Hebrews Chapter Ten, How The Just Shall Live

 

Hebrews 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: [37] “For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. [38] Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.”

 

The author commends endurance for the purpose of doing the will of God. What is the will of God for a believer? Jesus once said, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority,” John 7:16, 17.

The application of sound doctrine in a believer’s life is God’s will for us. Obedience born of faith is God’s will for us. Loving the brethren as Christ loves us is God’s will for us. Preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost world is God’s will for us.

 

I believe that, “after you have done the will of God,” is a euphemism for a saint’s death after a lifetime of faithful service. Why? Hebrews chapter 11 is replete with the lives of saints that, “did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us,” Hebrews 11:39, 40. They all died with a good testimony through faith, we are told, having not, in their lifetimes, received the promise of God. They, one and all, obeyed God’s revealed will, and having died in faith, waited for the fulfillment of the promise God made. Nothing less can be asked of us, their successors in this day and age.

 

Our Lord’s soon coming, according to Hebrews 10:37, 38 (quoted from Habakkuk 2:3, 4) is meant to inspire a Christian to the aforementioned endurance in leading a faithful life that produces spiritual fruit. Peter reminds us that Jesus’ Second Coming is something we should look for and encourage, 2 Peter 3:11-13. John writes that everyone whose hope is in Christ’s revelation, or return in glory, purifies himself, imitating his Lord, 1 John 3:2, 3. Jesus sternly warned that we, His followers, ought to be vigilant watching for Him. “Watch, therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning—and what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” Mark 13:35-37. Our Lord granted no exemptions from this charge. He explicitly said that what He told the apostles, He meant for everyone who was listening: to watch for His Second Coming. Our desire to see Him and be with Him was a purging power in our daily conduct, because it compelled Christians to self-evaluate their actions and choices in light of Jesus’ imminent return. But now the church has fallen asleep, and we no longer look for His coming. Many churches have spiritualized the meaning of such words, saying that His Second Coming is not a physical, literal event that will invade space-time history. But His Second Coming is linked so intrinsically to His first advent, that to spiritualize the one is to undermine or allegorize the other.

 

The Millerite movement—from which the Seventh Day Adventists came—created a little Rapture mania in the 1840’s. Such mania persisted as people, well intentioned or otherwise, tried in vain to deduce the time of Christ’s coming. Sadly, all such predictions could have been avoided, had they recalled the passage, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed with His own authority,” Acts 1:7, NASB. Or even our aforementioned Mark 13:35, “Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming.” In short, we (that is, the church) were not meant to know the time of Christ’s return. Attempting to deduce it, no matter how clever the method is an effort in vain, and worse, contrary to what God clearly revealed about the Second Coming. It is always imminent, but if one could fix a date, laxity would ultimately prevail in the mindset of Christians, when they realize, “my master is delaying his coming,” Matthew 24:48. Date setting is problematic and faith eroding, though a conscientious Christian ought not be troubled by it. The word of God is our rule in faith and practice, not the polemics of men whose intentions exceed their understanding.

 

The passage from Habakkuk is the promise made not only to us but everyone who places their faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. God isn’t slack, as some count slackness, we are informed, 2 Peter 3:9. God, having created time, stands outside of it, and will fulfill His will for us and all creation when He deems it is the fullness of time. He did so with the first advent, and 2000 years of church history has elapsed to demonstrate the historicity of that momentous and longed-for event. For God, it is indeed, “a little while.” Habakkuk describes the God who, after some undisclosed duration of time, finishes tarrying (from human perception) and comes swiftly, fulfilling all that He said He would. Our impatience and unwillingness to listen creates error, which spread like ripples across the clear visage of God’s word, distorting our view. Dave Hunt commended that all Christians be Bereans, searching the Scriptures to see if things are so. The opinions of men mean little. If they are rightly aligned with God’s word, then we may glean good from them, because their purpose isn’t to predict or distract or reinvent the wheel. It’s to teach and exhort and admonish; things direly needed in the church today. If purported Christians resist and oppose God’s word, mangling it with human conjecture and fallen wisdom, we are to reject their teaching, Titus 3:10, 11.

 

The just, we are told, live by faith. God finds no pleasure, He tells us, in the soul that draws back. What does it mean to draw back? Verse 39 details this a little more, adding in that such drawing back leads to perdition. The NASB substitutes that term for “destruction.” The ESV and HCSB render it, “are destroyed.” The chapter concludes with a staunch warning, beginning with the latter portion of verse 38. One must ask the obvious question: what is such a person drawing back from? We read, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself,” John 12:32. The word “peoples” is italicized in the NKJV, meaning that it was added to clarify the context. So the verse, sans that addition, reads, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to Myself.” The Holy Spirit’s purpose on earth is to lead people to a convicting need of Christ, so that they may be saved, and His vehicle is the church. Jesus being lifted up from the earth, of course, refers to our Lord’s substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf. Mankind has to address the issue of Jesus. Who is He? What do we think of Him? Hebrews 10:26 tells the cautionary tale of someone who is enlightened with the gospel, but mental assent is the furthest they venture. Its truth is not transformative. They are drawn, being a member of a local church, singing hymns, and hearing sermons, perhaps even reading their Bible. But they draw back. God has no pleasure in this, because, as was mentioned previously, it does despite to Christ’s offering for sin, and insults the Spirit of grace that convicts us of our need in a bid to rescue us from the death that rightfully belongs to us.