Reasoning about the oaths people take, the author of the letter says: if a person can swear by anything, then in any case it must be by something higher, something that represents absolute importance and value for him...
Reasoning about the oaths people take, the author of the letter says: if a person can swear by anything, then in any case it must be by something higher, something that represents absolute importance and value for him. It is no accident that in Israel the highest form of oath was considered an oath by the name of God.
Meanwhile, the Savior calls His disciples and followers not to swear at all: after all, what is absolutely important and valuable for a person does not belong to him, he cannot dispose of it, just as he cannot dispose of himself. Every person is in God's power, and therefore he cannot give anyone any guarantees about his own future. Against this background, the statement of the author of the letter that God swears by Himself because He cannot swear by anything or anyone higher sounds paradoxical. But if one thinks about it, it becomes clear that the matter here concerns one of the most important principles of spiritual life in general and Christian life in particular. Indeed, what is an oath? Swearing by someone or something, a person in a sense seeks a guarantor who will be able to ensure the fulfillment of the promise he has given.
The one or the thing called as witness, and an oath usually presupposes such a calling, is supposed to become the guarantor of the fulfillment of what was promised. It is quite understandable that if God gives a promise, no one and nothing can guarantee its fulfillment except God Himself. This appears quite obvious, and it is not very clear why the author of the letter suddenly decided to touch on the theme of oath. Meanwhile, many problems of Christians of that time were connected precisely with forgetting the most important principle of spiritual life just mentioned.
Many of them were probably inclined to see in the events then taking place some guarantee of the Messiah's swift return. After all, He had promised that after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple He would return, which means He must return, for in AD 70 precisely what He had spoken about took place. In reality, however, His return is not conditioned by any historical events. On the contrary, it itself determines them and, to a certain degree, conditions them as the point of completion of the historical process. And no events at all could be regarded as "forcing" the Messiah's return. It is this obvious fact that the author of the letter reminds his readers about.
6
6:16 Men generally swear by him who is infinitely greater than themselves, and an oath for confirmation, to confirm what is promised or asserted, usually puts an end to all contradiction. This shows that an oath taken in a religious manner is lawful even under the gospel: otherwise the apostle would never have mentioned it with so much honour, as a proper means to confirm the truth