Hebrews 2:9-15

One heresy the kids always learn about in confirmation class is Docetism-the belief that Jesus was not truly human, or only appeared to be human. It was a common belief and a major source of controversy in the ancient church. Unlike some of the ancient controversies such as the proper date of Easter, this one was important. If Jesus was not human, then He could not be a substitute. He could not demonstrate that human nature could be redeemed, could be righteous. He could not taste death for us and thus could not be a propitiatory sacrifice.

Monophysitism was a variation of this. This ancient error taught that Jesus had one nature, instead of two-a kind of hybrid God/man nature, a blending of the two. In most of its forms, Jesus' human nature is simply absorbed into the divine nature and loses any real significance, with the same result: that Jesus is not truly human and therefore cannot be a substitute and cannot be a sacrifice.

These errors were condemned by the church, and for good reason. The ancient church recognized these errors as an attack against the nature of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. It was not just idle curiosity or intellectual speculation but a threat to the gospel itself.

Christians today often unknowingly fall into the same errors. This is one of the reasons we study church history in our own church, so that we can understand and avoid these errors today as they reoccur. They will not come under the same names. They may not come as a formal movement or doctrinal position at all, but out of ignorance and neglect we can simply slip into attitudes that are equivalent. If we fail to give any weight to Jesus' human nature and believe that His suffering and His obedience on earth were not true suffering and not true obedience, since, after all, He was God, then we will put the weight of His work on the idea of a moral example or a message from God and fail to put our faith in His sacrifice on our behalf.

Christ Is Fully Human

Perhaps the greatest of all of God's mercies is this-Christ was not ashamed to be one of us. Considering what Scripture has to say about humanity and our state, what remarkable mercy that demonstrates! He became one of us, with all our weakness and frailty: we, who are like grass, like the flower of the field, here one day and gone the next.

He dwelt among us though we had rejected Him. It is not for nothing, then, that he was called humble, meek, and mild. He would have been completely within His rights to destroy us, or to dwell among us as a conqueror, an angel of light come to put down humanity's rebellion. But He came to save us. He saved us by being one of us.

Hebrews 2:11 shows that humanity is not the problem. God created man good. God looked at His work, after He had created man, and said that it was very good. When we blame our sin and our failure on our human nature, we slander God's good work. God didn't make a mistake when He made human nature.

Yes, we fell into sin, and our nature was corrupted, but even in this fallen state, it is not human nature itself which is the problem, but rather the alienation of our human nature from God and the effect that such alienation has on our human nature. Jesus took upon Himself the same human nature that we have, and He was righteous. Human nature, when in fellowship with God and supported by God's grace and power, is perfectly capable of being righteous. He did not just appear to be like us. He was like us, fully like us, only excepting sin. This did not mean that His nature was therefore not truly like our nature, but that His nature did not suffer the corruption and distortion that is the result of being born into alienation from God.

So He did not stand aloof from us. He entered into humanity truly. He became part of the family of humanity, becoming what we are. And by doing so He saves us.

Made Perfect through Suffering

Our text in Hebrews 2 even goes so far as to demonstrate that Jesus was so human that He changed, grew, matured, and developed. He was made perfect through suffering, according to verse 10. He was never imperfect in the sense of having sins or flaws. But He was imperfect in the sense of being incomplete. He had a process that He went through, characterized by suffering and learning to conform His will to the will of His Father in heaven, which is seen most clearly in His great agonizing struggle in the garden of Gethsemane.

Now none of that was in any sense necessary, for Jesus is God. He possessed all perfection before the incarnation. Nothing can be added to God. Yet He became one of us in order to save us. And He did not just appear to be like us. He was one of us, truly. He learned, He grew, He suffered, and He triumphed. That triumph is our salvation. And so Hebrews says that for God it was fitting, appropriate, to accomplish our salvation in this manner, demonstrating His great wisdom and love, that our salvation was accomplished by God Himself becoming one of us and suffering what we suffer.

He tasted death for us. He experienced the whole range of human suffering and pain, of human corruption and fallenness. He lived as one of us, among us, and He had all of our weakness. He experienced sin and all of its curse when He was made sin for us on the cross, when He took on the sins of mankind and became the sacrificial lamb, bearing all of God's wrath against sin. By doing so, He triumphed over it, was crowned with glory and honor, redeemed human nature, saved all of His people, and became the head of the new human race. This is His triumph and perfection.

This is God's grace to us, for in tasting death for all of us, He removes that taint from us so that we are clean and pure in God's eyes by His act.

