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Moses a Servant, Christ a Son

Therefore, brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, consider that Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, ²was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses also “was faithful in all God’s house.” ³Yet Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. ⁴(For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) ⁵Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later. ⁶Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.

Warning against Unbelief

⁷ Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

as on the day of testing in the wilderness,

where your ancestors put me to the test,

though they had seen my works ¹⁰for forty years.

Therefore I was angry with that generation,

and I said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts,

and they have not known my ways.’

As in my anger I swore,

‘They will not enter my rest.’ ”

¹² Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. ¹³But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. ¹⁴For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end. ¹⁵As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

¹⁶ Now who were they who heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? ¹⁷But with whom was he angry forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who were disobedient? ¹⁹So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

14. For we are made partakers, etc. He commends them for having begun well; but lest, under the pretext of the grace which they had obtained, they should indulge themselves in carnal security, he says that there was need of perseverance; for many having only tasted the Gospel, do not think of any progress as though they had reached the summit. Thus it is that they not only stop in the middle of their race, yea, nigh the startingposts, but turn another way. Plausible indeed is this objection, “What can we wish more after having found Christ?” But if he is possessed by faith, we must persevere in it, so that he may be our perpetual possession. Christ then has given himself to be enjoyed by us on this condition, that by the same faith by which we have been admitted into a participation of him, we are to preserve so great a blessing even to death. ⁶⁴⁶⁴ What is implied here is that we may professedly be partakers of Christ: that is of his blessings as a Savior, and yet be not really so: the proof of the reality is perseverance. — Ed.

Hence he says beginning, intimating that their faith was only begun. As hypostasis sometimes means confidence, it may be so taken here; yet the term substance, as some have rendered it, I do not dislike, though I explain it in a way somewhat different. They think that faith is thus called, because the whole of what man may have without it is nothing but vanity; but I so regard it, because we recumb on it alone, as there is no other support on which we can rely. And suitable to this view is the word steadfast or firm; for we shall be firmly fixed and beyond the danger of vacillating, provided faith be our foundation. The sum of the whole then is, that faith whose beginnings only appear in us, is to make constant and steady progress to the end. ⁶⁵⁶⁵ Here is another instance of the genitive being the main subject, “the beginning of our confidence,” i.e., our first confidence, which the Apostle calls “first faith” in 1 Timothy 5:12. Macknight renders it “the begun confidence.” — Ed.

⁶⁴ What is implied here is that we may professedly be partakers of Christ: that is of his blessings as a Savior, and yet be not really so: the proof of the reality is perseverance. — Ed.

⁶⁵ Here is another instance of the genitive being the main subject, “the beginning of our confidence,” i.e., our first confidence, which the Apostle calls “first faith” in 1 Timothy 5:12. Macknight renders it “the begun confidence.” — Ed.