Hebrews 1:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

If He were a creature, He would be a servant. He refuted Marcellus and the others by showing that the Father and the Son are two persons, distinct hypostatically.

He refuted the Marcionites by showing that it is not the Godhead that is anointed, but Christ's humanity. Then he says: "more than Thy companions."

Who are these partakers, if not men? That is, Christ did not receive the Spirit "by measure" (Jn 3:34).

Do you see how the Apostle everywhere joins the teaching about the uncreated Essence with the teaching about the divine economy? What could be clearer than this?

Do you see that creation and birth are not the same thing? Otherwise he would not distinguish them. In contrast to the expression "Thou makest," he would not have added, "of the Son: Thy throne, O God, ὁ Θεός, is unto the age of the age."

Nor would he have called the name Son a more glorious name, if it meant the same thing as creature. Indeed, in what would it be more glorious?

If creation and birth meant the same thing, and the angels are created, in what would the Son be more excellent than they? Here again the word "God" is used of Him with the article.

Some of the Arians asserted that the word God with the article, ὁ Θεός, is used in Holy Scripture only of God the Father. From this they concluded that His Son, Jesus Christ, is not true God. The saint refutes this false teaching here and elsewhere.

"With the oil of gladness," that is, with the Holy Spirit, above other men. For Christ did not receive the Spirit by measure (Jn 3:34), as though powerless. Rather, He was anointed with the whole fullness, both of the anointing and of the One Who anoints.

His partakers are all spiritual men, as those sanctified by the same participation. They include those who, being perfect in the Law and spiritual, received the Spirit through faith in Christ.

For this reason they too are called anointed ones, as in: "Touch not Mine anointed" (Ps 104:15). Much better known are those partakers of Christ by grace who shared in His death in baptism.

They were anointed with the Spirit, Who is called the oil of gladness. He freed us from sorrow over sins and granted that we be comforted by the hope of future good things.

That the name "God" stands in place of "O God," ὦ θεέ, has a reliable witness in the adversary Symmachus. He rendered it thus: "Therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy friends."

Notice that the word "God" is said of the Son with the article, because of those who say that the expression "and the Word was God" (Jn 1:1), where the word God lacks the article, does not present Him as God properly.

For God the Father was well pleased “to sum up all things in Christ” (Eph 1:10) and to renew them as they were in the beginning.

Therefore David explains the deep mystery of the Incarnation, crying out to the Son, who is from God the Father by nature: “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness beyond Thy fellows” (Ps 44:8; cf. Heb 1:9).

But some think that such expressions are not fitting for the Only-begotten. They suppose rather that they were said with reference to a mere man born of the Holy Virgin.

It has already been shown by many words to the one who thinks this way that it is foolishness. For no ordinary man was born for us, nor a man deprived of unity with God.

Thus one cannot say, according to their account, that the God of the universe knew beforehand of him that he would love righteousness and hate iniquity solely by his own will (cf. Ps 44:8a; Heb 1:9a).

Rather, we rightly apply the singer’s expression to the Only-begotten who appeared in the form of man. We also receive in a refined sense Isaiah’s prophecies concerning Him.

For he spoke thus: “Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel. He shall eat butter and honey before He knows, and before choosing evil He shall choose the good.”

“Therefore, before the Child knows good and evil, He will resist evil in order to choose the good” (Isa 7:14-16).

He loved righteousness and hated iniquity (cf. Ps 44:8a; Heb 1:9a), because He is in truth both Righteousness and God.

Indeed, if a child cannot yet know what is blameworthy and praise the opposite, as he may do from a certain point onward, how did He resist wickedness in order to choose the good?

As I have already said, He was God in the flesh. He could not pass beyond His natural goodness, which belongs to Him.

I do not support what I am now about to say. But if we follow the word of the senseless, let us grant that the one honored only by conjunction according to person also has his own virtue.

Yet I shall ask those who speak this way: for what merits can anyone, being man by nature, become so great as to be counted worthy even of divine thrones?

How can he sit with God the Father, be called Lord equally with Him who is so by nature, be worshiped by angels, and have the whole earth serve him?

Yet Scripture says, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Mt 4:10; cf. Deut 6:13), and it does not permit a new god among us.

Perhaps they will resort to this customary defense and say that, through union with God, the glory of the Godhead by nature encompassed Him. Then confess the true union, and do not distort the matter.

