Hebrews 2:14-15 | Two Reasons for Christmas

Let’s open the Bible now to Hebrews 2:14-15.

We’ve come to what some people call “the most wonderful time of the year.” I might argue for summer instead of winter, but it’s not wonderful because of the weather. It’s wonderful because of something else. It’s wonderful because this time of year, we’re all caught up in a story. It’s a story of a king coming in an unexpected way who wins a war for his people that they could not win on their own. It’s a story that has spawned a thousand stories, but no one has ever improved on the original. They can’t. It’s the best.

So, let me tell you that story.

A long time ago, in a place not so far away, a man and a woman lived in a perfect world. They enjoyed God’s presence with them. Work was easy and rewarding. Their relationship was without strain. They had all they needed. It was paradise. But one day, a serpent slithered in with some lies about God, and in their hearts, they began believing God was holding out on them. They listened to the serpent’s lies and rebelled against God. But instead of giving them something better, their rebellion brought something bad into the world. Something God had warned them about but that they decided not to believe. Something so terrible that every person who came after would fear it. It was called Death. For every person since that day, death has been the greatest threat. It lurks behind every corner, hides in every dark room, shadows every joy, and is the end of even the greatest lives. Death is the enemy we cannot avoid facing and the one we cannot beat. It will come for us all, and the only difference between us is when it comes.

We’ve tried to solve the problem of death. We’ve searched for fountains of youth. Our laboratories mine the depths of science for a cure. Medicine can prolong us, but it cannot insure us. Diet and exercise can extend us, but they cannot save us. Of all things in this world, death is the most certain event that will happen to us. Because of that, we fear death—the manner, the method, the reality—and are enslaved by that fear.

But something else happened that day in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned, God promised that one day the woman’s Offspring would crush the serpent’s head under his heel. One day, the devil, a midwife for death’s birth in the Garden, would lose his power to hold it over our heads. One day, God’s children would get their life back. One day, death would die.

Then the world kept spinning, centuries upon centuries added together, and nation upon nation was founded, flourished, and disappeared. But through it all, God’s promise never faded. He never wavered. He never yielded. He kept telling the same story again and again: the Savior is coming.

And one day, a long time ago, in a place not so far away, when it seemed as if there was no hope God’s savior would come, God waged war on death, and his Savior marched into battle. But to everyone’s surprise, he wasn’t a giant like Goliath. He was humble like David. He wasn’t an impressive politician like Caesar. He was a normal person like me and you, a carpenter by trade. He was a baby born in a manger in the city of Bethlehem. His name was Jesus. He was like us—flesh and blood, but though he was like in that way, he was also unlike us in another way. He was the Son of God, very God of very God, the radiance of God’s glory, and the exact imprint of God’s nature. The Savior had come, and the savior was God himself.

We celebrate this story each year at Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year because it reminds us that God has kept his promise. He has come to make things right. Jesus did not rise from the ranks of this world but came down from the heavenly throne. At Christmas, God came down. We call this the incarnation of Jesus. The heir of all things, the creator of all things, the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power, came down to save us. He became like us, so when we see the salvation he has wrought by his blood, we know this is one like us who saves people like us. This isn’t some theoretical salvation. This is the real stuff.

Jesus came down not like a Greek god from Olympus to check on things down here but to become like us in every way except for sin to save us because he knows how things are down here. Christmas is the story of God becoming like us. And he didn’t just make a cameo. He moved into the neighborhood. He came on a mission for a purpose, which takes us to our text today, Hebrews 2:14-15.

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

This is God’s word.

Now that’s real comfort and joy.

We see two reasons for Christmas. The first is for the second.

(Reason #1) Jesus made himself like us so that (Reason #2) Jesus could conquer death for us.

Reason #1: Jesus Made Himself Like Us

Look at verse 14. “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things….”

As the author of Hebrews begins explaining God’s solution to death, he begins with the incarnation at Christmas. Since the children are flesh and blood, Jesus partook of the same things. Jesus became human because we are human. Jesus needed to be human to save humanity. Our salvation could only come from the inside, as it were.

Why is that? Why did Jesus need to be human? The Heidelberg Catechism, written in the 1500s, asks the same question.

Q: Why must he be a true and righteous man?

A: He must be a true man because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin. He must be a righteous man because one who himself is a sinner cannot pay for others.

Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death.” Death is something we get because we deserve it. Death is our “reward,” you could say. It might not be the reward we want, but it is the one due to us. We get what we earn. Every person ever born—with one exception—is a sinner, and our sin earns us death. Now that might sound drastic to us. It makes sense that it would. We’re the ones on the hook, after all. But God warned Adam and Eve about this. He warns us in the Bible about this. We sin with our eyes wide open. We know what we’re doing. We cannot claim innocence. Our guilt is all too real.

