Heb. 2:3a ... "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?"
There are three truths of the most fundamental importance and ultimately of eternal consequence, which confront every person who passes through this world. The first of them is revealed in Rom. 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The second is proclaimed in II Cor. 5:10, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." And the third is presented in Rom. 5:8-9, "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him." Very simply put, (1) every person is a sinner, (2) God will at last judge and punish the sinner, and (3) God offers salvation from sin and its terrible penalty through His Son Jesus.
The only reasonable response that a person can make when he learns these truths is to accept the salvation God offers him. To learn that you are a sinner and hence doomed for destruction, and turn away from the one avenue of escape God has provided, is foolish. If a wildfire is raging across the countryside, as sometimes happens in the western states during a drought, those who live in its path are immediately alerted and warned to vacate their homes. As the flames draw dangerously near, orders to flee are issued in a stronger, more urgent way. If anyone refuses to leave and perishes in the holocaust, we feel great pity for their fate. And yet, we cannot but consider them foolish to have been warned and then neglected to save themselves. This is analogous to the action of sin in the world, which rages like wildfire through human experience. Christians, speaking from the inspired revelation of God's word, sound the warning of impending destruction to all. In Jude 23 we are thus instructed, "Save others, snatching them out of the fire." There is no one whose life is not in the path of the racing, consuming path of sin. To be warned by fervent, urgent appeals to accept God's route of escape through Christ, and then disregard it, is just as foolish as to stay at home until wildfire engulfs your house with you inside. In fact, it is more foolish, because physical fire ends a human life quickly, after which the anesthesia of death obliterates all pain. But the spiritual fire consequent upon sin is never extinguished, and no relief will ever come to the soul writhing within it, (see Mark 9:47-48).
Perhaps many who refuse to respond to the gospel of Christ reject its necessity on the basis that, having denied the Biblical concept of sin, they are not sinners. Others who decline to respond to God's offer of salvation have denied the reality of a judgment, as well as the idea that God is an avenger of sin. Such rejections, denials, and refusals indicate a severe lack of faith in the truth of Holy Scripture, which affirms these things as realities. The denial of what exists does not remove its reality, though it may indeed remove one's anxiety over its impact upon his own existence. However, the reality of God and His will for man has been sufficiently confirmed by "signs and wonders and various miracles," (Heb. 2:4), which were recorded by competent observers and preserved for the benefit of all posterity. God does not repeat these verifying phenomena to each generation, but rather accounts this testimony as enough to convince anyone whose mind is open. Therefore, if a person rejects the merciful invitation of God to be saved, how can he escape the wrath of God? Our featured text, Heb. 2:3, does not bother to answer that question, apparently because the answer is so obvious. But the answer is clearly and emphatically given in many places in the Bible. For example, "To those who are selfishly ambitious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness ... (God will will execute) wrath and indignation ... (upon) every soul of man who does evil," (Rom. 2:8-9).
