<p>2:15- see on Heb. 5:7.</p><p><i>And might deliver all those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage</i>- The reference is to Israel's deliverance from Egyptian bondage. The &quot;devil&quot; who was slain in :14 could then allude to Pharaoh. But Israel were delivered from a greater bondage- to the law and the inevitable fear of death which it inculcated in sinful man (see on :14). It is the fear of death, the subconscious awareness in every human being that they have sinned and must die, which is here defined as the psychological bind which keeps people in bondage. The message of freedom from sin and death which is in Christ is only attractive to those who are honest enough to get in touch with themselves and realize that this is indeed the psychological tie that binds them. We can only experience the joy of release from bondage if we perceive we were in bondage; and such joy can only come from a firm persuasion that if the Lord were to return right now, we really will be saved. For anything less than that is not good news, just a fearful sense of responsibility to judgment to come, against which we vainly hope our knowledge of some true theology will somehow triumph.</p><p>The fear of death grips our society more than we like to admit. The Swiss psychologist Paul Tournier observed the huge &ldquo;number of people who dream that they are locked in, that everywhere they come up against iron-bound and padlocked doors, that they absolutely must escape, and yet there is no way out&rdquo;. This is the state of the nation, this is how we naturally are, this is the audience to which we preach. And we preach a freedom from that fear. Because the Lord Jesus was of our human nature- and here perhaps more than anywhere else we see the crucial practical importance of doctrine- we are freed from the ranks of all those who through fear of death live their lives in bondage. For He died for us, as our representative. How true are those inspired words. &ldquo;To release them who through fear / <i>phobos</i> of death were all their living-time subject to slavery&rdquo; (Gk.). Nearly all the great psychologists concluded that the mystery of death obsesses humanity; and in the last analysis, all anxiety is reduced to anxiety about death. You can see it for yourself, in how death, or real, deep discussion of it, is a taboo subject; how people will make jokes about it in reflection of their fear of seriously discussing it. People, even doctors, don&rsquo;t quite know what to say to the dying. There can be floods of stories and chit-chat&hellip; all carefully avoiding any possible allusion to death. This fear of death, in which the unredeemed billions of humanity have been in bondage, explains the fear of old age, the unwillingness to accept our age for what it is, our bodies for how and what they are, or are becoming. I&rsquo;m not saying of course that the emotion of fear or anxiety is totally removed from our lives by faith. The Lord Jesus in Gethsemane is proof enough that these emotions are an integral part of being human, and it&rsquo;s no sin to have them. I&rsquo;m talking of fear in it&rsquo;s destructive sense, the fear of death which is rooted in a lack of hope. There's a passage in <i>Hamlet</i> which speaks of not so much fearing death as &quot;the dread of something after death&quot; (some of the sentiments in Job 18 are similar). And modern psychoanalytical studies have confirmed this. A large part of the fear of death is the fear of what follows. For those in Christ, whilst like their Lord they may naturally fear the process of death, their future is secured; they know that death is unconsciousness and will end ultimately in a bodily resurrection at the Lord's return, after which they will share in His eternal life. For them, &quot;the fear of death&quot; in its ultimate form has been removed (Heb. 2:14-18).</p><p>This passage in Hebrews 2 says that the Lord can deliver us from such bondage because he is our representative, our brother, of our nature, not ashamed of His connection with us (2:11). Reasoning back from this, we can see that Moses' ability to redeem Israel from Egypt, his appropriacy for the task, was because he had openly declared that he was one of them. Yet the wonder of that was lost on them. And if we are not careful, the wonder of the fact that the Lord had our nature, that He was our representative and is <i>therefore</i> mighty to save, can be lost on us too. The thrill of these first principles should ever remain with us.&nbsp;</p><p>All the Judges in some way prefigured the Lord; for they were &quot;saviours&quot; raised up to deliver God's weak and failing people in pure grace, when according to God's own word, they should have received the due punishment of rejection (Neh. 9:27,28). He who delivered &quot;them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage&quot; (Heb. 2:15) was typified by all those earlier deliverers of God's people from bondage (cp. Mt. 1:21). The &quot;great salvation&quot; of Heb. 2:3 which the Lord achieved was foreshadowed by the great deliverance wrought by Samson (Jud. 15:18).</p>