"5 For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6 It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honour,
8 putting everything in subjection under his feet.”
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone."
Hebrews 2:5-9
It is not always easy to see the thread of the argument here but thread there is in this closely reasoned epistle. The world to come - the new heaven and earth - is to be subject to men, not angels, therefore the new dispensation, which has as its purpose the ultimate fulfilment of the glorious destiny appointed for man by God, is greater and better than the old. We have here, in fact, a further corroboration of the thesis expounded in ch 1. For if the ultimate destiny of man is to rule over the world to come (8), then man, although for the present he may be lower than the angels, is better than they. And if man is better, how much more is the Son of Man, the Man Christ Jesus! This high destiny of man however, is by no means apparent, indeed the opposite. In spite of the amazing technological advancements 20th century man has made in his attempts to subdue the world to himself, it is only too true that he has succeeded in loosing dark powers over which he has no real control, and that they in fact now dominate his life, to the terror and dread of the world. No; it is not this kind of subjection of which the Scriptures speak, but one which has a moral and spiritual basis. That high destiny is perceived only by faith as we consider Jesus and think on what He is and what He has done in His atoning for us. We look on the one hand on the world with all its sin and misery, with all the dark sinister powers that oppress it; we look at man, disappointed in all his hopes of the ideal life, and ask, 'Are the promises of God in vain?' But then we look beyond man, and we see Jesus crowned with Glory and honour, and in Him we see the fulfilment of the high calling of God for mankind. In His victory we see the total healing of our life and the pledge and assurance that our ultimate destiny will come to pass. His presence in glory as a Man is the earnest and guarantee that one day we shall be there as men, as members of the new humanity, made perfect in Him, and without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.