'HAD TO' Be Made Like His Brothers (Hebrews 2:17-18)

[17] Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. [18] For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:17–18 ESV)

I can’t get away from those two words in Hebrews 2:17: “He had to.”

Jesus had to be made like me—fully human in every respect. Not just taking on flesh, but stepping into the weakness, the weariness, the limitations of human life. He grew tired, He grew hungry, He asked questions, He wept. He didn’t walk through this world with a pretend humanity. He truly shared in mine.

And He did this for a reason: so He could be the sacrifice for me. Hebrews says He became like His brothers “to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” That word, propitiation, is weighty but precious. It means that Jesus Himself turned aside the just wrath of God. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word kaphar carried the idea of covering sin through sacrifice. When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek (the Septuagint), the translators often used the word family built on hilaskomai. One of those words, hilastērion, was the name for the mercy seat—the golden cover of the Ark of the Covenant, where the high priest would sprinkle blood on the Day of Atonement. That place, the hilastērion, was where God’s wrath against sin was satisfied and His mercy was revealed.

But I have to admit—this doesn’t always strike me the way it would have struck a first-century Jewish convert. They knew the smell of sacrifices, the sight of blood, the weight of the temple rituals. They felt, in a way I don’t, the seriousness of sin and the wrath of God against it. I can grow dull to it, even weary of hearing about the cross. A man suffered, bled, and died so I did not have to. A holy man died like a criminal, so that I—the criminal—could live free. I need to keep that reality before me, because without it, the message of propitiation feels abstract. With it, it becomes the most urgent truth in the world.

And because of that, He is now merciful, faithful, and able to help me in every way. Verse 18 drives it home: “Because He himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” That means when I cry out in weakness, He doesn’t look down on me with detached pity. He comes alongside as one who has been there. The One who “had to” become like me is the same One who now helps me, faithfully, mercifully, without fail.

In some ways, all of this comes full circle to the beginning of Chaprer 2- I need to 'pay much closer attention'... So I don't drift.  

This latest journey though Hebrews illustrates how dull I can become to this incredible gospel message I first heard so clearly as an 8th grader in 1977 and again more clearly in 1980... and all these 45 years later- after reading, telling, studying, teaching..... sadly, I can grow dull to Jesus.

And the crazy thing is, He understand that. He loves me as a merciful and faithful brother.

May we all pay much closer attention lest we drift.....