Hebrews 2:16 Commentary and Bible Study

You see here several words in italic in the KJV which are supplied to give the full sense, for the Greek says simply, ‘he takes not on him of angels’, but it is obvious that the writer is comparing this alternative with the incarnation. Christ was made a little lower than the angels; he chose to take human nature even though man was made beneath the angels in the order of creation. The assumption here is that he would need to take the nature of the creature that he came to redeem. But the good angels did not need to be redeemed, and it was not the plan of God that the fallen angels should be redeemed; they have not been offered mercy or pardon. In order to redeem mankind, Christ could not take the nature of angels, for the work of redemption involved becoming the representative of his people, fulfilling the law on their behalf, and suffering the punishment of their sin. That could only be done by one who was truly a man. The angels were not created with a representative head who stood in the place of all, and by whose sin death came on all; they stood as individuals who either rebelled with Satan and fell to become demons, or who stood firm as individual elect angels. But without this representative relationship, Christ could not come to be the last Adam, the one man through whom his people were redeemed and justified before God’s law. However the verse does not say that Christ took on him the seed of Adam, as we might expect, but the seed of Abraham. Why is this? Hasn’t the writer just said that Christ took human nature, and wasn’t Adam the head of the human race, which Scripture confirms elsewhere? Some people say it's because the letter to the Hebrews is written to Jews, so it's more meaningful to them to say Abraham than Adam. But that is not an adequate explanation; the Old Testament does not hesitate to say that Adam is the head of the human race. No, the text is speaking very spiritually. It is because Christ did not come into the world to save every single human being but only the elect. Only those who are of the seed of Abraham are included, and even then, the term seed needs to be defined carefully. It is not the physical seed of Abraham that Christ came to save but the spiritual seed, which includes only those who are of faith, both physical descendants and non-physical descendants, Jews and Gentiles (Galatians 3:29). It is yet another way of speaking about the redeemed whether they are Jews or whether they are Gentiles. Abraham stands here for the father of the faithful. Those who are not in the physical seed of Abraham, may still be children of Abraham. The promise is limited to the elect of God, and Christ’s atoning work is for the benefit of them alone. It is only for those who are in the covenant made to Abraham, who walk in the steps of the faith of Abraham. This way of describing those for whom Christ died clarifies the fact that the ‘everyone’ of Hebrews 2:9 is not intended to include every single man and woman ever born, but only those who receive the promise by faith.