Truly Human For Our Salvation
TRULY HUMAN FOR OUR SALVATION
HEBREWS 2:10-18
Since Jesus knows what it is like to be one of us, he has perfect sympathy with us in our weakness and temptations.
Life was not easy for the little group of discouraged believers to whom this letter was written. Almost certainly, they faced the possibility of suffering for their Christian faith and they must have wondered whether it was all worth suffering for. Why not give the whole thing away and enter into peace?
For one reason, says the author, because Jesus suffered. Was this a dreadful accident that could not be guarded against? Not at all. It was the way he saved people. To bring about our salvation he came where we are, even though this necessarily involved him in cruel suffering and death. But since we had sinned and brought the penalty of death on ourselves, it was inevitable that our Savior should enter our humanity and die our death. It was through death that he destroyed “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (2:14).
To do this, he had to become human. But this was the point of everything. His work on earth was not with angels. He did not come to save angels (2:16). It was people who sinned. It was people who needed salvation. Therefore he became human and died and saved people. His genuine sharing in our human nature (2:14) shows God’s passionate concern for us to be saved.
The author speaks about Christ’s being made “perfect through suffering” (2:10). This does not, of course, mean that before suffering he was not perfect. But there are different kinds of perfection. The perfection of the bud is one thing and that of the flower another. There is a perfection involved in actually having suffered which does not exist apart from the experience of having suffered. Christ does not merely love us enough to suffer for us. He loved us so much that he actually did suffer for us.
A series of quotations brings out his sharing of our humanity. These come from Psalm 22:22 (where the key words are “brothers and sisters”), Isaiah 8:17 (Septuagint; if he trusted in God he was certainly man), and Isaiah 8:18 (“the children”). The real humanity of Jesus was necessary if he was to be our Savior. Only by becoming human could he take our death and remove our condemnation.
This passage concludes with some other aspects of this saving work. Christ became “a merciful and faithful high priest” (2:17). This concept is found in Hebrews only in the New Testament, but, as this writing shows, it is a powerful way of bringing out what Christ has done for us. And arising out of this is the thought, full of comfort to the tempted, that Christ can indeed help them, for he himself knows suffering and temptation from experience (2:18).
Notes 2:10: “pioneer” like our word “leader” can mean “first along the way” or “first in importance,” and in addition it can mean “originator.” Christ was all these. 2:17: “to make propitiation” (ESV); “to make atonement” (NIV): the personal process of removing wrath.