Abstract
Does the author of Hebrews seek to quell fear or create it? The answer to both seems to be yes. To better understand the argument as a coherent whole, however, readers must seek to understand how he makes these dual moves with fear and why. First, God acts to eliminate fear. Through the death and resurrection of the Son become High Priest, God destroyed the enslaving fear of death. The fear of death has been eliminated, but another more terrifying fear remains: the fear of departing from God. The author of Hebrews views this departure as a possibility, and so, he warns his community about it in the starkest terms possible. Without muting that warning, I want to affirm with equal intensity the answers the author provides to that fear. First, he asks something of them, namely to pay attention, persevere, and run with endurance. Second, he reminds them of the community around them that will aid their endurance. Finally, he focuses on the priesthood of Christ. His one-time sacrifice as well as his living intercession give aid. The balance between assurance and warning resides in this: the author does not want them to presume upon the grace of God, but it is God, the just, holy, as well as faithful and merciful to whom he entrusts them.
“It was an ominous year … There were earthquakes and subsequent panic … It all seemed a supernatural warning.” 1 “Thus it happens at times that the populace is plunged into disorder and riots.” 2 “Yes, the world is clearly coming to an end.” 3
It may not be immediately clear which of these quotes comes from the ancient world and which comes from this year’s newspaper. The common sentiment of fear reveals that the present era is not, unfortunately, unique in this regard. Hence, as fear often pervades societies, followers of God have had to instruct one another in ways to respond to and live in the midst of that fear.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is no exception. That author has much to say about fear. 4 He speaks to the common fears of his day, and how confessors of Jesus Christ can overcome them, but at the same time, he instills fear in his readers so that they will not let go of their confession. In other words, he reveals how the actions of the Triune God both quell and demand fear. From the fear of death, God has delivered the community of confessors through the death and resurrection of Christ, yet to encourage the fear of departing from God, the author offers the assurance of the sympathy, forgiveness, and intercession of the priesthood of Christ and appeals to the judgment of God. Hebrews, as a historical text, provides a window into an ancient response to fear and yet as a canonical text provides a reason for subsequent generations to fear. God’s soteriological act leaves all readers afraid of only one thing: turning away from the One who has destroyed the power of fear.
Fear of death
The fear that takes prominence at the beginning of the epistle is a fear that keeps people enslaved for the whole of their lives: the fear of death (2:15). Patrick Gray has documented the pervasive nature of this fear in the ancient world, which many of the philosophical writers try to assuage in different ways. 5 The author of Hebrews mentions this fear only to say that his readers are no longer under its grasp. Just as the children of Abraham (Heb 2:16) were delivered from their slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt, this community was delivered from the devil and his enslaving fear of death.
How was this the case? How are they free from what ensnares many of their neighbors? As the author presents this answer in brief statements and allusions throughout the letter, he reminds them of what they already know and have experienced—the details and implications of their confession. The first indication of this freedom from the fear of death appears in chapter 2, where, in recounting the story of the incarnation—Jesus being made lower than the angels, suffering death, and then being crowned with glory and honor—the author affirms that it all happens so that Jesus might taste death for all. The “for all” points to the reality that his death will have an impact on others, even though the precise nature of that impact has yet to be explicated. 6
Textual variant aside, 7 his tasting of death for all happens by the grace of God. A dative of manner seems most fitting here; 8 God’s grace is how this impactful death takes place. 9 The author goes on to associate grace with God’s realm—it can describe his throne (4:16) and his Spirit (10:29), and from there it is a gift given (4:16) that can strengthen the heart (13:9). It is something on offer of which humans can fall short (12:15). It is an aspect and, therefore, a gift of God. This aspect and gift, called grace, facilitated the Son’s tasting of death.
