Charles Swindoll on Hebrews 3:6b

The superiority of Jesus will do us no good if we don’t place Him as superior in our own lives. This was the problem facing these Jewish Christians. They were tempted to abandon their Messiah and go back to Moses. This would have been a disaster, a step backward to an inferior ministry. Never forgetting his purpose in writing, the author of Hebrews emphasizes, in the second part of Hebrews 3:6, his readers’ response to the superiority of Jesus.

He reminds them, first, that we-believers in Jesus Christ—are the household over which Christ rules as Son (Hebrews 3:6). However, the author seems to place a conditional element on this promise: “If we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.” At first blush, this verse seems to say that if we fail to hold on to our faith and hope in Christ, then we could somehow be kicked out of God’s house-hold, disowned, or disinherited. Does this mean our salvation is contingent on our subsequent faithfulness? Absolutely not.

The conditional construction, indicated by “if,” has different meanings. Sometimes it does indicate a conditional relationship, as in the phrase, “If you eat your broccoli, then you can have dessert.” The implication is: If you don’t eat up, no dessert for you! But it doesn’t lead to that person becoming a real musician in the same way that, in the other example, eating broccoli enables one to have dessert. This is how the author is using the term here. He’s saying that the continuance of faith and hope is proof of the reality of a person’s authentic membership in the family of God.

Now, we shouldn’t obsess over a little segment of a person’s life in which they go astray, have a lapse, or fall down and struggle to get up. All of us have dips and rises on the bumpy ride of spiritual growth. However, we can look at the life as a whole, see how a person’s life ends, and observe the evidences of true Christianity. That’s proof that there’s a reality there that backs up the claim. And if a person who claims to be a Christian appears to utterly fall away and fails to endure in faith and hope until the end of their life, then perhaps that person had never been a member of the family of God in the beginning.

Those who are truly in the household of faith live under the Father’s roof and the Son’s watchful eye. However, they are not immune to stumbling, tripping, and even falling flat on their faces. We never cease to be frail, fallen, and vulnerable people, saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. But those who are true believers—and therefore members of the household of faith—have Christ as their high priest. He ministers like no one else can. He is able to catch us when we stumble, steady us when we trip, and pick us up when we fall. He strengthens us in our frailty, forgives us when we fail, and comforts us in our weaknesses. If we endure in this faith and hope —with Christ at our side—to the end, then it will be manifest to all that we truly are members of His household.
This message was something the Hebrew believers desperately needed to hear. Some had fallen; others were teetering; others may have been reaching out for something to steady their tottering faith.

The author points them to Christ-superior to all others, even superior to Moses. All they needed to do was reassert their faith and hope, their confidence in Him-not good works, not spiritual disciplines, not striving to make themselves more worthy in God’s eyes, but confidence in Christ. Behind this hopeful message, however, was the hint of a warning. If they didn’t endure in their faith, but rather abandoned their Messiah and ran back to Moses, their claims to be members of God’s household would be suspect. Only by getting right with Christ would their identity as God’s children be assured.

Excerpt From Insights on Hebrews (Swindoll’s Living Insights New Testament Commentary Book 12) Charles R. Swindoll