2:14-15. Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Unlike angels, which are pure spirit and therefore cannot die, God created man with both a spiritual and a physical nature. Our bodies are not, as some people teach, merely a house in which our spirit lives (“man is a spirit who has a soul and lives in a body”), but rather an integral part of who we are. Each of us is one person who is spirit, soul and body, just as God is one God who is Father, Son and Spirit. That our bodies are an essential part of our nature is evidenced by the fact that at the end of time God will raise and transform them, and reunite them with our spirit/souls.
It is because our bodies are essential to our humanity that the Son of God had to come in a body. Had we been only spirits living in bodies, it would not have been necessary for Christ to take on a human body in order to identify with us. As an illustration, consider this: all people live in houses of one kind or another. Yet it was not necessary that Christ live in a house. He could have spent His life in the desert, sleeping under the stars, and still have been fully our Saviour. Although people live in houses, they are not essential to our nature, so Christ did not have to live in a house in order to identify with us. Our bodies, however, are essential to us, and He could not identify with us without taking on a human body.
It is our three-part nature that makes death possible. To understand this, we need to understand what death is. It is not non-existence. On the property where I live, there is a large dead tree. It is not non-existent. It is there – I can see it and touch it. On sunny days it casts a shadow, on rainy days it gets wet, and on windy days it sways back and forth. Over time, more and more branches are breaking off from it. One day, the whole tree will topple over, and eventually it will decay and disappear into the ground. When that happens, it will no longer be a dead tree – it will be part of the soil. As long as it is a dead tree, it still exists – but it cannot carry out any of the functions it had while it was a living tree.
So we see that death means to be existing but non-functional. When we are physically dead, the person still exists but his body cannot carry out the functions of a living body. We can also be “spiritually dead”, meaning our spirit cannot carry out its function of communication with God; or “emotionally dead”, as in a breakdown, when our emotions are incapable of carrying out their function of responding to our surroundings. All of this is possible because we are three-part beings – spirit, soul and body – so that we as a total being continue to exist even when part of us is not functioning.
For pure spirit beings, such as angels, there can be no death. If an angel could cease to function as an angel, it would cease to exist. (The devil and his minions are still angels, but their angelic functions are turned to the service of self rather than the service of God.) Therefore, no angel could have taken on the role of Saviour, because no angel could have died for our sin. For the same reason, Jesus did not come as an angel, but as a man, with the same death-capable physical body as every other human being.
that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil
In the garden, God told Adam and Eve that if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would die. By deceiving them into eating from that tree, the devil brought death upon them. They immediately died spiritually – their spirits were no longer capable of communication with God, as evidenced by the fact that they hid from Him, rather than looking for what had been, up until then, sweet communion. They also immediately began to die physically. The life-force which, if they had remained obedient, would have kept their bodies in perfect health and wholeness, was cut off from its source in God.
More than that, the devil’s deception – and Adam and Eve’s sinful acceptance of it – brought death on all mankind. They no longer had spiritual life, therefore they could not pass on spiritual life to their children; and they now had limited physical life, so could pass on limited physical life. Every child born from then on came into the world spiritually dead and physically dying.
Even beyond that, the position which the devil gained as the result of Adam and Eve handing their dominion of the world over to him gave him the power to bring death in a multitude of lesser ways. Through sin he had the power to bring death to relationships, death to dreams, emotional death, financial death. Every area in which man does not enjoy the fullness that God originally intended for us is an area of minor death, and results from either our own sin, the sin of others or the corporate sin of mankind.
Christ destroyed the devil not by annihilating him, but by stripping him of his power. Colossians 2:15 tells us that He disarmed principalities and powers, making open show of them through the Cross. By reversing the choices made by our first parents, Christ took back the dominion of the earth. By paying the death penalty for every person, He made it possible for life to be restored – spiritual life first, and ultimately physical life. He also made it possible for all the minor deaths in our experience to be replaced with His life. The devil’s power to bring death has once and for all been broken.
and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Christ’s victory would be meaningless if it could not be applied to the human heart. The innate knowledge of our own mortality, and the concern – even if unconscious – of what may follow death, lies behind every religious and legalistic bondage known to man. That fear has prompted man, even if unwilling to worship the true God, to create gods for himself. It has driven him to superstition and all kinds of occultic practices. Even in the worship of the true God, it has caused him to embrace a legalism that seemed to offer some degree of certainty.
By removing the sentence of death, Christ has removed the fear. By replacing death with His life, He has given us the ability to live in freedom.