Christ-Like

Now we are becoming like Christ. In the first place, He who works this work of sanctification and purification, and we who are the beneficiaries of that sanctification, are one, according to Hebrews 2:11, "For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one..." The Greek here shows that the act of purification or being made holy, sanctified, in verse 11, is a progressive ongoing work in our lives. And so we are one with Christ, and because of that oneness, we are progressively being made like Him.

Christ is here presented to us as supreme and preeminent, because He is the goal of our present process. In our moral nature, we are becoming like Him. As we have been declared holy by His act of substitution, and His righteousness is imparted to us, resulting in the forgiveness of sins, so too His righteousness is being worked in us so that we can actually become that which we are declared to be. Christ is pulling all of us up to Himself. And if I am now being made like Him, then He is the most important force and factor in my life. I need look nowhere else for some other guidance or inspiration. I need the approval of no other man. I need no other education or instruction or empowerment. All that I need is in Christ.

We think of sanctification as being the work of the Spirit of God, and indeed it is. But the Holy Spirit is directly referred to twice as "the Spirit of Christ" in 1 Peter 1:11 and Romans 8:9. Jesus said in John 14:26 that when the Spirit of God comes to us, He will call to our remembrance all that Jesus said. The Spirit does not come with a separate message, but with the message of Jesus. So the Spirit is the means by which our sanctification is accomplished, but the content of that sanctification is Christ.

Partakers of Flesh and Blood

This becoming like Christ is more than just intellectual or moral. He took on our nature, and then His nature was glorified and transformed when He rose from the dead. Our nature likewise will be glorified and transformed, so that our being conformed to be like Christ will involve our very nature. In verse 14, Hebrews says we have partaken in flesh and blood, that is, we share the nature which Christ took upon Himself. Christ on our behalf tasted of death and was glorified. But if we are united to Him, then we likewise will be glorified in the same manner, the point which Paul makes so clearly in 1 Cor. 15:35-57.

Jesus told Mary Magdalene in John 20:17 that He was ascending to "my Father and your Father, my God and your God"-indicating clearly that what was happening to Him would likewise happen to us.

Freed From the Power of Death

Paul said, "O death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting?" The curse of death is taken away from us. Death is now a victory for the believer, for in death we achieve what Christ has achieved for us.

The fear of death is a universal fact of human existence. All mankind lives in terror of death. People go to tremendous, ruinous lengths to extend their lives just a few more months. People consult witch doctors and sorcerers to try to extend their lives. Hebrews tells us in vs. 15 of this text that the devil uses the fear of death to enslave people. Indeed, to avoid death or to avoid thinking about death, people run to every kind of vice and wickedness.

People fear death because of guilt. They know, deep inside, that they stand condemned before God for their sin. Death is the moment when we go to give account. That is a terrifying thought. But for the believer, we have no fear. Condemnation is taken away by Christ, and therefore the power of the devil is removed. With no condemnation, no guilt, no fear of what will happen after we die, by faith in Christ, we can face whatever comes with confidence and boldness. Our hope is not in this life only, but because Christ became one of us, conquered death and now is in glory, we know we will be in glory as well, when we put our faith and trust in Him.

All of this means that Christ is our model for what it means to be fully human. He was fully human, and in being fully human and obedient to God, He redeemed human nature itself and has imparted that redeemed human nature to us. This is what the Lord's Supper fully symbolizes, and why we learn that in eating this bread and drinking this cup, we signify the fact that by faith we eat Christ's flesh and drink His blood. We partake of His nature. He became like us, died on the cross, rose again and was glorified. He became like us so that we could become like Him. And so He is now our benchmark, our goal, for what it means to be fully human.

Salvation doesn't mean escaping our human nature. Our human nature is not the problem. Our alienation from God and the corruption which that alienation works on our nature is the problem. Our nature has been tarnished, broken and perverted by sin and rebellion. But by God's power, it can be saved. It has been saved. Christ's human nature, the life-giving spirit, now becomes the source of our life and our new nature. As the old nature dies with Christ on the cross, the newly born humanity which is worked in us by regeneration, by the power of the Spirit comes alive. That new nature is fed by Christ and grows and grows until we die in this life. Our death in this life is then, to use Paul's analogy, like a seed falling into the ground, which springs forth into something new and wonderful.

It is Christ being formed in us. As the firstborn among many brethren, as the captain of our salvation, He has released us from the power of sin, death, and the devil, and charted the way to the new world, the new, glorious humanity which is forever united inseparably to God. Man and God can never again be separated, because they are forever united in Christ Himself, fully human and fully God, forever.