A common critique is that this doctrine makes for lazy Christians. The objection goes something like this: If I am justified merely by faith and not works, then there is no need for me to do good works. But the Reformers scoffed at that notion, because it misinterprets what God is doing for us through faith in Christ! Since our salvation is secured by a gracious gift of saving belief in Christ’s works, then that will stir us up to love and good works.

To understand the importance of the statement “faith alone,” we need to remember why the Reformers sought to recover the doctrine of God’s grace. They wanted to emphasize the fact that we are made right with God not through any merit of our own but rather through God’s own free grace. In Christ, we receive unmerited favor from God.
The Roman Catholics in the sixteenth century would have agreed with this to some extent. They indeed believed we needed God’s grace to get to heaven. But how do we get the grace? Here’s what they said at the Council of Trent in 1547 (which is still Roman Catholic doctrine today):

If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be accursed. (Sixth Session, Canon IX)

Faith is the gift of God.
This is very strong language. What Rome is saying is that if you believe that it is purely by faith that you receive God’s grace, you will be accursed—that is, damned to hell. What’s the problem with this? It’s the very teaching of Scripture that they are condemning! Paul could not be clearer:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:8-9)

Rome wanted to say that we are saved by God’s grace in cooperation with faith and works. In fact, it even saw faith itself as one of the works that earns us God’s grace. But you can’t earn grace—otherwise, it’s not grace, not a gift. Rome taught a theological contradiction, one that Paul warned against in Ephesians 2.
In response to Rome’s perversion of biblical doctrine, the Reformers returned to the Scriptural truth that nothing we do can earn favor with God.
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How do we avoid making the same mistakes that they did in Moses’ day and Joshua’s day? Since we’re in danger, what do we do about it? What I love about Hebrews is that the writer doesn’t just give one answer. There’s no single solution to this question. There are a few things that we must do, and this passage mentions some of them.

Big Idea: Israel only got a sample of what we get to enjoy, so don’t miss out on Jesus and all that he’s given us.
I feel like I know you well enough to share a fairy advanced Bible reading technique for the Hebrew Scriptures. It goes by the acronym HCTBSS. Sound complicated? Here’s what it means: How could they be so stupid?
Here’s how it works. We read a story in the Old Testament. For instance, we read in Numbers 13 about the time that Israel approached the land that God had promised them from the south. They sent in spies, and 10 of the 12 spies came back and said they couldn’t take the land. They’d just watched God rescue them from slavery from the one of the most powerful empires in the world. They’d watched God perform miracle after miracle to set them free, and now they were terrified of some tall people.
The HCTBSS method of interpreting Scripture is to shake our heads and say, “How could they be so stupid?” We know we would do better. This is such a versatile technique for reading Scripture that we can use it in the New Testament too. For instance, whenever the disciples blow it with Jesus — and there are plenty of examples — we can shake our heads and think, “How could they have been so stupid!” and think that we would have done a lot better.
Today’s passage introduces us to a better technique for reading Scripture, particularly when we read about when people get it wrong. Here’s the technique that this passage teaches us: WITSD. It stands for “We’re in the same danger.” Whenever we’re tempted to read Scripture and think, “How could they be so stupid?” we should actually be thinking, “We’re in the same danger.” We’re not better than the people of Scripture. In fact, we’re just like them. We need to learn from their mistakes because we’re in danger of making the exact same ones ourselves.
I want to show you this from the passage we just read. Here’s what I want to show you: two examples of disobedience, and then how to avoid making the same mistake ourselves.
Two Examples of Disobedience
Here are the two examples of mistakes that people made in the past in Scripture.
The first has to do with Moses.
Moses is a great figure in the Hebrew Scriptures. He led Israel from Egypt to the brink of the Promised Land. He built the tabernacle. God gave the law through Moses. God spoke to Moses face to face (Exodus 33:11). It would be hard to think of many people in the history of redemption who loom larger than Moses.
But how did Israel do under Moses leadership? Not that well. In verses 7 to 11, the writer to the Hebrews quotes Psalm 95:7-11:
Today, if you hear his voice,do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,on the day of testing in the wilderness,where your fathers put me to the testand saw my works for forty years.Therefore I was provoked with that generation,and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;they have not known my ways.’As I swore in my wrath,‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”
Look at the interpretive technique that the writer uses in the verses that follow:
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12-13)
Do you see what he’s saying? We could make the same mistake! We’re in the same danger that they were.
In fact, the writer argues that we’re in even greater danger. The first part of Hebrews 3 argues that although Israel had a great leader — Moses — we have an even better leader. Verses 1 to 5 argues that Jesus is superior to Moses. Verse 3 says, “Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses.” Moses presided over a house, the tabernacle; Jesus not only built that house but everything. Verse 5 says that Moses was a servant in the house, but Jesus is God’s son over that house. As great as Moses was, Jesus is much greater.
And so the stakes are so much higher for us. They rebelled against Moses, but if we make the same mistake, we’re rebelling against somebody even greater than Moses. We’re rebelling against Jesus! We could make the same mistake they did, except against an even greater person: Jesus himself.
Do you see the writer’s urgency here? He’s not holding a dispassionate theological study. He’s highlighting mistakes from the Hebrew Scriptures and trying to get our attention: we’re in the same danger! We could make the same mistake!
The results were catastrophic for Israel. At the end of chapter 3, he says that every one of the rebels died in the wilderness. The wilderness where Israel wandered for 40 years was littered with bodies not just because people die, but because they rebelled against God and missed out on entering the land that God gave them.
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There is a shocking truth that escapes the notice of most Christians: when we go to heaven, we won’t stop working. We were made for work and in heaven we will get to experience work in the fulfilling and meaningful way God intended. Heaven isn’t (just!) a picnic, either. We don’t know exactly what this work will look like.

The Garden of Eden was no picnic. When God created Adam and Eve, he placed them in the Garden, not to vacation but to work. Before sin ever entered the picture, God formed Adan and Eve in his image and called them to exercise dominion in the Garden of Eve.
We are called to create order from disorder, to cultivate, and till, and build. Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden not just to sip Mai Tais and binge on Netflix (not that there is anything wrong with that!); they were put there for the sake of dominion. God wanted caretakers who would craft, build, and create order.
We were made for work. We were made for dominion.
There are some interesting studies that reveal the impact of not working. It has been well documented that there are significant negative mental and emotional outcomes for those who are unemployed.[i] Anxiety rises and self-confidence drops which leads to an increase in substance abuse and violence against self and others.[ii] Consider, for instance, the unhealthy of the lives of those whose profession is to be famous, like the Kardashians.
We were made to work.
There is a 75-year longitudinal Harvard study that followed people to discover what factors made adults successful and healthy.[iii] When they looked back at the lives of these several hundred adults, they determined that one of the most significant determining factors for those who were successful was whether their parents had them do chores as kids.
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