Hebrews 3

18. The two elements of character requisite to the helpful friend are sympathy and power. A heart to love and an arm to save, combined in one, make that one the friend you need. In the chapter before us, the writer’s mind is mainly engrossed with the sympathy of Jesus for his people. The human side of his being is chiefly under consideration. Yet it is a striking fact that, in saying “is able to succor,” he has chosen the word which, more than any other in the language, suggests dynamic force; as if, out of his deep sufferings and terrible temptations, there came forth that very power in which he proves himself so gloriously “mighty to save.” H. C.

It was necessary that Jesus should be tempted; that is enough. The temptation was no mere accident in his life; it was essential to it; it entered into the plan of our redemption. All the images under which the prophets had described the coming

Messiah looked to a strife between himself and the spirit of darkness—a strife of which the narrative given in the gospel is but the prelude. Having come to establish a kingdom, but to establish it upon the ruins of a usurper, the Messiah, that true Joshua, could obtain his dominion only by conquest; he could receive “the inheritance of the nations” only by wrestling it from “the prince of this world.” The Jews had understood it thus themselves, and it was an article in their belief that the Messiah should be tempted by Satan at the very outset of his career. Monod.

Temptation is the condition of human life, and to try to flee from it in one shape is often only to provoke it in another. Every period of life, every class in society, every occupation and calling, duties as well as pleasures, work as well as rest, contain within them the elements of an incessant temptation, which it is at once our folly to ignore, our discipline to encounter, and our glory to overcome. It is no sin to be tempted, for Jesus, the sinless one, was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin. It is no weakness to feel the temptation grievous, for Jesus again suffered being tempted. The mistake is to run into temptation of our own accord. The sin is in listening to the voice of the charmer until our hearts go out after the forbidden sweetness. A. W. T.

1. WHEREFORE, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and 2 High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; who was faithful to him that appointed him, 3 as also Moses was faithful in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the 4 house. For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God. 5 And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things 6 which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. 7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your 8 hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers 9 tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that 10 generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. 11 So I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) 12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing 13 from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of 14 you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, 15 if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; while it is said, To day 16 if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when 17 they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses 18 fell in the wilderness? And to whom swore he that they should not enter into his rest, 19 but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Who is this new “Sun of Righteousness,” that identifies, in their effects on the eternal state, the attraction of faith to himself as a center, and the attraction of unsinning obedience to God as a center? I can find no solution for the question until I recognize in him, who fixed on himself man’s grasp of faith, the same everlasting God, who of old fixed on himself man’s obligation of obedience. Then can I see the force of that comparison of Paul between the two prophets of the law and gospel, which states that Moses was “the servant,” but Christ “the builder of the house,” and “the Son over his own house.” As the giver and witness of the law, the very essence of righteousness in his own person, he could, on the one hand, maintain it inviolate, on the other, alter his terms of acceptance from sinless obedience to himself to faith dependent on himself. W. A. B.

1. As “the Apostle of our profession,” the prime-minister of the Gospel Church, Christ was the principal messenger of God to men, the great revealer of that faith which we profess to hold and of that hope which we profess to have. Henry.—The apostleship of Jesus Christ is still and for ever in the world; as really in all the substance of the office as when it was held, under circumstantial differences of miraculous attestation, by Peter and James and John. And when he to whom “all power is given in heaven and earth” promised to be “always, unto the end of the world,” present with his eleven mortal commissaries, he spake not to the men, but to the office, or to the men as the temporary symbols, representatives, and occupants of the office. W. A. B.

2-6. It is hardly possible for Gentiles to understand or realize the veneration and affection with which the Jews regard Moses, the servant of God. All their religious life, all their thoughts about God, all their practices and observances, all their hopes of the future—everything connected with God is with them also connected with Moses. He was to them the great apostle, the man sent unto them of God, the mediator of the Old Covenant. A. S.—The Christian Hebrews were in no wise to disown or disparage Moses, but are exhorted to consider a greater apostle, or Sent One; not a servant, as Moses was, in the house of God, but the Son presiding over his own house. Let the dignity of Moses, his great services, and noble fidelity be fully acknowledged; yet Christ Jesus is worthy of more glory than he. D. F.—Moses is but a star shining by reflected light; Christ is the Sun, the light of the world. Moses foretold his coming, and in spirit sat at his feet and listened to his voice, as did Abraham before him, and all the prophets after him. Christ is more than a prophet; he is the central figure of all prophecy. The place that he assumes as the center of Christianity and the head of this spiritual kingdom was prepared in the ages for him. He takes the throne as the only one in the universe capacitated for it. No one stands a moment in comparison with him, the Lord of lords and King of kings. S. W. F.

