Made Like His Brothers

Hebrews 2:5–18

Read Hebrews 2:5–18 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.

Hebrews 2:17

The Turn

We have spent one whole session on the Son’s height. The Son begotten of the Father. The Son worshiped by angels. The Son enthroned. The Son seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The whole of chapter 1 pulls our gaze upward, away from every created thing, to the one who is God of God, Light of Light, the very representation of the Father’s essence. By the time we reach the end of chapter 1, we have been taught to look up.

And now, startlingly, the letter turns. In chapter 2, having just finished insisting that the Son is as far above the angels as His name is more excellent than theirs, the writer takes us to the passage in Psalm 8 that speaks of humanity as made “lower than the angels for a little while.” And he applies it not to us but to Christ. The One who was above the angels was, for a little while, made lower than them. The Son who is higher than all creation stooped beneath it. This is the great paradox at the heart of Christian faith, and Hebrews will not let us have one without the other.

The session before us is about that descent. Why did the Son become one of us? How did He, through suffering, become our merciful and faithful high priest? What does it mean that He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, that He shared our flesh and blood, that He tasted death for everyone? These are not abstract theological questions. They are the pastoral heart of Hebrews. The letter’s picture of Christ as high priest, which will dominate the chapters to come, begins here: with the incarnation, the suffering, the brotherhood. Before Hebrews can tell us how the high priest works, it must tell us that the high priest is one of us.

Not to Angels, But to Man

The writer begins by reminding us what the argument is not about. “For he did not put the world to come, about which we are speaking, under the control of angels.” The angels, glorious as they are, are not the ones for whom the future is being prepared. The world to come is not going to be ruled by Gabriel or Michael or by any heavenly host. Then for whom is it being prepared?

The writer answers by quoting Psalm 8: “What is man that you think of him or the son of man that you care for him? You made him lower than the angels for a little while. You crowned him with glory and honor. You put all things under his control.” The psalm looks back to the creation, where humanity was made as God’s vice-regent, given dominion over the works of His hands. In the Garden, Adam and Eve were crowned with that dominion. It was ours, by gift, in the beginning.

But the writer has to admit what his readers already know. “At present we do not yet see all things under his control.” The dominion Adam was given is not what we see in the world. We see, instead, creation groaning. We see chaos, disease, death. We see humans failing to rule justly even over themselves, let alone the world given to them. The psalm describes a reality that has not yet arrived. The crown is bent. The throne is empty. Something has gone wrong.

And then the writer gives us the answer that Hebrews is built on. “But we see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by God’s grace he would experience death on behalf of everyone.” We do not yet see humanity in its dominion. But we do see Jesus: the true human, the second Adam, the Son who assumed our flesh, was made lower than the angels for a little while, and has now been crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death. The dominion promised to humanity has arrived in one man. And because it has arrived in Him, it will arrive for us in Him.

The Pioneer of Salvation

The writer now presses further. “For it was fitting for him, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

Read that sentence slowly. Every phrase carries weight. “For whom and through whom all things exist”: this is the Father, the ultimate reference point of all reality. Everything is for Him and through Him. It was fitting, appropriate, right, that the Father, in bringing many sons to glory, would do it this way. “Many sons to glory”: not just one, but many. The salvation Christ accomplishes is not merely His own glorification; it is the bringing of many sons into the glory that is His. The Son’s work is for brothers and sisters. Plural.

And then the astonishing phrase: “the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” The word translated “pioneer” is sometimes rendered “founder,” “author,” or “trailblazer.” It is the image of one who goes ahead, opens the way, and brings others with Him to the place He has reached. He is not merely a scout whose example we must keep pace with; He is the source of the salvation He leads us into. Christ is the pioneer of our salvation. And this pioneer was made “perfect through sufferings.”

“Perfect” here does not mean that Christ was previously imperfect in any moral sense. The Greek word is teleioo, and it has the sense of being completed, brought to the goal, made fit for a particular purpose. Christ was always sinless, always fully God, always the eternal Son. But to be our high priest, to be the pioneer of our salvation, He had to be brought, in His human experience, through the full depth of what it means to be human in a world of suffering. He had to travel the road we travel, not just arrive at the destination. A high priest who had never suffered could not sympathize. A pioneer who had never walked the trail could not lead. So He suffered. And through suffering He was made fit, brought to the goal, as the pioneer who leads many sons to glory.

