All of One

Hebrews 2:14 said that He shared in “the same” flesh and blood as the children. The verses on either side of it say the same thing in two other ways. Before it, Hebrews speaks of brothers. After it, Hebrews says whom He came to help. Read together, they answer the question the law of the goel always asks first: is the redeemer near of kin to the one he redeems?

All of One

Hebrews 2:11-13 For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, "I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the ekklesia ἐκκλησία ek-klay-see'-ah(called-out community) I will sing your praise." And again, "I will be trusting in Him," and again, "Behold, I and the children whom God has given me."

The phrase “all of one” is short in Greek: ex henos pantes, all from one. The verse does not say they are all alike, or all on the same level. The One who sanctifies is still the One who sanctifies, and those sanctified are still the ones made holy. What it says is that they come from one. They belong together.

The same two words, ex henos, stood in Paul’s words at Athens: God “made from one blood every nation of mankind.” There the phrase gathers every nation into one household. Here it gathers the One who sanctifies and those He sanctifies into one. Hebrews does not stop to say more about the “one.” It draws its conclusion at once: “for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brothers.”

That word brothers takes us straight back to the law. Leviticus 25:25 opened, “When your brother becomes poor, and sells some of his possession, then his redeemer, the near one to him, shall come.” The goel law is the law of a brother’s duty to a brother. The one who comes to redeem is the one who can call the poor man his brother.

Hebrews says that He is not ashamed to use that word. The One who sanctifies calls those He sanctifies His brothers, and so stands toward them where a goel stands.

Three Witnesses From the Scriptures

To show that this is not a new idea, Hebrews brings three lines from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The first, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the ekklesia(called-out community) I will sing your praise,” comes from Psalm 22. The speaker calls those around Him “my brothers,” and stands among them in the assembly.

The second, “I will be trusting in Him,” puts on His own lips the words of one who trusts God.

The third, “Behold, I and the children whom God has given me,” comes from Isaiah 8. It speaks of children given to Him by God. Those are the same “children” who, in the next verse, share in flesh and blood.

All three lines say the same thing in different ways. The One who sanctifies stands with those He sanctifies, calls them brothers, speaks as one who trusts God, and receives them as children from God. He is not a stranger looking in. He is one of the family.

Not Angels

Two verses later Hebrews says plainly whom He came for.

Hebrews 2:16 For it is not angels that He helps, but He helps the seed of Abraham.

Hebrews has spent its whole first chapter showing that the Son is above the angels, and in 2:9 it says that He “for a little while was made lower than the angels.” Now 2:16 names those He came for, and they are not angels. The verse closes off one possibility and fixes another.

This verse fixes who the brothers of verse 11 and the children of verse 14 are. They are not angels but a line of human beings, descended from a man, with flesh and blood. To help them as a goel, He had to be of their kind, and Hebrews has just said that He is: He shared in the same flesh and blood.

The Seed of Abraham

The phrase “the seed of Abraham” has a history, and the history runs straight through Genesis.

In Genesis 22 the messenger of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from the heavens, after Abraham had not withheld his son.

Genesis 22:15-18 And the messenger of the LORD called to Abraham a second time out of the heavens, and said, "By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only one, that in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is upon the shore of the sea; and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have listened to my voice."

The same messenger who said “you have not withheld your son” now speaks of Abraham’s seed. The promise is about a seed, and through that seed it reaches all the nations.

Two generations later Jacob, at the end of his life, laid his hands on Joseph’s sons. He asked “the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil” to bless the lads, and he prayed, “let my name be called in them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac.” Those two boys were the seed of Abraham. Jacob asked the One who had redeemed him to bless Abraham’s seed.

Hebrews 2:16 names the same seed as the ones He helps. And the One who helps them is Himself of that seed; the first verse of Matthew calls Him “son of David, son of Abraham.” Jacob asked the messenger to bless Abraham’s seed; in Hebrews, the One who helps Abraham’s seed comes from within it.

What the Two Verses Settle

Read with the law, these verses meet the first condition of the goel at every point. The household made “from one blood” needed a kinsman of its own blood, and Hebrews says that the One who sanctifies and those He sanctifies are all of one. He called them brothers, He shared their flesh and blood, and He came to help Abraham’s seed rather than angels.

The second condition, though, has not yet been touched. Kinship gives the right to redeem. It does not pay the price. The nearer kinsman in Ruth had the right too, and he still said, “I cannot redeem.”

Hebrews knows this. The very next verse, Hebrews 2:17, moves from the question of kinship to the question of what that kinship required of Him, and it does so with a word taken from the world of debts.