BETTER EXPECTATIONS

Heb. 6:9 ... "Beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation."

      Although we do not know specifically who the recipients of this epistle were, nor the exact place of their residence, we are assured they were of Jewish background and had been Christians for many years. There is considerable evidence that they had cooled in their affection and zeal for the faith and were in danger of losing their identity in Christ. Perhaps they had become disappointed because Christianity had brought them no visible earthly kingdom and had itself been decisively rejected by the great majority of other Jews. The writer states several instances in which they were failing in the commitment they had made to the Lord when they pledged their lives to Him. -1- They had become lazy, (5:11; 6:12). -2- They had grown despondent, (12:3, 12). -3- They had lost their initial enthusiasm for the faith, (3:6, 14; 4:14; 10:23, 25). -4- They had failed to develop spiritual discernment, (5:12-14). -5- They had fallen into the habit of not attending worship services, (10:25). -6- They were not being loyal to their Christian overseers, (13:17). -7- They had ceased to imitate the faith of Christians who had gone before, (13:7). -8- They were easily influenced by new and strange doctrines, (13:9). -9- They had entered the danger zone of falling short of God's promises, (4:1). -10- They were drifting away from the doctrine which had converted them, (2:1). -11- They were coming perilously close to leaving the faith in deliberate and persistent apostasy, (3:12; 10:26).

      When the growing weaknesses and failures of the Hebrew Christians are noticed and considered, the writer's exhortation, "Beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you," evince their poignancy. It reminds me of something I witnessed in my youth. While waiting for a ride to high school one morning, a friend and I were approached by our Second Grade teacher. She gave my friend a letter to deliver to her son at our high school. A few minutes later she saw him from her window open the letter and read its private contents. Hurrying out and retrieving the letter, she spoke almost the same words as in Heb. 6:9, "J----, I expected something far better of you!" She trusted him to deliver the message inviolate and was both disappointed and distressed that he had betrayed her trust. Similarly, those who first carried the gospel to the Hebrews had entrusted it to them to preserve in their lives all its provisions by their fidelity. At the time of this epistle these disciples had not yet gone so far as to betray the divine trust, but they were drawing very close to doing so.

      Only here in the 303 verses of the letter does the writer call them "beloved," (agapêtoi), a term of affection that indicates he had not given up hope for them. Though they had already strayed afar and become quite a disappointment, he nevertheless believed they were capable of turning around and coming back to the salvation which always awaits those who will repent. There is a point beyond which such repentance is impossible, and in that condition the apostate has no prospect other than "a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume," (Heb. 10:27). There are those who abandon their faith in the Lord for one reason or another, but so long as they breathe the air God gives and enjoy the divinely bestowed energy that keeps their heart beating, they may always return to their allegiance to the Lord. And God, who does not want to destroy anyone in judgment, but who "desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth," (I Tim. 2:4), will welcome them back into His grace and reinstate them in His own family of saints. It is wonderful that God is so patient and self-restrained that he waits for a considerable time while those who once served Him wander afield in faithlessness until they at last discover ultimate truth and turn their lives back toward Him. May God grant such souls the time and opportunity to allow them to have this experience that will mean their eternal salvation.

THE SOURCE OF ETERNAL SALVATION

Heb. 5:9 ... "Having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation."

      The life of Jesus was the unique experience among all human lives in many ways. His birth was the miraculous result of a woman conceiving a child, not by carnal union with a man, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, (Luke 1:34-35). He was physically a human, (Php. 2:7-8), but spiritually God, (John 16:28). Indeed, he was God incarnate, i.e., "God-in-the-flesh," (John 1:14). He spoke and acted as no man ever has, (John 8:46 and 3:2). Although there were many men in Biblical times who were visited by the Spirit, who empowered them to perform supernatural deeds, Jesus possessed the Spirit in His infinite fulness rather than "by measure," (John 3:34). 

