The author has been pressing on this theme since the second chapter of his letter. Consider the following passages. “Therefore,” because of the glory of Christ that was described in chapter 1, “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it” and “how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” (2:1) Christians, we must persevere in the love of Christ by faith in Christ.
“Take care, brothers [and sisters], lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (3:12-14). Christians, we must persevere in the love of Christ by faith in Christ.
“Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it” (4:1). And again, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that none of you may fall by that same sort of disobedience” (4:11). And again, “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (4:14). Christians, we must persevere in the love of Christ by faith in Christ.
Then in chapters 5 and 6, the author halted the flow of his argument because he was afraid that his readers had become so hard-hearted that they couldn’t even hear the message he was proclaiming to them. He was concerned that they would be bored by the glorious things God has done in Christ, and so he rebuked them very sharply in love and then said this: “Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And 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” (6:9-12).
Please pay careful attention to that last line. One of the antidotes to being sluggish and thus being severely disciplined by God is to imitate the faith and patience of those who inherit the promises of God. Now, that line is the seed that latter sprouts up to become Hebrews 11. In fact, if you were to jump from 6:11-12 right to 11:1, the letter would be seamless and make perfect sense. “And 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…Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen” (6:11-12; 11:1).
Do you see what I mean? Read this way, the letter would be seamless and make sense, but the problem is that it would also be tragically false and teach us false things about what it means to persevere in Christ by faith. Why do I say that? Only because this way of putting things would miss the gospel, and above all things, we do not want to miss the gospel! To write the letter this way would give us the impression that persevering in the love of Christ by faith in Christ is essentially a work of the flesh, that it’s something we do for God. It would therefore make a mockery of the all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ by which we are saved and by which we stay saved and by which we will be saved forever.
By inserting chapters 7-10 into the discussion, the author most powerfully shows that persevering in the love of Christ is not about doing something for God but rather depending on what God has already done for us in Christ. It’s not about struggling in our flesh to have faith; it’s about resting in the finished work of Christ. The old covenant was marked by the words, “All that the Lord has said we will do,” but that covenant didn’t work and it will never work because “we will do it” always devolves into “ain’t gonna happen”! Thus, in his amazing grace, God gave us a new covenant in Christ that is marked by the words from Jeremiah 31:31-34, “I will do it, declares the Lord.” In other words, God is saying, “I will do for you what you could never do for yourselves, and your only part is to listen and believe. And I’ll even give you the grace for that so that in the end I get all the glory and you get eternal joy.”
With this in mind, the author again, at the end of chapter 10, issues a serious rebuke and warns us that it’s no small thing to turn away from the sacrifice of Christ. This rebuke is very similar to the one in chapter 6 and it warns us that rejecting what God has accomplished for us in Christ is tragic and eternally dangerous. Indeed, the author says that if we push Christ aside there’s nothing left for us but to face the wrath of God without protection, and indeed, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:32).
In love, the author had to again warn his precious readers but as he did at the end of chapter 6, so again he concludes his rebuke with an encouragement. In verses 33-39 he reminds his dear readers that they did indeed have a genuine faith in God, that the righteous live by faith, and that they were of those who will preserve their souls and not of those who would shrunk back and perish. They had need to persevere in the love of Christ by faith in Christ and the author had hope that they would do so. But given that faith plays such a crucial role in life with Christ, he now turns his full attention to that topic in chapter 11 and says, “Let’s talk about faith for a little while. Let’s talk about how faith operates and how you can press on in Christ at this time of your lives.”
Friends, I hope you can see that this train of thought puts faith in an extremely important place. I would dare say that there’s nothing in this life so valuable as faith: not money; not gold or silver or precious metals or jewels; not houses or cars or boats or other possessions; not prestige or power among our neighbors or co-workers or fellow citizens; not talent or success in our chosen fields; not good looks and straight teeth and fashionable clothing; not all the fleshly pleasures this world affords. Nothing in this world is so valuable as faith, and if nothing else, I pray that this post will inspire you to get faith no matter the cost or consequence.
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