Growing up I had an awesome older brother. He was five years older than me. To be sure, he wasn’t very pleased to share his home with a sibling at first. Rumor has it that he tried to trade me to my grandma for a cat when I was born. But as we grew up, he became a great companion in spite of our age gap. He let me tag along on neighborhood excursions with his playmates (though their roughhousing wasn’t something I could join in) and he played board games with me and our parents some nights (which probably bored him stiff). When we got into our teens, he cheerfully introduced me to his good-looking (older) guy friends who came over. Getting to meet them was thrilling, but trying to find something interesting to say to them was intimidating! 

Were you lucky enough to have an awesome older brother too? If so, you’ll understand and appreciate how Jesus assumes this role in our lives within God’s family. We don’t often dwell on this aspect of His relationship to us, compared to His more familiar handles. We talk a great deal about Him being our Savior and Redeemer, our Lord, our King, and our Good Shepherd. Occasionally, we might even mention His role as our Bridegroom, the One we will share a wedding feast with at the end of the age.

But in this devotional, I’d like us to explore how He serves as our elder brother, the forerunner who opened the way for us to experience new birth and acceptance into God’s family. He did this at great cost, of course. Only by being willing to go to the cross and lay down His life was it possible for us to be reconciled back to God our Father. “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God … should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:10-11).

It’s rare to find older siblings who aren’t competitive, jealous, or embarrassed by their younger siblings. We often distance ourselves from them when we’re with other people or we ridicule them so we can feel superior. But Jesus willingly identified with us, knowing how immature, sinful, and inept we are, even on our best days. Although He was vastly superior to us in every way, He did not distance himself from any one of us. He drew near, to enable us to become like Him. He faced our enemies for us and soundly defeated them, which opened the way for us to live in a brand-new way.  

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (vv. 14-18).

Jesus “gets us.” By taking on flesh and blood, He descended into our mess and saw firsthand our anxieties, insecurities, fears, foolish passions, and bottomless need for affirmation and acceptance. He experienced for himself how temptation, betrayal, cruelty, rejection, and sorrow feel. As Isaiah prophesied about Him before He came, Jesus was “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (53:3).

As He walked among us, He had no superhero protection that shielded Him from pain. The only thing He did not share with us was our sin nature, which no doubt made it even harder for him to witness the cruelty, corruption, injustice, and perversity that has marked human life since the Fall.

The enormous cost of Jesus becoming human, which eventually led to the cross, is something He willingly endured “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). As our older Brother, His joy is to see us return to the Father and find our place in God’s household. Because He’s intimately acquainted with our struggles and is sympathetic to our weaknesses, we can go to Him with anything, knowing we will “receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

One of the things I loved about hanging out with my brother was that I could in some sense vicariously participate in his more interesting life, but from a safe distance. I could ask him for advice on something he’d already gone through, and he could suggest the better path for me to take.

This is the very great value of a forerunner. A forerunner is one who precedes others who will later follow him (or her) to a designated place. He’s someone who is sent on before everyone else as a scout to take observations that he can pass on for their benefit. A forerunner is invaluable to those who follow him. The term is only used once in the New Testament—in Hebrews 6:20.

The writer mentions that Jesus, our spiritual forerunner, has gone before us and has entered the inner sanctuary in heaven on our behalf. When Jesus ascended and applied His blood on the mercy seat in heaven, our salvation was secured. We can look forward to being in that holy place with Him one day.

Under the Old Covenant, only the Jewish high priest could go into the Holy of Holies behind the veil in the tabernacle. He went as a representative of the people, but NOT as a forerunner. Only he could go in once a year to offer blood for their forgiveness—everyone else was kept out. In the New Covenant, however, everywhere changes. Where Jesus has gone, we can follow. He was the first to rise from the dead, and one day we will too. Even now we have access to His power, wisdom, and companionship. He can advise us of dangers ahead and counsel us about the best path to take going forward.  

Our days may be difficult right now and we may feel overwhelmed and defeated. But because of Jesus, we can “Draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings. … Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:22-23). Let’s not get so caught up in the concerns of everyday life that we forget we are members of Christ’s body—all His victories are ours as well! We can trust Him to take us safely through anything life brings our way.

Here’s a beautiful reflection on our forerunner and older Brother from C. H. Spurgeon.

“In all our sorrows we have His sympathy. Temptation, pain, disappointment, weakness, weariness, poverty—He knows them all, for He has felt them all. Remember this, Christian, and let it comfort you. However difficult and painful thy road, it is marked by the footsteps of thy Saviour; and even when you reach the dark valley of the shadow of death, and the deep waters of the swelling Jordan, you will find His footprints there. In all places whithersoever we go, He has been our forerunner; each burden we have to carry, has once been laid on the shoulders of Immanuel. Take courage! Royal feet have left a blood-red track upon the road and consecrated the thorny path for ever.”

Thank you, Lord Jesus!