      Nevertheless, Jesus' earthly life was developmental, a necessity He accepted willingly as a result of descending from His pre-incarnation Godness wherein He "emptied Himself," (Php. 2:6-7), and took on Himself the humble status of a human being. He entered the world by the normal means of childbirth as an infant, unable to speak or care for Himself, and was totally dependent upon His mother Mary to feed, clothe, and comfort Him. He grew to manhood and maturity by natural processes summarized in this important note: "And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man," (Luke 2:52). To phrase this in present terms, it says that He grew mentally, physically, spiritually, and socially, thus covering every dimension of the human constitution. From whatever low level He accepted when He descended into human existence, (but "yet without sin," (Heb. 4:15), Jesus moved upward to full maturity, indicated by the phrase in the lead text above, "having been made perfect." He thus obtained the full satisfaction and approval of His Father, (Mat. 3:17 and 17:5; Heb. 1:4-5, 9).

      This process of development into full maturity as a human involved a great ordeal of struggle and pain for Jesus, (Heb. 5:7-8). We must come to realize and appreciate this, for it emphasizes how our Lord experienced our human condition in the fullest way and enables Him even now to sympathize with all the varied trials of life here. It is of the greatest significance and comfort to us that we read, "We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin," (Heb. 4:15). He therefore serves as the entirely valid and effective Model for mankind, because throughout His struggle with all the harsh challenges of life here, He never once faltered and committed sin. He accomplished the perfect, untarnished life because of His total submission to His Father's will, both in deed and in spirit. Here is where the lesson of Heb. 5:9 begins to emerge and reveal its application for us. Through the victory Jesus won by submission in spirit and obedience in deed, "He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation." As He reached perfection by obedience to His Father, He will conduct us unto perfection as we obey Him promptly, willingly, and gladly. This is not to say that anyone attains perfection by his own power, for nothing is further from the context here. Our perfection comes only through the instrumentality of Jesus' attained perfection, i.e., Christians are made perfect through faith in Christ and obedience to His will. Having attained perfection in Him, we shall be granted by Him the incomparable gift of salvation.

      Some people attribute human salvation to grace without consideration for personal deeds, while others attribute it to one's faith in and of itself. But this statement of Heb. 5:9 specifically connects our salvation to obedience to the teachings of Jesus. Of course, this does not dismiss the superiority and priority of divine grace, (Eph. 2:8); nor does it remove the essential necessity of faith, (Heb. 11:6). What it does do is establish irrefutably human obedience to the divine will as the necessary response to God's grace.

BE DILIGENT TO ENTER GOD'S REST

Heb. 4:11 ... "Let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience."

      Looking backward into the Old Testament scriptures with their record of God's activity among Israel and the people's response thereunto, Paul wrote in I Cor. 10:11, "These things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction." One of the most decisive and memorable of those occasions involved the experience of the Hebrews led by Moses out of Egypt and across the desolate wastes of Sinai to the threshhold of Canaan.  God had promised to give that land to them as a rest from their bondage in an alien land, but the fulfillment of that promise was contingent upon their faith to follow God's directions. When the time came to exercise their faith by invading Canaan from the south, attacking fortified cities, and battling trained soldiers who were of greater stature than they, the hearts of the people melted within them. In the fear generated by a very weak faith, they rebelled and turned back into the relative safety of the desert. God's response was to abandon them to that desert until it swallowed every one of them except Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who had encouraged the people to follow God's lead in attacking Canaan. Out of the hundreds of thousands in that generation only those two men were finally allowed to enter Canaan as decisive conquerors, to take possession of it and enjoy the rest there that God had intended for all of them.

      God's promise of a rest for His people was not abrogated by the abysmal failure of the Israelites.  The generation that followed was led triumphantly into Canaan by Joshua and given to them for their possession. In vs. 8-9 it states that "if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." God has promised another rest to His people of the Christian Age, only this rest is heavenly rather than earthly, spiritual rather than material, and eternal rather than temporal. Just as it was in the case of the Israelites, it is contingent upon our faith to yield our lives to His direction and to perform the works of spiritual service for which He has created us in His Son, (Eph. 2:10). If we ignore His will, revealed to us in the New Testament, then we will, like that faithless generation so long ago, "fall, through following the same example of disobedience."  We can then be sure we will not "enter that rest."

