Last time we were together, we looked at a warning text in the Bible that applies to our media diets. Hebrews 2:1 was the text. It encourages us to focus our attention and not get distracted from the cross. It’s an incredibly important text for our lives inside the “attention economy,” as it’s been called.

Today’s question also relates to our media diets. It comes from an anonymous listener asking about a Christian view of fiction. Here it is: “Pastor John, hello! I have been struggling to understand 1 Timothy 1:4 and Paul’s warning against ‘myths.’ What implications does this verse against ancient myths have for a culture like ours, which is full of contemporary myths and fictional storytelling? Jesus told stories. C.S. Lewis wrote great fictional stories. Harry Potter is a bestselling series of contemporary mythology. So how do we view our own cultural myths — our captivating novels and superhero movies and long-running TV series — considering Paul’s warning to believers to not be devoted to myths? Do we face a spiritual danger in our fiction today or not?”

That’s a good question, exegetically, for what Paul meant. We want to start there and then relate it to some things today. Let’s put the New Testament word “myth” — Greek mythos; it’s the very same word in Greek — in front of us. It’s used five times in the New Testament: four in Paul and once in 2 Peter. Here they are:

Charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. (1 Timothy 1:3–4)

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness. (1 Timothy 4:7)

The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded. (2 Timothy 4:3–5)

Rebuke [the Cretans] sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. (Titus 1:13–14)

We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)

Those are all the uses of the word myth in the New Testament. The dictionary definition, if you look it up in a Greek dictionary of the first century, means a tale, a legend, a story that over time became fictional narrative over against a historical account of things.

Myths Among the Apostles

Now, the way Paul and Peter are using the term, it’s clearly negative. If you take those five texts that I just read, here are the associations with myths: Myths promote speculations. They are like endless genealogies — they don’t get anywhere; they don’t land anywhere solid (1 Timothy 1:4).

Paul calls them “old wives’ tales” in 1 Timothy 4:7 (NIV). Maybe that’s because there were vulnerable women that we meet at the church in Ephesus who were “always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). In other words, there was this endless, speculative approach toward things there that never got its feet on the ground of God’s reality, and myths were feeding into that.

Myths were irreverent and empty; they were the opposite of training oneself in godliness (1 Timothy 4:7). They were a wandering away from truth (2 Timothy 4:4). They were cleverly devised and not based on eyewitness accounts (2 Peter 1:16).

If you step back and say, “What’s the big picture here?” Paul’s main problem with them is that they weren’t serving what he calls oikonomia, the household plan of God — namely, the upbuilding of faith (1 Timothy 1:4). I think that would be his summary criticism. These are not doing what God means to be done in his house: Build people up in faith. Give them a firm place to stand, and make their faith strong.

In summary, myths, as Paul and Peter dealt with them in their letters, were not just false, but they were destabilizing. That is, they didn’t result in helping people plant their feet anywhere in God’s reality. They promoted speculations, endless openness, never coming to a knowledge of anything.

G.K. Chesterton once said there’s a good reason to open your mouth (in other words, to be open-minded): you open your mouth in order to bite down on something. You don’t just stand around with your mouth endlessly open. That’s what Paul was concerned with. I see that today in a lot of places, just an endless opening to possibilities but never a closing of your mouth on anything enriching.

Types of Myths

Now, what about myth today? The word has ordinary meanings and technical literary meanings. It’s kind of complex. For example, the second meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary is “a widely held misconception.” That’s like saying, “Oh, that’s a myth. It’s an erroneous belief.” In that sense, a myth is the opposite of reality. It’s false to what is.

Or it can refer to stories in general. They might be true and communicate truth and help truth advance, or they might be misleading.

Or thirdly, it can refer to something quite technical — say, in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, as they develop the term and work on writing that kind of literature. A myth, they would say, is a structure of ultimate reality that can be pointed to, hinted at, or embodied in lots of different forms: fables, epic poetry, novels, dramas. In that technical sense, myth is the ultimate story within various literary forms and not reducible to any literary form.

The really important thing to grasp for Lewis is that he means to say that Christianity is true myth. He’s got this essay called “Myth Became Fact.” Here’s a quote: “The heart of Christianity is a myth” — if you stop there, that’d be heresy (I mean, given the ordinary meaning of the word).

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. (God in the Dock, 58–59)

That’s Lewis.

