Good Friday Meditation on Hebrews 2: Jesus and Tabasco Sauce

Being a parent is hard, esp. when it comes to disciplining your children. I don't enjoy disciplining them when they are bad, but you have to do it if they are to learn right from wrong and if they are to learn self-discipline. When my kids lie, maliciously lie that is, I have a particuar punishment that I use: tabasco sauce. Some no doubt would call this excessive, but it works. After a lie has been found out, I sit my daughter down, we chat about the lie and its effects, then I pull out the dreaded tabasco sauce. Next thing I do is put big shot of tobasco sauce on a spoon and then I taste the spoon before her. I then get another spoon and put a few tiny drops on it and give it to my daughter who swallows it and usually starts crying. She then gets to drink a big glass of water with some ice to take the taste away. Justice has been served and order restored. And, for what it's worthy, my kids lie very seldomly and this is a great deterrent. You might ask, why do I taste the tabasco sauce before I dish out the sauce to my daughter? The answer is, so she knows that I'm not inflicting on her a punishment that is unbearable or something that I would not go through myself. The next question, what does this have to do with Jesus? I think Hebrews provides an answer:

Hebrews 2.9: "But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." (ESV).

As it were, Jesus tastes the tabasco sauce of death for us. He takes away its burning pain so that none is left to harm us. We must still taste death due to our participation in Adam, but because of our participation in Christ, the sting of death has been taken away and the tabasco sauce of human mortality no longer burns away the fabric of our existence! The God who inflicted death on his creation for its rebellion against him (see Genesis 5), did so knowing that he would take the full brunt of death on himself, through his only begotten Son.

Yes, I know all analogies break down at some point (that is why they are analogies), but my Easter thought for this Good Friday is that Jesus tasted death for us. Even though we must also taste death ourselves, because of his sacrifice we do not experience death in the same way, that of seperation from God and seperation from life. Rather, it through Jesus' death that the sons and daughters of God are brought to glory. If we are not ashamed to call him Lord, then he is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters.