Ben Witherington has an excellent post here on his very informative blog on the subject of the Hebrews 6 passage. It is very detailed so grab a cup of coffee...
Showing posts with label Warning Passages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warning Passages. Show all posts
February 25, 2008
February 3, 2008
The Blessing of Sight
This is a post from one of my favorite blogs that is no longer on the web. It is a post that deals with the subject of how God sometimes opens our eyes to the awefulness of our sins when we are shutting them on purpose. But it is also about God's rich mercy that is there to comfort and forgive us when we repent.
The Blessing of Sight
You’ve just truly seen yourself for the first time and now you’re scared. For years you have lived in the bubble of your own religious pretense, presumption and play acting, but now the mask has been taken from you and you tremble at what you’ve been shown.
For there lying conspicuously in front of you, what you had ignored so many times before, is a passage of God’s truth that now turns your heart to melted wax. Like a melted, snuffed candle you feel as if the life and flame has gone out from within you and now you think yourself as a grotesque blob of useless smoldering wax. What once was brushed aside by a mental wave of the hand, now has you terrified. You are desperate, anxious and near total despair. Perhaps it was the infamous Hebrews 6:4-6 or Hebrews 10:26-28 that struck your pride down. Maybe an Old Testament passage kindled your guilt and gave you glimmers of how past sins that had gone unnoticed and untended for so many years. It doesn't matter. Now you've been brought low. Now you realize your own sin, and you feel the weight of the deep offenses you’ve piled upon yourself and before the Lord.
Regardless of which dagger of the Living God’s truth struck and pierced your heart, you still think: "What need is there for me to stand before God to face his judgment? His wrath is already on me. His angry eyes are fixed on my unrepentant, bold, unabashed sin."
But even in his anger there is hope, much hope. In fact, for quite possibly the very first time in your life, there is true hope for you. Or is it that you have forgotten what the Word of God says? Have you not remembered that the God of All Creation is a God is One that brings forth the greatest good from the greatest sorrow for all who call upon him? Remember the story of Esther and how near the Jews were to annihilation at the hands of wicked Haman? Remember how the Israelites were pinned between the sea and a charging, well-armed Egyptian army? Remember the more than 185,000 Assyrians that were at Jerusalem’s gates? What about Jonah defying God, yet having a great work performed through his preaching after he was spared? What about the utterly depraved Ninevehites who heard Jonah’s preaching and repented? How about a murderous Paul being turned from his madness - when he didn’t even ask for it?
Now maybe you think: “That’s all well and good for a child of God, but I no longer think that God will accept me. I am as Esau. I am as Judas, once he saw his sin. I am like the Israelite put out of the camp or to be stoned to death for his offense and blasphemy. I don’t believe that I can repent and I don't believe that God will allow me to repent.”
Ah, but you see the truth. You see that to continue unrepentant is to sign your own spiritual death warrant. You see that your offenses before God is the thing to be sorrowful over. You now understand that you’ve offended God and that you continue to offend God. The question is not whether you see your guilt as a legitimate problem, the question now is what you are going to do about it?
Will you go the way of Judas, take matters into your own hands, and kill yourself in unbelief? Will go back to sinning, resolved to your presumed 'fate', and continue to live unrepentant like Cain and Esau? Or will your sorrow and guilt drive you to seek to Christ and trust in his promises for salvation. Remember Jesus said that those who seek find. Those who ask, receive. Those who knock are let in the door. So do these things and plead for God’s mercy, ask for repentance from him, and if you can’t find it in your heart now, pray for it and expect to find his grace.
Sight is a rare gift. To see God’s truth is a great blessing that far too often is not cherished and is taken for granted. To have sight of the truth is to have a measure of God's grace in your heart.
And the Spirit of God will work a heart to fear its separation from the truth in order to bring it back to conformity to God’s will. He will use the sight of your sin to turn you from your ways.