Do not divide the natures, setting each apart in turn, saying that they do not touch each other. Do not invent, I know not how, only a union of persons.

We affirm that the verse, “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness beyond Thy fellows” (Ps 44:8; Heb 1:9), was said of the Son.

He is from God by nature and became as we are, that is, man. For after the first man transgressed the divine commandment, human nature fell sick with a strong inclination toward sins.

Therefore the Word from God, being immutable by nature, holy, righteous, and hating unrighteousness, became as we are. He was called a servant, and He called His Father God (cf. Jn 20:17) because of His humanity, though He Himself is God.

It is said that He was anointed by Him, the Father, through the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 10:38). He did not receive Him for Himself, for as God He is also holy by nature.

Rather, He was bringing us through Himself to grace and showing us worthy of blessing from the Father, though we had stumbled through Adam’s transgression and the sin that tormented us afterward.

For neither an envoy nor an angel saved us, but the Lord Himself (cf. Isa 63:9).

Certainly, if anyone thinks that the Word from God the Father receives sanctification into His own nature, he sails into a vast and great sea of blasphemy.

For if we say that the anointing, or sanctification, in question was accomplished in the last times of the age, how do we not confess necessarily and willingly that He cannot be holy by nature?

Would we not rather say that He was also unholy in the times at the beginning and before the anointing, that is, for eternal ages, being deprived of sanctification before becoming as we are?

But if this were true, then He would not be free from sin.

How then does the most wise Paul say that the Son is the Radiance of the Father’s glory and, likewise, the Impress of His Hypostasis (cf. Heb 1:3ab)? For an impress fully receives the form of its archetype.

Consequently, the Father Himself would not be holy by nature. In that case, who sanctifies Him, the Son?

Therefore, bidding farewell to their torrents of words, we shall confess that the Son is holy by nature, just as, beyond doubt, the Father Himself is.

But we say that He was sanctified according to the flesh when He is said to have emptied Himself, being called man. For man can have sanctification by participation from God, and not by his own nature.

There is nothing astonishing if the Word, being God, appropriates to Himself the properties of humanity, according to His love of goodness and the divine economy.

For He who willed to endure complete self-emptying, how could He avoid its consequences?

Therefore, on the one hand, if the Word from God the Father is considered in Himself, He needs no good thing. We say that the Holy Spirit is His own.

On the other hand, as I have said, because He became flesh, He Himself anoints His own temple with His own Spirit. For the Father does not do what He wills to accomplish in Israel through anyone else, but only through the one Son.

Therefore He is said to have received the Spirit economically as man. “For,” he says, “Jesus of Nazareth, God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38).

As God, He grants Him to those worthy to receive Him. Indeed, He breathed Him into the holy apostles, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22).

And divine Peter also addressed the assemblies of the Jews concerning Him: “Therefore, being exalted by the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Spirit, He poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33).

You hear in these words, and very clearly, that He was exalted by the right hand of God, that He received and at the same time bestowed the Spirit.

It is clear that He was exalted after He humbled Himself. For just as He voluntarily brought Himself down into this condition, so He Himself raises Himself up again, even with the flesh.

He is the Hand of the Father, through whom He accomplishes all things in a manner befitting God. Therefore He is exalted through Himself, according to the will of the Father.

This took place when, having burst the bonds of death and said to the lower spirits, “Come forth” (Isa 49:9), He sat at the right hand of the Father.

Therefore the Son by nature was anointed with the oil of gladness when the Father was also called the God of Him who became as we are.

But it is in no way strange to say this, for He said somewhere to the holy apostles: “I go to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God” (Jn 20:17).

Know clearly, then, that He said His own Father was His God because of His humanity. And since we have been called through Him to adoption, He called the servants by nature His brethren.

He granted us His Father as our Father. Yet just as we, even though we are called sons of the Father, are certainly men, and have known the grace of Him who honored us, so also is it with the Son.

He is Son and Lord by nature. Although, because of the flesh and His likeness to us, He acknowledged the Father as His God, He did not lose the being that He is.

We also understand these words as fitting His divine economy with the flesh.

How, then, is He said to be anointed beyond His fellows? Let us say that this is possible. We are anointed with the Holy Spirit, but our condition differs by nature as much as the nature of the Godhead may be thought to differ from every created nature.

The Word of God, who became man for our sake, anoints His own temple with His own Spirit. He does not perform a partial action and does not give merely some pledge, as happens with us.