7-11. Amid all the demonstrations of the power and goodness of God in behalf of the Jews, they had still hardened their hearts by their continued and aggravated rebellions. At length, wearied and grieved by their provocations, he formed the irrevocable purpose, and confirmed it by an oath, that they should not enter the land of promise, the type of the heavenly country. This severe judgment of God against these ancient Israelites was appealed to by the Holy Ghost in the days of David as a solemn warning to unbelievers of his time. The same use is made of it by the apostle Paul; and it is left on record as equally applicable to those of similar character in every succeeding age. “To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” N. W. T.

12. Heart of unbelief. There is no greater mistake in the world than to suppose that we believe what we do not disbelieve. The common state with many of us is to do neither the one nor the other; neither to think that Christ’s word is true nor yet that it is false, but to think nothing at all about it. But this is truly unbelief; truly, and in the scriptural sense of unbelief; because, although neither our tongue nor our understanding consciously says that Christ’s word is false, yet our whole being says so daily; it gives its witness against Christ’s truth, silently, indeed, but quite decisively. Our whole being has settled the question for itself without directly arguing it. Our hopes renounce Christ, our fears renounce him, our affections renounce him; they all go on their way, working busily every day, but taking no account at all of him. And their testimony is our testimony, for they are our true life. Ask of our fear whether it ever knows anything of Christ, and it will say, No. Ask of our hope the same, and it will give the same answer. Ask of our affections, which are very busy every day, and their answer is no less positive, that to them Christ is not. T. A.

No man can receive Christ without being made ready for him by the teachings of conscience and of reason. The root of unbelief and of skepticism lies deeper down in the soul than many a man thinks: it is not merely rejection of the supernatural, or even the closing of the heart to God’s infinite love, manifest in his dear Son, but it is shutting the ear to the very voice of nature crying within us, telling us of our immense needs, and thus bringing us to a Christ all ready for our reception. And thus unbelief takes its true place: it is not only sin against Christ, blindness to revealed glories, insensibility to love from heaven—it is also sin against nature, sin against reason, sin against the soul’s deepest, most universal convictions. T. D. W.—Why does a man refuse to believe? Because he has confidence in himself; because he has not a sense of his own sins; because he has not love in his heart to his Lord and Saviour. Unbelief men are responsible for. Unbelief is criminal, because it is a moral act—an act of the whole nature. Belief or unbelief is the test of a man’s whole spiritual condition, just because it is the whole being, affections, will, conscience, and all, as well as the understanding, which are concerned in it. And therefore Christ, who says, “Sanctified by faith that is in me,” says likewise, “He that believeth not shall be condemned.” Faith is trust: Christ is the object of faith. Faith is the condition of salvation; and unbelief is your fault, your loss—the crime which ruins men’s souls! A. M.

Departing from God. Sin is nothing else than that the creature willeth otherwise than God willeth. And this contradiction to God’s will is disobedience, and therefore “Adam,” “self-will,” “the old man,” or “departing from God,” do all mean one and the same thing. Theol. Ger.—There is nothing contrary to God in the whole world, and fights against him, but self-will. Our only way to recover God and happiness is, not to soar up with our understandings, but to destroy this self-will of ours. God will not hurt us, and hell can not hurt us, if we will nothing but what God wills. Nay, then we are aided by God himself, and the whole divinity floweth in upon us. When we have cashiered this self-will of ours, which did but shackle and confine our souls, our wills shall then be widened and enlarged to the extent of God’s own will, which is freedom indeed. Culverwell.

