Heb 10:28-29 | KingComments | STEP | . We are in a section in which we are again warned against falling away. The consequences of falling away are presented in the most horrific way. After all it is not about a detail! It is about rejecting the only offering that God has given in His Son and to which offering the apostate at first consented. That is nothing else than deliberate rebellion against God. Rebelling against God, while knowing His will, was and still is a serious matter to God. Just take a look at the law of Moses. Whosoever rejected that law, in other words: trampled and despised it – so not accidentally transgressed it – died without mercy (cf. ). Death penalty followed “on [the testimony of] two or three witnesses”. . If God already punished rebellion under the old covenant that severely, how much severer will the punishment be if a person rebels against the new covenant. The severer punishment is the eternal judgment, while in the Old Testament it concerned a corporal punishment. But the severer punishment is fitting for gravity of that sin. It is ultimately about nothing less than trampling the Son of God, the eternal Son, and despising His work. You may say that transgressing the law was purely disobedience. How serious that might have already been, yet it is more serious to despise the grace of God and what He has done in His Son. It is rejecting the whole counsel of God’s plan of salvation with a contempt that gives no hope for conversion. To trample something under foot indicates a contemptible treatment. This is how one who is only a Christian in name treats the Son of God when he, after having first acknowledged Him as the Son of God, later on exchanges Him for a tangible religion. It is the grossest form of denial that anyone can do to Him. By such a treatment the Lord Jesus is held for liar and His work as meaningless. The latter appears from the denial of the blood of the covenant. Through this blood the confessor was sanctified, which means: set apart outwardly. It is the same sanctification that also applies to the unbelieving husband whose wife came to faith ( ). He confessed to be hiding behind the blood, like all members of the company he joined, though he didn’t believe in the power of the blood. At a certain moment he accounted it unholy. It is not surprising that such a person also insults “the Spirit of grace”. The Holy Spirit showed him grace when he entered professing Christianity by making him a partaker of His work in the church. But now he ignored the grace with a gesture of contempt. . By speaking about “we” the writer places himself among those to whom he writes. He sees all of them, including himself, as confessors. They all had the same confession. But there was a chance that there were some among them for whom the confession was only a matter of the lips and not of the heart. With regard to them he speaks these serious words. He wants to appeal to their conscience, so that they still may open up their hearts to receive the truth and that they will not turn to a religion that is rejected by God and which will surely cause them to die in their sins. They all knew God as the One Who judges. None of them was ignorant about that. God’s vengeance implies that He will righteously measure what a person is worthy of. He will repay and judge in a righteous way. . He who falls away from the living God ( ), will surely fall into the hands of the living God. How totally differently does the believer look at the hands of God. He loves to entrust himself to them ( ) because he trusts that God is perfectly righteous and full of love. . After his severe exhortations the writer appeals encouragingly to the readers again from . He has expressed his fear for the falling away of a very few, but for the many of the company he doesn’t have that fear. He saw the fruits of the new life with them. He reminds them of that by taking them back in spirit to the former days. He speaks about them being “enlightened”. By that he meant that they had discovered what Christendom meant more than Judaism. When they discovered that, they accepted the new. They were prepared to endure “a great conflict of sufferings” that it caused. Suffering goes hand in hand with accepting the Lord Jesus. There is not a single ground for the thought that the church will take possession of everything by a worldwide advancement of the gospel. It is a good thing to think of that always. . The writer speaks about two forms of suffering. There is a suffering that they individually experienced and a suffering they experienced by sympathizing with the sufferings of others. The suffering they endured by themselves consisted of “reproaches and tribulations” which were caused to them by their unbelieving fellow countrymen. Besides, these fellow countrymen were watching them like “a public spectacle” (cf. ). This suffering was visible for their surroundings. The other form of suffering is sharing in the sufferings of others. This is not personally, but it is spiritually sharing with others who endure it personally ( ; ). They had encouraged, probably visited, those who were kept in captivity because of their faith. . They were robbed from their possessions. Resentful Jews did that by plundering or confiscation. But they did not grieve about it. On the contrary, they “accepted joyfully” their loss. Did they still recall how that happened? Because they were convinced that they had a possession, which they could never lose, namely “a better possession and a lasting one”. It is a treasure in heaven where thieves cannot ever come ( ; ). When the eye is focused on that then there is power, courage and perseverance to continue the path of faith till the end. The suffering they endured was simply because they had chosen the right path. . Because of that, “therefore”, they were not to throw away their confidence with which they were proceeding the path of faith. At the end the reward was surely awaiting them: the eternal inheritance in the promised land. . It was, and it is for you, a matter of endurance. A lack of endurance results in falling away from faith. Endurance means remaining in the circumstances one finds oneself without escaping them. By endurance you partake of “the promise”: the inheritance. Therefore “the will of God” has to be done. Always when ‘the will of God’ is spoken about in a letter it is said in relation to the content of the letter. The will of God here has to do with the faith in the testimony concerning Jesus as the Messiah, Who was crucified, Who has died and raised, which caused that the sins are taken away. It is also His will that you look at a High Priest in heaven at the right hand of God, while on earth you possibly have to endure tribulation and persecution. It is God’s will that you endure in that until you will be with Him. . And that will only last “a very little while”, for Christ is coming soon and will fulfill everything that has been promised. His offering fitted you to partake of the fulfillment of the promises. The reason why you still have to wait and why you were not immediately transferred to heaven right after your conversion is that the faith you are confessing is tested as to its trueness. He is coming and will not delay. If ‘delaying’ becomes a central matter in your life you will become unfaithful to the Lord ( ) and from the good servant you are now you will turn into an evil servant. . To prevent that, it is necessary to live according to the principle of faith. The writer quotes here for the third time in the New Testament a verse from Habakkuk ( ). In each of the three quotations the emphasis is different. 1. In the first quotation, the emphasis is on ‘righteous’ ( ); 2. in the second, it is on ‘faith’ (opposite the law) ( ) and 3. in the third, it is on ‘life’ (opposite to perishing in the wilderness, falling away) ( ). As long as the coming of the Lord is delayed, the righteous should live from the power of his faith. He who lives as a righteous one has nothing to fear for and will surely endure. God speaks here of “My just”. This resonates the affection God has for everyone who lives from the faith in Him in a world that is against Him. . He who is a Christian by name will turn off and be rejected by God. Shrinking back is withdrawing from the path of faith, leaving that path. That can happen for example because of fear for men, which causes the necessary endurance to disappear. It can also happen by ignoring the Word of God and not looking upon the High Priest alone anymore. Such people do not please God. They return to the dead works from which they had turned off under the confession of the power of the blood of Christ. In the next chapter God will present people who do please Him. The writer does not assume that his readers are such apostates, just as he himself is not, for because of the word “we” he is using, you see that he again includes himself. I suppose that you too are not of the kind that shrinks back and who from fear abandons Christendom and has to meet such a terrible judgment. I suppose that you belong to those who “have faith to the preserving of the soul”, which means that you live by faith and in that way you preserve your soul until the end of the journey. Now read Hebrews 10:28-39 again. Reflection: Do you sometimes fear for falling away from faith or do you know of another person who does? What is your reply to that fear?