Truth-Denying Stories

Let’s step back now and ask whether myths, as Paul used the term and as many use it today, is a problem or a danger for Christians who love the truth, what really is. That’s what I mean by truth. Truth is God and all that God has revealed about his thoughts and his ways. It’s his view of things. It’s not just what human imagination can make up, but what God says is real.

Paul’s warning was that myths were leading people away from the truth and thus destroying people. They were, in fact, creating an indifference to the truth as anything fixed and stirring up endless speculations. They were fascinating. They were intriguing people, but not helping them land anywhere.

“The use of stories to lead away from truth is always going to be a problem.”

I get nervous when I’m around people who constantly use the words intriguing or fascinating. They don’t ever use categories of truth: right, wrong, good, bad, beautiful, ugly. It’s just intriguing. I think Paul was dealing with that all the time in Ephesus. They don’t get their feet on the ground of truth, and they’re not stable, with a clear sight of God and his ways and his will. That is what we should watch out for. That’s the way I would sum up the issue today.

The use of stories to lead away from truth, and the use of stories to destabilize people by replacing the very concept of firm, true, stable reality with open-endedness, is always going to be a problem. “Ever learning, never coming to a knowledge of the truth” (see 2 Timothy 3:7). That might happen through novels, or TV dramas, or movies, or theater. Do they serve the truth or lead away from it and diminish the importance of it?

Truth-Telling Stories

But here’s the reason we must not lump all fiction into the category of misleading myth or destabilizing myth. Fiction, as a way of leading to truth, is firmly embedded in the Bible. That’s why we can’t toss it out. God inspired it. God used it. For example, Jesus told parables. The point of these little, short fictional stories was to tell the truth in a peculiar way. The prophet Nathan convicted David of his sin by telling him a fictional story about a lamb. Isaiah developed parable-like stories throughout his prophecies, like the one in Isaiah 5:1–6, where Israel is compared to a vineyard. He goes on and on about Israel as his vineyard.

“Fiction, as a way of leading to truth, is firmly embedded in the Bible.”

The Bible rings — I mean, literally rings — on virtually every page with hundreds of similes and metaphors, which you could describe as tiny fictional pictures of things. Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:7). That’s a little tiny piece of fiction. Or in Revelation, Jesus says to his obedient people, “I will make [you] a pillar in the temple of my God” (Revelation 3:12). That’s a little piece of fiction that tells a glorious truth. I don’t expect to be like Lot’s wife, made out of marble in the kingdom to come. It’s a picture. It’s a fictional picture of something glorious and real. These are what you might call micro-fiction, clearly intended to lead us to the truth. Not all fictional storytelling is anti-truth.

Four Questions for Fiction

So how shall we be discerning? I would ask at least these four questions.

1. What kind of literature or drama are we reading or watching? Do we know it’s fiction or nonfiction?

2. Do we know how fiction can tell the truth or mislead? We need to be aware of both and not be sucked into a view of the world that distorts reality as God intended it to be known. Measure the fictional portrayal of nonfictional reality by the reality revealed in God’s word.

3. Does it increase or clarify our knowledge of and enjoyment of the truth? Do we understand reality better? Do we feel about reality the way God intends for us to feel about the reality being spoken of?

4. Does it leave us with a greater love for truth — not just knowledge but love for truth? Or does it destabilize us and make us more uncertain about the very concept of truth, suspicious of truth, confused about truth?

The apostle Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2:10 that people are perishing because they did not “welcome a love for the truth in order to be saved” (my translation). He didn’t just say people are perishing because they don’t know the truth; he said they’re perishing because they don’t love the truth. Our salvation hangs on loving the truth.

That was Paul’s great concern with myths in his day. They were leading people away from truth. They were undermining the very value of truth. They were knocking out the foundations from under faith and godliness. So they were destroying people. Yes, that can and does happen today.

A few years ago, a group of cognitive and behavioral psychologists took five hundred college students, split them into three groups, and gave them two tests. The groups were alike in every way except one: the placement of their phones. The first group had their phones screen-down on the table; the second had their phones in their pockets; the third didn’t have their phones at all. You probably can see where this is going.

