Hebrews chapter 2 verses 14-18.
I will not be using a digital voice this week as the blog is longer than normal.
Let us read.
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. 16 For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. 17 Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Hebrews 2:14-18 NASB
These verses are very interesting in that they discuss humanity in the grand scheme of God’s will. Jesus became a man and shared in the same life as we are in. Even as everyone will one day face death, Jesus also had to face and experience death.
Verse 14
This verse has two sections part a refers to us and Christ, and part b to the power of death. We will look at both parts in sequence.
Therefore since = Ἐπεὶ οὖν Hebrews 2:14 This takes us to the previous thought that comes straight from Isaiah 8 18. “BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME.” Hebrews 2:13 NASB This is a very important and this chapter has a grain of Messianic kingship truth running straight through. How terrible and great at the same time are these verses and Apollos understood this. The first part of Isaiah 8 talks about the Northern Kingdom being taken captive and as we know this terrible event really did happen. This judgement will also spill into Judah and only a remnant will be saved. These events happened my friends. Everything seems to be lost and if it wasn’t for the Lord there would be no hope.
I want to look now at background information to Isaiah 8 verses 16 to 18” 16 Bind up the testimony, seal the [q]Law among my disciples. 17 And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will wait eagerly for Him. 18 Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of armies, who dwells on Mount Zion.”
The context is clear the children in verse 18 refer to the saved remnant. The people Apollos was talking to were from their point of view the saved remnant. Now we understand the background to verse 13 b we can return to verse 14. The since and the children in verse 13 and 14 are those who are the remnant and being saved. This is the context. The children mentioned in verse 14 makes us children of the promise. The children and the Lord go hand in hand, “behold I and the children whom God has given to me.” The I refers to the Lord Jesus Christ and we are his children, the church, the community of believers. Jesus the Lord shared our humanity, he became a man, that is what flesh and blood means. The lord Jesus went further than that and tasted the suffering of death. We need to be careful to read the second part of verse 14 carefully. God is always in control. Satan is only a creature, a created being. As Philip Edgecumbe Hughes says. Satan having power of death can only be understood secondarily. On page 113c of his Hebrews commentary he writes;
“ in considering these questions it should be recognized that the power of death is held by the devil only In a secondary and not in an ultimate sense. Death is indeed the dark reality of his tyranny. But God is still supreme in his sovereignty: unfailingly, it is for him and by him that all things exist, as we have already been reminded (v. 10)- Death Is not a sphere that has broken loose from God 3 command. On the contrary, Scripture, as Aquinas observes, clearly teaches that death, like all else, is under God’s control (cf. Gen. 2:17; Dt. 32:39; 1 KL 216; Mt. 10:28; Lk. 12:5; 1 Cor. 15:25f.; Rev. 1:18); and the clinching proof of this is the conquest of death and Satan by the incarnate Son. Besides, the devil is a creature—and, significantly within the present context, an angelic creature—finite and futile in his rebellion, and subject to judgment and destruction. There is no question or possibility of an insoluble dilemma involving a cosmic dualism of God and Satan, as though they were eternally opposed to each other as two equal and ultimate realities. The power of death wielded by the devil is not an absolute power, indeed, death is the sentence of God pronounced against man who sinfully has transferred his allegiance from his Creator to the creature (Gen. 3:1ff.; Ezek. 18:4; Rom. 3:23) and who in doing so has turned His back on God’s realm of life in favour of Satan’s realm of death. It is in this sense that the devil is said to hold the power of death. But the power which he presently wields is also the power by which he is destroyed (1 In: 318] Rev. 20:10). Death is-the awful reality of divine judgment, not satanic Victory. Creation and destruction—and salvation from destruction—belong properly and absolutely to God alone. When we read that it was through death that the devil was overcome, we should carefully consider whose death it was that achieved this triumph and what kind of death it was that he died; otherwise, we shall never have a due appreciation of the logic and the necessity of that death by which we were redeemed. The spectacle of the cross is not that of any man enduring the pains of death, but of the incarnate Son of God in his pure innocence suffering a death which is not his due. It is the death, moreover, of one who, though guiltless, has been tried by and legal process condemned to die the death of a common criminal and in the place of the common criminal (Barabbas), so that it is plain to all that in this death the Innocent One is suffering for the guilty, the Holy One for the unholy. Any other kind of death, peaceful or violent, would have obscured this central truth of the cross. Death, therefore, and more specifically the death of Christ and death of this the overthrow of him who had persuaded death. “This of all others seemed the most kind, was necessary for mankind to abandon life for t unlikely way and means,” ”
From Philip Edgecumbe Hughes commentary, Eerdmans, page 113
So when reading this God holds all the power. It is through the work of Christ, his work on the cross that defeated death. The real number one enemy for mankind is death. We do not need to read holy books to understand this. All the graveyards which house our loved one’s remind us of this. But we have an eternal hope. Without the Lord Jesus Christ this would not have been possible.
Satan has been defeated (the adversary, see Job). It was Jesus who overcame death… He was the first to overcome death and according to Apollos in verse 15 we don’t need to face death anymore. In verse 16 the writer emphasises that we are the inheritors of salvation not the angels. Obviously, he is writing to an audience who were educated into the teachings of the OT.
The name of Abraham would resonate with the promise (Genesis 22). However, let us remember that according to the Jewish scriptures the blessing to Abraham in the end was meant for everyone. In Genesis Abraham is referred to as the ‘father of many nations’ and obviously this includes the gentile nations. In this context however it is better to remember the Jewish context of the letter… It is only in the context of Jesus as High Priest that gives sense to the text that we are reading.
In verse 17 we come to the theological debates that surround ‘expiate’ and ‘propitiate’. The high priests job was to mediate between God and the Jewish community at different levels. It is in light of this that our two words need to be understood. In Greek usage of the time propitiate meant to ‘appease the gods’ thus some commentators prefer expiate or ‘atone for’. The most important point however is that both meanings take us towards ‘peace with God’. So as high priest Jesus made peace with God for the people of God in line with OT theologies.
However, in verse 18 we see the focus being on Jesus as a human being who was prone to suffering as we are yet without sin. James 1 verse 13 seems to on the surface to contradict this verse. However, I think there is a difference between ‘tempt’ and ‘test’. The nuances in the Greek and the Hebrew are very important. One should read the ‘test’ of Abraham concerning his only son. Perhaps one way forward is to say that God ‘tests’ but we ‘tempt’ ourselves by our dark motives. The context is of the highest importance. As I said this seems to be a contradiction only on the surface. The grounds of motivation are different.
Summary
In chapters one and two the writer works through some themes which are found in the OT. The conclusion the writer reached was that Jesus is the Messiah the king of Israel and greater than the angels.
The angels belonged firmly in the ‘creatures’ part of reality not on the divine side of the reality even though they were in God’s presence himself.
In summary then, Jesus is greater than the angels and only for a ‘brief period of time’ was he made ‘lower’. ‘Son of God’ needs to be understood as a title which in its truest sense is explained in the life and teachings of Christ.
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