‏ Hebrews 10:28-29

He Who Is Coming Will Come

Heb 10:28. We are in a section in which we are again warned against falling away. The consequences of falling away are presented in the most horrific way. After all it is not about a detail! It is about rejecting the only offering that God has given in His Son and to which offering the apostate at first consented. That is nothing else than deliberate rebellion against God. Rebelling against God, while knowing His will, was and still is a serious matter to God. Just take a look at the law of Moses. Whosoever rejected that law, in other words: trampled and despised it – so not accidentally transgressed it – died without mercy (cf. Num 15:30-36). Death penalty followed “on [the testimony of] two or three witnesses”.

Heb 10:29. If God already punished rebellion under the old covenant that severely, how much severer will the punishment be if a person rebels against the new covenant. The severer punishment is the eternal judgment, while in the Old Testament it concerned a corporal punishment. But the severer punishment is fitting for gravity of that sin. It is ultimately about nothing less than trampling the Son of God, the eternal Son, and despising His work.

You may say that transgressing the law was purely disobedience. How serious that might have already been, yet it is more serious to despise the grace of God and what He has done in His Son. It is rejecting the whole counsel of God’s plan of salvation with a contempt that gives no hope for conversion. To trample something under foot indicates a contemptible treatment. This is how one who is only a Christian in name treats the Son of God when he, after having first acknowledged Him as the Son of God, later on exchanges Him for a tangible religion. It is the grossest form of denial that anyone can do to Him. By such a treatment the Lord Jesus is held for liar and His work as meaningless.

The latter appears from the denial of the blood of the covenant. Through this blood the confessor was sanctified, which means: set apart outwardly. It is the same sanctification that also applies to the unbelieving husband whose wife came to faith (1Cor 7:14). He confessed to be hiding behind the blood, like all members of the company he joined, though he didn’t believe in the power of the blood. At a certain moment he accounted it unholy. It is not surprising that such a person also insults “the Spirit of grace”. The Holy Spirit showed him grace when he entered professing Christianity by making him a partaker of His work in the church. But now he ignored the grace with a gesture of contempt.

Heb 10:30. By speaking about “we” the writer places himself among those to whom he writes. He sees all of them, including himself, as confessors. They all had the same confession. But there was a chance that there were some among them for whom the confession was only a matter of the lips and not of the heart. With regard to them he speaks these serious words. He wants to appeal to their conscience, so that they still may open up their hearts to receive the truth and that they will not turn to a religion that is rejected by God and which will surely cause them to die in their sins.

They all knew God as the One Who judges. None of them was ignorant about that. God’s vengeance implies that He will righteously measure what a person is worthy of. He will repay and judge in a righteous way.

