Main news for 28 March 2020

King James Version (en)

Hebrews, Chapter 10, verse 34

¹⁹ An exhortation to hold fast the faith, with patience and thanksgiving

³⁴For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.

NOTES

"...For yet a very little while..." Sometimes we do not want to believe this, and we say: you are only comforting us, Apostle Paul. But before this Paul says: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!" In the Greek text...

Continuing the conversation about Christian life, the author of the letter calls his readers not to turn aside from the path on which they have set out and along which they have already managed to travel some distance. As can be seen, the author, being a disciple of the apostle, together with him and with some others experienced persecution for Christ, which he mentions in general terms but quite clearly. Unlike his teacher, the author of the letter was not executed, but at some point the threat to his life was real.

Others were in a similar position. The fate of Paul and of other Christians may have been different if the anti-Roman uprising in Palestine, which began at about this time and proceeded under religious and, in particular, messianic slogans, had not started. The Romans then apparently began to look at the followers of Jesus in the same way as at all messianists in general: as rebels actively opposing Roman authority.

In such a situation, persecution naturally could not help intensifying, at least until the uprising was completely suppressed. And judging by the testimony of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, many of his addressees showed themselves to be faithful disciples of Christ. But now, after hopes for Christ's imminent return had dissipated, they were evidently in some confusion, not understanding what to wait for next and, one can think, looking closely at various messianic groups and sects of a gnostic kind; gnosis in those times was no less characteristic of the Jewish environment than of the pagan one. It is in just such a situation that the author writes his letter to some Christian Jewish community, possibly a community of Roman Jewish Christians.

There could have been many such people: the Jewish community of Rome was one of the largest in antiquity, and there were many there who had turned to Christ, in particular under the influence of Paul's preaching. Of course, these people experienced everything connected with the catastrophe of AD 70 as deeply as the whole Jewish community did, whether one speaks of orthodox Jews or of messianist Christians. And the author of the letter, remaining faithful to the teaching both of the Savior Himself and of his teacher Paul, calls them not to despair and to remain faithful to what had been revealed to them at their conversion and to the faithfulness they had witnessed during persecution.

Continuing the discussion of faithfulness to the once-established covenant-union, which is inseparable from faithfulness to the Church, the author...

Continuing the discussion of faithfulness to the once-established covenant-union, which is inseparable from faithfulness to the Church, the author of the letter reminds his readers of the persecutions they had endured before, apparently even before the catastrophe of AD 70 (vv. 32-34). This reminder is clearly not accidental: faithfulness during persecutions is possible only when the Kingdom is an obvious and immediate reality of life for those who are persecuted, so obvious that even physical death does not frighten them. The life of the Kingdom is greater than the physical life that can be taken from a person in our world, which is not yet transformed. And now the author clearly wants to remind his addressees of the times when the Kingdom was so evident to them that no one even thought of doubting its nearness. The main source of doubt for the faithful was evidently the fact that even now, after the catastrophe of which the Savior had spoken as an event immediately preceding His return in glory, the complete and final triumph of the Kingdom was being delayed, and delayed for an indefinite time: Jesus had left His disciples no other landmarks on this matter.

Such a situation did not so much frighten many people as cool them off, so that the author of the letter had to remind them that the history of the Kingdom's formation and its revelation in our transforming, but not yet transformed, world is still far from complete. That is why he calls the faithful not to give in to despondency and disappointment, assuring them that the Savior's return is near (vv. 35-37). Of course, in this case he is not speaking about any specific dates, since even Jesus Himself refused to speak about them. The point is something else: now that what He said concerning Jerusalem and the Temple has been fulfilled, history has entered the final stretch that leads straight to the threshold of the Kingdom. Precisely now, when it seems there is nothing more to wait for, the possibility of the Savior's return is higher than ever before. And precisely now the faithful need spiritual readiness more than ever, and therefore a resolve that knows no wavering (vv. 38-39). Indeed, it would be foolish and painful to lose the Kingdom because of disappointment, cooling, and indecision at the very time when every day and every hour one can expect its complete and final triumph.

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