HEBREWS 2:10-18 - A Flesh And Blood Savior

Introduction

The Book of Hebrews was written to put the supremacy of Jesus Christ on display for a people who were about to see their world come crashing down around them. The Jewish Christians who were the original recipients of this book were living in the twilight of the era of the Old Covenant, represented by the Temple in Jerusalem. Within a few years of this book’s writing, that Temple would be destroyed by occupying Roman armies under General Vespasian, with “not one stone left upon another” (Mark 13:2). Everything these believers knew about righteousness before God and atonement for sin and sacrifice for guilt was represented by that Temple—when it was wiped off the face of the earth it would have seemed to them that their entire relationship to God was annihilated with it.

And this is why the author of Hebrews takes such great pains here in these opening chapters (and indeed, throughout the book) to demonstrate the supremacy of Christ over all His rivals—in Chapter 1 we see the supremacy of Christ over all rival authorities:

Hebrews 1:8 (LSB)

But of the Son He says, “YOUR THRONE, O GOD, IS FOREVER AND EVER, AND THE SCEPTER OF UPRIGHTNESS IS THE SCEPTER OF YOUR KINGDOM.

Last week we saw the supremacy of the salvation Christ has won over all rival religions, such as Judaism:

Hebrews 2:2–3 (LSB)

For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every trespass and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?...

And as we conclude Chapter 2 this morning, we see the supremacy of Christ over all rival Saviors. There is no Savior like Jesus Christ, no other way to come to a right relationship with God. Jesus said it Himself in John 14:6

John 14:6 (LSB)

...“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.

And the Apostle Peter said it of Christ in Acts 4:12:

Acts 4:12 (LSB)

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

In our text this morning, the author of Hebrews is going to introduce another great theme of the book for his Jewish Christian readers—the supremacy of Christ’s sacrifice for sin. The Temple in Jerusalem and all of the sacrificial system that it entailed was about to go away. Under the Old Testament Law, sin was atoned for by sacrificing an animal to represent the sinner. But the New Covenant inaugurated by Christ provides a far better sacrifice for sin, because the Sacrifice is Christ Himself!

We see this at the end of Hebrews 2:9:

Hebrews 2:9 (LSB)

But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels—Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.

In the following verses through the end of Chapter 2, the author of Hebrews will explain to us the implications of Jesus “tasting death” for us. The suffering and death of Jesus Christ for sinners is the most consequential truth in all of Christianity. Take that fact away, and you have nothing left that can even be called “Christianity”. Theologians refer to Christ’s act of “tasting death” for us as

PENAL SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT: Jesus RECONCILED sinners to God by being their SUBSTITUTE PUNISHMENT.

And as we will see as we make our way through these verses, the only way that Christ could become our sacrifice for sin is for Him to become like us. The first chapter of Hebrews makes it clear that Jesus Christ is YHWH God—and these verses make it clear that He was also a human being. You cannot separate these two realities about Christ—his Divinity and His Humanity must both be fully affirmed as one hundred percent complete. Because, as we will see in our text

Only a FLESH and BLOOD Savior could ACCOMPLISH your ATONEMENT

We see the writer of Hebrews going back again and again to the humanity of Christ in these verses—His being made just like us, His complete identification with us in every way but our sin. In verses 10-13 we see that only a flesh-and-blood savior could accomplish your atonement because only a flesh and blood Savior...

I. Could be PERFECTED through His SUFFERING (Hebrews 2:10-13)

In verse 10 we read:

Hebrews 2:10 (LSB)

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.

Now right off we have a question, don’t we? What does it mean that Christ was “perfected” through sufferings? Now, this doesn’t mean that He was “imperfect” before, or that there was some deficiency in Him that had to be beaten out of Him by suffering. The Greek word translated “perfected” has the idea of “brought to the finish” or “fulfilled”—the idea here is that Jesus was perfectly suited to be our Savior through His sufferings. The sufferings that Jesus experienced—not just on the Cross, but throughout His life—qualified Him to be the “author” of our salvation.

