Hebrews 10

Today’s Passage: Hebrews 10

This is the chapter where the long argument of the letter finally lands, and it lands with a sound like a door closing on the old system and another opening into the presence of God. The writer begins by finishing what he started in chapter nine. The law was a shadow, and a shadow cannot be sat down in. The proof is the calendar: if those sacrifices had ever actually cleansed anyone, they would have stopped. They never stopped. Year after year they were an annual reminder of sins rather than a removal of them, because the blood of bulls and goats simply cannot take sin away. Then he puts Psalm 40 into the mouth of Christ coming into the world, a body prepared, a will to be done, and shows that the second thing replaces the first by the will of God Himself. And he gives us a picture worth a lifetime: every priest in Israel standing, day after day, because a priest’s work was never finished, and then one Priest who offered one sacrifice and sat down. From there the chapter opens out into one of the great invitations in Scripture, three times “let us,” and a call not to give up meeting together. Then, without warning, the floor drops away. The fourth of the letter’s five great warnings falls in verses twenty-six to thirty-one, and it is as severe as anything in the New Testament. And then the writer turns again, reminds his readers what they have already endured for Christ, tells them not to throw away their confidence, and ends where the whole letter is going: faith, endurance, and a people who do not shrink back.

As you read, hold this: By one offering Christ has made His people perfect for all time, so draw near with full assurance and hold fast, for the God who opened the way is faithful and will not lose those who are His.

Hebrews 10:1–4 (BSB)

¹ For the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities themselves. It can never, by the same sacrifices offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. ² If it could, would not the offerings have ceased? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt the guilt of their sins. ³ Instead, those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, ⁴ because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

A shadow is a real thing. Do not let anyone use this verse to sneer at the law, because the writer is not sneering. A shadow proves that something solid is standing in the light. But you cannot warm yourself at a shadow, and you cannot eat one, and a man who spends his life studying the shape on the ground while the substance stands behind him has misused a gift. The law was a shadow of the good things to come, and the argument the writer makes from it is beautifully simple and impossible to answer. If the sacrifices had worked, they would have stopped. That is the whole case, right there in verse two. Any treatment that has to be repeated forever has not cured the disease. The very rhythm of the religious year, the same autumn day coming round again with the same basin and the same goat, was God’s own way of saying that nothing had yet been finished.

And look at the phrase in verse two: the worshipers “would no longer have felt the guilt of their sins.” That is a remarkable thing for the Bible to treat as normal and expected. God is not indifferent to the fact that a guilty conscience is a heavy thing to carry, and He does not tell His people to simply stop feeling it. He intends to deal with the cause. Then verse three lands with a quiet sadness. Instead of removing sins, those sacrifices were an annual reminder of them. Imagine it: once a year the nation was made to remember, in blood, exactly what it was and what it had done. And verse four says out loud what every honest worshiper must have suspected while he watched the smoke go up. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Impossible. Not inefficient, not slow. Impossible, because an animal is not a moral agent, has not sinned, cannot consent, and cannot stand in for a man made in the image of God. The old altar was never meant to be the answer. It was meant to keep the question open until the Answer came.

Hebrews 10:5–10 (BSB)

⁵ Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me. ⁶ In burnt offerings and sin offerings You took no delight. ⁷ Then I said, ‘Here I am, it is written about Me in the scroll: I have come to do Your will, O God.’” ⁸ In the passage above He says, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not desire, nor did You delight in them” (although they are offered according to the law). ⁹ Then He adds, “Here I am, I have come to do Your will.” He takes away the first to establish the second. ¹⁰ And by that will, we have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Here the writer does something that ought to stop you where you stand. He takes an old song of David and hands it to the Son of God as He enters the world. The psalm is one you can read for yourself:

"Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but my ears You have opened. Burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not require. Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll: I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.”" Psalm 40:6–8 (BSB)

David sang that out of an ordinary human obedience, knowing that God wanted him more than He wanted his animals. And the writer of Hebrews hears in it a deeper voice, the voice of the One about whom the whole scroll was written, saying it at the moment of the incarnation. Notice the exchange at the center of it. God did not finally desire sacrifice and offering. What He prepared was a body. Think about that word for a moment. The eternal Son, who needed nothing, was given a body: bone and blood and nerve, capable of hunger and exhaustion and pain, capable of being nailed to wood. A body is a thing you can offer. And the offering He made in it was not first of all His death but His will. “I have come to do Your will, O God.” Obedience is the substance and the cross is where that obedience went.