Though the phones of all three groups were on silent, and though few students said they felt distracted by their phones, the test scores followed an inverse relationship to the nearness of the device. On average, the closer the phone, the lower the grade. Nicholas Carr, who discusses this study in the 2020 afterword to his book The Shallows, summarizes the psychologists’ troubling conclusion:

Smartphones have become so tied up in our lives that, even when we’re not peering or pawing at them, they tug at our attention, diverting precious cognitive resources. Just suppressing the desire to check a phone, which we do routinely and subconsciously throughout the day, can debilitate our thinking. (230)

The finding — corroborated by similar studies — gives clear expression to the vague sense many feel: our phones shape us not only, perhaps not even mainly, by the content they deliver to us, but also by the mere presence of something so pleasing, so undemanding, so endlessly interesting. Smartphones, though small, exert a (subconscious) gravitational pull on our attention, drawing our thoughts and feelings into their orbit, even when their screens are dark.

“Smartphones, though small, exert a gravitational pull on our attention, even when their screens are dark.”

Which means, if Christians are going to heed the summons of Romans 12:2 in a smartphone age — “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” — we will need to do more than resist the false content on our phones. We will need to resist the false gravitational presence our phones so subtly exert upon us.

And to that end, we might find help from an ancient practice: Sabbath.

Our Intimate Companion

Before considering what the Sabbath might mean for our screens, take fresh stock of where we are. The smartphone entered the world in 2007; by 2011, most of us had one. Now, just over a decade later, most of us have a hard time remembering life without one. Screens have become ubiquitous, seemingly inescapable — digital Alexanders who conquered our consciousness overnight.

For many, our phones are the first face we see in the morning, the last at night, and by far the most frequent in between. We have become a sea of bent heads and sore thumbs, adept at navigating sidewalks and store aisles with our peripheral vision. Phones have become so thoroughly embedded with mind and body that many feel phantom vibrations and find their hand repeatedly twitching, unbidden, toward the pocket. As of two years ago, the average American spends at least half his waking hours on a screen (The Shallows, 227).

Where shall we go from this digital spirit? Or where shall we flee from its presence? If we ascend to heaven, airplanes offer WiFi. If we make our bed in darkness, something buzzes on the nightstand. If we take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there 5G coverage will keep us within reach.

The stupendous prevalence of our phones may not be a problem if we knew a screen-saturated existence improved our quality of life and helped us follow Jesus more faithfully. Unfortunately, we have many reasons to think it doesn’t.

Digitized, Dehumanized

The irony has not escaped me that I am currently staring at a screen, and so (most likely) are you. Lest I saw off the branch I’m sitting on, let it be said: Our phones and other screens are gifts to thank God for. So much good can be done by them and through them. The need of the hour is not to shoot these wild stallions dead, but to tame them and harness their power.

But oh how they need taming. Jean Twenge, in her carefully researched book iGen, includes a graph that shows how much certain screen activities (like gaming, texting, and social networking) and certain nonscreen activities (like exercising, reading, and spending time with friends) contribute to teens’ happiness. She writes,

The results could not be clearer: teens who spend more time on screen activities . . . are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time on nonscreen activities . . . are more likely to be happy. There’s not a single exception: all screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. (77–78)

And as with happiness, so with other categories of mental health: “More screen time causes more anxiety, depression, loneliness, and less emotional connection” (112).

“Though phones may serve our discipleship to Jesus in some ways, they can do so at great cost.”

As Christians, can we not testify to a similar correlation between screens and the spiritual life? Though phones may serve our discipleship to Jesus in some ways (such as by giving us easy access to Scripture and Bible-study tools), they can do so at great cost. Rather than help us meditate, they often interrupt, draw our attention elsewhere, and cultivate habits of cursory reading. Rather than help us pray, they often fill the blank spaces of our days. Rather than help us evangelize, they often cast our gaze downward as we walk past our neighbors.

Those with a robust biblical anthropology look on unsurprised at our phones’ detrimental effects. Are we not social creatures, made for a fellowship that goes deeper than pen and ink, screen and key (2 John 12)? Are we not embodied creatures, made to feast upon God’s world with all five senses (Genesis 2:7; Psalm 104)? Are we not intellectual creatures, made to think deeply and not just on the surface of things (2 Timothy 2:7)? And are we not, first and foremost, Godward creatures, made to live coram Deo (Colossians 3:17) and not coram smartphone?

Perhaps, in such a digital world as ours, some Christians can protect and grow their social, embodied, intellectual, Godward nature apart from taking some extreme countermeasures. To me, that effort feels like trying to sleep with the lights on: possible, but harder than it needs to be.