This matters for how we read our own suffering. The path the Christian walks is not a path Christ has not walked. Whatever the suffering is (grief, illness, loss, betrayal, fear, the ordinary accumulation of sorrows that a long life gathers), Christ has walked it ahead of us. He did not circumvent the world of suffering; He went through it. And He went through it, the writer tells us, as the pioneer: the one who clears the path and brings us, following after Him, to the same glory He has entered. We do not suffer alone, and we do not suffer without a destination.

Not Ashamed to Call Them Brothers and Sisters

The next verses gather up three Old Testament quotations, each pressing in on the same remarkable claim. “For indeed he who makes holy and those being made holy all have the same origin, and so he is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”

The one who makes holy is Christ. Those being made holy are the people He is bringing to glory. And they, the writer says, all have the same origin. The Son took flesh from human flesh. He was born of a woman, born under the Law. He shares our origin, not in His divine nature, which is eternal, but in His humanity, which is ours. The Son of God became the Son of Man. And because He is truly human, truly of us, truly our brother, He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

Let that phrase land. He is not ashamed. We might expect the incarnate Son of God to look at us (petty, sinful, small, distractible) and be ashamed of the family. We might expect Him to prefer the company of His Father and the angels to the company of us. The writer insists that He does not. He is not ashamed. He is, in fact, eager to claim us. He calls us brothers and sisters.

Three quotations follow. First, from Psalm 22: “I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.” Psalm 22 is the psalm Christ quoted from the cross (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), but it is also a psalm of eventual vindication and worship. The writer takes the later verses and applies them to Christ: in His resurrection and His continuing priestly work, He stands among His brothers and sisters and leads them in the praise of the Father.

Second, from Isaiah 8: “I will be confident in him.” The word is the ordinary word for trust. Christ, the Son of God, trusted the Father. He lived the life of faith on our behalf. He was not immune to the need for trust; He experienced it as we do, and He trusted faithfully, as we often do not. The life of faith is not something Christ demands from a distance. It is something He has lived from the inside.

Third, also from Isaiah 8: “Here I am, with the children God has given me.” Christ presents us to the Father as His children, given to Him by the Father. The writer is piling up Scriptural pictures of Christ and His people as family: brothers and sisters, children given, the assembly gathered in praise. The picture is overwhelming. The Son who is higher than the angels is also our brother, our elder brother, the one who shares our nature and claims our company.

He Shared Our Flesh and Blood

The writer now explains why this brotherhood mattered. “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death.”

Three claims, tightly packed. First, that Christ shared in our flesh and blood in order to die. The incarnation was not a costume. It was not God pretending to be human. The Son took on real human flesh and real human blood so that He could experience real human death. Without the incarnation, no death. Without death, no saving work. The writer wants us to see that the Son’s humanity was purposeful: it was the means by which He entered into the very place we needed Him to enter.

Second, that through death Christ destroyed the one who holds the power of death, the devil. This is one of the more startling theological claims in the New Testament, and Lutheran hymnody has not been shy about singing it. The word “destroy” here means to render powerless, to put out of action. The devil held that power only through sin and its accusation; death was never rightly his. Christ entered death, where the devil had held sinners captive, and by entering it, He broke the devil’s grip. The resurrection was not merely an escape from death; it was the plundering of death from within. The one who held death’s power, the devil, has been stripped of his weapon. Death still happens, but death no longer has the final word. The devil still rages, but the devil has already lost.

Third, that Christ’s work sets free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death. This phrase names something pastorally precise. Human life, apart from Christ, is lived under the shadow of a death we cannot evade and cannot defeat. That shadow colors everything. We work against it, we distract ourselves from it, we medicate ourselves about it, we strategize around it, but it is always there. And under that shadow, we are slaves: slaves to the fear of what death will take from us, to the anxiety that accompanies mortality, to the desperate projects by which we try to outrun it. Christ has broken that slavery. Not by removing death in the sense that we no longer die, but by removing death’s power to rule us. The Christian, who knows that Christ has passed through death and emerged on the other side, is no longer ruled by death’s shadow. She dies, but she does not die alone, and she does not die without a destination.