So verse nine states the transaction with a lawyer’s economy: He takes away the first to establish the second. God did not abolish the old system in disgust. He set it aside because it had done its work and the reality had come, exactly as a scaffold comes down when the building stands. And verse ten tells you what it cost and what it bought: by that will, we have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Read the verbs. We have been sanctified, past tense, done, a thing accomplished about you if you are in Christ. Not a goal you are working toward on your best days. Set apart for God by the offering of a body, once for all, and the last three words are the drumbeat of this whole section of the letter. Once. There is nothing to add.

Hebrews 10:11–14 (BSB)

¹¹ Day after day every priest stands to minister and to offer again and again the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ¹² But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God. ¹³ Since that time, He waits for His enemies to be made a footstool for His feet, ¹⁴ because by a single offering He has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified.

There is a picture here so simple that a child can see it and so weighty that a scholar cannot exhaust it. Every priest stands. Day after day, on his feet, at the altar, doing the same work he did yesterday with the same result. And there is a reason there was no chair in the tabernacle. A priest’s work was never done, so a priest was never seated. Now look: “But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God.” He sat down. That is the sound of finished work. Not resting because He is weary, but seated because there is nothing left to do, and seated at the right hand of God, which is the place of authority and honor, not merely of rest. The nation of Israel never once saw a priest sit down in the sanctuary. We have a Priest who is sitting, and He has been sitting for two thousand years, and He will not get up to offer anything again.

Verse thirteen tells us what He does while He is seated. He waits. His enemies will be made a footstool for His feet, and the outcome is not in doubt, but it is not yet visible, and the church in every generation lives in that gap. It is worth saying plainly, because it saves us a great deal of anxiety: the delay is not weakness. A King who has already won can afford to wait. Then verse fourteen, which may be the single most reassuring sentence in the letter, and which we will need again before this chapter is over. “Because by a single offering He has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified.” Hold the two halves of that together and do not let go of either. He has made perfect (τελειόω) teleioō, pronounced tel-i-OH-oh. Strong's G5048, to bring to the goal, to complete, to make perfect. Teleioō does not mean flawless in the way we use the word “perfect.” It means brought to the goal, finished, completed, made fit for the purpose intended. A road is teleioō when it reaches the town. This letter uses the word again and again, and always about something the old system could not do: the law made nothing perfect, the sacrifices could never make perfect those who draw near. And then here, at the summit of the argument, the writer takes the very word he has been denying to the old covenant and grants it, in the perfect tense, to the people of Christ. He has made perfect, and the tense means a completed action whose result stands. And he adds for all time, so that no one can imagine a shelf life. Now set that beside the phrase that follows it in the same breath, “those who are being sanctified,” and you have the whole Christian life in one verse. You are not becoming acceptable. You are being made, day by day and often painfully, into the likeness of what God has already declared you to be. That order is not a technicality. It is the difference between a life of grateful growth and a life of anxious auditing. for all time, which is finished and permanent and true of you at this moment if you are His. And those who are being sanctified, which is present and ongoing and unfinished, the slow daily work of becoming in practice what you already are in Christ. Your standing is complete. Your progress is in motion. The first is the ground of the second and never the reward for it.

