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December 26 Hebrews 2:11–12 21 Steve Duby, PhD MDiv Alumnus & Online Full-Time Faculty at Grand Canyon University C hristians are a people who think and speak highly of Jesus Christ. We recognize and rejoice that He is in many respects different from us: God the Son made flesh, utterly sinless, the Lord reigning over all creation. At the same time, Christmas invites us to ponder that the Son took upon Himself a genuinely human nature and entered a state of creaturely humility. To put it tersely, Jesus is one of us. In the miracle of Christmas, He remains fully God—not merely one of us, but nevertheless, one of us! e writer of the book of Hebrews begins with a striking exaltation of Jesus, identifying Him as the one through whom the Father created the world, the heir of all things, the shining forth of the Father's glory, and the perfect representation of the Father's substance (1:2–3). e author positions Jesus above the angels and even attributes the unchanging, eternal life of Yahweh to the Savior (1:10–12). Yet, the author teaches that, like the rest of us, Jesus has been made "a little lower than the angels" (2:9). In fact, as Jesus stands before God in the assembly of God's people, He is not ashamed to identify us as His brothers and sisters (2:11–12). Since Jesus came to save the children of Abraham, He had to partake completely of our human condition (2:14–18). He suffered as He resisted temptation (4:15b). By virtue of this, He now serves as a sympathetic High Priest before the Father in heaven (2:14–18; 4:15a). To our surprise, Hebrews says that Jesus was "perfected" over time. He did not have to grow out of sinful habits, to be sure, but He nevertheless learned obedience to His Father from the things that He endured, tasting death for us all and securing for us an eternal salvation (2:9–10, 18; 5:7–10). ere is no question that we ought to continue thinking highly of Jesus. To do otherwise would be to fall away from the only source of salvation (10:26–31). Yet, as the writer of Hebrews insists, we are to draw near to Him and to God the Father in the assurance that our Savior is one of us. He did not shed His humanity when He returned to heaven but still prays for us in the presence of the Father (7:25). As we celebrate this Christmas, we have good reason to "approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." A Savior Who Is One of Us