THE EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE HEBREWS - Chapter 3 - Verse 4

Verse 4. For every house is builded by some man. The words in this verse are plain, and the sentiment in it clear. The only difficulty is in seeing the connexion, and in understanding how it is intended to bear on what precedes, or on what follows. It is clear that every house must have a builder, and equally clear that God is the Creator of all things. But what is the meaning of this passage in this connexion? What is its bearing on the argument? If the verse was entirely omitted, and the fifth verse read in connexion with the third, there would be apparently nothing wanting to complete the sense of the writer, or to finish the comparison which he had commenced. Various ways have been adopted to explain the difficulty. Perhaps the following observations may remove it, and express the true sense.

(1.) Every family must have a founder; every dispensation an author; every house a builder. There must be some one, therefore, over all dispensations —the old and the new—the Jewish and the Christian.

(2.) Paul assumes that the Lord Jesus was Divine. He had demonstrated this in Heb 1; and he argues as if this were so, without now stopping to prove it, or even to affirm it expressly.

(3.) God must be over all things. He is Creator of all; and he must therefore be over all. As the Lord Jesus, therefore, is Divine, he must be over the Jewish dispensation as well as the Christian—or he must, as God, have been at the head of that—or over his own family or household.

(4.) As such, he must have a glory and honour which could not belong to Moses. He, in his Divine character, was the Author of both the Jewish and the Christian dispensations; and he must, therefore, have a rank far superior to that of Moses—which was the point which the apostle designed to illustrate. The meaning of the whole may be thus expressed:— "The Lord Jesus is worthy of more honour than Moses, He is so, as the maker of a house deserves more honour than the house. He is Divine. In the beginning he laid the foundation of the earth, and was the agent in the creation of all things, Heb 1:2,10. He presides, therefore, over everything; and was over the Jewish and Christian dispensations—for there must have been some one over them, or the author of them, as really as it must be true that every house is built by some person. Being, therefore, over all things, and at the head of all dispensations, he MUST be more exalted than Moses." This seems to me to be the argument—- an argument which is based on the supposition that he is at the head of all things, and that he was the agent in the creation of all worlds. This view will make all consistent. The Lord Jesus will be seen to have a claim to a far higher honour than Moses, and Moses will be seen to have derived his honour, as a servant of the Mediator, in the economy which he had appointed.