Hebrews 10:15–20 (BSB)

¹⁵ The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says: ¹⁶ “This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds.” ¹⁷ Then He adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” ¹⁸ And where these have been forgiven, an offering for sin is no longer needed. ¹⁹ Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by the new and living way opened for us through the curtain of His body,

Notice how the writer introduces his Scripture: “The Holy Spirit also testifies to us.” He does not say Jeremiah wrote this seven centuries ago. He says the Spirit testifies, present tense, to us, now. That is how this man handles the Bible from beginning to end of his letter, as the living voice of God speaking in the present, and it is worth learning from him. Here is the promise he is drawing on:

"“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”" Jeremiah 31:33–34 (BSB)

I will remember their sins no more. That is not divine forgetfulness, as though the God who knows all things could mislay a fact. It is a covenant word, the language of a judge who will not bring the charge up again. And the writer’s conclusion in verse eighteen is inescapable and enormous: where these have been forgiven, an offering for sin is no longer needed. There is no altar left in the Christian faith, because the altar has done its work. Any religion that keeps offering for sin is confessing that its sins are not forgiven.

And now, on the back of all that argument, comes the great therefore. “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence (παρρησία) parrēsia, pronounced par-rhay-SEE-ah. Strong's G3954, boldness, freedom of speech, confidence. Parrēsia began as a word about speech. In the Greek city it meant the right of a free citizen to stand up in the assembly and say everything he thought, plainly and out loud, without fear. A slave did not have parrēsia. A foreigner did not have it. It belonged to those who were at home in the place where they were speaking. The New Testament takes that civic word and carries it into the throne room of God, and it appears at the great hinges of this letter: come with confidence to the throne of grace, we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place, do not throw away your confidence. What it does not mean is swagger. There is no room for a casual heart before a holy God, and this same chapter will make that unmistakably clear. What it means is that a believer may speak freely to God, out loud, in his own words, without editing himself and without waiting outside. And the reason is not that God has lowered His standard or that we have finally cleaned ourselves up enough to be presentable. The reason is the blood of Jesus, which purchased the right of a citizen for people who were strangers. When you pray tonight, you are exercising a freedom that cost the Son of God His life. Do not hold back. to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.” Do you feel the shock of it? That room. The one where a single man went once a year, trembling, in a cloud of incense. We enter it. Not the priest on our behalf while we wait outside, but we, brothers and sisters, ordinary people with ordinary histories, and we do it with confidence. On what ground? By the blood of Jesus, and by no other ground whatsoever. And by “the new and living way opened for us through the curtain of His body.” The old curtain was heavy woven cloth and it never moved. This curtain is the body of Christ, torn open at Calvary, and through the tearing of it a road was opened that the writer calls new and living. Not a route on a map but a way that is alive, because it is a Person. The door into the holiest place in the universe is a living Man.

Hebrews 10:21–25 (BSB)

²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²² let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. ²³ Let us hold resolutely to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds. ²⁵ Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

This is the warm heart of the chapter, and if you memorize nothing else from Hebrews, memorize this. Two facts have been laid down, and three commands follow, and the order never changes in the Christian life. The facts: we have a way in, and we have a great priest over the house of God. The commands all begin the same way, and it is a family word: let us.

Let us draw near. That was priestly language, the phrase used of a man approaching the altar to serve, and it is now handed to every believer in the room. Draw near with a sincere heart, which means an undivided one, no reservation kept back and no second address where you actually live. Draw near in full assurance of faith, and notice that the assurance is not confidence in yourself. It rests on the two clauses that follow it: our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. The old ritual sprinkled blood on the outside of a priest and washed his body at a basin before he could serve. Both pictures are now fulfilled inwardly and completely by Christ, so the worshiper comes not hoping to be accepted but knowing that he is. Do not miss what that means for the person who comes to God with a bad memory in his hand. The sprinkling is aimed precisely at a guilty conscience. God did not merely forgive the sin. He addressed the wound the sin left.