In theological terms, we can talk about the sufferings of Christ in terms of obedience. There are two types of obedience that Christ demonstrated in His earthly life. First, there is the active obedience of Christ, which means that

He perfectly KEPT the Law’s PRECEPTS for us

All 613 commandments of the Law were kept perfectly by Christ—from the turtledoves offered in the Temple on the eighth day at His circumcision to His body being taken down from the Cross before sunset so that His corpse would not violate the Sabbath—every single command of YHWH in the Law was perfectly kept by Christ at every single moment of His life.

Christ was made the perfect author of our salvation because in Him we have perfectly kept the Law of God in every single detail. He is a perfect Savior because of His active obedience, and the author of Hebrews says that He is a perfect Savior because of His passive obedience

He perfectly SUFFERED the Law’s PENALTIES for us (v. 10; cp. Phil. 2:8)

If the active obedience of Christ is His perfect obedience to God’s Law, then His passive obedience is His willing suffering of all of the penalties for breaking God’s Law. This passive obedience is what the Apostle Paul has in view when he writes in Philippians 2:8:

Philippians 2:8 (LSB)

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

We often think of Christ’s suffering in terms of His Crucifixion, and of course that is true—but His passive obedience in suffering did not just take place during the last 36 hours of His life.

For His whole life, Jesus Christ suffered the consequences of living in a fallen world—He grew weary, He hungered and thirsted, He ached and bled, He was heartbroken over death and disease and wickedness. If His family had a garden at His house in Nazareth, one of His chores growing up was probably to pull the thorns and thistles the ground produced, and by the sweat of His brow He ate His bread just like every other son of Adam had for four thousand years. And all of that suffering made Him the perfect Savior for a suffering people like us!

Now as with so many truths in the Scriptures, there are two opposite temptations that accompany the fact that Christ has been perfected as your Savior by what He suffered. There are those who think lightly of the sufferings of Christ, who take the phrase “Jesus died for my sins” as some sort of license to go ahead and “sin it up”, because Jesus already paid the tab in advance. The writer of Hebrews has strong words for such people earlier in this chapter about disregarding the blood of Christ in the New Covenant (we will see similar warnings elsewhere as we go through the book).

But the ditch on the other side of the road is to be so affected by the knowledge of Christ’s sufferings that we begin to believe that He somehow resents us for making Him go through all of that. As if Christ is sitting in Heaven saying, “You know, after all I went through for your salvation, you’d think you’d show your appreciation by shaping up some!!” Christ has saved us, but He brings us into Heaven with pursed lips and a disapproving shake of His head.

The author of Hebrews goes to great lengths to demonstrate that this is not the way Christ looks on you, Christian! He goes back to two Old Testament quotations—one from Psalm 22 and two from Isaiah 8—to demonstrate that

He perfectly DELIGHTS in His SIBLINGS

Hebrews 2:11–13 (LSB)

For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I WILL RECOUNT YOUR NAME TO MY BROTHERS, IN THE MIDST OF THE ASSEMBLY I WILL SING YOUR PRAISE.” And again, “I WILL PUT MY TRUST IN HIM.” And again, “BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME.”

Christ does not usher you into the presence of His Father with a sullen, “Here they are; they sure caused Me a deal of trouble”—the Scripture says that He sings to His Father as He brings us to Him! We are His brothers and sisters, we are His beloved children—He is overjoyed to be our Savior!

We really need to get this down into our Baptist bones, because (to paraphrase one author) we tend to think that it honors God somehow to live our lives in three accumulated feet of total depravity, and from time to time (like good Baptists) going completely under. (Wilson, Christ and His Rivals, p. 74).

But never forget what Jesus said to His disciples in Luke 15:10:

Luke 15:10 (LSB)

“In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Notice that it is not the angels who are rejoicing in that verse! The rejoicing is done by God Himself! The angels are spectators to His joy! And in the same way, beloved, Christ is overjoyed to be your Savior! Not only is He “not ashamed” to call you His brother or sister, He sings for joy before God because of you!

Jesus Christ is a perfect Savior for us because He has suffered in flesh and blood just as we have. Only a flesh and blood Savior could accomplish your atonement, because only a flesh and blood Savior

II. Could CONQUER through His DEATH (Hebrews 2:14-15)

Christ came in flesh and blood so that He could suffer with us, and Verse 14 teaches that He came in flesh and blood so that He could conquer death for us:

Hebrews 2:14 (LSB)

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,

Jesus partook of the same flesh and blood as us so that He could die in the flesh to release us from “the power of death”. We learn here that the Devil, Satan, had some kind of power relating to death, and that Jesus’ death on the Cross somehow rendered Satan powerless.