A reader should stop and clarify, however, the referent for the word theos, God, in this instance because the text offers several possibilities. In chapter 1, God is the Father who spoke in the Son and appointed him heir of all things. In chapter 2, God the Father is the “you” who crowns this son of man with glory and honor but also makes him a little lower than the angels through the suffering of death. Yet, the author has used the title theos for the Son as well (1:8), and his graciousness is on display through the citation of Psalm 40, where he takes the body God gives him to do God’s will (Heb 10:5–7). With such clear association between Jesus the Son and God, especially in chapter 1, it seems more than allowable that the Son’s graciousness also makes possible his own tasting of death. Moreover, the reference to God’s Spirit as the “Spirit of grace” (10:29) includes a pneumatological element here as well. God, as the church comes to articulate, the Triune God, in graciousness is active in the Son experiencing death on behalf of all.
In the next verse (2:10), death may not be mentioned but suffering is, and it is this suffering that God uses to perfect Jesus, and which the author joins with God’s action of “leading many sons to glory.” The connections are not explicit here, but if suffering alludes to death and glory alludes to life, then his death leads to life for others. God, through whom and because of whom all things exist, both perfects the “pioneer” and leads the “many sons”—a Christological way to refer to God’s many children.
Explicit clarity about their movement from slavish fear to confident freedom comes in verse 14. Here the author states unequivocally that Jesus, having become incarnate, nullified the one who has the power of death and rescued those who had been enslaved to its fear through this death and resurrection. David Moffitt has argued persuasively that although resurrection is not mentioned here, it is part of the underlying logic, for how could one who remained dead perform much of a rescue? 10 His resurrected state undergirds this proclamation of freedom from fear. The “he” here is very active. He shares with them in flesh and blood; he nullifies the one who had the power of death; he rescues. The path back through the pronouns to their antecedent is a long one, yet it is clear that the “he” is the “I” who speaks the citations in verses 12 and 13. He is the one who is “not ashamed to call them brothers” and he is the one who sanctifies—the pioneer (2:10), Jesus (2:9). He has won back the human component of his inheritance. At the same time, he is also the recipient of action. He was made like his siblings (2:17) when God made him a little lower than the angels (2:7, 9). Jesus is acting and God the Father is acting upon him, working in union to defeat the enslaving power of death.
The author alludes to this freedom from the fear of death again at the close of chapter 9, where he refers to the group that is eagerly awaiting salvation. This salvation is bound up in the second appearance of Christ who, having dealt with sin, does not have to focus upon it at his return. Because of his offering, they might die physically, as it is the lot for humans to do (v 27), but despite that fact, they do not live in fear but look forward to salvation. No mention of a fear of that coming death is present here. Because of Jesus’ past, present, and future action they have a great hope even in the face of death. Jesus is doing the action here, but because it is his offering that effects this change, God is in view as well as the one who accepts the offering of life that Christ brings (9:14). Again, because the spirit of holiness facilitates that offering (9:14), Hebrews presents a multivalent divine action to bring about this release from slavery.
If the author assumes they can look forward to a life with God after death, then the faithful of Israel’s past offer the same stance of hope. Freedom from the fear of death becomes more prominent again in chapter 11—the interlude of praise for the faithful before the final movement of the sermon in chapter 12. Death serves as a focal point for the stories of so many of the faithful: Abel, killed but still speaking, Enoch, transported away from death, Noah, floated over it, Abraham and Sarah, conceived in spite of it. All glorious victories, but still they and their descendants all died (11:13). Then the litany continues, Abraham was willing to submit his son to death. Jacob and Joseph looked past it and saw the promise of progeny and place. Moses escaped it as a baby, was willing to suffer it as a man, and, as leader of his people, repelled it with blood and escaped through water. Rahab, like Noah, protected her family from it. In the list for which he does not have time, beginning in verse 11, some died and some escaped death and some looked forward to a resurrection after it. Throughout chapter 11, this one theme remains consistent: the faithful about whom God testifies did not fear death. They knew that God was able to raise the dead. They knew that promises existed on the other side of death.