Let us hold resolutely to the hope we profess. Here is the first hint that this is written to people under strain, because you do not tell a comfortable man to hold on. The word carries the sense of gripping something firmly and not letting the current take it. And then the reason, and the reason is not in us at all: “for He who promised is faithful.” That is where the whole weight goes. Your grip on Him will vary with your sleep and your health and the news of the week. His faithfulness does not vary. Hold on, and know while you are holding that you are held.

Let us consider how to spur one another on (παροξυσμός) paroxysmos, pronounced par-ox-oos-MOSS. Strong's G3948, a sharp stirring up, a provoking to action. Paroxysmos is a strong word, and an honest one. It comes from a verb meaning to sharpen, the way a blade is sharpened on a stone, and it carries the sense of a jab that provokes a reaction. It is not a mild word at all. The only other place it appears in the New Testament describes the sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark, and our English word paroxysm comes straight from it. So this is not a suggestion that we vaguely encourage one another when the opportunity happens to arise. It is a summons to go at each other on purpose, with love and good deeds as the target. And notice the verb that governs it, which means to fix the mind on something and study it. Put the two together and you have a startling instruction. Think hard about what would provoke this particular brother to love. Study what would stir that particular sister into good works. Most of us are content to hope quietly that our fellow believers do well, and to leave it there. The New Testament asks for something far more deliberate and far more personal, and it plainly assumes we are close enough to one another to know what would actually work. Which is exactly why the very next line is about staying in the room. to love and good deeds. The verb translated “consider” means to fix your mind on something and study it, and here it is aimed at other people. Think hard, the writer says, about what would actually stir up that particular brother to love, what would set that particular sister moving toward good works. That is a wonderfully practical assignment, and it is the opposite of the vague goodwill we usually settle for. And it leads straight into the last one, which is the most concrete instruction in the chapter: let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit. Some had already dropped out, quietly, one at a time. He does not shame them by name and he does not treat it as a small matter either, because a Christian alone is a Christian without the very thing God gave him for the road: other believers, encouraging him, in a room, on purpose, week after week. Meeting together is not the reward for being strong. It is one of the ordinary means by which God keeps His people to the end. And do it “all the more as you see the Day approaching.” He gives no date and no diagram, and we will not supply what he withheld. He gives a direction. The Day is coming, and every week that passes brings the church one week nearer to it, and that is reason enough to be in the room.

Hebrews 10:26–31 (BSB)

²⁶ If we deliberately go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins remains, ²⁷ but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume all adversaries. ²⁸ Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ²⁹ How much more severely do you think one deserves to be punished who has trampled on the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and insulted the Spirit of grace? ³⁰ For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge His people.” ³¹ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Now read that slowly, and do not reach for anything to soften it, because the man who wrote it did not. He has just been at his warmest, calling them brothers, opening the holiest room in the universe to them, urging them into each other’s company. And out of that warmth, in the same breath, comes this. The two belong together. It is the same pastor speaking, and he is not contradicting himself. He is doing what a father does when he has walked his children to the edge of a cliff and shown them the drop, precisely because he loves them and wants them nowhere near it.

Hear what the words actually say. If we deliberately (ἑκουσίως) hekousiōs, pronounced heh-koo-SEE-oce. Strong's G1596, willingly, deliberately, of one's own choosing. Hekousiōs means willingly, of one’s own choosing, with the will fully engaged. It stands opposite everything accidental. The old law itself made this distinction and made it sharply: there were sacrifices prescribed for sins committed in ignorance or by mistake, and for the high-handed sin, done deliberately with a raised fist against the LORD, there was no sacrifice named at all. The writer is deliberately standing on that ground, and his readers, who knew Leviticus and Numbers as we know our own front door, would have heard it instantly. So notice with care what this word does and does not cover. It does not describe the believer who sins and is grieved by it, or who fights the same battle for years and keeps getting up. Every honest saint in Scripture is in that company. It describes a hardened, open-eyed turning away by someone who has seen the truth clearly and rejects it anyway, and who keeps rejecting it. The present tense matters as much as the adverb: this is a settled direction of life, not a fall. A heart that can still be pierced by this warning is showing a tenderness the hardened do not possess. go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins remains. That is not a description of a man who fell and is grieved about it. This is settled, open-eyed, ongoing rejection by someone who knows exactly what he is turning from. And the consequence is stated without decoration: no further sacrifice, because there is no other sacrifice. Christ is the last altar there will ever be, and a person who tramples on Him has walked past the only place where sin is dealt with in this universe. What remains is “a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume all adversaries.” Scripture teaches, here and elsewhere, a real and conscious and unending judgment under the wrath of God, and no one should say that with a raised voice or the least trace of satisfaction. It should be said the way a doctor says the worst word he knows, quietly, because it is true.

Verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine make the argument the writer always makes, from lesser to greater, and here it is terrible. Under Moses, a man who rejected the law died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. There was no appeal and no plea for leniency. Well then, the writer says, weigh this: how much more severely does one deserve to be punished who has done these three things? And look at the three, because they are chosen for their violence. He has trampled on the Son of God, which is the picture of a man grinding something underfoot in the dirt, and the Someone under his heel is the Son of God. He has profaned the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, treating the blood of Calvary as a common thing, no different from the blood of any executed criminal. And he has insulted the Spirit of grace, which is to spit at the very kindness by which God was drawing him. Then verse thirty puts two lines of the Song of Moses side by side, and verse thirty-one closes it like a stone door: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Not a dead idol. Not a comfortable notion. The living God, who is not answerable to anyone and does not grow old.

Now let us be honest with each other about this paragraph, because it is one of the hardest in the Bible and it deserves better than a quick answer. This warning, together with the one in chapter six, is the passage most often used to argue that a person truly in Christ may finally be lost. Godly readers who love the Scriptures have differed over the mechanism for centuries, and we are not going to settle it here. It is worth knowing the leading readings and hearing each one fairly. Some understand the person described as one who was thoroughly inside the covenant community, who heard, agreed, was baptized, and shared in its blessings, and who then repudiated the whole thing, showing by his departure that he had never belonged to Christ, and they read the “sanctified” of verse twenty-nine as the outward setting apart that came with belonging to the covenant people. Others hold that the warning itself is one of the very means God uses to preserve His own, so that the warned and the kept are not two groups but one, and a true believer, hearing this, is stopped in his tracks and turns back, which is exactly what the warning was given to accomplish. Others read it as a real description of what would happen if such a thing occurred, a road that genuinely leads to that end and that no child of God will finally travel. Weigh them at your leisure. But mark this clearly: on no reading of this passage, held by anyone who takes the whole letter seriously, is a person truly united to Christ finally lost. The writer will not permit it, because he has already ruled it out himself, in this very chapter, on both sides of the warning.

He ruled it out in verse fourteen: “because by a single offering He has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified.” For all time. And he will rule it out again eight verses from now, in language so pointed that it can only be deliberate: “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” We are not of those. The man who wrote the warning did not believe he was describing his readers, and he says so with his own pen. He has said the same thing earlier in the letter about the reach of Christ’s priesthood:

"Therefore He is able to save completely those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to intercede for them." Hebrews 7:25 (BSB)

Completely. That word is not decoration. And even the quotation in verse thirty carries more than it first appears, because the second line comes from the Song of Moses, where the sentence about the LORD judging His people stands in a passage about the LORD vindicating them. The writer is not using that to soften anything, and neither will we. He means the warning at full strength. But the God into whose hands it is a fearful thing to fall is the same God who has bound Himself by covenant to His own, and both of those things are true at once.

