Since it is indeed impossible for God to lie, why did He make an oath by Himself to Abraham? The surface level answer is that He made an oath by Himself because there is no higher authority by which God can appeal. Going deeper, God made the oath as an act of condescension, to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose and that they might have a strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 6:9-20 ESV
Because faith and hope are intimately bound together, Abraham could just as easily have been called the man of hope as the man of faith. Abraham’s entire life of faith was predicated upon his hope in God’s mighty promises to him. To be specific, God promised to give Abraham an offspring, to make him into a great nation, and give his offspring the land of Canaan. Abraham only saw the fulfillment of the first promise before his death, and even that promise came twenty-five years after God made it to him.
Of course, the Scriptures never attempt to portrait Abraham as a sinless man. He was just as needful of redemption as we are today. However, Abraham’s faith and hope in God’s word is worthy of our imitation, for like him, we too are called to believe God’s very great promise, that we might endure to the end just as he did.
Though We Speak in This Way: Verses 9–12
Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things–things that belong to salvation. What ought to immediately notice about this verse is the distinct tonal shift, even calling his readers beloved, and that is not accidental, as if the author of Hebrews were manic-depressive. Being carried along by the Holy Spirit and out of love for his congregation, this pastor is using both the rod and the staff, both rebuking and comforting. Of course, we should be familiar with this pattern because it is how all parental discipline ought to look. The rod of correction is a physical warning against the death that lies at the end of the path of folly and disobedience. But punishment rather than discipline has been meted out if the path of wisdom and love is not presented immediately.
Similarly, we the readers of this sermon-letter have been stricken with the rod of correction. First, we were rebuked for stalling in spiritual infancy and needing to learn the same theological ABC’s over and over again. Then we were warned of what made spiritual immaturity so dangerous: it made one ripe for falling away from the faith. Indeed, last week’s warning against apostasy was intended to startle and awaken us from our spiritual drowsiness and lethargy, but as we noted, the author had no desire to incite despair in any of his reader, which we can clearly observe in this verse.
Here the author makes it clear that he has greater hope in the case of his readers. But his hope of better things pertaining to salvation is not unmoored or frivolous. Indeed, it can be all too easy to others saved simply from compassion and the dreadfulness thought of eternal damnation. The author is giving way to no such thoughts. His confidence in his readers ultimate salvation is rooted in their past and present fruitfulness, which is what he expresses in verse 10: For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.
Notice first what kind of fruit the author described. They displayed love for God’s holy name by serving the saints. Their greatest devotion was toward the glory of God’s name, which ought to be true of every Christian. We see this in places like Ephesians 1 that make it clear that the purpose of our salvation is God’s praise and exaltation. However, we also ought to be reminded of this marvelous truth each time we pray through the Lord’s Prayer. As Thomas Watson noted, every petition in the Lord’s Prayer is necessary only for this life, but the first petition is eternal. God’s kingdom will one day come, His will shall be done on earth as in heaven, God Himself will be the eternal portion of His people, the tempter and temptation will be destroyed, and grace will reign forevermore. Yet even when we have no more need to pray for provision, pardon, and protection, we will still pray for God’s name to be hallowed, to be set apart and exalted ever higher. Indeed, there is no such thing as a Christian who does not cherish and esteem the name of God our Savior. Of course, that love is never wholly and perpetually pure throughout this life, but it is there and growing throughout the Christian’s life.
Yet their love for God’s name was displayed through their serving of the saints. Here we see a reflection of the two greatest commandments: loving God and loving our neighbor. They were doing that, and they were especially loving the saints, that is, their brothers and sisters in Christ. This likely referred both to their love for one another within their own congregation as well as their support of other congregations of believers in other cities. Indeed, I think it most likely that the author was sent out by them for that very purpose of serving some other group of Christians. This is just as crucial for the life of a Christian as the love for God’s name. Of course, our love for the saints is secondary to our love for God, but our love for God must always overflow into our love for God’s people. Christians are made saints, holy ones, because Christ died to redeem them. If God so loved the saints, how can anyone claim to love God and not also love what He loves? 1 John 4:20-21 makes this very point:
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Next notice when the readers exhibited this fruitfulness. The words have shown point toward their past, but verse 10 concludes by saying as you still do, which brings their fruitfulness into the present. Both are key to the author’s confidence that they will not be among those who fall away from the faith. Although they have becoming dull of hearing and have not pressed on toward spiritual maturity, they have not been and are not yet like the land that only yields thorns and thistles after the rain. Instead, they are still producing a crop of righteousness for the benefit of the saints out of love for their heavenly Father.
But though his readers are still bearing fruit that they belong to Christ, their gradual descent into immaturity is still a real threat. Thus, after reminding them of their faithfulness in the past and in the present, he exhorts them regarding the future in verses 11-12:
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
It is fitting that the author exhorts earnestness in his readers. John Piper notes that:
The opposite of earnestness is drifting in the Christian life. “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Heb. 2:1). Most “former Christians” drifted away from the faith rather than departing suddenly. As Jesus said, little by little “they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). One of God’s remedies for this dreadful danger of drifting away is the abundance of warnings in his word to make us earnest or vigilant—or, as Jesus said, “awake” (Mark 13:37).[1]
Although he rejoices in their past and present faithfulness, the author’s desire is that their earnestness for the faith would continue until the end. He desires this because “Scripture knows nothing of biblical assurance or of salvation apart from an earnest pressing on with the business of persevering in faith in Christ.”[2]
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When stacked against his holiness, Isaiah 64:6 says even our very best deeds are like filthy rags. They are not good enough to do anything to overcome the weigh of our sin. If there were a divine set of scales, on one side would be an infinitely heavy block of sin and on the other the weightless power of our good deeds. The grounds for entering Heaven is not more good than bad, but sinless perfection. That means all of us, by nature, stand to face judgement. Romans 3:10 is clear: there is none righteous, not even one.

