The Book of Hebrews

Greek Study

Explanation

"Let us go on unto perfection." The cure for staying a babe is to press on toward maturity, not to keep "laying again the foundation." The writer lists six elementary matters that form the foundation, "repentance from dead works," "faith toward God," "the doctrine of baptisms," "laying on of hands," "resurrection of the dead," and "eternal judgment." These are the ABCs of the faith, and they are true and necessary; but a house is not built by pouring the foundation over and over. Mature believers build upward on that settled foundation. "If God permit" acknowledges that all growth is finally the gift of God.

Gospel Focus

"Let us go on unto perfection" is a summons, not a scolding. The six foundations listed are real and necessary — but they are the foundation, not the house. No builder keeps re-pouring the footings and never raises the walls. So the call is to build upward: onward into the deep knowledge of Christ our High Priest that the letter is about to open. To linger forever on first principles, refusing to grow, is itself a kind of drifting; the antidote to falling back is pressing on.

Greek Study

Explanation

This is among the most sobering passages in Scripture. It describes people who have gone far: "once enlightened," "tasted of the heavenly gift," "partakers of the Holy Ghost," having tasted "the good word of God." If such persons "fall away", deliberately abandon Christ, it is "impossible... to renew them again unto repentance." Why? "Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." To knowingly reject the Christ one has known is to side with those who crucified Him, to treat His cross as worthless and Him as a public disgrace. There is no other Saviour to turn to and no further sacrifice for sin; the one who spurns Christ has spurned the only remedy.

Gospel Focus

The warning is real and must not be softened, yet it must be read in its own frame. It is aimed at those who would turn from Christ back to the shadows of the old covenant, and it says plainly: there is no going back to find forgiveness elsewhere, because the only sacrifice for sin is the Son of God Himself. To reject Him is to be left with nothing. Notice that the very next verse breathes hope: "we are persuaded better things of you." The warning is God's loving alarm to keep His people from a cliff, not a verdict pronounced over the faithful. And it magnifies Christ: because He is the one and only Saviour, God manifest in flesh who alone purged our sins, there is no salvation apart from Him. The severity of the warning is the measure of His singular glory.

Greek Study

Explanation

The writer illustrates with a picture of two fields that receive the same rain. One drinks in the rain and "bringeth forth herbs," bearing useful fruit, and "receiveth blessing from God." The other, watered just the same, "beareth thorns and briers," and is "rejected... nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned." The rain is the same, the goodness of God poured out on all; the difference is what the ground produces. So it is with hearts that receive the gospel: the test of genuine faith is fruit. To receive God's grace and blessing and then bear only thorns is to prove oneself the cursed ground. The evidence of real faith, as the next verses show, is a life of love and perseverance.

Gospel Focus

One rain falls on two fields. The same grace, the same word, the same gospel showers on every hearer alike — and the difference shows only in the harvest. One ground "drinketh in the rain" and bears useful herbs and "receiveth blessing from God"; the other drinks the very same rain and throws up thorns. Hearing is not the dividing line; fruit is. It is a solemn word to anyone who has received much and returned nothing — and a call to let the rain of God's grace bring forth a crop that blesses.

Greek Study

Explanation

Notice the pastoral tenderness: "beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation." The warning was severe, but the writer believes his readers are the genuine, fruitful ground, and he points to the evidence: "your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name," in ministering to the saints. "God is not unrighteous to forget" such love; He remembers and rewards it. So he urges them not to coast but to "shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end," to be "not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." Genuine faith perseveres, and perseverance leads to full assurance.

Gospel Focus

After the sharpest warning in the letter comes the tenderest reassurance: "beloved, we are persuaded better things of you." True warning and true confidence are not enemies; the same pastor who cautions also comforts. And the ground of comfort is God's own justice: "God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love." He remembers every quiet service done "toward his name." So the readers are urged to press on with the same diligence "unto the end," imitating those who "through faith and patience inherit the promises" — the very faith and patience that Abraham, in the next verses, will model.

Old Testament Source

This is Genesis 22:16-17, God's oath to Abraham after the offering of Isaac: "By myself have I sworn... in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed." Because there is no one greater to swear by, God swore by Himself. Abraham "patiently endured," waiting years for Isaac and a lifetime for the fuller promise, and "obtained the promise." His patient faith is the pattern the readers are urged to follow.

Greek Study

Explanation

God stoops to Abraham's weakness. A promise from God needs nothing added — yet to steady a waiting heart, God swore an oath, and "because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself." There is no higher name for God to invoke than His own. Then comes the long test of patience: the son of promise did not come for twenty-five years, but "after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise." Promise and oath together, and a faith that would not quit, brought Abraham at last to the very thing God had spoken.

Gospel Focus

The astonishing thing is that God would swear at all. His bare word is already truth itself; He owes us no oath. Yet "willing more abundantly to shew... the immutability of his counsel," He condescends to bind Himself, so that trembling hearts might have rock beneath their feet. And the promise sworn to Abraham runs straight to us, for it is fulfilled in Christ, Abraham's Seed. Our hope does not hang on our grip on God, but on God's own unbreakable, self-sworn word — the God who cannot lie has staked His own name on saving us.

Greek Study

Explanation

The argument is a chain of certainty. Among men an oath ends all dispute; God, condescending to that custom, added His oath to His promise. So now there are "two immutable things" — God's promise and God's oath — "in which it was impossible for God to lie," and on that double foundation rests "strong consolation." This hope is then pictured two ways at once: it is an "anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast," but an anchor cast not downward into shifting seas — it reaches upward and inward, "into that within the veil," fastened inside the heavenly sanctuary itself, where Jesus our forerunner has already gone.

Gospel Focus

God stooped to our weakness. Men confirm their word with an oath to end all argument; so God, though His bare word is enough, added an oath, giving us "two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie." Our hope rests not on our feelings but on the doubled certainty of God's promise and God's oath. This hope is "an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast," and, wonderfully, it is anchored not to something in this shifting world but "within the veil", in the very presence of God in the heavenly sanctuary. And why is that anchor secure? Because "the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever." Our anchor is fixed to Jesus Himself, who has already gone into God's presence as our High Priest and pioneer. He is God in flesh, seated within the veil, and because He is there, our salvation cannot be moved. The One who cannot lie has promised, and the One who is our forerunner has entered; so the storm-tossed soul holds an anchor that will never drag.