John Brown, Hebrews Quote 3

Hebrews  by John Brown  p. 105

    Let us examine this interesting passage somewhat more particularly.   Ver. 10.  “For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect though sufferings.”
    The first thing to which our attention is naturally called, on looking at this verse, is the appellation here given to the Supreme Being.  He is styled, He, “for whom are all things, and by whom are all things.”  The expression, all things, is one as comprehensive as language can furnish.  It includes all beings and all events.  All beings and all events are for God; i.e., the ultimate reason why the one exist and the other occur, is the manifestation of the glories of His character.  All beings and all events are by God; i.e. the one exist, and the other occur, in consequence of His will—they all originate in His appointment and in His agency.  His glory is the end, His will is the law, of the universe.

There is a beautiful appropriateness in the descriptive appellations given to God in the inspired writings.  They have almost uniformly a peculiar reference to the statement in the course of which they occur.  When the Apostle prays that the Roman Christians may be “likeminded one towards another,” he addresses the prayer to “the God of all patience and consolation;”  when he speaks of spiritual illumination, he describes God as “Him who commanded the light to shine out of darkness.”  We see the same appropriateness in the appellation here given to the Divinity, as will appear more distinctly when we come to show how the dispensation here referred to had a congruity with the character of God as “Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things.”

    This glorious Being, in the exercise of His high sovereignty, had formed a purpose of mercy with respect to a large portion of the human race, all of whom had by sin forfeited every claim on His kind regard, and rendered themselves the fit objects of His judicial displeasure and moral disapprobation.  It was His determination to “bring many sons to glory.”    He “predestined them to the adoption of children,” having “chosen them before the foundation of the world.”  Though in any past age of the church they have formed a very small minority of mankind, yet, considered collectively, they are “a multitude which no man can number, out of every kindred, and people, and tongue and nation.”