Heb 10:31. He who falls away from the living God (Heb 3:12), will surely fall into the hands of the living God. How totally differently does the believer look at the hands of God. He loves to entrust himself to them (2Sam 24:14) because he trusts that God is perfectly righteous and full of love.

Heb 10:32. After his severe exhortations the writer appeals encouragingly to the readers again from Heb 10:32. He has expressed his fear for the falling away of a very few, but for the many of the company he doesn’t have that fear. He saw the fruits of the new life with them. He reminds them of that by taking them back in spirit to the former days. He speaks about them being “enlightened”. By that he meant that they had discovered what Christendom meant more than Judaism. When they discovered that, they accepted the new.

They were prepared to endure “a great conflict of sufferings” that it caused. Suffering goes hand in hand with accepting the Lord Jesus. There is not a single ground for the thought that the church will take possession of everything by a worldwide advancement of the gospel. It is a good thing to think of that always.

Heb 10:33. The writer speaks about two forms of suffering. There is a suffering that they individually experienced and a suffering they experienced by sympathizing with the sufferings of others. The suffering they endured by themselves consisted of “reproaches and tribulations” which were caused to them by their unbelieving fellow countrymen. Besides, these fellow countrymen were watching them like “a public spectacle” (cf. 1Cor 4:9). This suffering was visible for their surroundings. The other form of suffering is sharing in the sufferings of others. This is not personally, but it is spiritually sharing with others who endure it personally (Heb 13:3; Mt 25:36 ; 39). They had encouraged, probably visited, those who were kept in captivity because of their faith.

Heb 10:34. They were robbed from their possessions. Resentful Jews did that by plundering or confiscation. But they did not grieve about it. On the contrary, they “accepted joyfully” their loss. Did they still recall how that happened? Because they were convinced that they had a possession, which they could never lose, namely “a better possession and a lasting one”. It is a treasure in heaven where thieves cannot ever come (Mt 6:20; 1Pet 1:4). When the eye is focused on that then there is power, courage and perseverance to continue the path of faith till the end. The suffering they endured was simply because they had chosen the right path.

Heb 10:35. Because of that, “therefore”, they were not to throw away their confidence with which they were proceeding the path of faith. At the end the reward was surely awaiting them: the eternal inheritance in the promised land.

Heb 10:36. It was, and it is for you, a matter of endurance. A lack of endurance results in falling away from faith. Endurance means remaining in the circumstances one finds oneself without escaping them. By endurance you partake of “the promise”: the inheritance.

Therefore “the will of God” has to be done. Always when ‘the will of God’ is spoken about in a letter it is said in relation to the content of the letter. The will of God here has to do with the faith in the testimony concerning Jesus as the Messiah, Who was crucified, Who has died and raised, which caused that the sins are taken away. It is also His will that you look at a High Priest in heaven at the right hand of God, while on earth you possibly have to endure tribulation and persecution. It is God’s will that you endure in that until you will be with Him.

Heb 10:37. And that will only last “a very little while”, for Christ is coming soon and will fulfill everything that has been promised. His offering fitted you to partake of the fulfillment of the promises. The reason why you still have to wait and why you were not immediately transferred to heaven right after your conversion is that the faith you are confessing is tested as to its trueness. He is coming and will not delay. If ‘delaying’ becomes a central matter in your life you will become unfaithful to the Lord (Mt 24:48-50) and from the good servant you are now you will turn into an evil servant.

Heb 10:38. To prevent that, it is necessary to live according to the principle of faith. The writer quotes here for the third time in the New Testament a verse from Habakkuk (Hab 2:3-4). In each of the three quotations the emphasis is different.

1. In the first quotation, the emphasis is on ‘righteous’ (Rom 1:17);

2. in the second, it is on ‘faith’ (opposite the law) (Gal 3:11) and

3. in the third, it is on ‘life’ (opposite to perishing in the wilderness, falling away) (Heb 10:38).

As long as the coming of the Lord is delayed, the righteous should live from the power of his faith. He who lives as a righteous one has nothing to fear for and will surely endure. God speaks here of “My just”. This resonates the affection God has for everyone who lives from the faith in Him in a world that is against Him.

Heb 10:39. He who is a Christian by name will turn off and be rejected by God. Shrinking back is withdrawing from the path of faith, leaving that path. That can happen for example because of fear for men, which causes the necessary endurance to disappear. It can also happen by ignoring the Word of God and not looking upon the High Priest alone anymore. Such people do not please God. They return to the dead works from which they had turned off under the confession of the power of the blood of Christ. In the next chapter God will present people who do please Him.

The writer does not assume that his readers are such apostates, just as he himself is not, for because of the word “we” he is using, you see that he again includes himself. I suppose that you too are not of the kind that shrinks back and who from fear abandons Christendom and has to meet such a terrible judgment.

I suppose that you belong to those who “have faith to the preserving of the soul”, which means that you live by faith and in that way you preserve your soul until the end of the journey.

Now read Hebrews 10:28-39 again.

Reflection: Do you sometimes fear for falling away from faith or do you know of another person who does? What is your reply to that fear?