Here’s a succinct summary of 2:9-18 for context and flow:
- The Father wanted many sons, and he wanted to bring them “to glory” (2:10).
- But sin prevented humans from becoming His sons, so He had an issue to resolve.
- The Father began by giving birth to one Son who was untainted by Adam’s bloodline, Jesus.
- Jesus, as a sinless human, endured the same sufferings we endure, especially death (2:9, 2:10; 2:14, 2:17).
- This “perfected” (or, “completed”) Jesus in the flesh (2:10).
- The Father crowned Jesus with glory (2:9).
- He had now brought one Son to glory but, as 2:10 said, he wanted to do this for many sons.
- Jesus’ human experience enabled Him show us mercy and come to our aid in relation to God (2:17-18).
- We can now become Jesus’ own brothers, sons of His Father, through that mercy and aid (2:11).
- Now the Father can SANCTIFY and bring us, His many sons, to glory (2:11).
Let’s take that word SANCTIFY with us as we read the next verse.
3:1 Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession;
“Partakers” in Greek is the same word translated “companions” in 1:9 and “partners” elsewhere.
This verse says that as Jesus’ brothers we are HOLY.
- HOLY in Greek is “HAGIOS” (ἅγιος)
- SANCTIFY in Greek is “HAGIAZŌ” (ἁγιάζω)
You can easily see that these are two forms of the same word. Being sanctified means being made holy.
The sanctification described in Chapter 2 changed us from filthy sinners into Jesus’ HOLY BROTHERS and PARTNERS WITH Him in His “heavenly calling.” We have been summoned to heaven with Jesus!
Whew! Don’t continue reading too quickly! That’s almost more than I can take in as I write! Ruminate on that for a little while. Dwell for some time on what the Father accomplished in you and me!
As the writer says, because of this incredible truth we should “CONSIDER Jesus.”
“CONSIDER” in English doesn’t carry as intense of a meaning as the Greek word behind it (katanoeō, or κατανοέω). But you’ll see its intensity come out in other contexts in which it is used:
- ACTS 11:6 [Peter’s dream]:
“I was in the city of Joppa praying; and in a trance I saw a vision, an object coming down like a great sheet lowered by four corners from the sky; and it came right down to me when I had fixed my gaze on it and was OBSERVING (katanoeō), I saw the four-footed animals of the earth and the wild beasts and the crawling creatures and the birds of the air.”
- ROMANS 4:19 [Abraham wondering how God could possibly give him a son]:
“Without becoming weak in faith he CONTEMPLATED (katanoeō ) his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”
Peter and Abraham weren’t just acknowledging these things, they were in awe! The writer of Hebrews doesn’t want is to simply acknowledge that Jesus made us holy sons of the Father. He wants us to marinate in it, to soak in its full implications for our lives.
Jesus, the writer goes on, is our APOSTLE (the most basic sense of this word is “ambassador” or “representative”) and our HIGH PRIEST (meaning that He gives us access to the Father by bridging the gap between us and Him).
I think it’s a mistake to think, as some do, that this verse is calling Jesus God’s representative to us. While He is that too, the focus in this context is that Jesus goes to the Father to represent us. He is our representative to the Father.
Jesus’ role as our High Priest will be important as this study moves forward. The writer will expand upon ways Jesus is a superior to the priests of Levi. But first he’ll show how Jesus is superior to Moses, who established the priesthood and who anointed Aaron, the first High Priest.
He mentions two ways Jesus is superior to Moses in the next few verses:
- Jesus built the house in which Moses faithfully served
- Although Moses was God’s servant, Jesus is God’s son
3:2 He was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house. 3 For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house.
Vv.2-3 are confusing in both English and Greek because of the many instances of “He,” “His,” and “Him.” Here’s how it breaks down when read carefully:List item 1
- 3:2a Jesus (He) was faithful to the Father (Him) who appointed Jesus (Him), just like...
- 3:2b Moses was faithful in all of the Father’s (His) house.
- 3:3 Jesus (He) built the house that Moses was faithful in, so He is counted more worthy than Moses.
3:4 For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.
This verse is sort of a parenthesis. Jesus built the house itself (v.3) though the Father is ultimately the Creator of everything.
3:5 Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later; 6 but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.
Though both were faithful, Moses was a SERVANT in the house; Jesus is a SON. And that makes all the difference.
CLIMAX! What “house” does the writer keep referring to?
It is us – the HOUSEHOLD of the Father, Jesus’ brothers, we who partake of the heavenly calling, we who have been sanctified and made holy, the many sons whom the Father brought to glory!
What could possibly prevent someone with this knowledge from compulsively falling flat on his or her face before the Father - whose desire for fellowship with us drove Him to devise and carry out such an intricate plan that required subjecting His only Son to suffering and death?
- Not one ounce of this is about our desire for Him. We desired only Satan’s world.
- Not one gram of this is about our worthiness. We didn’t have a crumb of that.
It is all about HIM desiring US and conveying HIS worthiness to us - and finding us holy because of it!
On my face I feel like praying “Father forgive me for ever standing up again!”
3:7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me,” as in the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years.
The wilderness tests our faithfulness, and it can harden us.
The scripture quoted here (Psalm 95:7-11) describes the time when the Israelites gave up on God in the wilderness. Moses was on the mountain hearing directly from God while the Israelites at the foot of the mountain provoked God to jealousy by building their own god.
