Hebrews 2:14Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Do you see in what the likeness consists? In the flesh. “He Himself likewise partook of the same.” Let all heretics be ashamed. Let those be confounded who assert that He came in appearance and not in truth.

The Apostle did not merely say, “He Himself partook of the same,” and stop there, though that would have been enough. He expressed something more by adding “likewise.”

He did not appear, he says, as an apparition or phantom, but truly. Otherwise the word “likewise” would not have been needed.

Having shown His brotherhood with us, the Apostle then gives the reason for this divine economy: “that through death,” he says, “He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.”

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same.” Let those be ashamed who say that He came in appearance and as a phantom.

The Apostle did not merely say that He partook of flesh and blood like the children, that is, like other human beings. Even if he had said only this, it would have been enough to establish that He was truly incarnate.

But he added “likewise,” in order to affirm His complete likeness to us and His true Incarnation.

“That through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” He gives the reason for the divine economy. Through His death, which He assumed, since He had plainly partaken of flesh and blood, He destroyed the devil, who held dominion over death.

He wiped away, in a certain manner, the tear from every face, since He rendered that ancient curse powerless by abolishing the unbearable dominion of death. So the wise Paul again teaches: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb 2:14-15).

What then does this mean, “He Himself likewise partook of the same,” if not that for our sake He was born of holy Mary the Theotokos, according to blood and flesh?

He gives up His soul, yet says: "I have power to take it again" (Jn 10:18). The veil is torn, because the things above are opened. The rocks are split, and the dead arise. He dies, yet He gives life and by death destroys death. He is buried, yet He rises. He descends into Hades, yet He leads souls up from it. He ascends into the heavens, yet He will come to judge the living and the dead, and to put words like yours to trial. If some sayings become an occasion of error for you, let the others dispel your error.

Since the children, so called according to the promise, shared in flesh and blood, that is, in sin, which is signified by flesh, He likewise became a partaker of the same condition of suffering, “in the likeness of flesh” (Rom 8:3; Phil 2:7).

He assumed them, flesh and blood with sufferings, in order to be for human beings a model of goodness. Then He gave Himself over to death, so that through His death He might abolish the one who held the power of death, that is, the devil, who brought death upon creatures on account of the eating of the fruit (Gen 3:1ff.).

Do you see in what sense he calls Him “made”? He says that He takes hold of the seed of Abraham (Heb 2:16), which birth according to the flesh therefore sows.

In what, if not in the flesh, did He redeem the sins of the people? In what did He suffer, if not in the flesh, when we have already said: “Christ suffered for us in the flesh” (1 Pet 4:1)?

For in what is He priest, if not in what He assumes from priestly seed? And a priest must offer something, and according to the law enter the Holy Place through blood.

Therefore, since God rejected the blood of bulls and goats (Heb 9:13), He had to enter the Holy of Holies by His own Blood, as you have already read, in order to become the eternal forgiveness of our sins.

Priest and sacrifice are one. Priesthood and sacrificial offering, according to human custom, are inseparable duties. For He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and He is priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Could He, says the Apostle, either be called our brother, or call us His children in the proper sense, if He had not been clothed with the same nature as ours?

Therefore, having assumed it, He crushed the dominion of death and dispersed the fear that oppressed us. For we never ceased to fear death, since we were compelled to drag the yoke of mortality.

The Apostle very fittingly used the word “likewise,” in order by it to expose the slanderous notion of an apparition. He set all this forth to teach those who suppose that, because of His suffering, the Son is less than the Angels.

He shows that He endured suffering by necessity. He teaches this still more clearly in what follows: “For He does not take hold of Angels, but He takes hold of the seed of Abraham.”

The tyrannical power of the evil one, who by deceit had subjected us to himself, God the Word cast down. He set against him, as a weapon, the flesh that had been conquered in Adam, and by it He conquered.

He did this in order to show that the flesh, formerly taken captive by death, took captive the one who had captured it. By its natural death it destroyed his life and became poison to him.

Thus he would vomit up all whom he had been able to devour, as the one who had the power of death (Heb 2:14). But for the human race this flesh became life.

It raises the whole of human nature, like leavened dough, to the resurrection of life. For this very reason God the Word became man, a truly strange and unheard-of deed, and voluntarily accepted death in the flesh.

As I have already said, the content of the Lord’s Prayer contains a supplication for all these things.

Jesus sanctified baptism by being Himself baptized. If the Son of God was baptized, what pious man can despise baptism?

He was baptized not in order to receive forgiveness of sins, for He was sinless. Rather, being sinless, He was baptized in order to grant divine grace and glory to those who are baptized.

Just as, following the example of the children who have flesh and blood, He Himself assumed the same, so that by becoming participants with Him in His incarnate manifestation we might also become participants in His divine grace, so Jesus was baptized.

He did this so that through it, again becoming His companions, we might receive glory together with salvation.

“Since therefore,” he says, “the children,” that is, human beings, “shared in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise,” that is, equally, truly, and not in appearance, as certain heretics claim, became a partaker of flesh and blood. In this also He showed what love He has for the children.

We who are numbered among the children of God shared in blood and flesh, in mortal and earthly bodies. For this reason the Only-begotten Word of God, being Life by nature, shared likewise, and in no other manner, but just as we do.

“That through death.” Then he states the reason for His becoming man. It was so that the one who had the power of death, the devil, might be abolished. And he was abolished through death.

“Since the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same.” The children are all those being saved, whom Jesus Christ must bring to the Father. For this He had to become true man.

He had to assume human flesh and blood “likewise,” paraplesios, exactly in the same way and equally. By this the error of those who considered the Incarnation of the Son of God to be only apparent is refuted.

The assumption of flesh and blood was necessary in order to die, and death was necessary in order to strike death and, with it, the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.

The devil is called the lord of death because through sin he brought all human beings to death. Jesus Christ abolished the dominion of death.

Thus, if those who believe in Him die, they die in order to come forth from the tomb as victors over death, and to show the devil himself that he has nothing in those who have become Christ’s.

It is said that Jesus Christ was crucified for us in this sense: by His death on the Cross He delivered us from sin, curse, and death. Holy Scripture speaks of this in the following way. Concerning deliverance from death: "Since therefore the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same, that through death He might destroy," that is. Deprive of power, "him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb 2:14-15).