So here is the pastoral word, and it will be said once, and it does not cheapen anything said above. A person who reads verses twenty-six to thirty-one and feels the ground shake is almost certainly not the person those verses describe. The one they describe has stopped trembling. That is the whole point of the word deliberately: he has looked at the Son of God and chosen the dirt, and he is not lying awake over it. Fear of falling away is not the symptom of a hardened heart. It is evidence of a soft one, and a soft heart is God’s own work in a person and not the achievement of that person. Perseverance is the mark of the genuine, never the price of staying kept. So if this passage has frightened you, do the one thing it is written to produce. Do not go looking for a loophole and do not sit down under a cloud. Draw near, on the blood of Jesus, with full assurance of faith, exactly as verse twenty-two told you to. The door has not moved.

Hebrews 10:32–35 (BSB)

³² Remember the early days that you were in the light. In those days, you endured a great conflict in the face of suffering. ³³ Sometimes you were publicly exposed to ridicule and persecution; at other times you were partners with those who were so treated. ³⁴ You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, knowing that you yourselves had a better and permanent possession. ³⁵ So do not throw away your confidence; it holds a great reward.

Feel the change of tone, and notice how quickly it comes. The writer has just held them over the fire, and now he takes their arm and says: remember. Remember the early days. He is not flattering them, he is reminding them of facts, and the facts are impressive. They endured a great conflict in the face of suffering. Some of them stood in the street and were laughed at and worse, publicly exposed, which in an honor-shame world was a wound that went deep. Others did the braver and less noticed thing, standing beside the ones who were being shamed, becoming partners in a disgrace they could have avoided by keeping quiet and staying home. They went to the prisons, where a visit marked you out. And when their goods were seized they accepted it joyfully, which is a staggering word and the writer does not qualify it, because they knew they owned something better and permanent that no magistrate could confiscate.

Now see the pastoral wisdom of this. He does not say, “Be brave, try harder.” He says, “Look at what God has already done in you.” That endurance was not manufactured out of their own nerve. It was the fruit of grace, and its presence in their past is evidence of grace in their present, which is precisely what a weary believer needs to be shown. And out of that memory comes the appeal: “So do not throw away your confidence.” Notice the picture in the verb. Not lose your confidence, as though it might slip out of a pocket, but throw it away, the way a man discards something he has decided is worthless. Nobody is going to take it from you. The danger is that you will set it down yourself, on a hard day, because it seems no longer worth carrying. Do not do it. It holds a great reward.

Hebrews 10:36–39 (BSB)

³⁶ You need to persevere, so that after you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised. ³⁷ For, “In just a little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay. ³⁸ But My righteous one will live by faith; and if he shrinks back, I will take no pleasure in him.” ³⁹ But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

“You need to persevere.” The word behind it means the steady bearing of weight over time, the ability to stay under a load without collapsing. That is not a glamorous virtue and it does not make a good story, but it is the one this letter keeps calling for, and it is what most of the Christian life is actually made of. Not heroics. Staying. Doing the will of God on an ordinary Tuesday when the first excitement is long gone, and then doing it again. And there is a promise on the far side of it: after you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.

Then he turns to Habakkuk, a prophet who had asked God some very hard questions and been told to wait. “In just a little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay.” Once again there is no timetable here and we will not manufacture one. What the writer gives is not a schedule but a perspective: from the far side, the wait will look short. He is coming, He will not be late, and He is a Person and not merely an event. And with Habakkuk’s words comes the sentence that would one day set the Reformation alight: “But My righteous one will live by faith.” Faith is not one department of the Christian life. It is the air in the lungs. The righteous live by it, every day, all the way to the end.

And then verse thirty-nine, and hear how the chapter chooses to end. Having pronounced the most terrifying warning in the letter, having said that God takes no pleasure in the one who shrinks back, the writer refuses to leave his readers hanging over the cliff. “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” We. He puts himself in the sentence with them, and he speaks of them not as people who might survive but as people who are of another company altogether. That is a pastor’s confidence, and it is not wishful thinking. It rests on the whole argument he has just made: one offering, offered once, by a Priest who sat down, that has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified. The warning is real and the assurance is real, and the same chapter holds both without a tremor, because the God who warns His people is the God who keeps them.