I watched the Netflix documentary on Jimmy Savile the other week. The first episode – which dragged a bit for Brits familiar with Savile – was clearly setup for a wider international audience. For most outside of Britain, it would be hard to comprehend how this absolute weirdo managed to get on television in the first place. Not only get onto, but remain on television. And then to get himself into such positions of trust that allowed him to carry out hundreds of acts of sexual abuse. I can see why it was a necessary context setting exercise for most people around the world.
One of the interesting insights into the documentary came from Mark Lawson, the journalist and broadcaster. Lawson – like Savile – had also been raised in Leeds to a Roman Catholic family. He recalls even seeing Savile at mass growing up. But the key insight from him about Savile was this: you cannot understand him without first understanding the Catholicism that drove him.
The fact is, not every one of Savile’s charitable acts were designed to increase his abuse. Clearly many were. But there were some that did not give him that sort of access. Yet his answer in response to why he did so much charitable work remained resolutely the same, and I am inclined to believe it. He insisted that it is not easy for anyone to get in Heaven. He admitted openly that he had done many things wrong (though did not go so far as to acknowledge what we all now know that included). But he claimed that when he gets to Heaven, he’d be alright, because against all the wrongdoing would be his charitable activities which would far outweigh whatever he had done. That was his hope. That his good deeds – to which he was deeply committed – would suffice to overcome the bad.
Outside of a Catholic worldview, of course, that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Most people in the post-Christian UK work more on an honour-shame basis these days. There are certain crimes for which there can be no grace and forgiveness. Though that list may be increasing in length and incorporating considerably less significant things, paedophilia has long been seen as so serious there is no coming back from it. For most post-Christian Brits, the scandal is that Savile might consider there could possibly be any hope of forgiveness for him. There are some crimes so serious, many believe, that nobody may escape righteous retribution.
On a Protestant, particularly an Evangelical, view things are a little different. The possibility of forgiveness – even for the most heinous of sin – exists. Indeed, Evangelicals would argue that though not all sins are equal in their seriousness, we have such a warped understanding of how infinitely offensive our sin is to a holy God that we fail to realise the extreme seriousness of what we would view as the vanilla end of sin. For the Evangelical, if we rightly understand our sin as God sees it, we would have no problem recognising the possibility of forgiveness for the likes of Savile because we would realise the distance between his sin and our own is much less than the distance between our lesser sin and God’s complete holiness.
That, of course, does not mean Evangelicals believe Savile was a forgiven sinner (for the record, I do not believe he was). For forgiveness only comes with repentance and there is no evidence whatsoever that Savile was ever repentant. Not only did he never make any effort to put right what he had done wrong (which, in the case of his crimes, would have minimally involved confessing to the police and bearing the just consequences), he continued to repeatedly indulge his sin over and over. His mocking tombstone – subsequently removed in the dead of night for fear of uproar and vandalism – insisted, ‘it was good while it lasted’. Such an unrepentant attitude, on a Protestant worldview, puts one beyond the bounds of forgiveness.
This is the real scandal of the Catholic worldview into which Savile bought. It is the scandal of the Catholic doctrine he was taught. If all that is required is enough good works stacked up against your bad, if you are committed enough, you may do what you want with impunity. The cleric that insisted, because of these things, that God would “fix it” for Savile to enter Heaven, not only blasphemed against Almighty God in misrepresenting his holiness and forgiveness this way, but left the door open for other heinous crimes to be committed the same way, so long as the perpetrator is committed to stacking up their good deeds to counterbalance them.
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The burgeoning of large churches with arrogant pastors has led to the stunted growth of many Christians and a serious de-christianization of too many cities. The rocketing growth of large churches often leads to the hollowing out of other, smaller churches around. When they implode, those people often don’t go back to church.
Well, it’s that time. You move to a new town. You go to college. You get married. You leave your last church for whatever reason. And you’re on the hunt again, looking to find a church. Everyone wants to have a church into which they are born, grow up, and die. But most of us will make the painful decision to say “Goodbye” (hopefully in a good way) to our old church and start looking for a new church a few times in our lives. There are lots of factors you need to consider: theology, style of worship, philosophy of ministry, location, etc.. I want to draw attention to one factor that you should pay attention to. Is the leadership humble?
Has the work of the Almighty Son of God, Jesus Christ in denying himself to accomplish our salvation as our substitute and sacrifice on the cross been like chemotherapy to the cancer of pride?
Specifically, are those who are responsible for the teaching of God’s Word humble. Why? Hebrews 13:7 tells us that we should imitate the example of those who teach God’s Word. Paul tells Timothy that by keeping a close watch on himself and his teaching, he will “save both yourself and your hearers.” (1 Timothy 4:16) He is pretty clear that the teacher must set, “the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (4:12)
In particular, a pit of errors is avoided by humility. James warns us that those who harbor “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition” in their hearts have demonic roots which leads to “disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:14-16). By contrast the “meekness of wisdom” (3:13) will lead to “a harvest of righteousness.” (3:18) For reasons I can’t elaborate on here, I believe that James 3:13-18 is specifically written for leaders. Some might disagree. But I think all can agree, this at least applies to the leaders of an assembly.