So far in the book of Hebrews we’ve learned all about the identity of Jesus Christ; that He is both supreme sustainer and suffering servant…  both God and man… 

Chapter 1 contains some of the most profound statements of Jesus’ divinity.

• Heir of all things

• Creator of all things

• Sustainer of all things

• Sitting at the right hand of the Majesty on high

• Superior to angels

Chapter 2 contains some of the most profound statements of Jesus’ humanity.

• He was made for a little while lower than the angels

• He tasted death for everyone

• He was made perfect through suffering

• He is our brother  

And it takes both of these extreme features of His identity, working together, to make Him the all-sufficient Savior of those who place their faith in Him.     

Last week we began talking about some of the specific facets of our salvation that Jesus accomplished by His death. 

The first effect of Jesus’ death that we looked at last week was our adoption into God’s family.   

• That was in verses 11-13. 

• We talked about how every Christian’s salvation story is an adoption story, and if you are in Christ, Jesus Himself is not ashamed to call you his sibling.

• We talked about how the death of Christ was like the signing of our adoption papers to bring us into God’s family.  

Today we move on to the next effect of Jesus’ death: that it destroyed the devil, and in doing so, delivered us from slavery.      

We have to take those two together, because as you’ll see, they are interconnected. 

The text say it like this: 

Hebrews 2:14–15 (ESV): 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, 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.

So.. To destroy and to deliver. Those are the two verbs that define this next aspect of Jesus’ victory for us.    

• Richard D. Phillips: If someone asks, “Why did Jesus come into the world?” here is the answer: he came to die, that he might overthrow Satan’s dominion, and set captive humanity free.

So… Not only did His death adopt us… it also… 

Destroyed the devil, and… 

Delivered us from slavery.  

Those are HUGE statements with MASSIVE implications for our lives!

We cannot just talk about these truths as though they are distant theological principles.    

Jesus destroyed the devil?! 

Jesus Delivered us from slavery? 

If this is true (which it is…) it changes everything. It changes the way we think about sin, the way we think about death, the way we think about fear… it affects the way we pray, the way we suffer, the way we evangelize…  

This MATTERS for the way we live our lives.  

So, let’s try our best to understand it so that we can appropriate it into our daily lives and more fully take hold of the freedom that Jesus died to give us. 

In order to appreciate the victory of Christ, we have to see it against the backdrop of fallen humanity.  That’s where verse 14 picks up… 

Hebrews 2:14–15 (ESV): 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, 

Children, meaning believers. Christians. Those who now belong in God’s family because of their faith in Jesus. 

Those terms flesh and blood taken together speak of the frailty of humanity.

We are flesh and blood. We are merely mortal.  

And this ties in with what it says about us down in verse 15… that we were held in bondage… in slavery… through fear of death. 

This is our mortal condition.  This is the bondage that every human finds themselves in from the moment they are born. 

Ever since the Fall, where our first parents Adam and Eve listened to Satan and disobeyed God, the curse of death has been upon humanity.  This was the ramification of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  

God warned them…  

• Genesis 2:17 (ESV): 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”   

• Romans 6:23 (ESV): the wages of sin is death… 

Death is what our sin earned for us, and in some mysterious way, this put us under the one who has the power of death, that is, Satan.  

In what sense does Satan have the power of death? 

It seems more congruent to say that God has the power over death, doesn’t it? 

• God ultimately decides who lives and who dies, God determines the length of a person’s life, God knows when even one hair falls from our heads…(Matthew 10:30) 

So why does the author of Hebrews feel the need to tell us that the devil has power over death? 

I like the way K. Hughes puts it: Death is held by the devil in a secondary and not in an ultimate sense. 

In other words, God is still sovereign over everything, but Satan has been handed the keys to death and the fear of death because of humanity’s deception and sin.  

• An example of this would be in the story of Job, where Satan is inflicting terrible things on Job but God is ultimately still providentially in control.   

This matches what we read throughout the New Testament. God is ultimately sovereign, yet it also says things like this about Satan: 

• 1 John 5:19 the whole world is in the power of the evil one

• John 12:31 and 14:30 both refer to Satan as the ruler of this world. 

• Paul calls Satan the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4)

• Ephesians 2:2 the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience

Here’s the logic: 

Satan has this power over humanity by wielding death over us because of our sin—Because the only way for the debt of sin to be paid is through death. 

And as long as we are under the penalty of sin which is death, we are under fear of dying, like verse 15 says.

And the way this fits into the big picture of the author’s argument is: as long as we are in bondage to death and the fear of death, we cannot obtain the dominion and destiny described earlier in chapter 2; we cannot obtain glory with Christ… we are stuck in bondage. 

Therefore, in order to break the power of death over us and bring us into glory, Jesus had to die in our place.  And in order to die, He had to be able to die.  And in order to be able to die, He had to be made like us in human flesh.  

• Thomas Schreiner: Death only dies through the death of Jesus. 

• Or, to re-work a famous phrase by John Owen: Jesus’ death was the death of death.

That’s why it says… 

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things,   

The idea is that He came as God…in human flesh… because that is what was required to redeem fallen humans.

• Guzik: He had to enter into the prison to free the captives  

Notice, it says we share in flesh and blood. Jesus merely partook of it.  It was not His original state.  

We know that Jesus had a glorious eternal existence before He partook in flesh and blood. 

I had the privilege earlier this week of sharing during our keiki day, and explaining to the kids how Jesus used the eternal name of God (“I AM”) and applied it to Himself.  

• I AM the bread of life

• I AM the light of the world

• I AM the resurrection and the life

• And so on.  

When He chose that verbage, He was intentionally employing the Holy, eternal name of God that God told Moses back in Exodus 3.  