This is one of the great pastoral resources of Hebrews. If you are teaching, or reading, a person who is afraid of death (a person in grief, a person with a diagnosis, a person growing older and feeling the approach), Hebrews 2:14–15 is the word for her. The fear of death is a real fear. Christ did not dismiss it; He entered it. But having entered it, He has broken it. The slavery to the fear of death is over for those who are in Him. We still grieve, but not as those who have no hope. We still die, but not as those who have no life.

A Merciful and Faithful High Priest

The climax of the passage, and the first full statement in Hebrews of what Christ is as our high priest. “For surely his concern is not for angels, but he is concerned for Abraham’s descendants. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.”

Not angels, but Abraham’s descendants. The writer is making sure we understand who is being helped. Angels have their glory, but angels are not the ones Christ came for. He came for Abraham’s descendants, which in the logic of the New Testament includes both ethnic Israel and all who share the faith of Abraham, Jew and Gentile alike. Christ’s saving help is aimed at humans, in all the particularity and weakness of being human. And to help humans, He had to become one.

“Made like his brothers and sisters in every respect.” The phrase is striking. Every respect. Not most respects. Not the respects that mattered theologically while avoiding the respects that would have been inconvenient. Every respect. He was tired. He was hungry. He was tempted. He wept. He bled. He died. He was a real human being in a real human body under real human conditions. The Son took on everything that belongs to being human, except sin, as Hebrews 4:15 will say, so that He might truly be one of us, truly represent us, truly stand for us before God.

And the reason for all of this: “so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God.” Here, for the first time, Hebrews uses its signature language for Christ. High priest. And notice the two adjectives: merciful and faithful. He is merciful toward those He represents: us, the people of God, struggling and weak. He is faithful toward the One He serves: the Father, whose will is to save. The two directions of a priest’s work are both honored in Him. He is faithful to God in offering the acceptable sacrifice; He is merciful to us in being the sacrifice Himself. He stands between us and the Father not as a hostile arbiter but as one who belongs to both sides, God from God, and man from Abraham, and therefore the perfect mediator.

The phrase “make atonement for the sins of the people” is worth pausing over. The Greek verb is the one behind the older English word “propitiation,” and the Lutheran tradition has not been embarrassed by that word. It means a sacrifice that turns away wrath, a sacrifice that addresses the real problem of human sin before a holy God. Atonement is a good word, so long as we do not empty it into mere reconciliation or a change in how we feel about God. The sacrificial system of the Old Testament was, at its heart, propitiatory. It was not mere ritual. It was the dealing-with of the problem of sin in a way that allowed a holy God to dwell among a sinful people. Christ’s death accomplishes what the old sacrifices only shadowed: He really deals with sin. He really turns away the wrath. He really reconciles God and humanity, not by softening God’s holiness, and not by minimizing humanity’s sin, but by taking our sin upon Himself and bearing its judgment in our place. This is the merciful and faithful high priest.

He Is Able to Help

The final verse of the session is one of the dearest sentences in the Bible, and we linger on it. “For since he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.”

Able. That is the word. Christ is able. Not merely willing. Not merely sympathetic. He is able to help (He has the power and the understanding and the right to help) those who are tempted. And the reason He is able is that He Himself suffered when He was tempted. His help is not a help from the safe side of the fence. It is the help of one who has been on our side of the fence, who has felt the force of temptation as a true man, who has endured the suffering that temptation brings, and who has come through.

Two things need to be said together here, because the Church has sometimes stumbled over one or the other. First, Christ was truly tempted. The temptations were real. The pressure was real. He was not play-acting. To deny that Christ was truly tempted is to deny that He was truly human, which is to deny the whole argument Hebrews has been making for the last chapter. He sweat in Gethsemane. He prayed that, if it were possible, the cup might pass. He was tempted in every way we are. Second, Christ did not sin. He felt the full force of temptation without yielding to it. His temptation did not rise out of a sinful heart, as ours so often does; there was no sin in Him for the tempter to work with. The Formula of Concord says so plainly, citing this very chapter to confess that He took our nature without our sin, and the Scripture says so plainly, and the Church has always said so. He was truly tempted, and He truly did not sin. Both are true. Hebrews 4:15 will state both together; Hebrews 2:18 assumes it.

Because both are true, His help is the help we need. A Christ who had not been tempted could not understand us. A Christ who had yielded to temptation could not help us. The Christ who was tempted and did not yield: He is the Christ who is able. He knows what it is to shrink, in His true human nature, from the suffering the Father has set before Him, and to hear the voice that says, “Surely you don’t have to go through this.” He has heard that voice. He has felt its pressure. He has refused it. And from that experience, not from the sheltered distance of divinity without humanity, He helps us.