To that end, do not look upon anxiety or fear as a great curse, but as a blessing that God has not given up on you. He is prompting you to return to him to find the grace and peace in the Lord Jesus Christ and to show you that the melted wax of your heart does not mean that the light of Christ’s love has extinguished. It just means that he is preparing the ground for your return and for your receipt of his love and truth.
"If we are faithless,
he will remain faithful,
for he cannot disown himself" - 2 Timothy 2:13
(Some may recognize this post as it was linked to a lot, but I am leaving the author's name out because I can't contact him to see if it's ok to put on here.)
The Blessing of Sight
You’ve just truly seen yourself for the first time and now you’re scared. For years you have lived in the bubble of your own religious pretense, presumption and play acting, but now the mask has been taken from you and you tremble at what you’ve been shown.
For there lying conspicuously in front of you, what you had ignored so many times before, is a passage of God’s truth that now turns your heart to melted wax. Like a melted, snuffed candle you feel as if the life and flame has gone out from within you and now you think yourself as a grotesque blob of useless smoldering wax. What once was brushed aside by a mental wave of the hand, now has you terrified. You are desperate, anxious and near total despair. Perhaps it was the infamous Hebrews 6:4-6 or Hebrews 10:26-28 that struck your pride down. Maybe an Old Testament passage kindled your guilt and gave you glimmers of how past sins that had gone unnoticed and untended for so many years. It doesn't matter. Now you've been brought low. Now you realize your own sin, and you feel the weight of the deep offenses you’ve piled upon yourself and before the Lord.
Regardless of which dagger of the Living God’s truth struck and pierced your heart, you still think: "What need is there for me to stand before God to face his judgment? His wrath is already on me. His angry eyes are fixed on my unrepentant, bold, unabashed sin."
But even in his anger there is hope, much hope. In fact, for quite possibly the very first time in your life, there is true hope for you. Or is it that you have forgotten what the Word of God says? Have you not remembered that the God of All Creation is a God is One that brings forth the greatest good from the greatest sorrow for all who call upon him? Remember the story of Esther and how near the Jews were to annihilation at the hands of wicked Haman? Remember how the Israelites were pinned between the sea and a charging, well-armed Egyptian army? Remember the more than 185,000 Assyrians that were at Jerusalem’s gates? What about Jonah defying God, yet having a great work performed through his preaching after he was spared? What about the utterly depraved Ninevehites who heard Jonah’s preaching and repented? How about a murderous Paul being turned from his madness - when he didn’t even ask for it?
Now maybe you think: “That’s all well and good for a child of God, but I no longer think that God will accept me. I am as Esau. I am as Judas, once he saw his sin. I am like the Israelite put out of the camp or to be stoned to death for his offense and blasphemy. I don’t believe that I can repent and I don't believe that God will allow me to repent.”
Ah, but you see the truth. You see that to continue unrepentant is to sign your own spiritual death warrant. You see that your offenses before God is the thing to be sorrowful over. You now understand that you’ve offended God and that you continue to offend God. The question is not whether you see your guilt as a legitimate problem, the question now is what you are going to do about it?
Will you go the way of Judas, take matters into your own hands, and kill yourself in unbelief? Will go back to sinning, resolved to your presumed 'fate', and continue to live unrepentant like Cain and Esau? Or will your sorrow and guilt drive you to seek to Christ and trust in his promises for salvation. Remember Jesus said that those who seek find. Those who ask, receive. Those who knock are let in the door. So do these things and plead for God’s mercy, ask for repentance from him, and if you can’t find it in your heart now, pray for it and expect to find his grace.
Sight is a rare gift. To see God’s truth is a great blessing that far too often is not cherished and is taken for granted. To have sight of the truth is to have a measure of God's grace in your heart.
And the Spirit of God will work a heart to fear its separation from the truth in order to bring it back to conformity to God’s will. He will use the sight of your sin to turn you from your ways.
To that end, do not look upon anxiety or fear as a great curse, but as a blessing that God has not given up on you. He is prompting you to return to him to find the grace and peace in the Lord Jesus Christ and to show you that the melted wax of your heart does not mean that the light of Christ’s love has extinguished. It just means that he is preparing the ground for your return and for your receipt of his love and truth.
