The Proclaimer

Receiving The Promise

“Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.  For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:

‘For yet a little while,

And He who is coming will come and will not tarry. 

Now the just shall live by faith;

But if he draws back,

My soul has no pleasure in him’”

Hebrews 10:35-38

The Hebrews writer has already exhorted his readers: “Let us hold fast the confidence of our hope” (10:23).  Now he says, “Do not cast away your confidence.”  The confidence of which he speaks is the boldness that the faithful Christian has in approaching the throne of God’s grace for help and mercy in time of need (4:16), a boldness based upon the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.  When we retain this confidence a great reward is received.

The readers were in danger of losing this confidence due to persecution.  In fact, their very faith in Christ was in jeopardy as they contemplated going back to the Law of Moses.  The writer admonishes them to continue to endure and obey the will of God, for if they do, they will “receive the promise.”  Any compromise of God’s will compromises the promise of God.  While they had and no doubt would again “suffer according to the will of God” (1 Peter 4:19), the sacrifice would be worth it for the reward is great.

How long will this suffering last?  The writer quotes Habakkuk 2:3-4, but the first line is apparently from Isaiah 26:20, “For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry.”  This statement is reminiscent of what Paul writes to the Corinthians, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17).  Certainly time is relative.  When compared to eternity, our affliction is certainly momentary and the return of Christ will be in “a little while.”

Most people in the religious world don’t think of heaven as a reward nor do they accept that receiving the promise of God is dependent upon our continued obedience.  But this inspired writer does not apologize for the conditional nature of God’s promise.  Neither does he hesitate to call it a reward.  We need this lesson today as much as those of the first century.  While we certainly do not face the intensity of persecution that these Hebrew brethren faced, the danger of losing our confidence in the faith is as real today as it was then. 

The writer closes these thoughts on a clear note of hope and optimism as he says, “But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul” (Heb. 10:39).  Do you believe to the saving of the soul?  Or have you “cast away your confidence?”  May God help us all to “endure, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.”                                                 

                                                                       -- Clark Dugger

The Proclaimer