Hebrews 2:9, “…so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.”
The idea for today’s verse picture was planted as I listened last week to a talk by poet/philosopher/priest Malcom Guite. During his presentation, he mentioned that he already knew what his death would be like because he’d seen it happen on the cross. Christ had died his death for him….Christ had endured the torments and offered up His spirit in faith to the Father (into your hands I commit my spirit) in Malcom’s place…and, indeed, in all His people’s place. And this concept is not just the fanciful thoughts of a poetic mind. Hebrews 2:9 (and other places in the NT) tell us clearly that Christ has died our death for us. There are two implications of that teaching that I want to draw out briefly.
First, when Hebrews 2:9 says that Jesus tasted death for all, part of what it means is that He tasted its damning bitterness. He swallowed up the curse of our death (Isaiah 25:8, John 4:14-15, Gal.3:13). Jesus’ devouring our death does not mean we will not die, but it does mean that our death will not be a curse, it will not be a punishment. Its pain will not be the beginning agonies of lasting death but the brief pangs of our true birth. Because Christ has swallowed up death forever, our death will be a servant of our final joy.
But secondly—and this is what today’s picture emphasizes—when we come to die, Christ will be there dying our death with us…dying our death for us….I believe I will find, in some unimagined work of grace, that the hands stretched out on the cross were then—2,000 years ago—and are now—in my last gasp—holding tightly to my own. We will find, when all the world is stripped away and Death’s shadow is deepest about us, that another—one other—is there with us; the one who has gone before us, the one who will never leave us, the only one who could possible meet us in that place, turning death itself into communion.
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear for you are with me.”