"If we are faithless,
he will remain faithful,
for he cannot disown himself" - 2 Timothy 2:13
(Some may recognize this post as it was linked to a lot, but I am leaving the author's name out because I can't contact him to see if it's ok to put on here.)
February 1, 2008
A Failure to Move Forward
"Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity..."(Hebrews 6:1, ESV)
One thing that stands out about this warning passage and others in Hebrews the more I read them are the similarities between what the writer is saying and the experience of Israel in the wilderness at Kadesh-Barnea (see here). The writer here in Hebrews 6 is scolding his congregation for their lack of forward progress in the faith. He then abrubptly stops and gives this solemn warning about the consequences of continuing in this state. If we look back to Numbers 14 we can see that the Israelites suffered from this exact same thing:
"Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron...'Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?' And they said to one another,'Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.'" (Numbers 14:1,3b-4)
God had promised to give them the land in his covenant with Abraham. They had also experienced countless miracles, eschatological wonders, and caring provision from the hand of God which parallels the gifts experienced by the New Covenant believer in Hebrews 6:4-5. In spite of all this they still refused to go forward, thus completely setting aside the covenant promises God had made to them. They not only rejected God, they also rejected his servant Moses and conspired to put him to the open shame of the death of a covenant breaker (parallelling putting Christ to open shame in the New Covenant). When God finally thunders from heaven in judgment on his people in Numbers 14:22-23 he says that it was for thier habitual rebellion, not for any isolated act, which helps us shed light on the statement about "falling away" in Hebrews 6:6. This falling away is not an isolated act of disobedience, or even an ongoing struggle with a certain sin, but a habitual and ongoing condition of a hard heart that despises God and his commandments and covenant promises. In fact it is a heart so hard that there is no shame, and when offered the chance of repentance it is rejected (Numbers 14:9-10). This is a dangerous condition indeed.
What the writer of Hebrews is showing here is the dangerous place that apathy, or refusing to go forward in the faith can result in. Calvin says in his commentaries that apathy can lead to indifference, and indifference to alienation, and alienation if not repented of can lead to this falling away and full rejection of Christ and his teachings in the New Covenant.
In summary, this passage is not for those who struggle with sin, which every single Christian does daily. So who is it for? I'm not sure I know the exact answer to that except to say that it's to those who are deliberately refusing to move forward in the faith for whatever reason.
So what is the author of Hebrews saying to us? "...we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." (Heb 6:11-12). We move forward with the full assurance of hope in God's promises, especially the promise of the forgiveness of sins!
One thing that stands out about this warning passage and others in Hebrews the more I read them are the similarities between what the writer is saying and the experience of Israel in the wilderness at Kadesh-Barnea (see here). The writer here in Hebrews 6 is scolding his congregation for their lack of forward progress in the faith. He then abrubptly stops and gives this solemn warning about the consequences of continuing in this state. If we look back to Numbers 14 we can see that the Israelites suffered from this exact same thing:
"Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron...'Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?' And they said to one another,'Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.'" (Numbers 14:1,3b-4)
God had promised to give them the land in his covenant with Abraham. They had also experienced countless miracles, eschatological wonders, and caring provision from the hand of God which parallels the gifts experienced by the New Covenant believer in Hebrews 6:4-5. In spite of all this they still refused to go forward, thus completely setting aside the covenant promises God had made to them. They not only rejected God, they also rejected his servant Moses and conspired to put him to the open shame of the death of a covenant breaker (parallelling putting Christ to open shame in the New Covenant). When God finally thunders from heaven in judgment on his people in Numbers 14:22-23 he says that it was for thier habitual rebellion, not for any isolated act, which helps us shed light on the statement about "falling away" in Hebrews 6:6. This falling away is not an isolated act of disobedience, or even an ongoing struggle with a certain sin, but a habitual and ongoing condition of a hard heart that despises God and his commandments and covenant promises. In fact it is a heart so hard that there is no shame, and when offered the chance of repentance it is rejected (Numbers 14:9-10). This is a dangerous condition indeed.
