Hebrews 2:10-18 Commentary

By this Sunday at least some of us will have finished our Christmas celebrations. We’ll have opened our gifts and boxed our ornaments, as well as put away our trees, lights and creches. Even some of Jesus’ friends who haven’t yet finished celebrating Jesus’ birth have turned our attention from the baby Jesus (back) toward the Jesus who lived, died and rose again from the dead in order to rescue us from both sin and our sinful selves.

As I think about that pivot, I’m intrigued by Jesus’ role that this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson highlights but perhaps some of us easily overlook. Hebrews 2:16’s author, the Preacher, says, “Surely it is not the angels [Christ] helps [epilambanetai*], but Abraham’s descendants.” In writing that, he underlines Jesus’ work of literally “taking hold of” his friends in order to “help” us.

Preachers might ask our hearers to think about the images this description of Jesus as helper conjures for them. It calls to my mind an adult bending over to help a child who is struggling or to walk alongside someone who feels lonely. I imagine a helper as someone who distributes food to a neighbor who’s hungry or who lays a gentle arm around the shoulder of someone who is grieving.

On this Sunday after Christmas Hebrews’ Preacher reminds us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to, among other things, help Abraham’s descendants – which, by God’s grace, includes all who have received that grace with our faith. We remember that the child whom Herod attempted but failed to murder was the one who “grew up” to help his adopted siblings who are his followers. We celebrate how the Jesus who needed so much help just to survive childhood grew up to help his friends.

The Preacher devotes much of Hebrews 2:10-18 to describing what shape that help took and still takes. Among this Lesson’s early recurring images is of the people Jesus helps as adopted members of his family. In verse 11 we read of how “the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family [ex henos pantes]. So Jesus is not ashamed [ouk epaischynetai] to call them brothers and sisters [adelphous].” In verse 12 the Preacher goes on to quote Jesus as saying, “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters [adelphois mou].” Hebrews 2 further quotes Jesus as saying, “Here am I, and the children [paidia] God has given me” (13).

Preachers might note that in making extensive familial references, the Hebrews’ Preacher alludes to a way Jesus helps God’s dearly beloved people. In a world where so many struggle to find our identity, Jesus unabashedly graces us with the identity of his adopted siblings. In a culture infatuated with identity and labels, Jesus doesn’t even hesitate to grace us with the most meaningful and lasting one of all: his brothers and sisters.

What’s more, Jesus isn’t embarrassed to publicly refer to us as siblings. While his friends must confess almost daily to doing, saying and even thinking things that make the Son of God ashamed of us, Hebrews’ preacher insists that he doesn’t, in the words of The Message, “hesitate to treat” us “as family.”

But, of course, the Preacher also explicitly identifies more ways Jesus helps his adopted siblings. His family members include those who verse 11 insists Jesus “makes holy” [hagiazon] and are “made holy [hagiazomenoi].” By his Spirit Jesus isn’t content to simply leave us in the sinful messes we make for our neighbors and ourselves. He, instead, graciously helps his adopted siblings by making us more and more like himself. Jesus, quite simply, helps us by restoring in us the image of God in which we are created but sometimes sinfully smudge.

In verses 14 and 15 Hebrews’ Preacher goes on to profess, “Since [God’s adopted] children have flesh and blood, he too shared in [meteschen] their humanity so that by his death he might break [katargese] the power of him who holds the [kratos] power of death – that is, the devil – and free [apallaxe] those who all their lives were held in slavery [douleias] by their fear [phobo] of death.”

These are such theologically and pastorally loaded verses that preachers might consider preaching an entire message on them alone. But it may suffice to call hearers’ attention to some particularly important points it makes about the ways Jesus graciously helps his friends.

Nearly every human being has at least some of what verse 14b refers to as phobo thanatou (“fear of death”). In fact, the Preacher admits that terror is so mighty that it’s a kind of slavery. That bondage includes our natural fear of the often painful process of dying. At least some of us fear the aftermath of death. Others fear that memories of us will die with us (what we sometimes call “the second death”).

The Preacher insists this is all part of the diabolical handiwork of the one to whom he refers in verse 14 as “the devil” [ton diabolon]. The evil one, after all, holds the “power” of death that convinces us to willingly embrace the spiritual death that is our alienation from God. Such eternal death was both the devil’s idea and his horrific “gift” to our first parents.

Yet the Preacher professes Jesus’ helps his followers by meteschen (“sharing in”) our humanity so that he might both break death’s fear’s stranglehold on us and free us from slavery to it. In fact, verse 17 more fully “fleshes” out the shape of that sharing. There the Preacher professes “Jesus had to be made like [homoiothenai] [his adopted brothers and sisters], fully human in every way [kata panta].”

Quite simply, the Preacher makes the utterly audacious claim that the incarnate eternal Son of God helped us by becoming like us in every way – except that he remained perfect. In contrast to popular hymnody, he probably did “make crying.” Jesus learned obedience to his parents. He got hungry and thirsty. Jesus grieved. While the gospels remain markedly circumspect in their descriptions of elements of Jesus’ full humanity, Jesus’ friends can feel free to imagine some of them.

Why did Jesus choose to help his followers by completely and willingly submitting to all of life’s indignities – and more? Hebrews Preacher offers three answers. As we’ve already noted, verse 14 indicates that, as The Message paraphrases it, Jesus “took on flesh and blood in order to rescue [his friends] by his blood.”

In verse 17b the Preacher adds, Jesus became just like us in every way – except that he remained perfect – “in order that he might become a merciful [eleemon] and faithful [pistos] high priest [archiereus] in service to God.” Jesus, in the words of The Message, helped his friends by entering “into every detail of human life” in order to do what Israel’s high priests could do only incompletely: effectively plead with God for the sake of God’s people.

Yet this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson reminds us Jesus the high priest didn’t help his adopted siblings by sacrificing an animal or some other creature to pay for our sins. No, Jesus the high priest paid for our sin, sins and sinfulness with his own life. He helped his friends by making “atonement [hilastheskai] for the sins [hamartias] of the people.” Our adopted brother Jesus got rid of our sins by letting people essentially get rid of him by rejecting, torturing and crucifying him.

Hebrews’ Preacher basically ends his description of the help Jesus gives his friends with perhaps Jesus’ most pastoral ongoing help of all. In verse 18 the Preacher sings of how “Because [Jesus] himself suffered [peponthen] when he was tempted [peirastheis], he is able to help [boethesai] those who are being tempted.” Jesus, in other words, helps us in part because he “gets” us. Since our adopted big Brother Jesus knows what it’s like to be tempted, he’s both willing and able to help his followers when we’re tempted.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Jesus work of helping his friends by atoning for our sins (17b) is an easily misunderstood and controversial doctrine. But no matter how we understand or even choose to emphasize it, that work’s superiority to people’s efforts to atone for ourselves is unmistakable.

Ian McEwan’s Atonement’s Briony is a 13 year-old young woman who glimpses her older sister Camilia in a passionate embrace with Robbie, the son of a family servant. She later reads an aggressive letter Robbie writes but doesn’t send to Camilia. When Briony’s cousin Lila is raped, Briony deduces it must have been Robbie and falsely claims she saw his face.

The claim gets Robbie imprisoned and breaks Camilia’s heart. As she matures Briony comes to understand the damage she’s done and tries to atone for it. But as one reviewer notes, “She discovers a terrible truth: you can’t give back the years you destroyed. Human attempts at atonement are often partial and troubled.”