Jesus on the Cross for His Brothers (Heb. 2:14-18)

 This sermon was preached on 7/4/2013

These verses introduce the major theme of Hebrews which is that Jesus is a merciful and faithful High Priest, which the author will explain in detail from 4:14–10:18. Previously he has referred to an aspect of Jesus’ priestly work in 1:3 (‘when he had by himself purged our sins’). He has already shown how Jesus is superior to the Old Testament prophets (1:1-3), and he is coming to the close of his section in which he has detailed the superiority of Jesus to angels (perhaps he is saying that an angel cannot understand what we need and therefore cannot be a priest). In the next chapters, he will show that Jesus is superior as a leader to those giants of Jewish history, Moses and Joshua. After that, he will explain how Jesus is superior to the priests of Israel.

But in these verses, the author continues his explanation of the relationship between Jesus and his brothers, and he focuses primarily on what took place on the cross where, in particular, Jesus came to the aid of his spiritual seed. The author mentions two aspects of the cross-work of Jesus – first, his victory over the devil; second, his propitiation for the sins of his brothers – and then he points out that Jesus, because of his own experiences, is able to help those who are tempted.

The author mentions two aspects of Jesus’ character as High Priest. First, he is merciful and, second, he is faithful, both needed for dealing with the requirements made by God of the brothers of Jesus. It is clear that his mercy is shown to his brothers because they needed it due to them having failed totally to fulfil God’s requirements. But to whom was he faithful? It is possible to say that he was faithful to God in that he completed the task assigned to him. Yet I suspect that we should read the adjective as stating his faithfulness to his brothers. He fulfilled the duties of the Elder Brother despite the cost demanded and the pain and distress involved.

Jesus’ victory over the devil

The writer of Hebrews summarises human existence in verses 14-15: people are ‘through fear of death ... subject to lifelong slavery.’ Death is recognised universally as an enemy because everywhere it goes it beings great sorrow, emotional pain and disappointment. Many persons today, who have spent their lifetimes building up a home and possessions, are looking at them aware that shortly death will take them away and what they gathered will be given to others; what they sense is powerless frustration. Other people are in mourning today because death has brought bereavement into their families, and in their grief they sense their weakness to do anything about it. Death is striding over the centuries, claiming victim after victim, and nobody can stop it. In fact, if we were to count the number of people today who have been crushed by death at one time or another, we would have to include virtually the entire population of the world.

Then the writer mentions who is to blame for this awful predicament, and the person is the devil. When he says that the devil had the power of death, he does not mean that the devil can decide when someone should die. Such authority belongs only to the Lord. The Bible makes it clear that the length of an individual’s life is decided by God (Ps. 139:16); it also teaches that the resurrected Christ holds the keys of death and the grave (Rev. 1:17-18). Instead the author means that the devil has a domain, and that domain is death, a kingdom in which each subject is marked by spiritual death and is destined for natural death, and which will be followed by eternal death. He is the god of this world, it was through his temptations that death came into the world at the beginning, and he only maintains his dominance because the world is permeated with the effects of death. The way he keeps his power is by blinding his subjects to the reality of their state, by diverting their minds from thinking that deliverance is possible. Among the blinded were those described here as the brothers of Jesus, and their Elder Brother had to destroy the usurper before being able to set them free.

The way by which the devil kept people under the bondage of death was by ensuring they remained guilty of sin. He is aware that the wages of sin is death, as Paul says in Romans 6, and all the devil has to do is ensure that his subjects keep on sinning. In a sense, it does not matter which sins they commit as long as these sins are always held to their account. If Jesus was going to deliver his brothers from that position of bondage, he would have to deal with the authority the devil had over them because of their guilt. He had to deal with the accusation that they were guilty of sin and so deserved to die.

Paul illustrates in Colossians 2:13-15 how Jesus did this: ‘And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.’ It is not entirely clear whether it is the Father or the Son who is described as nailing the record of debt to the cross. The Father is described in verse 13 – he has made believers alive together with Jesus after forgiving them their sins; and the Son is the focus in verses 14 and 15 as the one who made a public spectacle of the enemy forces. But whether it is the Son or the Father who nailed the record of debt to the cross in a figurative sense does not remove the point that Jesus on the cross rendered the power of the devil ineffective. How did Jesus do it?

