ACC ~ Hebrews 10 v35 - 37

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.

Heb