Hebrews 2
By Pastor Lawrence

In our text this morning, the author of Hebrews gives the first of five warnings in this letter, admonishing these Jewish Christians of the danger of minimizing Christ and reverting back to Judaism. These are very serious warnings indeed, for those who turn away from Christ are turning away from the promise of salvation in Jesus, and they will not inherit eternal life. For those who turn away from Christ, will fall away from the Lord and drift away from the truth.

But contrary to the teachings of the Roman Catholics and Arminians we do not believe that genuine faith in Christ can be lost, although it can be diminished and weakened at times for various reasons. However there will always be some who profess Christianity for a time and who attach themselves to the church who do not really know and love Jesus and thus do not have a genuine faith in Christ. These can and will fall away from God and drift away from the truth, no matter how involved they are in the church.

That is one of the reasons that we do not generally use the term “eternal security” when presenting the gospel to others since many understand that to mean that a person is saved merely based upon their confession of faith rather than on a true and saving faith in Jesus. In other words, just because someone prayed a prayer, or walked an aisle does not mean that they are eternally secure in Jesus. Rather, we refer to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints believing that if some have genuinely trusted in Christ, the Lord will preserve their faith throughout their life and that they will, indeed, continue to persevere in the faith until the final day. However, if an individual does not persevere till the end, it shows that they were not really saved in the first place.

Nevertheless, warning passages such as these are actually written primarily for those who are in fact children of God. All of these warning passages found in the book of Hebrews are used by God in order to prick the conscience of the believer who has been lulled to sleep by his sin, to awaken him, and rouse him to turn back to his first love so that instead of falling away from Christ, the convicted believer falls back into the arms of Christ as his only hope and confidence.

Truly, we ought to give thanks to God for giving us passages such as these that at times bring great discomfort and unease assuring us that he does not allow us to wallow long in our sins nor to be snatched out of his hand by the devil.