ACC ~ Hebrews 10 v26 - 39

OVERVIEW:

There is always room for repentance (OECUMENIUS), but only one cross (CHRYSOSTOM). Chrysostom encourages faithful living after communion. A fear of the upcoming judgment stimulates repentance that helps to escape the judgment (BASIL), although not all people assent to repentance (THEODORE). Chrysostom rebukes those who delay their baptism as they neglect repentance, the second washing, granted to us not by the law but by the gospel (ORIGEN, EPHREM). Struggle and suffering help us to attain self-control and to despise the vanity of wealth and honor; thus, they serve as a medicine for the soul. However, the devil tempts us to respond to the unavoidable sufferings with blasphemy rather than patience (CHRYSOSTOM). All the baptized are called to stand firm as good wrestlers (EPHREM, CHRYSOSTOM). It is the hope of the Lord’s second coming that strengthens believers in their struggle and endurance (EUSEBIUS, CHRYSOSTOM, PHOTIUS); that hope is based on faith. The Lord will soon return as the righteous live by faith (THEODORET). The just live by faith, because they believe what they cannot see (AUGUSTINE, EPHREM). The believers are reminded to remember the days of persecution, when the Hebrews joyfully endured suffering as a community. What is closer to your ears than a heart that is penitent and a life founded on faith?

10:26-27 | A Fearful Prospect of Judgment

IF WE SIN DELIBERATELY. THEODORET OF CYR: Now, it was not that he was ruling out repentance in these statements; rather, he was claiming there is no second sacrifice: our Lord was immolated for us once and for all. He used the term deliberately to emphasize that what is done against our free will enjoys a degree of pardon. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 10.

YET ANOTHER CHANCE OF REPENTANCE. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: So a person who has received pardon for sins must refrain from future sin. For in the light of the first and only repentance of sins—sins committed earlier in a person’s first, pagan life, I mean, a life led in ignorance—repentance is immediately available to those who are called, and it cleanses the region of the soul from anything discordant to provide a foundation for faith. The Lord, “who knows the heart,” and foreknowing all that is going to happen, has a foreknowledge from the very first of human instability and the devil’s crooked villainy. [The Lord has knowledge] of how the latter is jealous of the forgiveness of human sins and, by his mischievous calculations to induce them to share in his fall, will introduce other occasions for God’s servants to sin.

So in his great mercy he gave yet another chance of repentance to those who, despite their faith, fall into some form of disharmony, so that if anyone should, after their calling, fall into temptation and be forced or tricked into sin, they may have one more chance of “a repentance that brings no regret.” “For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.” Continual and repeated repentance for sins is no different from those who have once and for all turned away from faith, except alone in the consciousness of sin. I do not know which is worse: deliberate sin, or, after repentance for sin, offending again. … To repeat an action repented is a deliberate accomplishment of an action already condemned. STROMATEIS 2.13.56-57.

A MORE WRATHFUL JUDGMENT. BASIL THE GREAT: Each one should conciliate, as far as he is able, anyone at variance with him. He should not hold past wrongs against the repentant sinner but from his heart should pardon him. He who says that he repents of his sin should not only feel remorse for the sin which he has committed but should also bring forth fruits befitting repentance. If he who has been corrected for his first sins and has been deemed worthy of pardon again falls, he prepares for himself a more wrathful judgment. LETTER 22.

NO LONGER REFERS TO CHRIST’S SACRIFICE. CHRYSOSTOM: At this place we are again assailed by those who take away repentance as well as by those who delay to come to baptism. The one says that it is not safe to come to baptism, since there is no second remission. The other asserts that it is not safe to impart the mysteries to those who have sinned, if there is no second remission.

What shall we say then to them both? The Lord does not thrust away or cast down those who are fallen into despair. Nor does he take away repentance or the propitiation itself through an act of repentance. He is not thus an enemy of our salvation. But what means “no longer”? He takes away the second washing. For he did not say that no more is there repentance or no more is there remission, but “no longer” is there a “sacrifice”; that is, there is no need for a second cross. For this is what he means by sacrifice. “For by a single offering,” he says, “he has perfected for all time those that are sanctified,” unlike the Jewish rites. For this reason he has so consistently shown, concerning the sacrifice, that it is one, and one only. This calls us to be more steadfast. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 20.2.

HE DOES NOT DESTROY THE POSSIBILITY OF REPENTANCE. OECUMENIUS: He did not speak of people who have sinned, but he addressed the reckless and desired to admonish those who wish to remain in sin until the end. Hence it is especially clear that he does not destroy the possibility of repentance. FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 10.26.

