Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews II. 14-18. 355
tence beginning with Iva, and then in ver. 16. "Lap^ ml alfia—
designates the human nature in opposition to the incorporeal uncreated
God (comp. Matth. xvi. 17; Gal. i. 16)- not the body in
opposition to the soul, nor the mortal body in opposition to the
glorified (Grotius, Tholuck)—an antithesis which could not be urged
in this context.
TJiat through death, etc. The autlior now proceeds to specify the
internal ground upon which the thesis rests. That which stands in
the way of our becoming sons of God, and which must first be
removed, is death, or—as the author here more specially describes
it—the being subject to the kingdom of darkness and the prince of
this kingdom, who has the power of death.
This bondage of death
could be removed only by our guilt being atoned for through the
sacrificial death of Christ. In order to this, however, it was necessary
that he should become a member of that humanity which took
its rise from the first Adam.
So much in reference to the train of thought in general. To
come to particulars, Karapyelv is an expression frequently used by
Paul, but occurring elsewhere in the New Testament only in Luke
xiii. 7, and in our passage (but also in the profane writers). It is
equivalent to depybv noielv to render ineffective, to deprive of efficacy.
The author certainly might have expressed his meaning thus : Iva
6id Tov davcbTov rbv ddvarov KarapyTJay. But he has, with good reason,
avoided doing so. For Jesus by his death has not freed us
from death, absolutely, and in every respect ; the death of the body
still remains, but its sting has been taken away ; it is no longer a
judgment before which conscience trembles and which keeps men in
incessant fear ; to the Christian the death of the body is rather
only a deliverance from the " body of this death" (Eom. vii. 24), a
final putting off of the last remnant of the old Adam with which
we have still to contend, in other words, the completion of sanctification,
for, as the Heidelberg catechism so admirably expresses it in
the 42d question :
" Our death is not a payment for our sin, but
only a dying to sin, and an entrance on life eternal." Therefore
the author speaks not of a taking away of death absolutely, but
only of a cessation of the power of death. In the words apdrog rov
davdrov the genitive is not the gen. objecti (" power to kill"), for
Kpdrog never denotes a mere facultas ; it is the gen. subjecti. It is
the power which death exercises over us, the violence which it offers
to us. The best explanation of this is to be found in ver. 15, the
consideration of which we shall here anticipate. Christ has delivered
those who through fear of death were, i. e., shewed themselves,
to be all their life time subject to bondage. The man who,
however well he might ward off repentance and the knowledge of
sin, and by this pretended self-righteousness keep his conscience at