Gathering the Threads

A remarkable passage, and one that repays slow reading. Five movements, and they belong together.

The first is that the world to come is for humanity, not for angels. The dominion Adam received has not been taken away; it has been rerouted through Christ, the true human, who has already entered the glory and who is bringing many sons after Him.

The second is that Christ was perfected through suffering. Not morally perfected, as though He had been imperfect, but brought through the human experience of suffering so that He might be the pioneer who leads us through the same road to the same destination.

The third is that Christ is our brother. He shares our origin. He is not ashamed to call us His own. The incarnation is not an embarrassment to the Son of God; it is His chosen way of claiming us.

The fourth is that by entering death, Christ has destroyed the one who held death’s power and has set us free from lifelong slavery to the fear of death. This is the Easter victory, anticipated in the theology of Hebrews and sung in the hymns of the Church.

The fifth is that Christ, made like His brothers and sisters in every respect, has become our merciful and faithful high priest: the one who has made propitiation for our sins, and who is able to help us because He Himself suffered when He was tempted.

These five movements are the foundation of everything the rest of Hebrews will build. The high priest whose work we will explore in coming sessions (His priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, His once-for-all sacrifice, His entrance into the heavenly sanctuary) is the high priest whose merciful and faithful character has been established here. Hebrews does not begin its account of Christ’s priesthood with the technicalities of the old sacrificial system. It begins with His brotherhood. The priest who represents us is the priest who has become one of us.

And so, from this session forward, when Hebrews speaks of the high priest, we will think of the One who is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. When Hebrews speaks of the once-for-all sacrifice, we will think of the One who tasted death for everyone. When Hebrews speaks of drawing near with confidence, we will think of the One who has gone ahead as our pioneer. The theology and the pastoral comfort are the same theology and the same comfort. Christ is our merciful and faithful high priest. He is able to help. He has already helped. He will help again.

For Discussion

1. The writer moves abruptly from the Son’s height (chapter 1) to His humility (chapter 2). Why does the letter hold these two together? What goes wrong, practically, when Christians emphasize only one, only Christ’s divinity or only His humanity?
2. Christ was made “perfect through sufferings”: not morally perfected, but brought through the human experience of suffering as the pioneer of our salvation. How does it change the way we read our own suffering to know that Christ has gone ahead of us through it? Where in your own life has this been, or could this be, a strengthening truth?
3. “He is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” What does it mean that the Son of God is not ashamed of us? Where are you tempted to think He must be ashamed? How does this verse speak into that fear?
4. The writer says Christ came to “set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death.” How does fear of death shape ordinary human life in ways we often do not notice? What difference does Christ’s victory over death make to those fears?
5. “He had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect.” What does this “every respect” include? What would it have been like for the Son of God to experience hunger, exhaustion, temptation, betrayal, and death? What does it mean for us that He chose this?
6. Verse 18 says that because Christ Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted. How is that different from the help a person gets from someone who has never suffered similarly? Where does Christ actually bring that help to you (in His Word, in Absolution, in the Supper), even on days when you do not feel understood?

Looking Ahead

Session 4 takes up Hebrews 3:1–4:13, where the writer compares Christ to Moses and then brings the second of the four warning passages: a sustained meditation on the wilderness generation, God’s rest, and the danger of unbelief. This is one of the most pastorally difficult passages in Hebrews, and we will treat it with the care the Lutheran tradition has developed for such texts.

Before next session, read Hebrews 3:1–4:13 slowly, preferably in one sitting. Notice how the writer weaves together the example of Moses, the warning from Psalm 95 about the wilderness generation, and the promise of God’s rest. Notice how the warning is framed and who, exactly, it is addressed to. And as you read, remember the pastoral pattern we worked out in Session 2: warnings are real, and warnings do different work in different hearts.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, our merciful and faithful high priest, who was not ashamed to call us brothers: we thank You that You shared our flesh and blood, tasted death for us, and through death destroyed the one who held death’s power. Deliver us from the fear of death. Help us in our temptations, knowing that You Yourself suffered when You were tempted. And draw us, Your brothers and sisters, after You into the glory the Father has prepared, for You are able to help, and You have promised to help. Amen.