ONE TAKES NO NOTICE OF STUMBLING. THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA: Those who have changed from the better to the worse must in the end be handed over to punishment, when they rise from the dead, since they did not allow any repentance in this life. For not merely in the present life does such an individual abolish repentance, but by his inability to assent to repentance he remains content with his fall and takes no notice of his stumbling, accomplishing every sort of sin with much pleasure by a certain lack of reason. FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 10.26-27.

10:28-29 | Outraging the Spirit of Grace

LAW IN OPPOSITION TO BLOOD AND SPIRIT. THEODORET OF CYR: Once more, note, he brings out the difference under the guise of exhortation, namely, the Son in one case and the slave in the other, those sacrifices of brute beasts in one case and in the other this rational and all-holy sacrifice. To the law he set in opposition not a law but the “blood” and the “Spirit.” Through them salvation comes to us. INTERPRETATION OF HE-BREWS 10.

A DIFFERENT DISPENSATION. ORIGEN: According to the law, “the adulterer and the adulteress were put to death.” They could not say, “We seek repentance and we pray for mercy.” There was no place for tears, and no opportunity was granted for any correction, but in every way it was necessary for those who had contravened the law to be punished. This was observed in certain individual offenses for which the death penalty was ascribed. But among Christians, if adultery has been committed, the precept is not that “the adulterer and adulteress” be punished by the destruction of the body. No power was given to episcopal authority to sentence an adulterer to immediate death, as had happened earlier according to the levitical law who gave this power to elders. What does this mean? That while the law of Moses takes adultery seriously enough to punish it unmercifully, the gospel of Christ through gentleness frees the adulterer to go from bad to worse? It is not so. For this reason, we brought forth the word of Paul, saying above, “How much worse punishment will be deserved by one who has spurned the Son of God,” etc. Hear, therefore, how neither was the law cruel then, nor does the gospel now appear dissolute because of the abundance of mercy, but in both instances the benevolence of God is held in a different dispensation. HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS 11.2.4.

CONSIDERING THE GOSPEL TO BE EQUAL. EPHREM THE SYRIAN: And who have “outraged the Spirit of grace,” which is in us? These are the people who consider the gospel to be equal to the law of Moses. COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

OLD REPROACHES RETURN. ORIGEN: But if you sin again, the old reproaches return again against you and all the more so, since it is a much greater crime “to spurn the Son of God and to profane the blood of the covenant” than to neglect the law of Moses. HOMILIES ON JOSHUA 5.6.

10:30-34 | A Hard Struggle with Sufferings

THINK LIGHTLY OF WEALTH AND HONOR. CHRYSOSTOM: Knowing then these things, let us be patient when we suffer evil and forthright in offering kindness. This is all the stronger if we think lightly of wealth and honor. He that has stripped himself of those affections is of all people most generous and wealthier even than he who wears the purple. Do you not see how many evils come through money? I do not say how many through covetousness, but merely by our attachment to these things. Just think of one who loses his money and leads a life more wretched than any death. Why do you grieve, my friend? Why do you weep if God has delivered you from excessive watching? Better that you come before God in fear and trembling. Again, if someone might chain you to a treasure, commanding you to sit there perpetually and to keep watch for other people’s goods, you are grieved, you are disgusted. But would you, having been bound with these chains, grieve when you yourself are delivered from the slavery? ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 20.5.

THE DEVIL CAUSES LOSSES TO IMPEL US TO BLASPHEMY. CHRYSOSTOM: These things I say to the overreaching, and it is well to say them also to those who are overreached. Bear their overreaching generously; they are ruining themselves, not you. They indeed defraud you of your money, but they strip themselves of the good will and help of God. And he that is stripped of that, though he clothe himself with the whole wealth of the world, is of all people most poor, just as he who is the poorest of all, if he has God’s help, is the wealthiest of all. For “the Lord,” it is said, “is my shepherd, and I shall lack nothing.” Tell me now, if you had had a husband, a great and admirable man, who thoroughly loved you and cared for you, and then you knew that he would live always and not die before you and would give you all things to enjoy in security as your own, would you then have wished to possess anything? Even if you had been stripped of all, would you not have thought yourself the richer for this?

Why then do you grieve? Because you have no property? But consider that you have had the occasion of sin taken away. Or do you grieve because you had property and have been deprived of it? But remember that you have acquired the good will of God. And how have I acquired it, you say? He has said, “Why do you not rather suffer wrong?” He has said, “Blessed are they who bear all things with thankfulness.” Consider therefore how great a good you will enjoy, if you show forth those things by your works. For one thing only is required from us, “in all things to give thanks” to God, and then we have all things in abundance. I mean, for instance, have you lost ten thousand pounds of gold? Give thanks unto God, and you have acquired ten times ten thousand, by that word and thanksgiving.