      Christians always face the danger of becoming complacent, taking the grace of God for granted, and participating less and less in the "good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them," (Eph. 2:10). If we do not wear ourselves out in God's service, we have no need for any rest in the life beyond. It is the one who has worked through the day, endured the heat of the sun, and produced fruit by the sweat of his brow, who needs and deserves the bliss of sweet rest at the end of the day.  Through the apostle John the Lord wrote to the Christians at Ephesus, "Remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first, or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place --- unless you repent," (Rev. 2:5). These people were obviously on the verge of missing "that rest" because they had ceased to "be diligent to enter" it. Perhaps their attention had been diverted by other activities in which they were engaging, or perhaps they were resting on the laurels of past achievements, or perhaps they had settled into the practice of just "keeping house for the Lord," the fault of many modern congregations. Whatever their situation, they were not busily and zealously involved in the works required by the gospel. It is sobering to consider Jesus' description of the Final Judgment in Mat. 25:31-46, where those who were assembled on His left hand were excluded from the rest of heaven because they had not been active in evangelism, edification, and benevolence for Jesus' sake while they yet lived on earth. 

ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER DAILY

Heb. 3:13 ... "Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

     Although this statement contains only 25 words, it presents seven ideas in delivering a message of great significance to Christians. 

      First, Christians are to be constantly occupied in the effort to encourage. The object is to motivate other Christians to continue steadfastly in faith, love, hope, good works, and all the other components of the Christian Way. Every follower of Christ must learn to encourage within the scope of his ability and opportunity.  This could involve public speaking (preaching and teaching), but for the most part it can be accomplished on an informal, interpersonal plane in one's daily private life.

      Second, Christians are to encourage "one another." The circle of each person's life intersects those of many other people. No one must withdraw into his own circle of isolation. Within the community of the church, the life of each Christian touches, overlaps, and engages the lives of many fellow Christians. Because of these unavoidable, interpersonal relationships, and because of the divine persuasion to love one another, care for each other, and support each other, we are motivated to encourage "one another."

      Third, this encouragement is to be given "daily." Day by day, and not just on Sundays, Christians are to encourage each other to "fight the good fight of faith" (I Tim. 6:12) and never "lose heart in doing good" (Gal. 6:9). The force of evil never grows weary or slackens in its activity (II Ths. 2:7; I Pet. 5:8), and it is always ready to take quick advantage of any Christian who lays aside his vigilance and ceases to take the presence, the power, and the pervasiveness of evil seriously (Mat. 26:41). It is, therefore, an urgent, unending, and utterly essential task for Christians to encourage one another "daily."

      Fourth, each Christian must consider the time for his duty to encourage to be "Today." That is, he must take advantage of present opportunities to offer assistance to fellow disciples (II Cor. 6:2). It is too late to encourage effectively someone who has already sold out his life to the pleasures of sin. The opportunity to turn a brother or sister away from the face of evil will not always continue, and the degree of success in the attempt is progressively reduced with the passage of time as the evil warps, distorts, and destroys the mind and conscience.

      Fifth, sin is the great adversary of the children of God. It is the powerful tool of Satan "which so easily entangles us" (Heb. 12:1). Sin separates Christians from God (Isa. 59:2) and leads those who surrender to its power into the grip of death (Rom. 6:23). It has become accepted by a large part of our society that the concept of sin is meaningless, irrelevant, and in fact false. This is the most dangerous response that can be made to sin's presence and activity. To deny the reality of something does not destroy its reality, but it places the one who denies it at great risk.

      Sixth, sin operates extremely successfully because of its power of "deceitfulness." If sin presented itself to us in its horrible reality, it would be so abhorrent and repulsive that all but the most foolish would flee immediately from it. To avoid this reaction and also to ensnare its victims, sin rather masks itself behind a veneer of pleasure, success, power, and fame. The undiscerning person who is seduced by this bait finds out only too late how shallow and unsatisfying it really is. Christians must exhort one another continually so that no one will be swallowed by the "deceitfulness of sin."

      Seventh, sin hardens the conscience and soul until they are insensitive to the distinction between right and wrong. Sin also erodes any appreciation for what is good and lowers one's sight from the eternal things of heaven to the temporal things of earth that perish with the using and still do not bring enduring fulfilment. Unless Christian encouragement is persuasive enough before this hardening effect progresses too far, the soul of the victim might reach a state where it can no longer be motivated to repent.