Screen Sabbaths

Enter the Sabbath. From the exodus onward, Israel’s Sabbath served as a weekly reminder of Reality. And not just a reminder of Reality (as if the Sabbath were merely a mental exercise), but a felt sense of it. God revealed himself as Israel’s restful Creator (Exodus 20:11) and rest-giving Redeemer (Deuteronomy 5:15). But given how deeply they had been shaped by work-obsessed Egypt, and given the bent of their own hearts toward restlessness, they needed a practice that would work their confession down into the nerves and sinews of the soul.

And so, God gave them the Sabbath, a day that shifted the gravitational center away from Egypt with its restless Pharaoh and toward Reality with its restful God, trading a seven-day workweek for God’s own six-and-one pattern (Genesis 2:1–3). As such, the Sabbath takes its place alongside Israel’s festivals and feasts, the psalmist’s day-and-night meditation (Psalm 1:1–2), Daniel’s kneeling prayer (Daniel 6:10), and Jesus’s morning solitude (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16) as a practice of disciplined resistance against the atmospheric influence of the world.

Now, how might we apply the Sabbath principle to our screen-addled, digitally saturated selves? The proposal is neither complicated nor novel: in order to resist the tug of your digital devices and live as a more present follower of Jesus, take a break from screens one day a week. Whether for a full 24 hours or for some other protected time, turn off the phone, close the computer, and plunge yourself into God’s created world, embodied and attentive to the people and places nearby. Call it a screen Sabbath.

The idea may sound extreme or impractical in a world where screens mediate so much of life. (No texts, emails, directions, podcasts, or camera?) Consider, however, not simply what you might lose on such a day, but also all you might gain.

Life off the Grid

What might happen if, for one day a week, you silenced the hum and darkened the glow of every device? If you knew you would hear no ding and feel no vibration? If every impulse to text, check, or divert were thwarted by an empty pocket? What might happen on such a day?

You might pull aside the curtains to a different glow, watching as the sun begins his morning run (Psalm 19:5). You might hear again voices so often drowned in the digital buzz: a cardinal singing from fencepost to branch, a hidden chorus of crickets, the meow of a neighbor’s stretching cat. Instead of drifting bodiless through the digital ether, you might dig your hands into the dirt or pound the paths of your allotted dwelling place (Acts 17:26).

Or maybe you would see your gruff neighbor, or the impatient parent at the park, as more than a two-dimensional stick figure, and instead begin to imagine the hopes and fears beating in their breast. Maybe such seeing would lead to speaking, and speaking to befriending, and befriending to praying and witnessing. Later, you might sit across the table from spouse, friend, or child and find the kind of undistracted inner quiet that plays host to quick hearing, slow speech (James 1:19).

Or you might discover new patience for Bible reading and prayer. Instead of glancing over the surface of a passage, maybe you would carefully turn over some of its stones, meditating like the blessed man and finding yourself blessed (Psalm 1:1–3). You might slow down as you respond to God’s words, perhaps for the first time in a long time laying your cares before him one by one (1 Peter 5:6–7). You might feel an exhale of the soul.

And when the time comes to turn the phone back on, you might find that you have carried some of this seventh-day rest with you.

Spirit of the Seventh Day

We should be wary of idealism, of course. A day without screens is still a day in a fallen world, a day when our flesh refuses to rest and we sometimes find, to our dismay, our attention scattered and our devotion to God shallow. Surely in ancient Israel the godly sometimes left the Sabbath day still restless. Over time, however, the weekly Sabbath did something to those who received it by faith: it slowly recalibrated them toward God-centered Reality, sending the restful spirit of the seventh day into the following six.

And so might a screen Sabbath. Taking disciplined time away from screens may not be the only way to live in the digital world without being conformed to it, but it is one good way. Over time, the gravitational pull of our phones may grow weaker, and we may find ourselves drawn into a different, far better orbit: the bright, life-giving sun of God himself.

I get asked two questions every time I teach Hebrews. You can probably guess both. (1) Who wrote Hebrews? That one’s always first. And (2) what are we supposed to do with Hebrews’ warning passages? Does Hebrews teach that believers can lose their salvation? After all, the letter issues warnings like this: “If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment” (Hebrews 10:26–27). Which of us hasn’t felt the sting of a text like that? And that’s just one of five such warnings in the book (see 2:1–4; 3:7–4:13; 6:4–8; 12:25–29).

