jesus they heard about had died on the cross. They even heard of eyewitness accounts of His resurrection. But after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, doubt might have set in. So Jewish listeners to the Christian message began hedging their bets: “I think Jesus was the promised Jewish savior, but maybe I’ll play it safe: maybe I should just go back to sacrificing bulls and goats? Maybe I do need a priest to negotiate my situation with God?” It was so much worse than just the second-best thing; New Testament Israelites start with the “yeah… but what if Christ’s death wasn’t enough?”
You know what the author to Hebrews says? He tells us of the importance of the Old Covenant: “Long ago God spoke to the ancestors by the prophets at different times and in different ways” (v. 1); however, the authors tells us that God climatically and finally spoke through His resurrected Son, Jesus, the inheritor and creator of the world (v. 2). Not only is Christ God Himself (v.3), Christ’s death and resurrection purifies and covers the sins of believers. It’s only natural that the author finishes his thought this way: “So he became superior to the angels, just as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs” (v.4).
Jesus Christ is the heavyweight champion of saviors. He is not just better; he is the best offer we have. Is this how you view Jesus today? Or have you been tempted to hedge your bets on something else? It might not be blatant disbelief, but it might feel innocent like the Hebrew Christians: “I’ll believe that Jesus died for sins… but I’ll do this extra work just in case God wanted something else.”
God finished speaking through His Son, Jesus Christ; what He said through Him is enough: God desires our absolute trust in Christ’s death in our place, and He desires our very lives, the dirty and the ugly. He wants it all, not our second guesses or hedged bets. That’s the whole point of Hebrews, and thankfully, Christ is enough—you might even say the best and only way—to have this close relationship with God. This is the greatest offer we could ever receive, but I have a question for you: are you going to keep reaching for the second-best thing?
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”—C.S. Lewis