Still, it helps to understand why death is the reward for sin. (And, by the way, it’s important to understand that by “death,” we don’t just mean physical death but also eternal death. Sin’s rewards are not paid out with a death certificate.) Death is the reward for sin because of the nature of who God is. God is holy and righteous. By his nature, he must punish sin. Otherwise, he would not be holy and righteous. Therefore, it's holiness or else. It’s not like he hasn’t given us enough information. We have God’s law written down. We know what he’s asking. The problem is that we can’t live up to it. Adam and Eve ruined our only real shot, and the Bible says we inherit a sinful nature by birth because of them. But we can’t blame them too much. We’ve all added our own sins on top of theirs. We are all guilty, and where holiness is not present, death must be.

Romans 6:23 is terrifying. “The wages of sin is death.” But there is a second part to that verse, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God provides a gift to his children—the gift of eternal life. How does that gift come to us? In Christ Jesus our Lord. As the Heidelberg Catechism says, because God’s justice requires human nature to pay for sin, Jesus had to be like us. He had to partake of the same things. If we are going to be saved, Jesus had to be really, fully, truly human. And he had to be a perfect human. He had to be righteous. He had to be holy. Because only a righteous man can pay the penalty for unrighteous men, only a holy man can make sinners holy by his sacrifice. This is the reason for Christmas. We needed a savior, and Jesus is that savior.

At Christmas, the all-holy God above put on skin and flesh on top of bones and organs and was born as a human baby, just like we were, to save his unholy people. In Jesus, God has a neck we can hug. He has a laugh we can hear. He has a face with a smile that we can see. And because of that, he has hands that can be pierced. He has a side that can be cut open with a spear. He has righteousness that can be ours by faith. At Christmas, Jesus became die-able so that he could die to save us. God didn’t outsource this job. He couldn’t.

That’s so important to understand. Christmas will never mean very much beyond some vague sense of happiness resulting from the “spirit of the season” if you don’t understand the enormity of these truths. Before anything else, Christmas screams to us, “You need a savior!” And Christmas provides that savior.

Christmas is God telling us that our most desperate need is fulfilled in Jesus. That’s why it’s merry and bright. That’s why it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

So, reason #1 for Christmas: Jesus himself became like us. Now, reason #2: so that he could conquer death for us.

Reason #2: Jesus Conquered Death For Us

Let’s keep reading. “14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

Only a human Jesus can live for us, and only a dead Jesus can rescue us. The reason for Christmas is Good Friday and Easter.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet says death is “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Jesus said, “Not so fast.” He went to that undiscovered country and returned. That reality is the most astounding thing in all the world. Jesus came not only to live the perfect life we failed to live but also to die the guilty death we don’t want to die. And when he did, he secured something for his people that no one else could ever do. He secured life for us.

Jesus secured life for us in a surprising way: by death. Jesus destroyed death from the inside. He destroyed death by going through it. In all human history, there has not been, and will not be, any greater accomplishment. Everyone in the world is looking for a solution to death. It hangs over our heads. We fear it. We’re enslaved to it. Death is, as one commentator put it (Phillips), not only an event that awaits us but a power that rules us. The fear of death plays itself out in a million different ways. It’s the reason for our mid-life crisis. It’s the reason for our despair. It’s the reason for our anxiety. It’s the reason we hold on to things too tightly. Death rules us.

But the author of Hebrews wants us to see how this great enemy has been dealt with in Christ’s hands. Because Jesus has gone through death, he has destroyed the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil. This doesn’t mean Satan ceases to exist. He’s still around. It means he no longer has the power he once had over death.

That does beg the question as to how the devil gained the power of death to begin with. How did that happen? Well, we have to look back at the beginning of the Bible. In Genesis 3, the devil ushered death into the world in the Garden of Eden by tempting Adam and Eve to sin. Because he introduced sin, he also introduced death. When God passed the death sentence on sin, the devil frightened humanity’s conscience and brought them into slavery under the fear of death. That’s why Satan is called the “god” of this world (2 Cor. 4:4) in the Bible. He’s the author of sin and the enslaver of those under sin’s penalty.