Three Strategies

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we can get very far in answering that first question. (For a start, see here.) But I do think we can make some headway with the second. To that end, I want to suggest three strategies that will help us read Hebrews’ warnings better. I’ll sketch each first and then take a step back and conclude by reflecting on the help each provides.

Read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ structure.

Hebrews is tough to outline. It’s different from the other letters in the New Testament. Paul, for example, often makes his arguments first and only then applies them to his audience. Thus, we get the argument of Ephesians 1–3 and only then the application of Ephesians 4–6. Hebrews, however, breathes a different air. The letter moves back and forth between argument and application or, as these genres are commonly called, between exposition and exhortation. The author is like a preacher who pauses to apply after every main point. It’s an effective rhetorical strategy, but it also makes outlining the letter difficult. And it can hinder us from seeing the developing logic of his argument and feeling the cumulative weight of his applications.

For example, we can struggle to see the connections between what Hebrews says about the “world” Jesus entered in 1:6 and that God subjected to humans in 2:5. Hebrews gives us a clue, telling us the “world” in 2:5 is that one “of which we are speaking.” But the author also interrupts his argument with an exhortation — his first warning (2:1–4) — causing us, if we’re not careful, to lose the trail. Other examples like this could be easily given (see the mentions of Melchizedek in 5:1–10 and 7:1–10, in light of the exhortation of 5:11–6:20).

The point is, the structure of Hebrews invites us to read the letter not only front-to-back but also “genre-by-genre” or, we might say, “side-by-side.” If we don’t, we run the risk of misreading its theology and missing its pastoral force.

Read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ story line.

Hebrews everywhere tells the Bible’s story. We can see this with even a cursory look at the typography of our English Bibles, with page after page of Hebrews punctuated by indented quotations of the Old Testament — one, the longest in the New Testament (see Jeremiah 31:31–34 in Hebrews 8:8–12). Hebrews, however, tells the Bible’s story in two ways or, better, with two distinct emphases. In the author’s arguments or expositions, he emphasizes the discontinuity between the Old Testament story and his audience. What was only promised in the Old Testament has now been fulfilled in the New Testament. In his applications or exhortations, however, it’s just the reverse. In these he emphasizes the continuity between the Old Testament story and his audience. What happened in the Old Testament era is just like what’s happening in the New Testament era.

What’s more, in his exhortations, his analogy of choice is the wilderness generation (see 2:2; 3:7–4:6; 10:28; 12:25). If we miss the analogy, if we fail to feel the continuity, then we’ll blunt the sharp edge of the warnings themselves. After all, it was precisely that former generation — remarkably rescued by God from Egypt, led through the desert by God’s visible presence, sustained in the desert by God’s miraculous provision, and given a law from God himself (see 3:9; compare 2:4; 6:4–6; 10:29; 12:26) — who hardened their hearts and perished in unbelief. There’s a reason, in other words, that Hebrews skips over the wilderness generation in chapter 11’s “hall of faith.” Just like the author’s audience, the wilderness generation lived “between the times,” between the exodus and the promised land, experiencing a kind of inaugurated eschatology. We are not meant to miss the similarities. Thus, the question that hangs in the air exhortation by exhortation and warning by warning isn’t simply “How could they?” but rather “Will you too?”

“The question that hangs in the air isn’t simply ‘How could they?’ but rather ‘Will you too?’”

Now, we must add that this way of describing the author’s storytelling risks oversimplification. After all, while Hebrews emphasizes discontinuity in its arguments, continuity is nevertheless everywhere present. What else are we to make of the author’s consistent focus on the “self-confessed inadequacy” of the Old Testament? Of course, the New Testament era is an advance beyond the Old Testament era, but the advance is precisely what the Old Testament era led us to expect all along with its anticipations, for example, of another priestly order (Psalm 110:4) or a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Similarly, while Hebrews emphasizes continuity in its exhortations, notes of discontinuity are sounded as well. It’s these notes of discontinuity, in fact, that underwrite the ratcheting-up we see in the warnings: If the wilderness generation suffered for its unbelief, how much more will you (see 2:3, 12:25)? It’s one thing to refuse to believe God’s Old Testament speech; it’s quite another to refuse his superior New Testament speech (see 1:1–2; 2:1–4).

In short, Hebrews invites us to read its warnings “side-by-side” and in light of the continuity between its audience and the wilderness generation. Both lived during incredible chapters in God’s story. But, even here, Hebrews also invites us to see the discontinuity between the two. After all, the author’s audience doesn’t just live during an important chapter in God’s story but during a later and, indeed, better chapter.

