Hebrews 2 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

So we need to pay even closer attention to what we've heard, or we might drift right past it.

After all, the message delivered through angels proved to be binding — every violation and act of disobedience received its fair consequence.

So how will we escape if we ignore a rescue this significant? It was first announced by the Lord himself, then confirmed to us by those who heard him,

while God himself backed it up with signs, wonders, and all kinds of demonstrations of power, along with gifts distributed by the Breath of God exactly as he chose.

Now, it's not to angels that God has subjected the world to come — which is what we're really talking about.

Someone testified somewhere: "What are mere humans that you even think about them? What is a son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the angels for a short time. You crowned him with magnificence and honor.

You put everything under his feet." Now when it says God put "everything" under him, that means nothing was left outside his authority. Of course, we don't see everything under his authority just yet.

But we do see Jesus — the one who was made a little lower than the angels for a short time — now crowned with magnificence and honor because he suffered death. This was so that, by God's generous favor, he could taste death for every single person.

It made perfect sense that God — the one for whom and through whom everything exists — in bringing many sons and daughters to magnificence, would make the pioneer of their rescue complete through suffering.

Because the one who makes people whole and the people being made whole all come from the same source. That's why he's not embarrassed to call them his brothers and sisters.

He says: "I will announce your name to my brothers and sisters. Right there in the middle of the gathering, I'll sing your praises."

And again: "I will put my trust in him." And again: "Here I am, together with the children God has given me."

So since the children share flesh and blood, he fully shared in the same — so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil),

and set free everyone who had been held hostage their entire lives by the fear of death.

Because obviously, it's not angels he's reaching out to help — it's Abraham's descendants he's reaching out to help.

That's why he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way — so he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and make things right for the people's failures.

Because he himself suffered when he was tested, he's able to help anyone who is being tested right now.