Jesus: Our Tempted and Tried Savior and Priest

Christ came to defeat two great enemies: death and the devil. Let’s look at each in turn.

Death is a harsh reality, yet I am continually amazed how rarely most people consider their own impending deaths. One thing that always strikes me in the midst of the hustle and bustle of an airport is how busy folks seem in getting from one gate to another. Newspapers must be read, coffees must be bought and consumed, and phone calls must be made. In some ways, the airport is a metaphor for the remainder of our lives. We are constantly running around, so tirelessly consumed with day-to-day tasks that we seldom stop to meditate on some of the more sobering aspects of life—like death. In fact, many of us use busyness to avoid thinking about our mortality.

Yet no matter how much we try to ignore the reality of death, it is inevitable. In fact, a colleague once told me that as he was on a long flight back home, the man sitting next to him died of a heart attack. Given that the flight attendants had nowhere to put the body, they simply left the man buckled in his seat. Whether or not you are ever forced to sit that close to death before your own end, the reality of death’s inevitability remains. Honesty compels us to admit that if the gospel is not true, then death is a horrifying reality we should fear. Death is the most frightening thing we can ever face without the gospel.

The second enemy Christ overcomes for us is the devil. Christians have never been sure what to do with the devil. We certainly should not blame the devil for every sin or envision him hiding in every closet and lurking behind every corner. At the same time, we certainly should not trivialize the devil and turn him into nothing more than a cartoon character. We should also reject a theological dualism that imagines a good God and an evil god (the devil) in a cosmic power struggle between two equals. God’s power far exceeds Satan’s.

Christians must take the devil seriously. Scripture testifies that Satan is our enemy. In fact, 1 Peter 5:8 says that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He delights in perverting the gospel and preventing it from being preached. He is a liar (John 8:44); he is a deceiver (2 Cor 2:10-11; 11:14; Eph 6:11); he is a destroyer (John 10:10); and he is a tempter (Matt 4:1-11; 1 Cor 7:5). In short, the devil is maliciously and comprehensively opposed to God’s being, God’s character, God’s purposes, God’s people, and God’s glory.

This does not always mean that Satan pursues public wickedness as we typically envision. Donald Grey Barnhouse once asked the question, “What would a city look like that was completely ruled by the devil?” While many of us might picutre a city like Sodom and Gomorrah or Babylon, Barnhouse said a city completely ruled by Satan might look like something we never imagined: Every lawn would be mowed and every bridge would be clean of graffiti. No one would drive over the speed limit, children would be obedient to parents, marriages would remain intact, and every church would have a beautiful building. However, the gospel would not be preached at any place or in any pulpit because the devil’s primary ambition is to prevent the gospel from being preached. The devil’s aim is to keep people from believing the gospel. He will even use moralism and the appearance of perfection to accomplish that end (Horton, Christless Christianity, 15).

Christ gives us victory over both of these adversaries. First, the gospel provides hope in the face of death. As John Owen’s famous book title so poignantly phrases it, the gospel tells the story of “the death of death in the death of Christ” (Death of Death). As Jesus said in Matthew 16, the power of the gospel is such that the gates of Hades (death) would not prevail against the church (v. 18). Christ offers us the hope of life from the dead. In fact, Jesus parallels receiving salvation with receiving “eternal life” (John 3:16). Eschatologically, the gospel message culminates with resurrection hope. Verse 15 indicates that Christ achieves victory over death so that he can “free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.” The looming prospect of death should rightly cause those outside of the gospel to fear. Death not only brings the end of this life, but the beginning of God’s retributive justice against sinners. Christ, however, saves those who turn to him in faith and repentance and delivers them from holy wrath. Christians no longer need to be paralyzed by the fear of death. It is simply one more step toward resurrection. Moreover, after death we have the blessed hope of being absent from the body but present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8).

These verses also reveal that Christ has destroyed the devil, “the one holding the power of death.” Of course, this destruction does not refer to Satan’s ultimate, eschatological destruction. As we have already seen, Satan remains a real and active enemy of the church. Instead, Christ destroyed the devil in such a way that Satan can no longer do any ultimate spiritual damage to God’s people. Christ’s penal and substitutionary atonement completely exhausts Satan’s powers of accusation. Thus, while the devil may continue to prowl about, he prowls with a limp. He has been stripped of his most destructive weapons. His accusations against God’s people do not stick.

Before leaving verses 14 and 15, the author of Hebrews demonstrates how Jesus defeats death and the devil. His victory comes “through his death.” Jesus overcomes death and the one who has the power of death by dying himself. The echoes of Genesis 3 and the curse are difficult to miss. Christ has overcome the curse by undergoing the curse in our place. He defeats death by dying for his people and bearing their curse. As the author of Hebrews will mention in just a few verses, this death was to “make propitiation,” that is, to remove the wrath of God that was justly against us due to our sin. Yet, even more than that, Christ defeats death by rising again from the dead, thus giving resurrection hope to all of God’s people. He is the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Cor 15:20), and we are the harvest he will reap in the eschaton (1 Cor 15:22-23). Christians can truly rejoice: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:54-55).