When Moses asked God, ‘when I go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let your people go, who should I say is sending me?’ God responded, ‘tell them I AM sent you’. 

That name refers to the fact that God is self-existent; He depends on nobody and nothing for His existence. He has no beginning, no end… no need for anything… He simply IS.  

And when we get to the New Testament, we see that Jesus dubs Himself the same way.  

In fact, He even told the Jews, “before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58) 

And so, Jesus, even though He was God, stepped into human flesh… This is Philippians 2 right? 

• Philippians 2:6–8 (ESV): 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Why did He do this? 

that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 

In what sense did Jesus’ death destroy Satan? 

This cannot mean that when Jesus died on the cross Satan was annihilated or ceased to exist.  Obviously, we know that the devil continues to exist, to deceive, and to keep in bondage those who don’t belong to Christ. 

So what does it mean?

It means that…

When Jesus died on the cross, the devil was decisively defeated, disarmed and made powerless over those who belong to God through faith in Christ. 

This victory is seen in several different ways… 

One is in the way Jesus took away Satan’s right to accuse us before God.  

In scripture, Satan is called the accuser. Satan’s power is in his ability to accuse sinners of being condemned before a holy God.

Picture him like a lawyer coming against us in God’s courtroom.   

He can look at us in our sin and say, “you’re not worthy, and you’re going to die because of your sin.  God’s wrath is upon you because of your sin”.  

And guess what?  He’s right.  That’s a valid accusation.  Which gives him power to condemn us to death.  

But when Jesus died on the cross, and the debt of sin was paid for, there was no more grounds for accusation.  

Satan can no longer wield the power of shame and sin and fear of death over believers because our sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ. 

• John Owen: All of Satan’s power over death was founded on sin. The obligation of the sinner to death gave Satan his power. If this obligation was removed, Satan’s power would also be taken away.  

In other words, 

Jesus has destroyed the devil by removing the PENALTY of our sin. 

Also… 

Jesus has destroyed the devil by removing the POWER of our sin.  

The cross does more than forgive us. As we’ve seen last week, the cross also unites us to Christ.  And when we are united to Christ, we are no longer in slavery to sin.  

Sin was our old master… Christ is our new master.

• Romans 6:6-7 says, “Our old self was crucified with him… that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.”

• Romans 6:11-14 “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God… For sin will have no dominion over you.”

• Colossians 1:13–14 (ESV): 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Satan can still tempt us, but we are no longer under His power; we are now free to obey Christ. We have a new identity, a new heart, a new master, and we are citizens of a new Kingdom… We are no longer under Satan’s dominion.

So Jesus destroyed the devil by taking away the penalty of our sin, setting us free from the power of our sin… AND… 

Because of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross… we will one day be free from the PRESENCE of sin.

Jesus has destroyed the devil by removing the PENALTY of our sin. 

Jesus has destroyed the devil by removing the POWER of our sin.  

Jesus WILL take away the PRESENCE of our sin.  

Evil may still rear its ugly head in our world and in our lives, but the cross was the final blow that guarantees the eventual eradication of evil and of Satan Himself. 

• Romans 16:20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

When we see the vision of the final judgment in Revelation 20, we read this:

• Revelation 20:10 The devil… was thrown into the lake of fire… and will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

You can think of it this way, and take this to the bank:  

The cross was the decisive defeat of Satan. 

The resurrection proved it. 

And the return of Christ will bring it totally to completion. 

• Colossians 2:13–15 (ESV): 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

So that is the sense in which Jesus’ death destroyed the devil AND… that is why verse 15 can go on to say… 

[Jesus delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ… Because we belong to God’s family… Because nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord… (those are all realities described in detail in Romans 8)... 

Then it follows that we no longer need to fear death!  The devil can no longer play that hand against us!  

• 1 John 4:18 (ESV): 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Because of God’s perfect love toward us, displayed through (and made possible by) the cross, we no longer fear the day when we will die and stand face to face with the Great Judge… Because that great Judge is now our loving Father.  Since His Son has come and identified with us in our humanity and died in our place to free us from the curse of sin… since He has brought to completion the prophecy of Genesis 3:15, that a child of the woman would crush Satan’s head… we can live our lives in freedom, not in fear and not in slavery.    

Are you living in this freedom today?

I’m afraid many of us may still be thinking and behaving like slaves to sin and fear, instead of like free people in Christ.  This is something we need to actively pursue. 

In Galatians 5:1 Paul commands us… 

• Galatians 5:1 (ESV): 5 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

• In that context, the sort of slavery Paul is referring to is the need to try to earn God’s favor through our good works.  

• It takes effort to retrain our minds to believe that when Jesus died on the cross He paid for ALL our sins, past, present and future––which means that we no longer have to feel enslaved to the fear of failing to live up to God’s standard. 

• Jesus lived up to that standard FOR us.  

• Now we have freedom to live for God out of a new identity, not out of fear of punishment. 

Here are some questions to assess the degree to which you are walking in the freedom of Jesus: 

Do you still find yourself trying to compensate for sin by doing good things, instead of trusting in Jesus’ finished work on the cross? 

Do you still find yourself fearful of standing before God because you feel unworthy, instead of looking forward to meeting your Heavenly Father because you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ? 

Do you still find yourself reverting back to old habits because you feel like that’s just ‘who you are’, or do you believe you have been made new and that when you sin you are acting out of character? 

After you give in to sin, do you find yourself running away from God out of fear, or towards God for forgiveness and grace?

Jesus died to give you victory over these patterns.  The key is to preach the gospel to yourself every day and remember what Jesus’ death accomplished: that the devil has been destroyed and you have been delivered.