If this whole community—members of the first covenant and new—have been delivered from the fear of death, because in his rescue from fear Jesus gave his help to the children of Abraham (2:16), and if they are not subject to slavery throughout the whole of their lives, it is because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to which the faithful of the past looked forward (11:13). The author and his congregation have already heard and confessed (2:1; 3:1) this story—the death and resurrection born out of a willing embrace by the Son of the will of the Father carried out by the Spirit of grace. The unified will of God defeats death and, therefore, rescues from the slavery of fear those who know and confess this will. This community, joined with the faithful of Israel, has been rescued from this persistent fear among humanity—the fear of death.
Fear of departure from God
Then why can Hebrews still strike fear in the hearts of its readers? One early commentator on Hebrews wrote, “We sincerely trust and earnestly pray that it may please our God to strike terror into the souls of many who read this article, that their false peace may be disturbed.” 11 The author of Hebrews, it seems, might have echoed a similar sentiment. The fear of death has been eliminated but another more terrifying fear remains: the fear of departing from God. At times the author discusses this departure as a falling away, which seems passive on the part of the congregation. At other times, the departure is much more deliberate—an active rejection.
His articulation of this fear begins early in the book. Because of the great majesty of the Son—his place as the Father’s co-Sovereign—it is even more necessary for this community to pay attention to the message they have heard because, if they do not, there is a chance that they will drift away. Παραρρέω, “drift away,” carries the connotation both of escape (Prov 3:21) and flow (Isa 44:4), which are active and passive possibilities. The author of Hebrews then compares this drifting away with transgression of the law of Israel. If someone transgressed or disobeyed the law, they would be punished. The author fears that this community, too, might ignore what God has revealed. Lack of attention to the truth of salvation in the Son could allow them to drift away from this truth and to move to the place where they rightly would receive punishment.
The fear of falling away remains in place in the next section even as the author introduces another element of fear. With the citation of Ps 95 he begins to warn them about a clearly active danger—the danger of hardening their hearts and, therefore, of testing God. As the wilderness generation had seen God’s miraculous work, this act seems rather deliberate. It is neither a misunderstanding nor a lack of attention. When faced with a decision to obey God or not, that generation hardened their hearts. The middle/passive voice of πλανάω often carries an active sense of “going astray.” 12 They deceive themselves and choose not to know God’s ways, continually. Later in the book the author presents Jeremiah’s reflection on the failure of the previous generation of Israelites. When God took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, they did not remain in the covenant (Heb 8:9), and so God responded to them by ignoring them (ἀμελέω)—precisely the stance the author does not want the audience to take before God (Heb 2:3).
The author reads between the lines of the Psalm, possibly by alluding to other texts, 13 to address the problem. First comes a warning against an evil heart of unbelief—one that would turn away from the living God. Deliberate choice and active sins are again in play here. In the next verses, though, the author returns to a more passive model. Readers might be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, recognizing as well that forces at work outside of them might lead them to make the choice against God.
With the repeated call, “Do not harden your hearts” (3:15), the author develops the idea of unbelief as he argues that the problem of the wilderness generation is lack of trust, lack of faith, and hence lack of obedience (3:18–19). Therefore, for the audience, it is appropriate to fear: “Let us fear, lest some of you should seem to lack the promise of God’s rest.” The previous generation did not add in faith, but that is how one enters into the rest (4:2–3). Said a different way, the previous generation did not trust (4:6), so the warning comes after their time not to act in the same way, not to harden their hearts (4:7). It is time to exercise positive action because the danger of falling remains: “Let us hasten to go into that rest so that someone may not fall in the same pattern of disobedience” (4:11). If, in chapter 2, the fear is that they might ignore their confession, the fear in chapter 3 and 4 is more insidious, that they might not trust or believe in God anymore, and hence fall away from One who has rescued them.
According to the perspective of the author, he does have legitimate reason to worry. Instead of progress, this community has experienced stagnation. Instead of growing into maturity, they continue to wallow in childishness. He says they are sluggish with regard to hearing (5:11), and, as listening to God is what he has emphasized that they need to do (1:2; 3–4), this is a major cause for concern.