Hebrews 2:16 reengages the author’s exposition of the incarnation and the atoning work of Christ with the overall argument in chapters 1 and 2 of Christ’s superiority over the angels. The author reminds us that the last Adam is restoring humanity to God’s good purpose of having dominion over the world and displaying God to all of creation. Christ is superior to the angels because he himself is the image of the invisible God and the redeemer of the pinnacle of God’s creative activity—mankind. Indeed, as the One who helps “Abraham’s offspring,” his work is intimately interwoven within the entire fabric of redemptive history. Christ is the white-hot center of God’s purposes and plan for humanity.

Hebrews 2:17-18

These verses are heavily loaded with important theological assertions. First, notice that the author says that Christ “had to be” incarnated and sacrificed in order to forgive the sins of God’s people. I am often asked if God could have secured our salvation in any other way. This text indicates that the answer to that question is no. God only acts in the way that corresponds with his character and most displays his glory. Thus, in order to both satisfy his justice and display his mercy, God put Christ forward as a propitiatory sacrifice. No external necessity is forced on God, but God is always consistent with his own character.

The author also reasserts the absolute indispensability of the incarnation. Christ “had to be” made “like his brothers and sisters.” In order to conquer death through death, the Son of God became a human being. Yet the author also explains that Jesus became a man in order to become a “high priest” on our behalf. It is critical that we rightly understand the Old Testament’s teachings on the priesthood. The original readers of Hebrews were likely Hellenistic Jews who recognized the need for a priest specifically in matters of sacrifice. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel looked to the priests for mediation before God. On the Day of Atonement the high priest represented all the people before God and offered a substitutionary sacrifice on their behalf. Hebrews fully explains the relationship between Jesus and the priesthood in the chapters to come, but in this verse the author simply introduces us to the relationship. He presents the notion that in order to make a propitiatory sacrifice for the people, Jesus had to function as a priest; and in order to be a priest, the Son of God had to become a man.

Atonement is a massively important word that encapsulates the meaning of Jesus’s work on the cross. The meaning of propitiation—an atoning sacrifice—has been hotly contested. For example, in the early twentieth century one of the chief aims of liberal theologians was to redefine the meaning of the atonement. The primary word they sought to expunge from the Christian theological vocabulary was propitiation. In fact, one of the most famous New Testament scholars in the liberal academy, C. H. Dodd, staked his academic reputation on asserting that propitiation was synonymous with expiation. Since the terms still confuse many Christians, we will examine each of them in turn.

Expiation refers to the washing away of sin. It cancels the debt of sin and closely relates to the forgiveness of sins. Yet expiation requires no change in God himself. It fails to answer how a holy God can forgive sins. Propitiation answers this question. Propitiation refers to the satisfaction of God’s justice. At the cross, God poured out his wrath against sinners on Jesus, thereby satisfying God’s demand for the just punishment of sin. Thus, God’s wrath was satisfied and his righteousness was vindicated. Paul describes the atoning sacrifice of Christ with the same language in another important passage on the meaning of the cross in Romans 3:21-26:

But now, apart from the law, God’s righteousness has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented him as an atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. God presented him to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so that he would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.

Propitiation enables God to be both just and justifier. Without the satisfaction of God’s righteousness in the punishment of sin, he could not justly declare sinners righteous. Thus, propitiation stands at the very heart of the gospel. The logic of propitiation makes the good news good. Without propitiation, there is no gospel. In fact, the nature of Christ’s atoning work is so central to the argument of Hebrews that the author revisits the entire discussion at length in Hebrews 9 and 10. He continues to clarify exactly how Jesus’s priesthood and his propitiatory sacrifice work together to bring about our redemption.

Verse 18 reminds us to look backward to the temptations and sufferings of Christ to find encouragement in meeting our own temptations. This is a regular pattern throughout Hebrews: the Christian faith continuously alternates between looking backward and looking forward. We look forward to the hope of resurrection and the perfection of our salvation, but we also look backward at the life and ministry of Christ. In so doing, we look back to the source of our salvation. When we pray to Christ for rescue from sin, we pray to One who has himself walked through suffering and temptation. He is no stranger to our difficulties. He truly has been made like his brothers and sisters “in every way” (2:17).

These two introductory chapters of Hebrews are remarkable. In the midst of the author’s argument that Christ is superior to the angelic host, we have already seen tremendous glimpses of the gospel of grace. This gospel is the solution to our biggest problems in life, from death to the devil. Yet because of the nature of the gospel, it is also the solution to our day-to-day trials and temptations. Christ sympathizes with our weaknesses at every level. As our incarnate brother, he suffered and was tempted just like us. Therefore, we can approach him with confidence and in faith.