Lesson for July 20, 2014
The Book of Hebrews
Chapter 2:14-16
Verse 14-15
“Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is , the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.”
Jesus Christ was just as much true humanity as we are, except He didn’t have a sin nature. Because of the Virgin Birth, Christ was born without a sin nature and therefore He is unique. He partook of same means He became a man (flesh and blood) and has an affinity for all mankind.
Might render powerless is the Greek word “katargeo.” whichmeans to render useless, to cancel, to render null and void, or to neutralize. The Greek word for death is “qanatos” referring to spiritual death the first time it occurs and the ruling power of death the second time. Members of the human race are born physically alive but spiritually dead. Therefore through physical birth mankind enters into the kingdom of Satan; a kingdom of spiritual death. Satan has the ruling power of spiritual death. He has had this power from the fall of man and will have it until the Second Coming of Christ.
Jesus Christ as our High Priest provided the true legal release from Satan’s ruling power by His work on the Cross, bearing our sins and paying the penalty of sin – spiritual death. It is spiritual death that brings fear upon man. It is true that many people are afraid to die physically but it is because they are unsure where they will spend eternity. The death of Christ for our sins satisfied the justice of God the Father and set up the potential for mankind to be reconciled to God. Reconciliation can remove the eternal hold that Satan has on the human race and can remove the fear of both physical and spiritual death.
The devil cannot rule anyone who has a maturing relationship with God. A believer can be set free from satanic rule as a member of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and as a servant (slave) of Jesus Christ. As a voluntary servant, believers are to follow the pattern of their Master and take control of their own spiritual lives. By taking control of your spiritual life through the study and application of accurate Bible doctrine fear can be removed from your life.
Everyone is susceptible to fear occasionally, even the mature believer. However, fear is a mental attitude sin that shuts down thinking and makes application of Bible doctrine impossible. When fear catches us off guard, it is important to know the correct recovery procedure. This procedure for fear is the Faith-Rest Technique.
This technique involves claiming a Bible promise, applying a doctrinal rationale and reaching a doctrinal conclusion. This is the reason that it is so important that we learn theology. The nice stories and “Christian principles” will not sustain us in time of extreme difficulty or disaster. We need accurate Bible Doctrine circulating and available in our souls! We cannot apply what we do not know. Therefore, we need to be consistent in our intake of God’s Word for the purpose of growth. Growth means learning to use the Word of God resident in our souls to combat and control our sin nature and the influences of Satan’s world system. Since fear is a sin, the first step to recovery from fear is the utilization of I John 1:9. By naming “fear” as our sin, we are forgiven and the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit is restored. Now we are in a position to use the Faith-Rest Technique.
The best illustration of the Faith-Rest Technique is Romans 8:28-32. We can easily follow the progression from claiming a promise, to application, to reaching a conclusion.
Romans 8:28 says “We know that God works all things together for good for those who love Him, for those who are the called ones according to a predetermined plan”. This is the Biblical promise to those who are maturing in their faith (executing God’s plan for their life). This promise is guaranteed by God, and when a believer claims this promise, it can reduce a very complicated situation into a very simple one. When we claim this promise, that God is working all things for our good, fear is brought under control because we are now THINKING, not emoting. Fear is an emotion.
Once thinking is resumed, we can move on to step two, application. A doctrinal rationale can be any doctrinal truth that you have learned and stored in your memory. In our passage the doctrinal rationale is a series of five related doctrines.
- Foreknowledge – God’s awareness of all the assets that He prepared for the believer in eternity-past. This assures us that God was thinking about each of us in eternity-past.
- Predestination – God predesigned aplan for us in eternity-past. That plan calls for us to be set apart unto God in time and eternity.
- Election – God chose each Church Age believer to be spiritual royalty. Since Jesus Christ was elected, we share in His election because of our union with Him.
- Justification – God declares the believer to be righteous. God actually imputes His righteousness to each believer, setting up the potential for divine blessing in time and eternity.
- Glorification – God gives the believer a glorified body and eternal rewards (based on execution of His plan in time).
These five doctrines in Romans 8:29-30 outline God’s plan for every believer of this age. By recalling these doctrines, the believer can remember his place in God’s overall plan, which is another step in driving out fear.
Finally, in Romans 8:31-32, the believer is able to reach a doctrinal conclusion. This passage says, “To what conclusion are we forced? If God be for us, who shall be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up in behalf of us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?”
Reaching the doctrinal conclusion “that God is for us,” allows us to retake control of our situation and restores confidence in God, and in our ability to make good decisions. If a problem is too overwhelming and beyond our ability to solve, we are still able to cope with it by placing ourselves in the mighty hand of God and trusting Him for the solution. (Exodus 14:13-14)
Utilization of this technique restores the most important ability God has given us: thinking. This technique does not need to be a mechanical, “step one, two, three,” but can be if the situation demands it. The key is to stop fear in its tracks and restore the thinking process.
There is another way to stop fear in its tracks according to I John 4:18. This way is called “virtue-love” (“perfect love” in the King James Version of the Bible). The Greek word for perfect is “teleios,” which means complete or mature. It has also been used in connection with the Greek word “arête,” which means virtue. Therefore, virtue-love is mature love. The love spoken of here is “agape love” or as you may recall, unconditional love. Virtue is strength of character, or in the believer it is the character of Jesus Christ being produced in him. When we put it all together, virtue-love is Christ’s character of unconditional love exhibited in the life of the maturing believer.
