Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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Hebrews II. 11-13. 345
sistency of the divine dealings towards us with his nature. In the
second place, however, ayioq is used in a historical sense of the
creature, and forms in this sense the antithesis to all that which bysin
has become estranged from Grod, separated from God, and
morally had or essentially 'profane. Those things are holy, which
are withdrawn from the profane natural life, and devoted to the
service of God. Those persons are holy, who are withdrawn from
the sinfully-natural life, and are placed in a relation of grace and
rede77iption to God. Hence in the Old Testament the Israelites,
and in all the apostolical epistles the Christians, are called ol dyioi,
although they are by no means already sinless. Only, in the third
place, does dyiog come to denote (and in this case oatog is rather
used) the state of a personal creature who is absolutely free from
sin, or who has become free (1 Pet. i. 16).—The dyid^eiv in the passage
under consideration is an instance of the second of these usages,
and denotes the total act by which Christ withdraws his own people
from the natural life of death, and places them in the sphere of a
new life which rests upon his atoning death, has its source in his
resurrection, consists in the appropriation of salvation through
repentance, faith, and renewal of life, and will at one time be perfected
in sinlessness and glorification.—The other and stricter signification
of dyid^eiv, in which it denotes the special renewal of life
proceeding from faith (John xvii. 17 ; comp. Heb. xii. 14) belongs
to the third usage of dyiog.
Who, now, is the elg, the common parent, in relation to whom
the dyid^o)v, Christ, and the dyia^onevot^ the subjects of the Messiah's
kingdom are called brethren, i. e., who is he whose sons Christians
become through the sanctifier ? Hunnius and Carpzov thought it
was Adam ; Bengel, Schmid, and Michaelis, that it was Abraham.
All these (as also Olshausen) found, accordingly, in ver. 11 the idea
expressed that the Son of God, as incarnate, has entered into a
relation of brother to men. Then is ver. 11 an answer to the question,
by ivhat means has Christ made many to be sons? Ver. 10:
Christ, as leader, draws many sons after him, ver. 11 : for he has
become man, and therefore comes from the same common ancestor
with those ivlio are sanctified.—This interpretation is, meanwhile,
decidedly wrong. Not until ver. 14 does the author pass on to shew
that Christ, in order to raise us to a participation in his sonship
with God, must needs take part in our sonship with Adam. The
citations also in ver. 12 prove, as we shall see, not that it was necessary
for the Messiah to become man, but simply that the Messiah
should stand in the spiy'itual relation of a brother to the subjects of
his kingdom, that he should lift them up to his relation of oneness
with God. Finally, the designation of Christ here as the sanctifier,
and the sons as the sanctified, also shows that it is not the physical