August 12, 2013

Hebrews 4:1 — Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.

Yesterday, I spoke about the ways “entering into His rest” can be read:

There is still more to consider in this verse. On the face of it, “come short” is simple. But not so fast! I’m not much of a Greek scholar (3 year at High School 40 years ago!) so I rely on some of the wonderful tools available to the unlearned — interlinear Bibles, dictionaries and word studies. Kenneth Wuest produced a fine set of Greek word studies and in it I found:

The words “come short of” are the translation of a verb which could be rendered either “should seem to have fallen short, should be judged to have fallen short, or, should think that he has fallen short or come too late.

We can fall short, like the Hebrews of old, by lack of faith so that we fail to finish — or we can fall short by failing to realize that our opportunity has arrived!

In the first sense, The writer of Hebrews is warning his readers specifically about falling short of realizing that their work is finished — of continuing to depend on temple worship rituals for their justification. “Listen”, he is saying, “that work is finished. Like God who rested eternally after His work, you can rest from justification by works.” Saint Augustine, following Jewish Rabbis, points out that the seventh day of Genesis, symbolizing this rest of God, has no end — in his “Confessions” he says “But the seventh day is without any evening, nor hath it any setting, because Thou hast sanctified it to an everlasting continuance“. Like the Hebrews of the letter we need to avoid the mistake of thinking that we are justified by anything but grace. Good works are good, but they are not good for salvation!

In the second sense, the writer of Hebrews is warning his readers — and us — not to be slack in our efforts because God’s grace has passed us by. One of my favorite writers, William Barclay, puts it splendidly:

The writer to the Hebrews sounds a trumpet-call. ‘Never think’, he says, ‘that you have arrived too late in history; never think that the days of great promise and great achievement lie in the past. This is still God’s “today”. There is a blessedness for you as great as the blessedness of the saints; there is an adventure for you as great as the adventure of the martyrs. God is as great today as he ever was.’

So much in one verse! So much promise, and so much warning. Let us never seem to come short!