Its easier to understand in context, look at other abstractions introduced between languages.
A key difference between assembly language and a procedural language like C or Pascal is the introduction of the "procedure" abstraction. People writing assembly code create procedures, but its hard and error prone, a procedural language gives you tools to make it easier.
The difference between a procedural language and an OO language like C++ is the "object" abstraction. People who write "c" often create conceptual objects but its difficult and error prone, an OO language gives you tools to make it easier.
Things like Sing# from Microsoft (or Erlang) add the Message/Process abstraction into the language. Sure, you can do message passing and process creation in assembly, C or C++ but Sing# makes it easier.
It all comes down to the same machine code, these abstractions are purely for the benfit of our brains, not the computer.
