The Question Psalm 8 Leaves Open
The question is not simply about human weakness. It is about human significance.
Man appears small when compared with the heavens, yet God is mindful of him. Man is a creature, yet God has given him a place within His purpose. David continues: “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour” (Psalm 8:5).
There is a tension in these words. Man is lower than the angels, yet he is crowned with glory and honour. He is a creature of dust, yet God has given him a destiny that reaches beyond what his present condition seems to explain.
The question, therefore, is not only, “What is man?” It is also, “What did God intend for man?”
Hebrews 2 takes this question and gives us the answer in a way that changes how we should read the Psalm. The writer does not simply tell us to look more closely at humanity.
He says, “We see Jesus.”
The World to Come Is Part of the Answer
Before Hebrews points us directly to Jesus, it introduces another reality: “the world to come.”
The writer says, “For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak” (Hebrews 2:5).
This is a remarkable statement because it places Psalm 8 within a future context. The question of man's glory and dominion is connected to something that has not yet been fully manifested: the world to come.
The present world is not the whole story.
There is an age to come. There is a future order in God's purpose. There is something God has prepared that has not yet been fully placed under the dominion spoken of in Psalm 8.
And then Hebrews returns to the Psalm:
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”
The writer is showing us that the destiny spoken of in the Psalm reaches beyond what we presently see.
But if that is true, where do we see this destiny fulfilled?
The answer is extraordinary:
“But we see Jesus...”
We See Jesus
Hebrews 2:9 says, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.”
The language deliberately echoes Psalm 8.
The Psalm says man was made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honour.
Hebrews says that Jesus was made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honour.
This is not an accidental similarity. The writer is showing us something about Jesus and something about man.
Jesus entered into our humanity.
The eternal Son took on flesh and blood. He entered the condition of the human race. He experienced hunger, weariness, rejection, suffering, and death. He was made lower than the angels in His incarnate humiliation, and He went all the way to death.
But death was not the end of His path.
He was crowned with glory and honour.
This is where the mystery of man's destiny begins to open. The One who entered humanity is the One who passes through suffering into glory. Christ does not merely tell us that glory exists. In His own humanity, He enters the path that leads through suffering and death into exaltation.
From Humiliation to Glory
Hebrews does not present Christ's suffering as an interruption of God's purpose. It presents it as part of the appointed pathway through which He is brought into the glory associated with His completed work.
Hebrews 2:10 says:
“For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
The words “bringing many sons unto glory” are essential.
Jesus is not only being described as the One who is crowned with glory. He is the One through whom God is bringing many sons into glory.
This means that Christ's path matters to us.
He is not merely an example standing outside our experience. He is the One who has gone before us. He is the captain, or pioneer, of our salvation.
His suffering, death, resurrection, and exaltation reveal the movement of God's redemptive purpose.
We must be careful here. Jesus did not become the Son of God by suffering, nor did He need to be morally transformed from an imperfect state into a perfect one. He is the eternal Son. Hebrews is speaking about His incarnate mission being brought to its appointed completion through suffering.
The Son entered humanity, fulfilled His mission, tasted death, and was exalted in glory.
And now He is bringing many sons unto glory.
The Son Who Became Like Us
Hebrews continues:
“For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Hebrews 2:11).
This is one of the great mysteries of the gospel.
The Son did not save humanity from a distance.
He entered our humanity.
He calls those He sanctifies His brethren.
The writer then quotes Psalm 22 and continues to describe Christ identifying Himself with the people God is bringing to glory. A few verses later he says that because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, Christ also took part of the same.
There is therefore a profound connection between Christ's humanity and our destiny.
He became like us in order to bring us into what God has purposed for us.
This does not mean that we become divine in essence. It means that through Christ we are brought into the relationship, inheritance, glory, and future God has prepared for those who belong to His Son.
Christ's identification with humanity is therefore not merely a doctrine about the incarnation. It is connected to where God is taking redeemed humanity.
Christ Reveals the Destiny of Redeemed Humanity
If we want to know what God is doing with humanity, we must look at Christ.
He is not merely the One who forgives our sins. He is also the revelation of the destiny God is bringing His people into.
Paul says that those whom God foreknew He also predestined “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29).
That is a remarkable statement.
God is not merely making us morally improved versions of ourselves. His purpose is that we should be conformed to the image of His Son.
Paul also speaks of believers being transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).
John takes the same hope into the future: “we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2).
The direction is clear.
God is bringing His sons unto glory, and Christ is the pattern and centre of that purpose.
The destination is not merely a place. It is conformity to the Son in the fullness of what God has purposed for redeemed humanity.
The One Who Went Before Us
This is why the pathway of Jesus matters.
He did not come merely to tell us where we are going. He came into our humanity and went before us.
He suffered.
He obeyed.
He endured the cross.
