August 30, 2022 – Tuesday
Hebrews 10:29 NIV
29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
Hebrews 10:29 ESV
How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
Comment
This verse is in the middle of a section, verses 19-39, which has various titles. In the NIV it is A Call to Persevere in Faith and in the ESV it is The Full Assurance of Faith. The NIV concludes, 36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 37 For, “In just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay. [Isaiah 26:20]” 38 And, “But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.” [Habakkuk 2:4]39 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.
With that we know we want to persevere in doing the will of God in our lives so that we will receive what He has promised. But our verse of the day is about those who do not persevere. It begins with How much more severely or How much worse punishment, so to find out what the writer is telling us about we go to the prior verse. There we find, 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. And that is not sufficient so let’s go back two more verses, 26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
Now it all begins to make sense. Violate or reject the law of Moses as given to him by God and you could be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses. That was then, but now, after Jesus died on the cross for all of our sins, if someone chooses to intentionally keep on sinning after knowing what Jesus did for him, there is no sacrifice left for those sins. Instead, only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God, aka hell.
With this background our verse for today makes a great deal more sense, 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? That’s the NIV, the ESV ends with outraged the Spirit of grace? If someone treats the grace of God granted by the Son of God dying on the cross as something to be ignored or insulted or treated as a lie, that person has effectively trampled the Son of God underfoot. Further he is treating Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, His blood of the covenant He made with us to sanctify us as nothing. And in doing so this person is refusing the gift of grace and thus insults the Spirit of grace, the Holy Spirit.
This brings us back to what Jesus said to the teachers of the law who were accusing Him of being in league with Satan in Mark 3:28-29, 28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin. Refusing the gift of grace. even at the point of death, is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, against the Spirit of grace. For more on this go here.
Bottom Line: All of us know individuals who reject the gift of grace, pray for them with the hope they will not die blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, Almighty God, Help us, who have accepted the wonderful gift of grace, to continually pray for those who have not. – In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
RileyD, nwJ
Riley D. Driver – Pastor
Calvary Chapel of Dayton
in Beavercreek