This virtue-love drives out fear and replaces it with faith. The reason this is true is that what you love the most is what you think about the most. If our love for God has matured into unconditional love for others based on our virtue and our integrity from God, we will not fear anything or anyone because we have Divine Viewpoint Thinking. This virtue-love brings with it confidence and courage: confidence towards God and courage towards man and circumstances. Courage is being able to think clearly under pressure.
Uncontrolled fear is the opposite of courage. Fear causes self-induced misery and often carries with it a punishment of its own. For example, a believer who succumbs to fear has placed himself in a position of weakness. This weakness causes him to make poor decisions, which often bring with them poor results. He has become the product of his own decisions to disobey God by failing to name his sin and to resume his spiritual life. So to what conclusion are we drawn? Fear can be controlled! It can be controlled by an advancing believer utilizing the Faith-Rest Technique and exhibiting virtue-love.
A companion sin to fear is worry. Worry is a result of fear. Worry causes all kind of problems: spiritual, emotional and physical. Worry keeps the believer from experiencing all that God has designed for him to enjoy. God did not place us on this earth to be miserable and worry about every detail of life. The Word of God says in John 10:10 that God has given us life and given it more abundantly. God wants us to be free of worry and anxiety by having a relaxed mental attitude. A relaxed mental attitude is possible only when we are executing God’s plan for us under the control of the Holy Spirit. This means staying it fellowship with God a maximum amount of time. It also means using the Faith-Rest Technique, having a personal sense of destiny and being oriented to God’s grace policy. An understanding of who we are and what we have as a result of our relationship with Jesus Christ should cause us to relax and stop worrying. Stop worrying about things over which we have no control, about what others think of us and about the future. God’s Word commands us to stop worrying and start trusting (that’s faith). (Matthew 6:25-33; Philippians 4:6-9) Isaiah 41:10, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”
So the conclusion of verses 14-15 is that spiritual death is a set of chains that shackles all unbelievers in slavery in every function of life. Jesus Christ came into the world to break those chains and shackles and offer mankind a relationship with God. The result of the Cross was breaking the shackles of slavery to fear of physical and spiritual death. In this way, through the Cross, Jesus Christ has delivered those who believe in Him from the rulership of Satan while they are still living under his world system. The Cross not only provides eternal salvation but freedom from the bondage of Satan’s kingdom. We can live above the human viewpoint thinking of Satan’s world system, which brings fear and worry, by applying Bible doctrine consistently throughout each day.
Verse 16
“For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham.”
Since God created man to resolve the Angelic Conflict, a man is going to have to resolve it. That Man was the last Adam, Jesus Christ. Therefore Christ did not become an angel, He became a man. Since the first Adam lost the victory through the Fall, the last Adam had to win the victory at the Cross. Abraham is mentioned because he is the human pattern for Jewish regeneration and he is the founder of a new race (the Jewish race). Abraham’s faith in Christ is described in Genesis 15:6, “Abraham had believed in the Lord and it was credited to his account for righteousness” and amplified in Romans 9:6-15. Therefore Jesus Christ is born to the Jewish race to fulfil the unconditional covenants to born-again Jews.
Jesus Christ made a choice to become a human being and go to the Cross. After the Cross Jesus was glorified through resurrection, ascension and session, and at that point the humanity of Christ became superior to all angelic creatures. So man is inferior to angels by birth, but becomes superior to angels by the new birth. And, it is God Who receives the glory by taking man, an inferior creature, and through grace makes him ultimately and eternally superior to angels in every way.
If Christ was to bypass the angelic creation in solving the Angelic Conflict, He had to become a man. The Angelic Conflict was not going to be resolved in the angelic realm. It was going to be resolved in the human realm. Christ became true humanity at the Virgin Birth. When Jesus Christ was still a baby in the cradle the plan of God was complete in God’s mind as far as the victory of the Angelic Conflict. Jesus Christ was true humanity and was sustained by the Father and the Holy Spirit all the way to the Cross where He defeated Satan. In the angelic realm Satan thought He could win the Angelic Conflict and when man was created lower than angels it looked even easier for Satan. The fall of mankind made Satan very confident that he could win. But he forgot one principle. At the time of the fall of man the incarnation of Christ (when the Second Person of the Trinity became a man) was also promised. It was promised in Genesis 3:15 that Jesus Christ would come into existence as a man and would go to the Cross as “the seed of the woman” and die for the sins of the world, and not only save man but at the same time resolve the Angelic Conflict.
The Father’s purpose in the incarnation of Christ was to provide eternal salvation for the human race and at the same time to resolve the Angelic Conflict. When Satan appealed his sentence of the Lake of Fire in the court of Heaven, God took the case out of the angelic realm. If God had created a being superior to angels then Satan would have cried “unfair, unjust.” And since his attack and defense was already the fact that God could not be fair and just and at the same time cast angels into the Lake of Fire, Satan would have made an issue out of this immediately. But Satan could not make an issue out of God creating a creature which was inferior to him and his followers. Therefore man was created to resolve the Angelic Conflict and one Man resolved it – Jesus Christ. And we become witnesses for the prosecution in the courtroom of Heaven when we believe in Jesus Christ and execute His plan, purpose and will.