Remaining Faithful to a Faithful Savior
10/13/25 Bible Thought (Hebrews 2)
The Christian serves a Savior who is faithful beyond our comprehension.
In Hebrews 2, the author begins with a call to Christian faithfulness and steadfastness in allegiance to Christ. With this, we must remember that the believer’s grip on Christ is never stronger than His grip on them.
The Lord Jesus is our great high priest. Although being God in nature, He subjected Himself to the limitations of humanity. For this reason, He can speak on our behalf before the Father, and yet He truly understands the struggles of our humanity as well.
For Jesus Christ took on human nature, partaking of flesh and blood (Heb. 2:14). As Paul would write, though eternally existent in the form of God, Christ condescended to be found in the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men (see Phil. 2:6-7).
He became like us in order to genuinely suffer in our place as one of us, and to deliver us. The Scripture so powerfully states of His humiliation:
“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” (Heb. 2:14b-15).
Just as David once beheaded Goliath with his own sword, so the Son of David defeated Satan with his own weapon—death.
Death is the great unknown. It is something people do not get to practice but they are one day forced to undergo. Perhaps the only thing absolutely certain about life in this fallen world is its sure end.
But for the one in Christ there is no need to fear. The Son of God has gone through the valley of shadow before us, defeating the enemy therein, and thereby delivering us from the fear of death.
Now, if we are in Christ, death is merely the entrance to glory! To live is Christ, to die is gain (Phil. 1:21) and to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord! (2 Cor. 5:8).
As if this is not good enough, not only will Christ be faithful to carry us through death unto eternity, but He carries us even in the present as our high priest.
While subjected to humanity, he underwent suffering. He knows what it is like to be tempted, to suffer, to be abandoned, to be betrayed, to be mocked and scorned.
The Lord Jesus experienced the lowest lows of humanity and the deepest physical suffering imaginable. As such, He can certainly help us as we go through our lesser challenges.
I think frequently to the Garden of Gethsemane where the Son of God was so distraught over the coming cross that He sweat great drops of blood (Lk. 22:44).
Personally, I have struggled with anxiety for years that at times can be crippling. Not necessarily the mental worry, but the physical symptoms that begin to follow anxiety due to stress and burnout. Yet I have never been stressed to the point of sweating blood, but Jesus experienced this.
As such, He knows what it is like to be human. He knows the hardships and sufferings, and He is faithful and ready to help us:
“For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb. 2:18).
The Savior extends a nail-pierced hand to help those in need. The only question is: will we take Him up on the offer?
Many try to persevere on their own, but the Christian knows that their strength is found ultimately in the support of Jesus whose yoke is easy and burden light (see Matt. 11:28-30).
Will we go to Him in our time of need?
I wrote a paper in school years ago and subsequently used it in a sermon. I always thought Luke’s record of Jesus’ sweating blood to be an artistic embellishment. I was surprised to find out it’s a very real and rare, reaction to extreme stress called hematidrosis. What a rich detail included by Luke.