For, tell me, when do you account Job blessed? When he had so many camels and flocks and herds, or when he uttered that saying: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away”? Therefore also the devil causes us losses, not that he may take away our goods only, for he knows that is nothing, but that through them he may compel us to utter some blasphemy. So in the case of the blessed Job too, the devil did not strive after this only to make him poor but also to make him a blasphemer. At any rate, when he had stripped him of everything, observe what he says to him through his wife, “Curse God, and die.” And yet, O accursed one, you had stripped him of everything. “But,” he says, “this is not what I was striving for, for I have not yet accomplished that for which I did it all. I was striving to deprive him of God’s help. … This is what I wish, the other is nothing. If this be not gained, he not only has not been injured at all, but has even been benefited.” Do you see that even that wicked demon knows how great is the loss in this matter? ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 20.7-8.

AFTER DISCOURAGING THEM. EPHREM THE SYRIAN: Then, after he discouraged them from sinning, Paul returned to talk to them about the first topic, that is, that of the joy which was at the beginning of their discipleship. “Recall,” he says, “the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.” COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

HE DID NOT SAY “TEMPTATIONS” BUT “STRUGGLE.” CHRYSOSTOM: The best physicians, after they have made a deep incision and have increased the pains by the wound, soothing the afflicted part and giving rest and refreshment to the disturbed soul, proceed not to make a second incision but rather soothe that which has been made with gentle remedies and such as are suited to remove the violence of the pain. This Paul also did after he had shaken their souls and pierced them with the recollection of hell and convinced them that he who does insult to the grace of God must certainly perish. After he had shown from the laws of Moses that they also shall perish … and had said, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” then, lest the soul, desponding through excessive fear, should be swallowed up with grief, he soothes them by commendations and exhortation and gives them zeal derived from their own conduct. For, he says, “recall the former days, when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.” Powerful is the exhortation from deeds already done, for he who begins a work ought to go forward and add to it. It is as if he had said, when you were brought in to the church, when you were in the rank of learners, you displayed such great readiness, such great nobleness. But now it is no longer so. And he who encourages thus especially encourages them from their own example.

And he did not simply say, “you endured a struggle” but a “hard” struggle. Moreover he did not say “temptations” but “struggle,” which is an expression of commendation and of very great praise. Then he also enumerates them particularly, amplifying his discourse and multiplying his praise. How? “Sometimes,” he says, you are “being publicly exposed to reproaches and affliction.” Reproach is a heavy weight and calculated to pervert the soul and to darken the judgment. The prophet remembers those who “say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’” … For since the human race is exceedingly vainglorious, it is easily overcome by this. And he did not simply say “by reproaches,” but that even with greater intensity, being “publicly exposed.” For when a person is reproached alone, it is indeed painful, but far more so when in presence of all. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 21.1.

SHAME TAKEN AWAY BY BAPTISM. EPHREM THE SYRIAN: Now “exposures to abuse and persecutions” they had to endure, because the law imposed on them the requirement to reveal their sins over their offerings. However, these exposures to abuse discouraged people from revealing their sins. These difficulties, he says, that you had in revealing your sins, and the shames that prevented you from revealing them, these fumes of the consciousness, which were like fierce pains and great sufferings of bitterness—all these have been taken away from you through the baptism of the waters and with the single expiation that you received. COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

AS NOBLE WRESTLERS YOU STOOD. CHRYSOSTOM: I cannot say, he says, that you suffered these things indeed and were grieved, but you even rejoiced exceedingly. He expressed this by saying, “You became partners with those so treated,” and he brings forward the apostles themselves. Not only, he means, were you not ashamed of your own sufferings, but you even shared with others who were suffering the same things. This too is the language of one who is encouraging them. He said not, “Bear my afflictions, share with me,” but respect your own.

“You had compassion on those who were bound.” You see that he is speaking concerning himself and the rest who were in prison. Thus you did not account “bonds” to be bonds, but you stood as noble wrestlers. For not only did you need no consolation in your own distresses, but you even became a consolation to others. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 21.2.

10:35-37 | Do Not Throw Away Your Confidence

THESE THINGS BESTOW CONFIDENCE ON US. PHOTIUS: “Do not throw away your confidence,” your boldness based on your works, based on your faith, based on your periods of testing, based on your endurance. For these things bestow great confidence on us, that we will obtain the promise. FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 10.35.

