Hebrews 2:10–18 ESV

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again, “Behold, I and the children God has given me.” Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Why Did Jesus Have to Have Skin Cells and Platelets?

There’s a great story I heard on National Public Radio of a four-year-old girl, despite having decidedly secular parents, developed a fascination with all things Jesus. Christmas was the immediate reason for her preoccupation with the second person of the Trinity, and but her father bought her a children’s Bible and read to her other things that the adult Jesus said and did. Except one.

One day she and her father were driving past a church and she looked up from her carseat and saw a crucifix on the side of the building. “Who’s that?” she asked.

Quick parental evaluation: what do you say? Is your four-year-old ready to find out that her favorite character grew up and got nailed to a cross? Gladly, he went for the truth: “That’s Jesus.”

He said to her, and this is a direct quote,

Well, you know, he ran afoul of the Roman government. This message that he had was so radical and unnerving to the prevailing authorities of the time that they had to kill him. They came to the conclusion that he would have to die. That message was too troublesome.

The father didn’t say how she responded to this, only that she most definitely remembered it. But I have to imagine that a little girl would be shocked that the baby Jesus who first fascinated her, the Jesus who welcomed little children into his arms, would be strung up to die.

This little girl wasn’t the first to find it shocking that baby Jesus became crucified Jesus—the disciples did it long before her. But it wasn’t a surprise for the Son of Man himself. He predicted it. Jesus was born to die.

That’s why he had to be incarnated—only beings made of flesh and blood can die. And that’s what Hebrews 2 tells us that we didn’t know before. The “incarnation” we celebrate at Christmas is, to be a bit more Anglo-Saxon about it, “enfleshment.” It’s the addition of skin and bones and sinews and platelets and basal ganglia to a spiritual being who never had them before. Was it truly necessary for God the Son to acquire a right hand? Was his arm not already mighty enough to save? Why Did Jesus Have to Have Skin Cells and Platelets?

1. Jesus acquired a body because he had to die

The author of the epistle to the Hebrews gives us one big, sobering reason why the Son of God had to be a human baby: it’s precisely because, one day, he had to die.

Hebrews 2:14 ESV

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

There aren’t many things that people can do that God can’t. I can think of two, and they’re tightly related: we can sin, and we can die. In order to save us from the former, Jesus had to join us in the latter. It takes death to end death.

When your children are really in trouble, you go to them. I'm sure that's true of teenagers stranded with a flat tire, but I don't know that from experience yet. I'm thinking instead of rescuing my two-year-old when he is distraught on the trampoline—which he calls the "bampane." More than once I have had to give up my fatherly dignity and crawl onto the trampoline to retrieve a crying Ellery. Dads and Moms have to go into pillow "forts" and apple trees, back seats and bunk beds. When you love your kid, you go where they are to help them.

That's what Jesus did for his children, namely us. Only his work was a lot harder than shimmying onto a top bunk, because we had gotten ourselves in a much greater mess than my two-year-old yet can.

Even our fictional stories have “Christ-figures," characters who give up their lives and yet "rise again"—from Frodo Baggins to Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities—because that’s the kind of world we live in, one in which redemption takes terrible sacrifice. As the author of Hebrews later says,

Hebrews 9:22 ESV

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Jesus had to have flesh because it had to be broken. He had to have blood because it had to be spilled. For us.

And the author of Hebrews clarifies and gives greater depth to that little prepositional phrase, “for us.” He clarifies that in order to get to the death which afflicts humanity he had to destroy the one who has the power of death. As John says elsewhere, Jesus came to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8). And not just his works, but the devil himself, Hebrews 2 tells us.

2. Jesus acquired a body because he had to destroy the devil

Look at the passage again:

Hebrews 2:14 ESV

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

Make no mistake: Jesus came to destroy the devil and to wrench his greatest weapon from his cold dead hands.

Indeed, what does it mean that the devil had this "power of death"? It can't mean merely that the devil could kill people. He could, as the story of Job shows when Satan kills Job's children, but only with permission from God. No, the meaning of this phrase—that Satan has "the power of death"—is hidden in plain sight in the very name "Satan." "Devil" is just a different word for the same thing: "slanderer" or "accuser" or "adversary." Satan has the power of death because he knows the rules of the universe: sin must be paid for. And he stands against us before God and accuses us of sin—not very hard to do. He calls on God to destroy us for that sin.

And yet Jesus, through death, has destroyed him. By dying the death we should die he removes from Satan the only real power he has against us.

But that doesn't mean he has no other weapons. In George Orwell’s 1984, the Big Brother who holds the power of life and death in that dystopian society may not even still exist by the time the story occurs. Probably doesn’t. But you don’t have to be alive to wield fear over people.

That’s another reason why Jesus came to undergo enfleshment and live on this little planet.

3. Jesus acquired a body because he had to set fear's slaves free

He came, this passage tells us, to...

