Biblion Bible Commentary
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Not Ashamed to Call Them Brothers
Hebrews 2:10-13
10 For it became him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many children to glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings. · WEB
Something is completed in the Son through suffering, and three quotations are produced to show him claiming kinship with those he saves.
For it became him... in bringing many children to glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
The word for perfect needs care, because the obvious reading is the wrong one. The same letter says he was without sin Hebrews 4:15, so nothing moral is being repaired. The verb — which falls in nine verses of this book — means to bring to completion, to finish something so that it is fit for its purpose. What suffering completed was not his character but his qualification.
And the office being qualified for is named five verses later: a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities Hebrews 4:15. A priest who had never suffered would be missing something the job requires.
The first clause is equally deliberate: it became him. It was fitting — appropriate to God's own character rather than forced on him by circumstance.
Verse 11 states the common ground: both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one. The one is not specified, and the point is the shared origin rather than its name.
Then the consequence, and it is put as a refusal to be embarrassed: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brothers.
That sentence assumes there would be grounds for shame. The readers had been publicly humiliated Hebrews 10:33, and the letter's answer is not that they are impressive but that he does not mind being associated with them.
Three quotations follow, all putting words in his mouth, and each one places him among people rather than above them.
I will declare your name to my brothers. Among the congregation I will sing your praise — he is inside the assembly, singing rather than being sung to. I will put my trust in him — an extraordinary line to attribute to the one described in chapter 1 as upholding all things, and it makes him a believer alongside them. And behold, here I am with the children whom God has given me, which is a father's line and a shepherd's, spoken while standing with them.
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