Rather, He fills His temple with sanctification, and with His own power and glory. Therefore He said: “For their sake I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth” (Jn 17:19).

For he says: "He will transform the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory" (Phil 3:21). The body of the saints will not be conformed to the Godhead, but to "the body of glory."

This same testimony also exposed the blasphemy of Arius, for it showed that the throne of God the Word is eternal. By the duality of the Persons it drove out the confusion of Sabellius.

The same testimony also stops the shameless mouths of the Jews.

When we hear of God's sword, bow, arrows (Ps 44:4-6), and anything else of this kind, we must not understand it in a crude, literal sense, but in the sense of His power.

So too we must think of the Son's anointing under the image of oil. The "anointing of gladness" is the coming of the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is the giver of joy.

In general, this anointing is a full anointing, so that the Holy Spirit united His whole being with the being of the Son, and not a part of His gift, as with Spirit-bearing men. In this the superiority of the Son was expressed.

He Who through this chrismation is the Savior of our salvation from sins, and through this is the High Priest of our humility before God the Father, is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through this anointing with oil He will deem us worthy to receive the eternal Kingdom of His Father. He lives and abides with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and may God reign unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Here is the proof. None of those who were symbolically anointed in ancient times, whether priests, kings, or even prophets, possessed such power of divine virtue as our Savior and Lord Jesus, the one true Christ, revealed. None of them, though renowned for dignity and honor through many generations of their countrymen, gave to those subject to them the name Christians from his own typological name “Christ.” None of them received divine honors from those subject to them. After the death of none of them was anyone willing to die gladly for the one honored. None of them caused such a shaking among all the nations on earth. For in their typological power there was not the effective power that was in the truth revealed by Christ.

He received from no one symbols and signs of His high-priestly dignity. He did not trace His origin according to the flesh from a priestly family. Human weapons did not raise Him to a royal throne, and He was not even like the prophets of old. He received from the Jews neither an honored office nor the first place, but was adorned by the Father with all honors, not symbolically, but in reality.

Though He had none of the things we have listed, He has a greater right to the name “Christ” than all the others. He is the only true Christ of God. Through Him the world is full of Christians, who bear His truly majestic and holy name. He handed down to them not images and likenesses, but virtue in its pure form and the heavenly life, and He communicated true dogmas to His disciples.

He was anointed not with oil prepared by human hands, but, as befits the Godhead, with the Spirit of God, who participates in the unbegotten Godhead of the Father. Isaiah teaches this, crying out as if in the person of Christ: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me. He has sent Me to preach good tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind” (Isa 61:1; Lk 4:18).

Not only Isaiah, but also David speaks, addressing Christ: “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness beyond Thy companions” (Ps 45:6-7). Here, in the first verse, the word calls Him God. In the second, it honors Him with a royal scepter. Then, after mentioning His divine and royal authority, in the third verse it calls Him Christ, anointed not with material oil, but with the divine oil of gladness. By this His election is indicated, which is greater and distinguishes Him from those who in ancient times were anointed materially and typologically.

In another place the same David explains who He is and says: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I make Thy enemies the footstool of Thy feet” (Ps 109:1). And again: “From the womb before the morning star I begot Thee. The Lord has sworn and will not repent: Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 109:3-4; Heb 5:5-6).

This Melchizedek is introduced in Holy Scripture as priest of God Most High. He was not anointed by any ointment made by human hands, and he did not receive the priesthood among the Hebrews by inheriting it through family succession. For this reason our Savior is named by oath Christ and priest according to his order, and not according to the order of others who received symbols and images.

History relates that He was not bodily anointed among the Jews and did not come from a priestly generation. Rather, He received His being from God Himself before the morning star, that is, before the creation of the world. To Him belongs forever and ever an immortal and unaging priesthood.

A great and manifest proof of His anointing, not material but divine, is this: of all who formerly lived and now live, throughout the whole world He alone is called Christ, confessed and proclaimed as such. Under this name He is remembered by Greeks and barbarians. To this day, throughout the whole inhabited earth, His disciples honor Him as King, reverence Him as more than a prophet, and glorify Him as the true and only High Priest of God. More than this, they glorify Him as the Word of God, who existed before the ages and received the greatest honor from the Father. They worship Him as God.

And what is most wondrous is this: we who believe in Him honor Him not only with our lips and with the sound of words, but with the whole disposition of our soul. We prefer the confession of Him to our very life.