What the writer of Hebrews is showing here is the dangerous place that apathy, or refusing to go forward in the faith can result in. Calvin says in his commentaries that apathy can lead to indifference, and indifference to alienation, and alienation if not repented of can lead to this falling away and full rejection of Christ and his teachings in the New Covenant.
In summary, this passage is not for those who struggle with sin, which every single Christian does daily. So who is it for? I'm not sure I know the exact answer to that except to say that it's to those who are deliberately refusing to move forward in the faith for whatever reason.
So what is the author of Hebrews saying to us? "...we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." (Heb 6:11-12). We move forward with the full assurance of hope in God's promises, especially the promise of the forgiveness of sins!
January 19, 2008
Hebrews 6, the corporate translation
"For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt." (Hebrews 6:4-6, ESV)
A lot of the time people will read this verse and wonder "is this me?". Especially those who have been caught up in some certain sin or another. But one thing that has struck me about these verses after reading this is the corporate nature of the language in these verses. If you look you will see words like those and them. If you follow the more Redemptive Historical explanation offered in the paper listed above (or here) its hard not to conclude that at least part of the authors intentions were to address them in a corporate manner. In other words, if we (church/corporate body) fall away from God in the same way that Israel fell away from God, then that we will not be able to be restored again. But this falling away is not just any falling away. In the events at Kadesh-Barnea the Israelites were ready to stone Moses, God's mediator, and expose him to the shame of being cast outside the camp and killed. But here if there is not forward progression, then the author says that the consequences are much worse now that we are in the New Covenant, for it's not Moses now, but Jesus that we will put to an open shame if we fall in this way!
Now the big question is to what extent did they fall away at Kadesh-Barnea? In other words, what did it look like to those looking on? I hope to deal with that in the next post.
Go back and look at the story of Israel in the wilderness and the events leading up to Numbers 14 through the lenses of Hebrews 5 and 6. To me this corporate approach makes more sense than the individualistic interpretations that we've all heard.
A lot of the time people will read this verse and wonder "is this me?". Especially those who have been caught up in some certain sin or another. But one thing that has struck me about these verses after reading this is the corporate nature of the language in these verses. If you look you will see words like those and them. If you follow the more Redemptive Historical explanation offered in the paper listed above (or here) its hard not to conclude that at least part of the authors intentions were to address them in a corporate manner. In other words, if we (church/corporate body) fall away from God in the same way that Israel fell away from God, then that we will not be able to be restored again. But this falling away is not just any falling away. In the events at Kadesh-Barnea the Israelites were ready to stone Moses, God's mediator, and expose him to the shame of being cast outside the camp and killed. But here if there is not forward progression, then the author says that the consequences are much worse now that we are in the New Covenant, for it's not Moses now, but Jesus that we will put to an open shame if we fall in this way!
Now the big question is to what extent did they fall away at Kadesh-Barnea? In other words, what did it look like to those looking on? I hope to deal with that in the next post.
Go back and look at the story of Israel in the wilderness and the events leading up to Numbers 14 through the lenses of Hebrews 5 and 6. To me this corporate approach makes more sense than the individualistic interpretations that we've all heard.
January 14, 2008
Great Explanation of warning passages in Heberews
I've found a new blog by Scot Mcknight that I've really been enjoying. He has a really good exegesis of the warning passages in Hebrews. It's broken down into four sections which really helps. They are:
Exhortation
Sin
Believers or Not?
So What?
I'm not sure I agree totally with his "phenominological-true believer" category, and he doesn't subscribe to the Calvinistic view of Hebrews completely, but I appreciate the way he honestly writes about struggling with it. The comments are great, too.
Exhortation
Sin
Believers or Not?
So What?
I'm not sure I agree totally with his "phenominological-true believer" category, and he doesn't subscribe to the Calvinistic view of Hebrews completely, but I appreciate the way he honestly writes about struggling with it. The comments are great, too.
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