But then Jesus stepped onto the battlefield, dressed not in armor fit for another but dressed like us, in flesh and bones and skin that could be pierced and blood that could be spilled. When Jesus died upon the cross, he entered death with all the sins of God’s people and took those sins into the grave with him. But he then did something the devil wasn’t prepared for. He rose from the grave but left those sins buried. When he rose on the third day, Jesus ripped the sword from the devil’s hand. His ability to hold our guilt over our heads was gone. The sting of death has been taken away because Jesus bore it on the cross. The devil has no power to condemn us any longer because Jesus has made us right with God.  On the cross, he took our guilt and gave back his righteousness. He took our shame and gave back his holiness. This was a real transfer. He really took our sins, and he really gave us his righteousness. It is as much ours as it is his because, on the cross, our sin was as much his as it is ours. This is how, as we saw in our Colossians series, “Jesus disarmed the powers and authorities, triumphing over them on the cross.” The devil’s power was destroyed by the death of Christ.

Since death is dead, the fear of death isn’t what it once was. By his death, when Jesus defeated our great enemy, he also delivered us from our great slavery. Death no longer hangs over our heads. We no longer need to fear the judgment to come. We no longer need to ensure we wring every ounce out of this life because it’s all we have. We no longer need to avoid thinking about death. We aren’t enslaved to fear of death anymore. We are free because Christ set us free. Oh, death, where is your sting?

If you have Christ, your death day can be the greatest day of your life. Death cannot destroy you. It can only usher you into the waiting arms of your Savior. Death will separate you from this world for a while, but it will not separate you from God. It will unite you with him even more closely. Now, that’s freedom!

Conclusion

Church history helps us see what this freedom looks like. I want to tell a few stories as we close.

John Wesley, the English evangelist in the Great Awakening, was on a ship heading across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Georgia. Two groups of people were on board: his English countrymen and a group of German Moravian Christians. One day, the Germans had a church service on the boat’s deck, and as they were singing, a big storm came. They were on this little wooden boat in this big ocean, and Wesley was scared. Here’s what he said in his journal about that day.

In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the main-sail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English. The Germans calmly sung on. I asked one of them afterwards, “Were you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” I asked, “But were not your women and children afraid?” He replied, mildly, “No; our women and children are not afraid to die.” From them I went to their crying, trembling neighbours and pointed out to them the difference in the hour of trial, between him that fears God, and him that fears him not.

DL Moody, the 19th-century evangelist, said, "Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment, I shall be more alive than I am now.”

F.B. Meyer was a pastor and a friend of D.L. Moody. He was near death and sent a postcard to a friend. “I raced you to heaven. I’m just off. See you there.” 

Donald Cargill was a Scottish Reformed preacher who was hung in 1681 for his reformed preaching. He said, “This is the most joyful day I ever saw on earth. I am no more terrified of death because of sin than if I had never sinned. For all my sins are freely pardoned and washed thoroughly away by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Donald Grey Barnhouse was the pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. His wife died of cancer. He was left with four kids, all under the age of twelve. They were driving down the road one day when a big semi-truck pulled past them, casting its shadow over them. Barnhouse asked his kids, “Would you rather be run over by the truck or the shadow of the truck?” One of the children said, “Shadow, of course.” Barnhouse said, “Well, that’s what has happened to your mother….only the shadow of death has passed over her because death itself ran over Jesus.”

In the 3rd century, in the city of Carthage, Perpetua was a recently married mother of an infant son. She and others from her church were arrested for being Christians. Their sentence was to be fed to wild beasts to entertain the paying crowd. When they heard their fate, they returned to their prison, glad to be able to die for the glory of God. Perpetua’s father came to persuade her to deny her faith and live, but she wouldn’t. She said, “I am unable to call myself other than what I am, a Christian.” When the day came, a bull tossed her in the air, and her hair came undone. She asked for time to put her hair back up because undone hair was a sign of mourning and this was a day of joy for her.

There was another girl there that day in Carthage, a slave named Felicity. She was pregnant, and it was against Roman law for pregnant women to be executed until their child was born. Not wanting to face execution without her church members, she asked for prayer that her child would be born before the execution day. God granted their prayer. During childbirth, Felicity cried out in pain. The prison guards mocked her, asking how she could face the wild beasts if she couldn’t stay silent during childbirth. Felicity replied: “Now I alone suffer what I am suffering, but then there will be another inside me who will suffer for me because I am going to suffer for him.”

When it’s your turn to die, what can you expect by faith? You can expect the same thing. These were not super-human people. These were normal Christians like you and me. All they had is all we have—the gospel of Jesus Christ and faith in him by the power of the Holy Spirit. They were free from the fear of death because they were free from the consequences of death by the grace of Christ. They knew they were free, and if you trust Christ, you need to know you are free too. Jesus is your death defeater. He is your redeemer. He is your Savior. When it’s your turn to die, he will come and get you!

This is the reason this is the most wonderful time of the year. This is the reason we sing “Joy to the world.” Because a long time ago, in a place not so very far away, the curse of sin entered the world, but then Christmas came, and through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, we have a new song. “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.”

Let’s pray.