About that, Moses said “I saw that you had indeed sinned against the LORD your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf; you had turned aside quickly from the way which the LORD had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes. I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to PROVOKE Him to anger.” (Deuteronomy 9:16-18).
I did a quick count of 34 times in the OT where people “provoked” God. In every case it is because the “the work of their hands” became their gods.
God certainly didn’t hide Himself from the Israelites in the wilderness. He provided daily food, caused their sandals to not wear out, and led them with a fire that went before them. He was evident all the while.
What they grumbled about was that things in their lives weren’t the way they wanted them to be. That’s what caused them to turn to their own creations. They had no control over what God did, but they had control over what they made.
That’s what the wilderness can do to us. We can lose sight of the sonship that God went to such great lengths to enable for us. We can turn attention to the things we’ve created and acquired with our own hands and make them more central in our lives than God.
The Holy Spirit warns us strongly in this passage against hardening our hearts in the wilderness.
Apply that to your own life and your own heart. I know it’s easy to apply it to mine.
3:10 “Therefore I was angry with this generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know My ways’; 11 As I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’”
The Hebrews writer continues to warn us about neglecting such a great salvation (from 2:3). The consequences are dire! God will be patient to a point, but the story of the grumbling Israelites shows that His patience has a limit beyond which the neglector will have no more opportunity.
Israel repeatedly neglected God in times of prosperity, too. But this is not that. This neglecting occurred when things in their lives were undesirable - at a time when their own insufficiency could have made them realize their complete dependence upon YHWH.
The lure of worldly pleasures drew the prodigal son away from his father. Famine drove him back to his father (Luke 15:14). The Israelites could have chosen the same in the wilderness. Instead they became angry and unfaithful to God. They loved this world too much, as is evident in their murmuring: “Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Numbers 14:4).
They wanted to turn around and go back to Egypt!! “Forget the Promised Land. We kind of liked slavery in Egypt. They didn’t treat us all that badly, and at least we knew what to expect!”
How prone we are to sacrificing a whole lot of heaven for a little bit of earth!
3:12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.
The writer addresses the readers as “brethren” and warns them against “falling away from the living God. “
What does “fall away from the living God” mean to this writer in this context? The answer is plain. It means not knowing God’s ways, angering Him, going astray in your heart, and thereby and losing the privilege of entering into the Father’s rest (v.11).
I can’t understand why there is still debate about whether it is possible for brethren to fall away. This passage is as clear as can be.
Important in connection with “fall away” in chapter 3:
In Numbers 14 and following, the original generation that set out for the Promised Land under Moses’ leadership died off before they got there – they never got their rest. But their kids, led by Joshua, continued the journey. They actually arrived and entered the land, but they rejected God once they arrived so God drove them right back out.
3:13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
This attractive, wicked, alluring thing called “sin” is all around us. It easily deceives us. And if it has victory in our hearts often enough it hardens us.
So we need to encourage each other “as long as it is called Today.”
[This phrase can also be properly translated “until it is called Today” – reader’s choice. Seeing how 10:25 tells us to encourage each other all the more “as you see the Day drawing near,” I believe “until it is called Today” is the better translation here in 3:13.]
What jumps out at me in this verse is that I am responsible for your faithfulness to God and you are responsible for mine.
We are to “ENCOURAGE each other daily.” Want to know something interesting about that charge?
- ENCOURAGE in Greek here is “PARAKALEŌ”.
- Barnabas’ nickname was ENCOURAGER (“PARAKLĒSIS”).
- Jesus called the Holy Spirit a HELPER (“PARAKLĒTOS”) throughout John 14-16.
These are all obvious forms of the same word. It has the deeper meaning of "to call to one's aid" (literally “para”=beside and “klatos”=”to call”).
The writer isn’t charging us to speak encouraging words to each other. Parakaleō requires us to be active and involved in each others' lives. And this passage says to do that “day after day.”
Falling is so easy!
3:14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end,
As in 3:1, “partake of” literally means “partner with.”
Do you want to partner with Christ? Do you want this salvation you’ve been warned not to neglect? Do you want to enter the Father’s rest? Then firmly hold onto the assurance that you received in the beginning all the way until the end.
Look at the sequence in v.14 very carefully.
1. We HAVE BECOME (in the present) partakers of Christ...
...IF...
2. ...WE HOLD (continuous) fast to the beginning of our assurance...
3. ...firm UNTIL THE END (in the future).
Do you see the mind-twisting message in that sentence? I am a Christian today if in the end I've held on to that assurance. If I do not hold onto that assurance all the way to the end, I'm not a Christian right now.
Paul made very similar statements in 1 Corinthians a Colossians:
- "[The gospel] by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you" (1 Corinthians 15:2)
- "He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach— if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister” (Colossians 1:22-23)
Together, verses 13-14 make me think of this common Hollywood... A man fell over the ledge of a tall building. He’s holding firmly to a railing so as to not fall to his death. His grip gets weaker and weaker. It feels impossible to keep holding on. But he knows someone is coming to save him, and a crowd is cheering him on to muster the strength to keep holding on, even when it seems impossible, until the rescue squad arrives.
Continue to hold tightly until the end to what you began holding tightly to in the beginning. Rescue is coming. Salvation is near.
3:15 while it is said, “Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.” 16 For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
The writer closes the point now. A time will come when the invitation is withdrawn. It came for the Israelites on their way to the Promised Land. It will come for use as well. Don’t wait until it is too late.