Read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ soteriology.

Hebrews’ soteriology — doctrine of salvation — is wonderfully rich, so I can only summarize a little part of it here. It’s important that we see that Jesus’s death has inaugurated a better covenant, one that’s better both because it has better promises — new spiritual abilities for every covenant member (8:6, 10–11) — and because it provides better forgiveness. New-covenant members, Hebrews tells us, are completely forgiven (8:12; 10:17–18). God promises them that he’ll remember their sins no more! Hebrews calls this complete forgiveness perfection. It’s something that wasn’t available for the wilderness generation (10:2–3; cf. 11:39–40) but is now, thanks to Jesus’s sacrifice-ending sacrifice (10:14). This perfection, moreover, is what gives covenant members — Hebrews calls these believers — access to God’s presence, in part now (10:19–22; 12:22) and fully later (12:26–28). Again, this access simply wasn’t available under the old covenant, as Hebrews says again and again (see 9:8–10). Hebrews goes on to assure new-covenant believers that in the interim period, their pilgrimage to the heavenly city is sustained by an indestructible high priest, whose intercessory ministry is described as infallible (7:25), and by a heavenly Father, who not only initiates but also continually energizes their perseverance (13:20).

Thus, if we accept the author’s invitation to read his warnings “side-by-side” and against the backdrop of the wilderness period, we’ll see that his own community lives in a new era of God’s story, an era in which covenant membership means something even better than it meant for the wilderness generation.

Three Reflections

With these strategies in place, we’re now in a position to reflect on the warnings. Does Hebrews teach that believers can lose their salvation? And, if not, what are we to make of them? Let’s tackle these questions head-on by looking once more at each strategy, reflecting on them in reverse order.

Secure Salvation

When we read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ soteriology, we see that the nature of the new covenant implies — guarantees — that its members cannot and will not fall away. New-covenant members cannot lose their salvation. To suggest otherwise risks undoing precisely those features that make the new covenant new and, thus, better.

Story Line

If we read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ story line, we see that the author’s analogy of the wilderness generation only goes so far. Again, Hebrews’ audience lives in a new and better era of God’s story. This means that the two communities — the wilderness community and the author’s — are mixed but in different ways. Everybody in the wilderness generation was part of the covenant community, but only a few persevered to salvation (for example, Caleb and Joshua). The rest perished in unbelief, as the author’s warnings repeatedly tell us. In other words, old-covenant membership did not guarantee salvation in the way that new-covenant membership does.

The old-covenant community was a mixture of believing covenant members and nonbelieving covenant members. The author’s community, however, is still mixed but in a very different way. While everyone the letter addresses professed to be part of the new-covenant community, only those who persevered actually were. Those who apparently had fallen away (10:25) were, at one point, part of the author’s congregation — part of the Christian community — but never truly included in the new covenant. Otherwise, they would have persevered. Again, to say otherwise risks misreading the Bible’s story and seeing continuity where there is now glorious discontinuity.

Structure

In light of all this, when we read Hebrews’ warnings “side-by-side” to feel their collective weight, we may now discern their pastoral function with more precision. I see at least three such functions.

First, the warnings explain the spiritual status of those who walk away from the Christian community. And it’s devastating (see 6:6; 10:26). What else would you expect to happen to someone who’d seen and experienced the goodness of the gospel — God’s new-covenant work — only to deliberately turn away from it? It’s like seeing and experiencing the goodness of the exodus and rebelling on the cusp of the promised land. People like this, Hebrews tells us, neither want nor get a second chance. One doesn’t get to deliberately reject Jesus twice.

“One doesn’t get to deliberately reject Jesus twice.”

Second, the warnings also enable the perseverance of new-covenant members. They are one means God uses to sustain the faith of those he’s perfected. (For others, see, for example, the author’s prayer in 13:20 and his biographical sketches in 11:1–40.)

Third, and finally, the warnings exhort professing covenant members to walk in true repentance and genuine faith by showing them the consequences of turning their backs on what they’ve heard and experienced.

Hearing Hebrews

Applying these strategies to Hebrews won’t alone answer every question we have about the warnings, but they will point us in the right direction. They’ll help us, above all, benefit even more from the goodness of this part of our Bibles, to the end that we’re better equipped to do God’s will (13:20), leading to our greater joy and God’s ever-deserved glory.