He tasted death.
He was raised.
He was exalted.
And He was crowned with glory and honour.
Hebrews therefore presents Him as the pioneer of our salvation.
This does not mean that believers reproduce Christ's redemptive work. Only Christ died for the sins of the world. His sacrifice is unique and complete.
But His pathway reveals something about God's work in those He is bringing to glory.
The Christian's destiny is not achieved by bypassing Christ's pattern. We are united to the One who has gone before us, and God's work in us is directed toward conformity to Him.
This is why Scripture speaks so strongly about following Christ, taking up the cross, suffering with Him, being conformed to His image, and ultimately being glorified with Him.
The cross is not merely the place where our guilt was dealt with. It is also central to the revelation of the pathway by which the Son entered His appointed glory.
Higher Than the Angels
There is another part of the biblical picture that becomes important when we consider the movement from Christ's humiliation to His exaltation.
Hebrews 1:4 says that the Son “being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.”
The Son's glory is not something He acquired because He ceased to be divine. He is eternally the Son. But the New Testament describes His exaltation in relation to the work He accomplished in His incarnate humanity.
The One who was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death is now crowned with glory and honour.
The One who humbled Himself has been highly exalted.
Paul says that Christ “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” and that “God also hath highly exalted him” (Philippians 2:8–9).
There is therefore a movement Scripture wants us to see:
humiliation, obedience, suffering, death, resurrection, exaltation, glory.
This does not mean that Christ's deity began at His exaltation. It means that the incarnate Son passed through the appointed work of redemption and was publicly exalted in the glory associated with His victorious work.
And this matters because the One who has gone before us is now the One to whom the future of redeemed humanity is joined.
Bringing Many Sons to Glory
Hebrews 2:10 does not stop with Jesus.
It says that God is “bringing many sons unto glory.”
The glory of Christ therefore opens our eyes to the destiny of those who belong to Him.
Romans 8 says that those who suffer with Christ will also be glorified with Him. It speaks of the revealing of the sons of God and of creation itself waiting for that manifestation.
Philippians speaks of the transformation of our lowly body so that it will be fashioned like Christ's glorious body.
First John says that when Christ appears, “we shall be like him.”
These passages should enlarge our understanding of salvation.
The gospel is not merely about getting people out of hell and into heaven. It is about God accomplishing His eternal purpose in Christ.
He is forming a people in the image of His Son.
He is bringing sons to glory.
He is preparing an inheritance.
He is moving creation toward the fulfilment of His purpose.
And Christ stands at the centre of all of it.
A Destiny That Reaches Into the Age to Come
The language of glory becomes even more significant when placed beside the Bible's teaching about the age to come.
Jesus spoke of eternal life “in the world to come” (Mark 10:30). Paul spoke of Christ being exalted not only in this world, but also in that which is to come (Ephesians 1:21). Hebrews speaks of those who have tasted “the powers of the world to come” (Hebrews 6:5).
The destiny of the believer therefore reaches beyond the present age.
We are living now, but we are being prepared for what God will reveal.
We are experiencing salvation now, but we await its fullness.
We belong to Christ now, but there is a glory that will be revealed.
And this is why Scripture can speak about believers participating in Christ's future reign and even says, “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:3).
Whatever details remain beyond what Scripture explains, the central truth is clear: redeemed humanity has a future within God's coming order that is far greater than what our present condition would suggest.
The destiny of man cannot be understood by looking only at man.
We must look at Christ.
And the destiny revealed in Christ reaches into the age to come.
What It Means to Become Like Christ
When we say that God's purpose is to make us like Christ, we must understand the statement in the way Scripture presents it.
It does not mean that we become Christ.
It does not mean that we become God in essence.
It means that God's redemptive purpose is to conform His sons to the image of His Son.
The character that Christ revealed, the obedience He demonstrated, the sonship He lived, the glory He entered, and the future He now possesses all become part of the horizon toward which God's work in His people is moving.
This is why the Christian life cannot be understood only in terms of what happens to us after death.
God is forming us now.
He is conforming us to Christ now.
He is preparing us now for a destiny that will be fully manifested in the age to come.
The present work and the future glory belong together.
What God is doing in us now is connected to what He intends to reveal through us then.
The next question is therefore larger than man's destiny in isolation: how does God's purpose unfold across the ages, and what does Scripture mean when it speaks of an eternal purpose that existed before us?
But Scripture does not describe this purpose as something revealed in one moment. It speaks about the present age, the age to come, and ages to come. It also speaks about God's purpose unfolding through generations until what He has purposed in Christ reaches its appointed fullness.
Christ shows us what humanity was made for, what sin disrupted, and what God is restoring in those who belong to Him. The path He walked—from humiliation through death to resurrection and glory—is not merely a story about Jesus. It reveals where redeemed humanity is being taken.