Lent 24 post 14

 Hebrews 2.9-18

It’s not that I’m afraid to die,’ said Woody Allen. ‘I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ A lot of people would agree with the second half. We don’t want to go through the unpredictable and potentially painful process of actually dying. But is the first half of his claim sincere? I don’t know, but I doubt it. 

Fear of death 

Judging from the vast range of cultures and religions, the human race has a pretty universal fear of death. And why not? Life is such a precious thing, and death is such a mysterious intrusion from a realm that scares us simply because it is so unknowable, so beyond our customary control. Of course, there are many wonderfully brave people who overcome the fear of death for the sake of others, a country’s armed forces, police, firefighters, emergency and rescue services, medical personnel in lethal epidemics and war zones, bomb disposal officers, lifeboat crews . . . But being willing to face death is not the same as having no fear of death, is it? Good fear makes you careful. No fear at all is foolhardy. 

It’s a kind of slavery, says our text in Hebrews (.15). And we saw at the start of the week that Ecclesiastes would agree. In the midst of this good world and wonderful life, we are imprisoned in the fear of inevitable death. But here’s the thing. It’s an open prison now! We can walk out free! 

Why? Because ‘we see Jesus’ (.9). 

We see Jesus 

The writer to the Hebrews opens his letter with an overwhelming affirmation of the deity of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, exalting him above all the ranks of angels (Hebrews 1). But then we see Jesus as ‘lower than the angels for a little while’, that is, as a man. And why did the divine Son of God have to become fully human? The writer summarizes the point of his whole next section thus: ‘so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone’ (.9). And then he expands on that same reason at the end in verse 17: ‘in order that . . . he might make atonement for the sins of the people.’ In short, God became human in order to die a human death, and in that God–man death to deal with the problem of sin that brought death upon us. 

Flesh and blood 

Can you see, then, the two fundamental points that Hebrews makes in these verses? First of all, we must grasp the full truth of the incarnation. God became wholly one of us in Jesus Christ, subject to our sufferings, our temptations (.18) and our mortality. And this was both ‘fitting’ and necessary. Only God could save us. But God could not save us remotely, from heaven. Only God in flesh and blood (.14a) could take our fallen humanity upon himself and redeem us ‘from below’. 

Battle dress 

Then, second, we see Jesus in battle dress, paradoxically but precisely, in his death. Remember God the warrior last week (Exodus 15)? Remember Jesus overpowering the ‘strong man’ (Luke 11.21–22)? That’s the picture Hebrews has in mind, recalling perhaps the same imagery from Isaiah 49.24–25 and 59.15–20. Jesus in his death took on the worst that human and satanic power could inflict upon him, death itself, and won the victory by taking on himself the sin that gives death its sting and power. 

I think the NIV is right to translate verse 14 as ‘break the power of him who holds the power of death’, rather than ‘destroy’ (ESV). The word means to make ineffective, render impotent. Neither the devil nor death were destroyed at the cross, right there and then. But they will be, when God’s victory is completed at the end (1 Corinthians 15.24–26, 54–57). And, in the meantime, the devil’s power to imprison us in the fear of death is broken. Death has lost its sting for those liberated by the cross of Christ. The death of Christ spells the ultimate death of death itself. 

We should not think that ‘the power of death’ means that the devil can just kill whomever he wants. Satan is a created being whose power is subject to God’s permission and authority. ‘The power of death’ probably means the power that the fear of death holds over us, which the devil can certainly exploit. And that is what God has delivered us from through the death of Christ.