DO NOT FRET OVER LOSING WHAT DOES NOT NEED TO BE HELD FAST. CHRYSOSTOM: In the next place, having praised them, he says, “Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.” What do you mean? He did not say, “you have cast it away, and recovered it.” Rather he tended more to strengthen them when he says, “you have it.” For to recover again that which has been cast away requires more labor, but not to lose that which is held fast does not. To the Galatians he says the very opposite, “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you,” and he says this with good reason, for they were more indifferent and needed a sharper word. These, however, were more faint-hearted, so that they rather needed what was more soothing. “Therefore do not throw away,” he says, “your confidence,” so that they were in great confidence toward God. “Which has,” he says, “a great reward.” “And when shall we receive them?” someone might say. “Behold! All things on our part have been done.” Therefore he anticipated them on their own supposition, saying in effect, if you know that you have in heaven a better substance, seek nothing here. “For you have need of endurance,” not of any addition to your labors, that you may continue in the same state, that you may not throw away what has been put into your hands. You need nothing else but to stand as you have stood, that when you come to the end, you may receive the promise. “For,” he says, “you have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised.” You have need of one thing only, to bear with the delay, not that you should fight again. You are at the very crown, he means. You have borne all the combats of bonds, of afflictions; your goods have been spoiled. What then? Henceforward you are standing to be crowned. Endure this only—the delay of the crown. Oh, the greatness of the consolation! It is as if one should speak to an athlete who had overthrown all and had no antagonist and then was to be crowned but could not show up for the ceremony in which the president of the games comes and places the crown upon him. Instead, he is so impatient that he wishes to go out and escape, as though he could not bear the thirst and the heat. He then also says, so as to hint in this direction: “Yet a little while and the coming one shall come and shall not tarry.” For lest they should say, “And when will he come?” he comforts them from the Scriptures. For thus also when he says in another place, “salvation is nearer,” he comforts them, because the remaining time is short. And this he says not of himself but from the Scriptures. But if from that time it was said, “Yet a little while and the coming one shall come and shall not tarry,” it is plain that now he is even nearer. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 21.3.

THE WILL OF GOD. PHOTIUS: “The will of God” is to believe sincerely in him and to do virtuous deeds and to contend for them even to the point of blood when the time calls. For such people “receive what is promised.” FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 10.36.

THE COMING ONE SHALL COME. EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA: And here it is clearly foretold that that one will come whom prophecy says will come. Who could this be but he who is referred to in the words, “Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord, the Lord God also has shone upon us”? With which also Zechariah agrees, when he says, “Behold a man, the Dawn is his name, and he shall rise from below.” The same prophet too, noting the time, adds, “At eventide it shall be light. If he delays, wait for him.” Instead of this, Aquila reads, “If he tarry expect him, for he that comes will come and will not tarry.” And the epistle to the Hebrews has this in mind. … But note how clearly the epistle arranges what was obscure in the prophetic writing, because of the inversion of the clauses. For the prophecy says, “He that comes will come and will not tarry,” and then adds, “If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” Without what follows, this addition would seem absurd. For how could it be said of the just that God takes no pleasure in him? But the placing side by side of the divided clauses by a change in the arrangement of them preserves the sense. For after “Yet a little while, and the coming one shall come and shall not tarry,” it adds next, “but my righteous one shall live by faith.” Then what was first in the prophecy it places second, “and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”

For as Scripture has already once foretold through the prophecy that the light promised to all nations by Christ’s coming “shall rise late and in the evening, and shall not deceive” (for so Aquila interprets instead of “come to nothing”), it next exhorts to patience, because the coming of the subject of the prophecy is to be late and in the evening, as seen in the words, “If he tarry await him, or if he delay expect him, for he that comes will come and will not tarry.” Thus he encourages the hearer to trust the prediction, saying that he that trusts it, shown by his very faith to be just, shall live the life according to God. On the other hand, he that does not trust, drawing back through lack of boldness, and putting no faith in the words “My soul has no pleasure in him.” So, then, if we follow this course and place the first clause last and the last first, we shall preserve the sense of the passage, putting “The just shall live by faith” after “For he that comes will come and will not tarry,” by transposing the clauses and adding to this, “If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” And Aquila agrees with this interpretation, saying, “If he delay, expect him, for he that comes will come and will not tarry. Lo, if he be sluggish, my soul is not true in him, and the just shall live by faith.” PROOF OF THE GOSPEL 6.14.

10:38-39 | Live by Faith

THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. THEODORET OF CYR: God has said this through the inspired authors, he is saying; and so even when the law was in force, the remedy of faith secured salvation. … Through faith we are related to God. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 10.

