God's sure judgment on those who neglect the great salvation.
I. NOTE THE APPEAL TO HISTORY. In the history of the Hebrew people God had shown the validity and seriousness of his messages. Those to whom the message had come had been disposed to slight it, either because of the improbability of the matter, or the mean appearance of the messenger. And behind both of these considerations it might also be that the message was very unpalatable. But however the message might appear to men, it was God's message, therefore necessary to be sent. The steadfast word through the angels we must take with a very wide significance, as including the prophets, though angels are specially mentioned because being so reverently regarded by the Hebrews There was an a fortiori argument as applied to the message that came through the Son.
II. NOTE THE GREAT TRANSGRESSION AND DISOBEDIENCE WE MAY COMMIT. We may be negligent of the great salvation. Our own personality, with its great powers and with the claims which God has upon it, we may allow to go to wreck and ruin, instead of submitting to the process whereby God would save us, and make us capable of glorifying him in a perfect way. The man who in any physical peril should steadily neglect whatever means of escape were put in his way, if he perished, would be held to have in him the spirit of the suicide. He who takes active steps against his own life is held to be committing a crime against society; but he who neglects his physical welfare is also sinning against society, though society cannot define his offence so as to punish him. But God, we know, can specify offences, as we cannot; and here is one, that when a man has spiritual and eternal salvation laid before him he yet neglects it. And the more we study this state of negligence, the more we shall see how great a sin it involves.
III. THE INEVITABLE PUNISHMENT WHICH WILL COME FOR SUCH NEGLECT. How shall we escape it? It is a question parallel to that of Paul in Romans 2:3, "How shalt thou escape the judgment of God?" The question is not of escaping from the danger by some other means than what God has provided. It is as to how we shall get away from God's doom upon us for deliberately and. persistently neglecting his loving provisions. How often New Testament exhortations make us face the thought of the great judgment-seat! We see what a serious thing in the sight of God simple negligence is. It is in heavenly affairs as in earthly, probably more harm is done by negligence of the good than by actual commission of the evil. Let there be strongest emphasis and deepest penitence in the confession, "We have not done the things we ought to have done."
IV. THE EXHORTATION TO ATTENTION. We must give more earnest heed to the things that have been heard. How close this exhortation comes! Things not only spoken but heard. The excuse is not permitted that we have not heard of these things. It is what we have heard, but have failed to treat rightly, to cherish and hold fast which constitutes our peculiar responsibility. Over against actual negligence there is the demand for close, continual attention. The meaning of salvation and the means of salvation are not to be discovered by listless hearts. We are attending too much to the wrong things—things that, in comparison with the so great salvation, are but as the fables and endless genealogies, attention to which Paul contemptuously condemned. And those who have to proclaim this salvation would do well to attend to that other counsel of Paul to Timothy, "Give heed to reading, exhortation, teaching," and so all of us need to be readers, learners, and especially submissive to the παράκλησις of the Holy Ghost.—Y.
The completeness with which the great salvation is made known.
The justness of God's visitation on those who neglect the great salvation lies in this, that the salvation has been so fully and variously proclaimed. Certainly this held in the instance of all to whom this Epistle was addressed; certainly it holds of all who can read the New Testament. With the Testament before us, it is our business, as prudent people, to make ourselves acquainted with the explanations, assurances, exhortations it contains on this matter of salvation.
I. THIS SALVATION WAS SPOKEN OF THROUGH THE LORD; i.e. through Jesus. Doubtless the reference here is specially to those solemn and awful intimations he gave to his disciples of the approaching destruction of Jerusalem. But the destruction of Jerusalem was itself only a type of a destruction more dreadful still. The worst thing was, not the destruction of the buildings, but the spiritual ruin of those who dwelt in them. This was the thing to be feared, that believers in Jesus should get infected by the lawless life around them, or should take unbelieving and self-indulgent ways to get away from peril. Therefore the Lord proclaimed salvation to him who would endure to the end. His own resurrection from the dead after men had done their very worst and got untrammeled their fullest opportunities, was itself an assurance of safety to those who fully trusted in him.
II. THE WORD OF THIS SALVATION CONFIRMED BY LISTENERS. We feel there must be a parallelism between the βέβαιος of Hebrews 2:2 and the ἐβεβαιώθη of Hebrews 2:3. The same God who gave authority to his messengers of old, and- put on them a certain kind of honor by showing, in severe treatment of those who rejected them, the Divine origin of their message, also gave authority to certain persons to continue that news of salvation which Jesus had first of all made known. Jesus himself passed these persons through a manifold and. searching discipline to qualify them for their work. He said many things to the common crowd, but of the mysteries of the kingdom he spoke for a while only to a chosen and docile circle; until at last the hour came when these listeners had to spread far and wide the same truths, for a benefit to every one who would attend to them. Jesus, in the greatness of his unique power, began—and it is ever the first step which is most difficult; others came and continued his work on his lines, and made some at least of their auditors in every place to feel that what they said rested on a sure foundation of a reality.