Paul’s illustration is that the record was like a sheet of parchment on which were written God’s laws and the number of times we had disobeyed them. It was the evidence that the devil had that we should be condemned; it expressed his power over us, a power like a prosecutor who demands that a criminal should be punished. And, of course, there is no denying that we are guilty of the charges.

Three things were done to the writing on this parchment. First, the words of accusation were blotted out so that they disappeared. Jesus (or the Father, if it is he who is active) blotted them out with the blood that Jesus shed in order for sinners to be cleansed. All the accusing words are gone.

Second, the parchment or paper was taken away from the hands of the prosecutor, the devil. When a person is found not guilty in a courtroom, the prosecutor cannot continue pressing the charges. He may still believe the person is guilty, but officially he cannot prosecute the person any more. Similarly, but in a higher sense, Jesus (or the Father) took from the devil his long list of accusations against each of the brothers of Jesus. The devil’s legal case has been taken away, and any accusations he now makes are invalid because the penalty has been paid.

Third, the blotted-out parchment was nailed to the cross by Jesus (or by the Father). There is probably an allusion here to what happened when a criminal was crucified – his crime would be written above his head. This was what happened when Jesus was crucified – his ‘crime’, that he was the King of the Jews, was written above his head so that onlookers could see why he was being put to death by the civil authorities. In Paul’s illustration, we who deserved to die have now been given a document that states we are not liable for any of our sins. This is the case because Jesus paid the penalty for the sins of his brothers. In fact, the next time the devil accuses you of forgiven sin, if you are a believer you should ask him to take a look at the document with your name on it that is nailed above the cross. The devil’s power over us, that demanded the wages of death, has been removed, for ever.

Jesus dealing with God’s wrath on behalf of his brothers

There was one other problem that his brothers faced which Jesus had to deal with, and it was the problem of God’s wrath. It is bad enough to face an angry devil, but it is much worse to face an angry God. As Paul says in Ephesians 2, the brothers of Jesus were children of wrath as well. Before their conversion God was angry with them because of their sins. His sovereignty had been flouted by severe rebellion and his justice required that the rebels be punished.

When the letter was written, the concept of propitiation was understood by all who heard the term. Whether they were Jews or Gentiles who worshipped the true God or Gentiles who worshipped idols, both groups realised that they had to deal with divine wrath against their sins. Our predecessors also understood this concept. Perhaps we have heard of the famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards that was used to initiate a revival in New England in the early 1800s. The title of the sermon was ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’. Today the concept has been diluted almost of all recognition and it is regarded as a relic from an ignorant and superstitious past. Yet the modern abandonment of the concept does not mean that God has ceased to be angry.

What does it mean for God to be angry? It does not mean that he is prone to losing his temper and flying off the handle at certain things that displease him. Rather it describes his settled and consistent opposition to what is wrong and includes his determination to punish it. ‘It is as much the expression of a personal, emotional attitude of the Triune Jehovah as is his love to sinners; it is the active manifesting of his hatred of irreligion and moral evil’ (J. I. Packer). While this wrath has a future manifestation (1 Thess. 1:10), it is also displayed in the present (Rom. 1:18) in various providences of God against sin (as Paul indicates is the cause of humanity being abandoned to its chosen sins and their effects).

The place where we see God’s wrath clearly is Calvary. There we don’t see it in the callousness of the observers (although there is a sense in which God had given them up to their desires), but in the experience of Jesus as he endured God’s wrath as he paid the penalty for the sins of his brothers. Jesus endured divine wrath because he desired to be merciful and faithful to them. He would bear what was required in order that they would not taste this awful wrath. In doing so, he made satisfaction to God’s justice and turned away divine wrath from his brothers.

