¹⁰ For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.

God’s purpose and plan was “fitting.” To the spiritual eye we see it as proper, suitable, revealing. Christ is the ultimate magnifying glass on God’s character. Christ’s coming to earth was a perfection in amplification of who God really is.

When we say “fitting,” we mean an expression that is entirely appropriate for what it is intended to convey. You see, all creation exists for the sake of Christ. God made it all for His enjoyment, for His use, for His reflection. Creation is created to reveal Christ. Furthermore, God created creation through Christ. He was the agent, the actual Creator. The categories of distinguishing between Father and Son become blurred, as both were involved. However, our verse strains to separate, or at least hint at the differences. Human language fails to adequately convey the mind and actions of God. But constrained as God was in the incarnation of Christ, so also does God constrain Himself to human language in order to communicate to us mere humans with our limited capacities, some truth of the inner recesses of His mind and ways. While we cannot know God exhaustively, we can know Him in some small ways.

On one level, His plan and purpose was to bring “many sons to glory.” Clearly Christ came to save sinners and raise us up to eternal life. (This is part of the glory of which Jesus prayed to receive at the cross and resurrection.) We too share in that glory. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). Our glory is a mere reflection of His.

But God’s ultimate purpose and plan is more than our salvation, more than crafting fine mirrors of Him. The greater focus is on the “perfecting” of Christ, the One who brings salvation. The word translated here means “completeness.” It is not as though Christ was somehow less than perfect in our usual sense of the word. Rather, God was completing His work in relationship to creation in and through Christ. He is now seen as perfect, having completed His creative work. In Christ, the incarnate Creator God, the final creative touches of what God made are found in His personal involvement in that creation. From the beginning He had planned to suffer for His creation.