III. AN EXPLICIT STATEMENT OF HOW THIS CONFIRMATION WAS PRODUCED. Never let us forget that the apostles were peculiarly witness-bearers (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8). Again and again this is the apostolic claim in the Acts of the Apostles. Therefore it is quite the thing to be expected that God should be introduced, bearing his testimony along with them. Certain things were done, manifestly transcending human power, and manifestly full of a Divine presence and intent to those who regarded them with an honest heart. It is part of the love of God that he seeks all means to strengthen our hearts in keeping hold of the truth as it is in Jesus. Evidence is nothing without a spirit to appreciate it; but God knew that wheresoever the gospel went there would be some appreciating spirits, and to them the truth came by agencies such as bore it forward to an abiding home in their hearts. Evidence, of course, changes as the ages change; but truth is ever the same. The truth as it is in Jesus has not been altered; the need which that truth came to supply remains undiminished; and so we may be sure God is testifying still concerning that truth, the testimony being such that it satisfies the intellect because first of all it feeds and comforts the heart.—Y.
The seen present as a ground of confidence in the unseen future.
The confidence of one who believes in Messianic prophecy is that all things are as good as subjected to the Christ because God has declared this as his design. What we see is greatly short of subjection, and the subjected part we fail to see; we cannot rest our eyes upon it properly, because their attention is distracted by the sight of so much defiance, rebellion, and attempt at self-government in the far greater part of what ought to be subject to Christ. All the more need to find in what we may see the assurance and promise of the unseen. We do see—for that is what the words amount to—a humanized, a dying, and a risen Christ. "Crowned with glory and honor" is but a periphrasis for the resurrection, an indication of one of the things God did in raising his Son Jesus.
I. WHAT WE SEE SHOWS US THE POWER WHICH CAN PRODUCE THE DESIRED UNSEEN. God, in saying that all things shall be subjected to Christ, asserts authority. But by the course of his Son Jesus on earth he also manifested power. He took as it were a small section of time and space, and there gave us gracious illustration of what he is ever doing, some of it in the realm of the seen, but much more in that of the unseen. What power there is in the Incarnation! For obvious reasons the Incarnation is mostly connected with thoughts of God's condescension, and the lowly-heartedness of Jesus himself. But these considerations must not blind us to the Incarnation as an illustration of God's power. There is a mysterious power in making Jesus lower than the angels, and if it be true that there is a causal connection between sin and death as a painful experience, then some peculiar power must be involved in bringing the sinless Jesus in contact with the pain of death. Then, of course, there is the instance of power, most impressive and most cheering to us, in the raising of Jesus from the dead. If only we can really believe that God has power over the grave, we shall believe in his final conquest of all that can hurt his people.
II. WHAT WE SEE SHOWS US THE PURPOSE EVER WORKING TOWARDS THE DESIRED UNSEEN. The grace of God is manifest as well as the power of God. Jesus not only died; he tasted of death for every one—for every one who could benefit by the tasting of it. He tasted of it that by his resurrection he might show it was not the remediless poison men reckoned it to be. In his love he tasted death, as much as to say to men, "Fear not." We have the Divine purposes in words, but those words are only the more perfect expressions of what we might infer from the works. It is true that "through the ages one increasing purpose runs"—a purpose much higher than that any individual man might form, or the combination of any men.
III. WHAT WE SEE SHOWS US PATIENCE WAITING FOP, THE DESIRED UNSEEN. Great is the patience of God—a contrast to our impatience, our haste, our discontent, if we cannot get immediate results. The fullness of time has to be waited for before the Christ can enter the world; the fullness of manhood has to be waited for till he can begin to teach. Jesus himself must have his own time of sufficient seed-sowing before he can go to Jerusalem for the final scene, belay, procrastination, postponement, is what God cannot tolerate where there ought to be decision, but for great steps to be taken in his own mighty plans he can wait the proper time. If we do not yet see all things subjected to Jesus, if indeed the struggle seems often quite the other way, then there is all the more need for us to look at the career of Jesus from Bethlehem to Calvary as an illustration of how God can wait. In making up the cup which Jesus drank, many ingredients had to be waited for.—Y.