The Elder Brother Has Sympathy and Succour for His Tried Brothers

The next benefit of Jesus’ priesthood that is mentioned by the author is his sympathy and succour for those who are enduring trials and temptations. Of course, this would have relevance for the author’s original readers, just as it speaks very powerfully to the persecuted church today. The initial recipients were suffering for the faith to such an extent that they were in danger of giving up the faith. Perhaps they wondered if God cared for them at all and may have even imagined that nobody could know what they were going through. If that was the case, and even if they had not thought it, the author informs them that Jesus knows, not only in the sense of being aware of it, but also in the sense of having gone through it himself.

The word translated ‘tempted’ can also be rendered by ‘tried’. Sometimes the context makes it clear what word should be used; at other times, either meaning or even both meanings together would be suitable (in the same event, God may test us while the devil may tempt us). Jesus went through situations when he was tried for his obedience to God’s will. We are familiar with the way Jesus was tempted in the desert by the devil (tempted not to trust in God for daily needs, not to trust in God for the way to glory, not to have a sensible trust in God), but he was tried in other ways as well.

John Owen summarises these situations in this way: ‘He was poor, despised, persecuted, reproached, especially from the beginning unto the end of his public ministry. Herein lay one continued temptation; that is, a trial of his obedience by all manner of hardships. Hence he calls this whole time the time of his temptations, “Ye have continued with me in my temptations”; or in the work that he carried on in a constant course of temptation, arising from his outward state and condition. See James 1:2; 1 Peter 5:9. In this temptation he suffered hunger, poverty, weariness, sorrow, reproach, shame, contempt; wherewith his holy soul was deeply affected. And he underwent it cheerfully, because it was to be the condition of them whose preservation and salvation as their high priest he had undertaken, as we shall see. And his experience hereof is the spring of their comfort and safety.'

The fact of the matter is that Jesus felt these situations more than any human who has lived through them. Because he was sinless, his holy nature made him more sensitive to the horror of sins and its effects. Even although he lived a perfect life, there were occasions when he was greatly distressed by sin and its consequences: ‘He could not yield to temptation, but he did suffer from it. He did not suffer from it morally, he was too pure for that; but he did suffer from it mentally because of his purity. His mind was grieved, and vexed, and troubled by the temptation that he had to bear’ (C. H. Spurgeon). Of course, there is comfort in this reality because it means that to be tempted is not a sin, nor is it a sign of God’s displeasure.

Because he experienced trials and temptations, Jesus can sympathise with his brothers: ‘He had particular experience thereby of the weakness, sorrows, and miseries of human nature under the assaults of temptations; he tried it, felt it, and will never forget it’ (Owen). Yet he did not suffer only to sympathise, he also suffered in order to help. In heaven, there is One who sees the needs of his brothers on earth: ‘His heart is hereby inclined to compassion, and acquainted with what it is that will afford relief. In his throne of eternal peace and glory, he sees his poor brethren labouring in that storm which with so much travail of soul he himself passed through, and is intimately affected with their condition’ (Owen).

None of his suffering, tried, tempted followers can say that Jesus does not have the ability to help them. John Owen puts it like this: ‘He bears still in his holy mind the sense he had of his sorrows wherewith he was pressed in the time of his temptations, and thereon seeing his brethren conflicting with the like difficulties he is ready to help them; and because his power is proportioned unto his will, it is said “he is able”.’

Jesus will help them in the ways with which he was helped when he was tried and tempted. Among the ways that he can use are the following. He can remind them of God’s promises, he can give them a sense of God’s presence, he can strengthen them with divine power, he can arrange deliverances in his providence, and he can stimulate them by thoughts of the glory to come (after all, it was the joy that was set before him that helped him endure the cross and despise its shame).

So these are the achievements that Jesus, the Elder Brother, does as the High Priest of his brothers, achievements which angels could never perform. He dealt with the devil’s accusations against them, he paid the penalty for their sins and turned away from them the wrath of God, and he sympathises with and strengthens them in each difficult situation they will face. Truly, he is the brother born for adversity (Prov. 17:17).

Is he our Brother?