This is worth unpacking, because it demonstrates Christ’s supremacy over Satan and all of his works. In what way did Christ’s death on the Cross “render Satan powerless?” The next verse gives us more light—by coming in flesh and blood Jesus was able to die on the Cross so that He

Hebrews 2:15 (LSB)

...might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

So let’s start here—it’s easy for us to see how Jesus’ death on the Cross and His resurrection

Disarmed the FEAR of DEATH (cp. 1 Cor. 15:55-57)

The fear of death is a constant backdrop in the lives we live here on this earth. Most of the time we can kind of filter it out, push it to the back of our minds, distract ourselves from it. But then death strikes close to home through illness or tragedy or violence or accident, it becomes impossible to ignore. We use metaphors to describe “bargaining” with Death or “cheating” Death, but we know it can’t really be avoided. Every one of us knows that the one great certainty in this life is that nobody gets out of it alive.

Until Jesus Christ! Because He alone out of all humanity could not be kept in the grave by Death! He broke the jaws of Death, burst out of the tomb He had been buried in, and rose again in triumph! You hear the triumph in the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 15:55–57 (LSB)

“O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?” Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Christian, you and I live in a world where Death has lost its perfect record! It has billions of “wins” on its record, and one big shining “L”! And that “L” is just the first of millions more!

So now we are in a position to understand what the writer of Hebrews means when he writes that by disarming the fear of death, Christ “rendered Satan powerless”. Death used to be some kind of weapon in Satan’s hand, as it were, that Jesus neutralized by His death. Satan had a gun pointed at us that he terrorized us with, but when Jesus died and rose again He took away the bullets from the gun—that weapon cannot frighten us anymore!

So how does Satan use the fear of death to terrorize us? How does fear of death keep us in bondage? One commentator suggests that “We do not fear death because we die; we fear death because we know we deserve to die” (Wilson, p. 78). Deep down inside each one of us is an innate understanding that we deserve death for our sin before God. Though as a race we deny it, we are all descended in a straight line from our First Parents in the Garden who were warned that on the day they disobeyed God’s command and ate the forbidden fruit “they would surely die” (Genesis 2:17). And thousands of years later the prophet Ezekiel would echo that warning from YHWH:

Ezekiel 18:4 (LSB)

“Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die.

The power that Satan had over us was his ability to threaten us with the death that we knew we deserved. The devil is an accuser; he exists to dig up dirt on you; he will work ceaselessly to pile up accusation upon accusation, charge upon charge, to beat you over the head with your guilt and shame and constantly tell you “You should just go curl up and die somewhere. You don’t deserve to live. God is going to strike you dead for your sin...”

But on that Cross and through that tomb, Jesus Christ

Disarmed the ACCUSATIONS of SATAN (v. 14; cp. John 12:31-32; Col. 2:14-15)

By His death, burial and resurrection, Jesus Christ delivered you from the guilt and shame and fear of the death you deserved under God’s wrath! Jesus suffered that wrath in your place, as your substitute—Satan can no longer use the fear of death against you! Jesus said this very thing in John 12:31-32 about what He was going to do:

John 12:31–32 (LSB)

“Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”

And Paul writes to the church in Colosse that Christ has

Colossians 2:14–15 (LSB)

...canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us, He also has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in Him.

Only a flesh-and-blood Savior could have died on that Cross to free you from your bondage to fear of death; only a flesh-and blood Savior could have walked out of that Tomb to break the power of death over flesh and blood. And in doing so, Christ disarmed Satan—he can no longer accuse us of our sins because Christ cancelled them by His death, and he can no longer terrorize us with death because Christ has disarmed death by His resurrection!

Only a flesh and blood Savior could accomplish your atonement. In His flesh, Christ was made a perfect Savior for us through the sufferings of His active and passive obedience. In His flesh, Christ conquered death and disarmed the power of Satan over us. And as we read through the end of our chapter this morning we see that Christ’s identification with us in flesh and blood meant that He

III.Could INTERCEDE through His SACRIFICE (Hebrews 2:16-18)

Hebrews 2:16–17 (LSB)

For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers 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.

