Scripture References: Psalm 8
III. The Lord’s Passion – Continued
What were you intended to be? “Turn your eyes upon Jesus.” He is King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation exults: He has made us to be “kings and priests [forever with Him]” (Revelation 5:10). So Jesus is the epitome, the description, the example of what we are intended to be.
The word “visit” in verse 4 means to care. What are we that God would care about us? Why would the omnipotent God of the universe care about our hurts, our confusion, our intense pressure? Why should God concern Himself? And then God crowns us. This psalm goes on to indicate that God has made man to be a “little lower than the angels,” slightly less than the angels. God has “crowned us with glory and honor.” God has made us to have “dominion over the works of [His] hands and has put all things under [our] feet.”
How breathtaking! God invested us with the dignity second only to His own, second only to the very nature of Himself. God made us to be rulers over the world that He created. What a high position, what lofty dignity God gives to mankind. It is as though, the psalmist said, God set a regal crown upon man’s head, a scepter in his hand, and a robe of royalty around his shoulders. It is a crown of glory and honor. Nowhere is human dignity more clearly and boldly asserted than in this passage. God intended for us to be regal.
Before the fall in the Garden of Eden, when God created Adam and Eve, that is how He wants us to be. If you want to understand the full impact of this psalm, turn to Hebrews 2. The writer of Hebrews quotes this psalm, from verses 4 and on. Hebrews 2 speaks in detail about this and declares that God has “put all things in subjection under his [man’s] feet.” Nothing was left out, but focus on the last portion of Hebrews 2:8, “But now we do not yet see all things put under him [man].”
Mankind botched it up. Sin entered into human experience, and we have not achieved what God intended for us. The intent of Hebrews 2 is to display before us the high and lofty ideal God had for mankind and to show us that, in Christ, we can indeed reach our full potential. It is all found in our Lord and Savior. We become what God created us to become in Jesus Christ. He restores the dominion, the authority, the dignity that sin snatched away. Jesus Christ makes us to be what God created us to be.
Though we may not seem to be rulers and kings with honor in this life, we discover in Revelation 1:5–6 that God has “loved us and washed us [redeemed] from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever.” Our fullest potential and our utmost fulfillment is found through Jesus Christ.
People were meant to have dominion, but by no means do they have dominion. We are creatures frustrated by our circumstances, defeated by our temptations, conscious of our weaknesses. We stagger with an burden around our necks. We should be free, but we are bound. We should be kings, but we are slaves. Now whatever else is true and whatever else may not be true, one crushing reality is certain, people are not what they were meant to be. You and I are not what we were meant to be. How, then, do we realize our potential? How do we fill the longing in our hearts? How do we deal with the inadequacies of our spirits? How do we realize the tremendous possibilities that lie within us? Only in and through Jesus Christ. That is the impact of Hebrews 2 and the intent of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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