Come Alongside
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching Hebrews 10:23-25
Three closely related and previously mentioned themes come together in this passage.
The readers are first to hold on resolutely to their initial confession of faith in Christ. In a society where Christ and His standards are openly dishonoured, where God’s word is ignored and the Christian faith dismissed as irrelevant, believers must ‘hold unswervingly to the hope we profess.’ The world’s standards are constantly in flux but Christian standards don’t change.
Because hope relates more to the future, the writer is emphasising the promises in Christ that have a future fulfilment. Believers are to hold unswervingly to this hope. The word encapsulates the idea of an upright object that stands perfectly perpendicular without tilting the slightest bit.
Holding on to this hope doesn’t ultimately depend on us but on God ‘for he who promised is faithful.’ Our faith is based on the sure foundation of God’s faithfulness.
The second exhortation is to ‘consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.’ Loving each other doesn’t just happen. It needs to be stirred up. The word used here means “to incite” and although used in Acts of a sharp disagreement, it can carry just as much force positively. Loving one another has to be provoked. Many early denominations included these words in the covenant members were to sign to be members of the local church: “We engage to watch over one another in love.”
The third and final exhortation is ‘Let us not give up meeting together.’ We understand that this letter of Hebrews was written to an unknown but specific group of (predominately) Jewish Christians, possibly a house church in Rome (13:24) that was opting out of relationships with the wider Christian community They were facing increased persecution (10:32-39;12:4) and probably some doubt as to whether Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient to secure their complete forgiveness.
The encouragement to continue in fellowship with the wider church adds ‘and all the more as you see the Day approaching.’ The term ‘the Day’ is being used in a specifically Christian sense of the day of reckoning that will be part of Christ’s second coming. Christians were to live as if the dawning of that day was so near that its arrival was just beyond the horizon.
The recipients of this letter of Hebrews were like some believers today. Life has been hard. The world, the flesh and the devil have beaten them down. If you know someone like this, don’t judge them; don’t reject them. Instead, encourage them; help them; get beside them; build them up.
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