The Need for Perseverance

Some musings on grace from Hebrews 3:1-4:11

God’s saving grace is sovereign grace.  God is free in giving his grace to those he chooses.  Yet his grace is also his power to overcome the effects of sin and rebellion that rise from our hearts and lead us always away from God and his glory.  Those who come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ do so because in his grace God called them to Christ and by the agency of the Holy Spirit working through the Gospel caused them to be born again so as to respond to that call by faith in Christ. 

Yet from our vantage point all we can determine is that a person who has heard the Gospel (maybe a person for whom we have been praying) is now definitely interested in Jesus Christ and confesses faith in Him as their savior and Lord.  We cannot see into that person’s heart and observe the operation of God’s grace.  All we can see are its effects or what seems to be the effect of a deeper work of grace in the heart of that person who is now responding. 

Yet whether or not this response to Christ is that of saving faith can only truly be made clear by the grace of persevering faith.  Those who God calls to Christ and grants by the Spirit life from above will indeed be kept by God to the end.   God’s keeping grace over the life of a true believer is worked out through a persevering faith coming out of the life of the believer.  God works to keep those who are in Christ by giving them His grace to work out their salvation with fear and trembling through persevering and enduring faith. 

So the New Testament is filled with texts that call the church, the people of God, professing believers and saints to be sure that they are vigilant and diligent in holding fast to the Gospel.  The Gospel that Christians believe is the promise not only of being reconciled to God now but of one day entering his presence with our senses and not merely by faith.  The Gospel is the promise that those who God has redeemed from the bondage of sin will enter his eternal rest in the new heavens and the new earth. 

The church’s place in redemptive history parallels that of the Children of Israel between the Exodus from Egyptian bondage and their entrance into the Promised Land.  In today’s Hebrews 3:1-4:11 the writer presents the Lord Jesus Christ as the true or new Moses.  As believers in Christ we have been brought out of slavery to sin by his once for all sacrifice.  He is now leading us through the present wilderness of this fallen age toward God’s promised rest.  Salvation therefore entails not only the initial rescue but also the hope of entering that promised rest and thus the need for perseverance for the journey.  Just like the Children of Israel, we will only truly enter that rest if we hold fast our confidence and the boasting of our hope, hold our original confidence to the end, strive to enter that rest, pay closer attention to what we have heard and hold fast our confession.  In other words we need to persevere. 

Hebrews 3:1-4:11 calls us to persevere and warns against not doing so.  Those warnings are issued by God’s grace to those of God’s house – the church, professing believers.  Here are the reasons that you need to persevere:

You need to persevere because you have not yet reached the promised rest.

You need to persevere because the journey to that promised rest is filled with challenges to your faith.  Faith needs to push back against the press that the journey presents to us.

You need to persevere because it is only through persevering faith that you will enter the promised rest.

You need to persevere because such perseverance is the truest evidence for the validity of your faith. 

Why was it that those who came out with Moses in the Exodus failed to reach the promised rest?  It was due to their unbelief and their disobedience.  They did not pay attention to what they heard, they did not listen to God’s voice, the message of the Gospel they heard but it was not truly believed.  They allowed an evil heart of unbelief to blind them and harden them so that rather than follow the living God from Egypt all the way to the promised rest they turned away from him.  They possessed only a temporary faith at best. They did not endure by faith.  

It wasn’t as though they had no experience with God’s grace and power.  They were beneficiaries of the miracles that redeemed them from slavery, yet their hearts were never truly changed.  They did not ever set their hearts on entering the promised rest.  They were too preoccupied with the struggles and trials on the way to set their hearts on where God was bringing them.  Rather than hold fast the means of grace God had given them of his presence, they kept their eyes only on their circumstances.  Rather than strive against their own sin, they strove against the Lord and thus never entered the promised rest.  This is why the writer here urges us:  “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience” Hebrews 4:11.

Saving faith is a striving faith.  It strives against ingratitude.  It strives against idolatry.  It strives against immorality.  It strives against unbelief and indwelling sin.  It strives to enter that rest by cultivating endurance and this comes by looking always to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. 
 

It is clear that if we indeed believe we will also heed the calls to persevere and the warnings against failing to do so.  We will make sure that we do not have evil unbelieving hearts that are deceived by sin, which lead us to turn away from the living God.  We will welcome the exhortations to self-examination.  We will seek the aid of the Lord Jesus Christ our great High Priest and take in that powerful penetrating exposing word of God so that we will not be fooled or lulled into a presumptuous attitude about the Gospel and our hold on it.   We will take heed if we think we stand lest we fall.  Such heart and life vigilant stewardship is not contrary to assurance and confidence of God’s grace but rather is the fruit of such assurance and confidence.  

There is a sense in which those who truly possess saving faith will also fear while the promise of entering his rests still stands lest they should seem to fail to reach it (Hebrews 4:1).   This frame of heart is not contrary to the peace and encouragement that you can have in believing the Gospel.  Yet persevering faith is not only rooted in the Gospel’s exodus of justification.  It also keeps its eye on the Gospel’s promised rest of glorification and it is this future perspective of saving faith that aids you in the work of persevering faith as you follow Jesus Christ your redeemer and present guide.  Remember the Exodus, no matter how glorious, needs to be secured by entering into the promised rest of Canaan.  For this you need perseverance on the journey of the Christian life.  As you continue to look the Jesus he will give you what you need to persevere.  Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.  Hebrews 7:25