Once again, the author of Hebrews reminds us that Christ was not an angelic being—He did not come in the form of an angel to help angels—He came in flesh and blood in order to help human beings who belonged to Him by faith (the “seed of Abraham”). We learn here that Christ came as our high priest. And so that means that He must identify with us—He “had to be made like His brothers in all things”. Christ must share in our nature (in our flesh and blood) as

He faithfully REPRESENTS us before GOD

In the Old Testament, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies once a year, offering the blood of bulls and goats as a sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of God over his people’s sin. But because Jesus is a flesh and blood Savior, He perfectly fulfilled the penalty of God’s righteous wrath against sin—this is the meaning of the word “propitiation” in verse 17. Only a man could die for the sins of mankind; only Jesus could faithfully represent us before God because He shares in our flesh and blood.

Our flesh and blood Savior is able to perfectly represent our flesh-and-blood atonement before God. And in verse 18 we learn that because He shares in our humanity,

He mercifully IDENTIFIES with us in TEMPTATION (v. 18)

Hebrews 2:18 (LSB)

For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to help those who are tempted.

Since He is YHWH God Himself, Jesus Christ was absolutely and utterly sinless in every way. And this can cause us to stumble in our understanding of His humanity, in that we kind of assume that His battles with sin didn’t really count—if He couldn’t sin, then is it fair to even say that He was tempted?

The best illustration I ever heard about Christ’s temptations was from one of my college professors who was an avid tennis player. He once put it this way: “Suppose I had a chance to go play Jon MacEnroe?” (This dates the story, doesn’t it??) He says, “If I were to go play against Jon MacEnroe, there is absolutely no chance that I could ever win. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t play tennis!”

This is why our flesh and blood Savior Jesus Christ is so perfect for us—He understands what we go through. Are you hounded by temptations to sin every day? Do you fight and fight and fight some more until you feel as though you’re never going to get past that trial? Are you weary of having to face the same old temptation, the same struggle, the same battle day after day?

Jesus gets it! He knows what you are facing, because He faced the same battles! As Hebrews will remind us in a couple of chapters,

Hebrews 4:15 (LSB)

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things like we are, yet without sin.

He has suffered the same temptation you have, Christian—every kind of battle with sin you can go through, He also fought. But the difference is, He never failed. And because He never fell to temptation, He knows how to beat every one of them. And before you say, “Well, that’s great for Jesus, but He is God! Of course He never fell to temptation!”—remember, He beat those temptations as a flesh-and-blood man!

And so that temptation that you have come to believe is simply unbeatable; that pull to bitterness or anger or lust or anxiety or laziness or dishonesty or whatever it might be—it comes at you and you think to yourself, “I’m toast; I’ve fought and fought and there is just no way I can fight this off...” You have a flesh and blood Savior who is able to come and help you! You fight those temptations by crying out to Jesus! When that bully of temptation corners you and you are about to get knocked to the ground again, you cry out for your Big Brother!

And in those times when temptation has come after you and you have given in—you didn’t call for your Big Brother to come to your aid because part of you still wanted to lose that battle—those are the times when the Accuser will sidle up to you and start whispering in your ear: “You ain’t no kind of Christian! You’ve blown it with this sin so many times, you’re toast—God’s patience with your hypocrisy is about done—why, He ought to just strike you dead!” But Christian, the sacrifice of your flesh and blood Savior means that God has already struck you dead in Christ! There is now no condemnation for you in Christ Jesus! The perfect flesh and blood sacrifice of Christ means that you cannot be punished by God for your sin—you may suffer the consequences of your sin in terms of pain and heartache and loss and isolation, and you may suffer under the chastening hand of God to discipline you—but you can never again be under the wrath of God for your sin!

Your flesh and blood Savior reconciled you to God as your substitute punishment—His sufferings of the agonies of the Cross was the final chapter of a life of obedient suffering through all of the brokenness of a world shattered by the curse of sin—a life of suffering that He joyfully chose for your sake! He does not regret saving you; He does not look down on you in frustration over your imperfect obedience and the weakness of your faith—He rejoices to call Himself your Brother, He sings to His Father for the delight He has in bringing you to glory! Look to Him, cry out to Him, rest in Him—the author of your salvation, your flesh and blood Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Jude 24–25 (LSB)

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________

Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________

Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________