In last week’s sermon I mentioned the Lord of the Ring’s character Boromir, who was next in line to be Steward of Gondor. Yet Boromir meets Aragorn, who is the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor. Boromir is initially conflicted, as Aragorn has barely set foot in his beloved Gondor. Yet at the end he realises Aragorn loves Gondor just as much as he does, and his dying words to Aragorn were ‘I would have followed you, my brother, my captain, my king’.
Hebrews 2:5-18 outlines why Jesus became human. It was first to live the perfect life we could not live. The only way Jesus could save his people from their sins was to succeed where they failed. Yet he could not do this as a divine being; so he became our ‘brother’ (v. 11-12) in taking on humanity.
The second reason was to die, so as to destroy ‘him who holds the power of death – that is the Devil’ (v. 14). In taking the punishment for our sins, the accuser (Rev 12:10) no longer has a claim over God’s people. In marking out the path through death for us, the author calls Jesus our ‘leader’ or ‘pioneer’ (v. 10).
Given Jesus is our brother and captain (leader), it is only right for us to follow him as our king. And how do we do that? V. 11 says Jesus wants us to become holy; to become more like Him. While this covers a whole range of things, what we see in Heb 2 is Jesus making himself vulnerable in order to help his people. So how can we do this?
We can make ourselves vulnerable emotionally, by sharing our lives with others (1 Thess 2:8). We can make ourselves vulnerable by serving others with our time and energy (Phil 2:14-18). We can make ourselves vulnerable by befriending that person we find a little difficult, even though they may ask much of us (Gal 6:2). We can make ourselves vulnerable financially, trusting that God will ‘increase our store of seed’, so that we can continue to be generous (2 Cor 9:10). So let us be vulnerable for the sake of others, as we follow the Lord Jesus; our brother, our captain, our king.