13. Exhort one another.** Exhortation may easily be much overdone, in which case it has little or no effect. Scarcely anything is of less force than a continued stream of it, when it comes not from visible and adequate truth-springs. But the exhortations here commended by the apostle are founded, as we know and as they knew, upon the broadest of all foundations. They rest on the proved actuality of the revelation of God to men; on God manifest in the flesh; on redemption accomplished; on Christ risen; on the believer risen with Christ; on all that is peculiar, vital, permanent, in the Christian system. A. R.—To exhort one another in a Christian spirit with genuine love, but at the same time with holy earnestness; to do this without ararrogance, without hardness or bitterness, without respect of persons; to do this not merely once, but every day anew, as frequently as occasion offers, as long as it is called to-day; to go on doing it, even when our voice has been already more than once as the voice of one crying in the wilderness: how much is comprised in this, and how far even the best of us come short of it! Van O.

Deceitfulness of sin. Sin deceives us until it comes into manifestation. Men are apt to think that they are good enough, because no indications of a corrupt character are shown in their lives. And then, when the time of trial comes and they yield, they excuse themselves because temptation is so strong and so sudden. In neither case does their moral judgment conform to the true state of things. Principle means that which will stand the test, when native characteristics which were on its side have turned against it. The measure of principle is the strength of resistance to attacks of temptation, and, if hatred or lust is a cherished feeling of the heart, there is no possibility of resistance when circumstances turn so as to favor sin. How deceitful then and how false the judgments from a mere absence of outward sin! T. D. W.

15-19. The great reason why a revelation from God is given at all is because the destiny to come is an eternal one, because the heaven to be lost, if lost, is eternal, and the retributions to be endured, if endured at all, are eternal. We may safely say that, if this were not the case, there would have been no revelation, because the human race could as well have gone on and have been saved without a revelation as with one. The very fact on which that revelation is grounded is the fact of a future state of endless retribution, to which this world, according to the character formed in it, is an introduction. What makes God’s warnings so awfully impressive is, that they are warnings as to a threatened experience which is endless. There is no return from it, no change of it, after it be once entered. This eternity of our future condition has made the cross a reality; for without it there had been no Saviour suffering, dying, and no need of one. And the cross itself, the system of redemption, this vast, incomprehensible, all-comprehending transaction, demonstrates that eternal retribution, and makes its eternity a reality. The system itself, in the character of the sinner and the character of the Son of God, is such that, if accepted, it secures heaven as eternal; but, if rejected, is death unto death, and renders hell both inevitable and eternal. It is under these circumstances that God has said that there is no way or possibility of salvation except through Christ, and that he has added to this the warning of the Holy Ghost, TO-DAY! “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” G. B. C.

and finds them out; it hunts and haunts them, forbidding them during their agony any entrance into the paradise of one comfortable thought. T. Fuller.—It takes human nature as it actually is; and, disregarding all adventitious differences, it enters into the inner man and speaks to all the same language; addresses in all the same principles and feelings, and supplies the same wants of this dying, immortal, rational, accountable being. It recognizes his profoundest moral feelings, the mighty movements of his spirit, and everything in him which loves to grapple with infinity, which rejoices in the thoughts of eternity and longs after immortality. It shows an intimate acquaintance with his deepest musings, his most retired thoughts, the agonizing throes and throbbings of his soul, when the flesh contends with the spirit and the spirit with the flesh; when he feels the entanglements and enticements of worldly pleasure, and is powerfully attracted by the lying vanities of life, but yet knows that he has a nature allied to heaven, and is an heir of eternity; when the dark cloud of guilt hangs over his heart, and truth is only like the lightning-flash which shows the fearfulness of the coming storm. The deep anxieties, the soul-shaking terrors, the envenomed

stings of remorse—all, in a word, that guilt suffers and the greater torments which it fears, are perfectly known to the Bible, as well as every feeling of ingenuous repentance, every purpose of holy living, every kindling up of hope, every anticipated joy of eternal life. In this sacred word of eternal truth we find a power of thoroughly searching the heart, a perfect knowledge of everything in man, which compels us to believe that he who made him made the Bible also. Rice.