Therefore, in the next warning against falling away, the author ratchets up the fear level to an almost deafening volume. It is impossible for those who fall away (6:6) to renew again unto repentance. That would involve crucifying and exposing to public shame again the Son of God, who, like any human, can die only once, and who has now taken his seat at God’s right hand because his one offering for sin is complete. The absurdity of the hypothesis emphasizes its impossibility. If you fall away from him, there is no other option for salvation. The author does not want their sluggishness to allow them to be swept away.
After the brief mention of the inconsistency of the Israelites’ faith in the citation from Jeremiah (Heb 8:9), the author does not return to the theme of fear again until after his thorough explication of the enduring and efficacious power of the priestly offering of Christ. Only after this point does the author return to an intense reason to fear. If he or his readers sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins remains (10:26). They have known the truth because they have been brought into the New Covenant where no one any longer needs to instruct them, “know the Lord” (Heb 8:11), and where their hearts have been made true (10:22). After such knowledge and a departure from it, the only thing that would remain is fear: a fearful expectation of judgement—God’s devouring fire (10:27). It is difficult to ascertain the precise scope of this deliberate sin, but the trampling of the Son of God, considering the holy blood of the covenant common, and casting hubris at the Spirit of grace has led most interpreters to see this as a deliberate affront to the salvation offered in Christ. 14 This act stands worthy of God’s judgement; although he offers a comfort after this warning, he does negate it. With the quotation of Habakkuk, the author presents God voicing a complete lack of pleasure in those who draw back (Heb 10:38).
In chapter 12, the fear is that someone from among them may come short of God’s grace (12:15)—a very similar fear he articulated at the beginning of chapter 4, lacking the promised rest (4:1). This is not a fear just for isolated individuals, but such a lack would affect the community, bringing in bitterness, trouble, and defilement. The fear reminds the author of Esau who gives away his rights of being the firstborn. When he wanted to inherit the blessing, he found only rejection instead of a possibility for change, even though he sought it tearfully. Esau offers only a story, an account of how lust led to an irredeemable exchange. The author offers no didactic lesson of clear dogmatic application, but allows the story’s rhetorical power to reverberate through the air. Esau gave up his standing as a firstborn son, and it could not be undone even though he desired to do so.
The author again offers comfort that this community is not as unfortunate as Esau, but, yet again, after doing so, he tells them to stay alert. They should not resist the one who is speaking as the Israelites did (12:19). They did not escape (recalling his first warning in 2:3), and his voice echoed from earth. Now that God speaks from heaven in a Son who sits at his right hand and through the Spirit in words and deeds, how could they expect to escape if they turn away? God is a fire who consumes (12:29), and no one would want to be an enemy in this consumptive fire (10:27). This author desires his audience to retain a sense of fear—fear of what could happen to them if they depart from the salvation God has procured in Christ.
Answers to fear
Human action
The author’s recommendation in light of such a great fear is for them to keep focus: pay attention to what you have heard (2:1). Then he continues: do not ignore (2:3); direct your attention to Jesus (3:1); hold fast to the boldness and boast of hope (3:6); consider your hearts (3:12); hold fast to what you did at the beginning (3:14); have faith (4:2–3); show haste to go into the rest (4:11); press on toward maturity (6:1); show haste toward full assurance (6:11); do not be sluggish (6:12); flee toward hope (6:18); hold fast the confession of hope without wavering (10:23); do not throw away your boldness (10:35); you need to endure (10:36); we are not those who shrink back (10:39); without faith it is impossible to please God (11:6); lay aside weight and sin, run with endurance, look to Jesus (12:1–2); consider what Jesus endured (12:3); do not faint (12:3); do not forgot God’s word of discipline to his children (12:5–11); strengthen your bodies, make straight paths, heal (12:13); pursue peace and sanctification (12:14); watch out (12:15); pay attention (12:25); serve God (12:28); and, love, honor, be content, remember your forebears, go outside the gate, trust your leaders, do not complain, bear with this word of exhortation (13:22).