THE SOUL BECOMES JUST BY SHARING IN THE BETTER ONE. AUGUSTINE: “Faith working through love,” comes not so much by fearing punishment as by loving justice. Still, as the soul does not become just except by sharing in the better one who justifies the ungodly—for what has it that it has not received?—it ought not to glory as if it had not received it, by attributing to itself what comes from God. That is why it was said to him, “Be not high-minded, but fear.” And that fear is also commanded for those who live by faith and are heirs of the new covenant, being “called to freedom.” LETTER 140.21.

CLAD IN JUSTICE. AUGUSTINE: “No man living is righteous before you,” yet “the righteous one lives by faith.” The saints are clad in justice, one more, another less; yet no one lives here without sin. In this also, one more, another less, but he is best who has least sin. LETTER 167.13.

FOUNDED ON FAITH. AUGUSTINE: What is closer to your ears than a heart that is penitent and a life founded on faith? CONFESSIONS 2.3.5.

THE JUST BELIEVE WHAT THEY CANNOT SEE. AUGUSTINE: Will there be any of us bold enough to say, “I am just”? I assume, after all, that “I am just” amounts to the same thing as “I am not a sinner.” … Here we are with people who have been justified from their sins. We can’t deny it. There remains, however, the struggle with the flesh, there remains the struggle with the world, there remains the struggle with the devil. When you are struggling, you sometimes hit, sometimes you get hit; sometimes you win, sometimes you’re done for; it remains to be seen how you leave the stadium. Because “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Again, if we say we have no justice at all, we are telling a lie about God’s gifts. You see, if we have no justice at all, we have no faith either; and if we have not faith, we are not Christians. But if we do have faith, we already have at least some justice. Do you want to know how much that “some” is? The just live by faith. The just, I repeat, live by faith, because they believe what they cannot see. SERMON 158.4.

UNTIL THEY ARE BROUGHT FACE TO FACE. AUGUSTINE: This justice is the grace of the New Testament, by which the faithful are just while they live by faith until, by the perfection of justice, they are brought to the face-to-face vision, as they are also equally brought to immortality of the body itself by the perfection of salvation. Hence, in another place the apostle says, “So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” And then he adds, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin”—that is, a sacrifice for sin, for in that law offerings made for sins were called sin—“so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” that is, in his body, which is the church, of which he is the head, that we may be the justice of God. LETTER 140.30.

WE HAVE FAITH INSTEAD. EPHREM THE SYRIAN: The just one lives when endurance and faith are found in that one. But if somebody is oppressed by doubts and scruples, because the rewarder did not appear, “my soul has no pleasure in him” on that day.

But we are not victims of scruples, which destroy our path to heaven and “bring us to perdition”; we have faith instead, through which we obtain “the salvation of our soul.” COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

BY FAITH HEBREWS 11:1-7

OVERVIEW: This chapter calls the roll of the Old Testament heroes of the faith. Without faith there is no understanding, for faith, which the Greeks think alien and useless, is in fact “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA). If things are not seen, how can you be convinced that they exist? Where do the things come from, if not from the one whom you cannot see? The reason faith is greatly rewarded is that it does not see and yet believes. Faith does not falter, because it is supported by hope; if you take away hope, faith falters. If, from faith and hope, you withdraw love, what is the point of believing; what is the point of hoping, if you do not love? Indeed, you cannot even hope for anything you do not love (AUGUSTINE). Faith is the foundation of the church, and the faith in the risen Lord sustains many (CYRIL OF JERUSALEM). Faith supersedes human reason, as it penetrates the invisible substance of things. Furthermore, communal faith of the church is superior to individual. Seek God, but not despairingly. For the desperation of our search to see hidden reasons in God’s purpose is transcended through simple faith.

The pattern of faith is seen in the history of the patriarchs and primitive heroes who believed God’s promise (CHRYSOSTOM). That pattern extends from Abel, who spoke through his faith to Enoch, Moses and even to the woman from Canaan and Paul, all of whom sought God (EPHREM, ATHANASIUS, PACHOMIUS, CHRYSOSTOM). Often the figures and stories are typological allusions to Christ. The figures came first so their fulfillment could follow (LEO THE GREAT). It is only through faith that we join the church through the confession of a creed (“I believe”) and thus are released from the bond of sin (BEDE). A sound faith of the church is the foundation of eternal salvation (LEO THE GREAT) as well as of personal morals (CYRIL OF JERUSALEM). Unlike our belief in God, our knowledge about God is limited (CHRYSOSTOM). Noah and Abraham are just two examples of faith that resulted in righteousness through faithful obedience to God’s word (EPHREM, CHRYSOSTOM).