Hebrews 2:15 ESV

and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

That’s us. It’s not just the devil that troubles us, it’s not just death; the mere fear of death chains us. This is the reason snake oil is a multi-gazillion dollar industry. Jesus had to take on flesh and die in order to make this fear go away. There will be no amped up infomercials hawking miracle anti-aging treatments in the New Earth. The human race won’t have to fear death anymore; we’ve been delivered from that bondage.

Clearly not all people are. Just the other day while my Christian in-laws were here we were talking about Catholic neighbors that they've known for 30 years. It was an older couple; the husband died just a few years ago in his nineties. The wife is now in a nursing home. These two attended mass every single day. Every single day. They were great neighbors, nice people with a stubborn streak that kept them going—they were very hard workers. They were almost never interested in talking about religion with my in-laws despite their daily mass attendance. But over the years religious conversation happened a few times anyway. And before her husband died the wife confided to my in-laws that he was indeed afraid to die. Years of mass. Still afraid to die. I did not know this man personally, but that sounds like lifelong slavery to me.

There is a natural aversion to pain that we all experience. No one relishes the thought of cancer or dementia and the physical trials they bring. And death for a Christian is still a loss: a loss of all the things he or she would experience otherwise, and a loss for the family of the deceased. Sorrow is the feeling of loss, and sorrow is not wrong. We shouldn't put subtle pressure on our sufferers as a Christian community, expecting them not to feel sorrow. But we should encourage them not to feel the fear of death. We know what's on the other side. We need not—we should not—be in bondage to that fear.

Younger folks, I probably don't have to tell you not to fear death. We don't even think about it. Everyone below 40 is invincible! But when those thoughts do come, don't fear. And older folks, let me encourage you: don't fear. You have nothing to fear; you have been set free from that slavery.

4. Jesus acquired a body because he was called to be a faithful high priest

Underlying and interweaving through all of the points of this passage is the basic point that Jesus had to die for our sins or we would be without hope. We'd have every reason to fear death and the devil if we died in our sins. Even worse, we'd have every reason to live in terror of God himself. Satan's accusations are powerful against us because our offenses were committed against a powerful God.

Hebrews 2:17 ESV

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

The Bible teaches in very clear terms that God has every right to be wrathful against us; the payment made by Jesus' death was not paid to Satan but to God. That's what "propitiation" means. Jesus' death appeased or satisfied the wrath of God. This is what a faithful high priest does: he makes atonement. He brings God and man together. Hebrews labors to make the point elsewhere that the millions of sacrifices made by Old Testament Jewish priests could never really reconcile God to his very fallen creatures. But Jesus, in the service of the very God whom we all offended, sacrificed himself so that God would spend his wrath on Jesus instead of us.

5. Jesus acquired a body because he was called to be a merciful high priest

There is one other problem we children of God still have, however, that this passage addresses. And Jesus was born and took on a body to help us with those, too.

Look again at our text.

Hebrews 2:17–18 ESV

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Our author says that Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every respect” for several specific reasons: he had to be made like us “so that he might become a merciful... high priest in the service of God.”

What does that mean? Verse 18 explains: he knows what it's like to be tempted, and that increases his mercy toward us.

I don’t honestly fear death for myself; that’s partly because I’m a Christian and partly because I’m currently a healthy person in my mid 30s. But by becoming human, Jesus helped me in the bondage I am most concerned about: “because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” He is a merciful high priest, because he knows our frame. He knows we are dust—because he spent some time “endusted” himself. He still has a body to this day, though a resurrected one.

The bondage I’m most concerned about is temptation. I want to stop sinning. Like now please. And Hebrews tells me that Jesus understands. He’s not the kind of high priest who just can’t get why these crazy people won’t stop harming themselves, who does his high priestly duties with an air of haughty superiority. Make no mistake: he is superior to us in every way. But the Bible itself tells us that the incarnation taught the infinite and omniscient Son of God something: empathy. Mercy. Help.

When I look into the faces of my own children when they are hot steaming mad about some injustice regarding candy and siblings, say—I know what they're going through. I know what it means to have NOT-FAIR coursing through your veins and screaming out of all your pores. I was there. I was a redheaded six-year-old for an entire year in the 1980s, and what's more, I, too, had a brunette younger sister. I've totally been there. Totally done that. So I don't look at my child like he is from another planet when he is being irrational by adult standards. I sympathize. I correct, yes, but I correct with the words and arms of a person who knows.

This is Jesus. What a comfort. Dr. Jim Berg, whom some of you have heard of or met, used to say that Jesus is the only person with whom you can "let your hair down" and "be yourself." Even your spouse should not be told all the things you're thinking and feeling all the time. But you can tell Jesus all of your troubles. Do it. He understands.

Christmas

Without Christmas, without a baby Jesus, we have none of the benefits listed here in Hebrews 2. We needed an incarnate God if we wanted the devil to be destroyed along with the very fear of death. We needed a God to undergo “enfleshment” if we wanted “a merciful and faithful high priest” to not only make propitiation for our sins but to “help those who are being tempted.”