Hebrews calls for an active faith. Much does the author want the audience to do. Acting as an educator who employs the Greco-Roman iteration of our well-known motif, “no pain no gain,” μαθεῖν παθεῖν, the author states that if you want to learn you are going to have to suffer. (The proverb is cited in 5:8 and explicated for the audience in 5:11–14.) Readers see the author as an athlete—a coach, a type-A personality with no sympathy for laziness or complaining. This is no-nonsense soteriology. You have a role to play in your salvation, and you better play it.
Although I have catalogued these exhortations for personal strength, the author also recognizes that individuals in the congregation do not pursue their ultimate salvation alone. This author does—like every other author in the New Testament—speak dominantly in the plural tense, “we” and “you all.” Jesus gives aid to the seed of Abraham (2:16), they are members of his household (3:6; 10:21), sharers together of Christ (3:14), the Sabbath that remains is for the people of God (4:9), the covenant is with the house of Israel (8:10), and they are sharers in God’s discipline (12:8). In other words, God’s work is done in and over groups of believers.
In addition to that fact of language in the author’s exhortations, he also asserts that it is communal support that shores up personal endurance and therefore keeps the fears of departing from God from materializing. In fact, he bases his confidence that they have not fallen away from God in their communal actions, in how they have taken care of one another. They have loved and served the saints, in the past and in the present (6:10). They were partners to those who were persecuted (10:33), suffering alongside the prisoners (10:34). As these actions have kept them faithful in the past, so he urges the same commitments in the present and the future. For example, after he instructs them to watch out for the evil heart of unbelief that apostatizes from the living God—a verbal combination of the most serious of fears—his remedy is the simple but yet seemingly incredible power of encouragement. He calls upon his readers to encourage one another every day so that they may not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (3:13). The coming alongside of one to another uncovers the lies of sin and keeps the heart malleable and pure before God.
Similarly, in chapter 10, joined with his admonition to hold fast the confession of hope without wavering, he exhorts them to pay attention again, but this time to one another to prod each other toward love and good deeds, and this has to be done in community (10:23–24). He does not want them to stop assembling together, especially as they are in the final days (10:25). They are called to give aid to one another as they run, helping those who are struggling with ailments (12:12–13). The final practical instructions have to do with how they relate in community: with insiders, outsiders, spouses, and leaders (13).
In chapter 6, he extends this community to include the previous generations. The way to keep from being sluggish in their faith is to look to the example of those in the past. Abraham exercised great faith and patience, as did all those praised in chapter 11. As the readers of this letter run the race of faith, they know they have the support of the great cloud of witnesses (12:1). This contemporary congregation is journeying toward the group of saints made perfect and given all the blessings of being the firstborn (12:22–24). It is true that they should be mindful of their own faith, yet the medium for doing so is communal. By giving aid to others and being aided by them, this collection of believers will join the larger community of God’s people in God’s presence forever.
Divine action
I must acknowledge, however, that even communal support falls on the same side of the soteriological equation as personal endurance, namely the human side. What, though, of the work of God? The answer, it seems to me, is two-fold: the priesthood of Christ and the sovereignty of God.
It might not be completely apparent when reading the exhortations catalogued above, but in the outline of the sermon a large gap exists in the middle of the “try hard” section, where the author—without negating his call to “let us fear”—directs their attention to the priesthood of Christ. His appeal to the priesthood of Christ in response to fear begins earlier at the end of the second chapter. His being made human has eliminated the fear of death, but it has also allowed him to become a merciful and faithful high priest. In this role, he has made an offering for sin, but his priesthood is not just a one-time act, but an ongoing vocation. He is able to aid those who are tempted (2:17–18). Either connotation of, as temptation or testing, affirms that the application is rather broad. In whatever way they are struggling, this merciful high priest will give them aid. It seems that this rather inclusive comfort could include his giving aid even for waning attention. He could help them if they feel they are drifting away.
That is precisely the answer he provides after the extended exhortation to fear in chapters 3 and 4. The author asserts again, as he does in Hebrews 1, the supremacy of Jesus. He is the great high priest, no longer on earth but having passed through the heavens—the Son of God. This very same mighty one, supreme above all others, sympathizes with their weaknesses because he has been tempted in all ways, so surely this would include the temptations listed before: lack of attention, a loose hold on the confession, lack of faith, lack of trust, turning away, and disobedience. If they are wavering, and about this the author seems to be quite worried, his seemingly paradoxical exhortation is to approach the throne of the very One you have having a hard time trusting. Help thou my unbelief. When they do come boldly because they confess that Jesus the Son of God is their high priest, mercy, grace, and help will be given. Hence, the author continues the emphasis upon the understanding and mercy of Jesus in his encouragement to approach. Because of the Son’s sympathy and mercy and forgiveness of sins (stated in 1:13, 2:17, and 9:14), they can now draw near to God rather than fall away from Him.
A similar priestly comfort follows the warning in chapter 6, although it does not seem to fall into this cultic category at the beginning of the paragraph. Look to the faith of Abraham, the author says, whose faith rests in the faithfulness of God. This assurance of a firm hope, an anchor of the soul, then morphs into an unexpected metaphor in verse 19. The anchor, which, of course, should stay put, moves into the inside of the veil. The sailing metaphor becomes a cultic one. 15 Then this moving anchor becomes a person, Jesus the forerunner. He is the one who goes on the inside of the veil because he has become a priest in the order of Melchizedek.
To retrace the point from the back end, then, Jesus—as priests do—enters into the part of the sanctuary on the inner side of the veil. In so doing, he provides the sure and solid hope for them. If the antidote to falling away is to show haste toward the full assurance of hope (6:11), Jesus as priest is that hope. By invoking Jesus’ priesthood, the author recalls his mercy, help, sympathy, and grace. As Kevin McCruden has highlighted in his work, Jesus Christ’s benevolent priesthood is their hope 16 —their anchor that has now come to rest as it is seated inside the veil at the right hand of God. Holding to him will draw them in, and will keep them from falling away.
Again after the exegetical explication of his Melchizedekian priesthood, the author assures that it is Jesus’ Melchizedekian priesthood that allows people to approach God (7:19), which is to move in the opposite direction of falling away or retreat. His living eternal priesthood allows for salvation to the utmost, complete, which surely includes salvation to the end, as Craig Koester eloquently states, “The salvation provided by Christ is everlasting precisely because it is complete” 17 —a salvation that endures (7:25). In chapter 8, his priesthood establishes him as the mediator of the new covenant (8:6) which stands in juxtaposition with the old covenant in which the people did not remain (8:9). At another rhetorical climax in chapter 10, the author proclaims that His blood and flesh, his high priesthood (10:21), gives them the chance to be bold to enter the holy place through the veil (10:19). Instead of shrinking back or falling away they can approach not with an evil heart (3:12), but with a true heart—not with lack of faith (3:12, 18–19) but with full assurance of faith, the evil having been removed and the purity granted.
Jesus the High Priest understands them, has forgiven them, and so ushers them into God’s presence. As noted above, because this is an eternal priesthood, it is not exhausted in one event. The author offers another powerful assurance found in the priesthood of Christ. He, always living, intercedes—talks to God the Father—on behalf of those who are approaching God (7:25). Intercession—a vital activity for a priest (Zech 3:7)—either has connotations of asking for assistance or pleading for forgiveness. Both might be needed by this community: endurance in what they face and forgiveness if their faith has begun to wane. 18
This is why the author emphasizes his perfection: holy, innocent, undefiled (7:26). The author is affirming the earlier assertion that this priest is without sin (4:15). The next statement, though, seems a bit odd, namely, that he is separated from sinners. The connotation there is that he is distant, which seems to work against the assertions of his sympathy and mercy. Instead, readers should hear the author describing the movement of Jesus; he is separated from them now because, having dwelt among them, understood them, and brought them into the presence of God, to the throne, inside the veil, he now turns to address God and so turns away from them and turns toward God to speak for them in heaven itself. His priesthood is what allows them to approach forgiven and what allows him to continue to intercede for them.
His priesthood, then, is the lens through which they process their fear. Through his sympathy, they are understood; through his offering, they are cleansed and forgiven; through his sacrifice, they can approach God; and through his living and continual intercession, they can find help for their struggle and temptation. By extolling the priesthood of Christ, the author provides the antidote to hardheartedness and doubt. By him and with him and in Him, they move forward and will not fall away. This is why the author urges them to pay attention and to hold fast. If they keep their eyes on this priest, they have nothing to fear.
The priesthood of Jesus the Messiah is effective because it rests upon the foundation of divine action. As the author instructs his readers to hold fast to their confession without wavering, the grounds for doing so is the fact that the One who “promised is faithful” (10:23). God the Father called the Son to this priesthood, and the Son, willing to become incarnate, answered in obedience by offering his own body and blood. Then, God the Father exalted the Son to his right hand, and God accepted the offering to make atonement. God the Father continues to hear his living intercession as the sympathetic One prays for those whom he has perfected even as they are being sanctified (10:14). As their salvation was inaugurated, so, too, will their salvation reach its end because of the action of God—God the Father and God the Son facilitated by the movement of the Spirit.
If, however, this high priest ceases to be their vision, they have much to fear indeed. If transgression of the law was punished, how will they escape (2:3)? If God was angry with the wilderness generation (3:10; 8:9) and did not let them into his rest (3:11, 18–19; 4:3), but whose bodies fell in the wilderness (3:17), what would happen to those who do not have faith toward reaching the Sabbath rest which comes after Joshua? The author has proclaimed that it is impossible to renew unto repentance those who turn away from the one-time sacrifice of the Son of God (6:6). Those who fall away are compared to thorns and thistles near a curse whose end is burning (6:8). Those who sin willfully have fearfully to expect judgement and devouring fire. They are worthy of punishment even more so than those who disobeyed the law (10:28–29). This punishment, named as judgement, and stated twice in 10:30, is the recompense of God. Esau’s story is that he could not find a place for repentance even though he sought for it with tears (12:15–17). How will they escape the one who speaks from heaven if those did not when warned from earth (12:26)? God is a consuming fire (12:29). Obviously, assurance and fear are interwoven throughout this sermon. 19
Conclusion
Let me return to the place where many of these themes unite. It is, the author says, a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (10:31). Departure from God stands worthy of God’s judgement, and falling into God’s hands is a thing worthy of fear. The author does not say exactly the fate of one who departs, but leaves them in the hands of God, who would be just, in light of such a rejection, to punish, judge, kill, or consume. It is for God to decide, and as previous examples show, God’s decision could have consequences so intense that “fire” is the best way to describe them.
Yet to describe God here as the living One recalls both God’s defeat of death and the living intercession of Christ the high priest. The one thing they have to fear is to depart from the One who has vanquished fear. Yet, where can they go, as the psalmist says (Ps 139:7), apart from Him? Even when they turn away, they fall into the hands of the sovereign and living God. D. H. Lawrence in his poem “The Hands of God” completes the thought: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God/But it is a much more fearful thing to fall out of them!” 20 The author does not want them to presume upon the grace of God. Yet it is God, the just and holy, and also faithful and merciful, to whom he entrusts them. To fall into the hands of this God is the worst-case scenario. This same God has provided for the coming of Jesus, the living priest who understands them, has sanctified them, gives them aid, and intercedes for them.
In the many sectors of the contemporary world, humans may not fear death as did the readers of this document in the first century. Yet there are pervasive fears, maybe more often of a meaningless and oppressed life. The author of Hebrews speaks to these issues which he could not imagine, and his exhortation would be the same. By being a member of Christ, one is freed from the fears of the culture; for in him confessors find a meaningful life of freedom, and so with chilling warnings, he begs his readers not to take this life flippantly. To them and to us the author says, God will keep you from departing from God and help you endure until the end, when the hope for life after death being realized, the fear of falling away will be no more.