Brotherly Love

Let brotherly love continue. (Hebrews 13:01, NKJV).

The final chapter in the incredible New Testament epistle of Hebrews is a comprehensive presentation of godly exhortations to those who are in Christ Jesus.

The world does not readily understand what it means to be a true follower of Christ, partly because it is a state of being spiritually discerned - and without the indwelling Spirit of God it remains an opaque designation at best. And partly because the visible church is rife with professing believers who are, in tragic reality, unsaved.

One of the most amazing hallmarks of soul-deep Christian conversion is the glorious expansion of family through faith in Christ. This is a real phenomena based on what the Bible calls koinonia, rendered in English as fellowship.

Perhaps this is best defined as profound community, that real-time experience of deep and abiding affection (brotherly love) for those whose spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. This often happens instantaneously; a sense of commonality and fundamental unity that bonds deeper than the blood ties of earthly family.

It is inexplicable, surprising, even irrational, outside of faith in Christ, but is an essential sign of a transformed heart. Consider these verses:

So He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, “who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Luke 18:29, 30, NKJV).

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. (1 John 3:14, NKJV).

In addition to being a signpost of true faith, it is a source of supernatural strength, and gracious encouragement. That is why the exhortation above is to let brotherly love continue. Many a Christian throughout the centuries has found support and overflowing love in time of need from groups and individuals who, from the human perspective, are complete strangers. Yet, from the spiritual perspective, these same people are more intimately related than congenital twins.

That is one of the reasons behind the earlier exhortation in this letter to …let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25, NKJV).

In a gathering where love of Christ and love of one another abounds, amazing things occur, and a sweetness of fellowship is present that nourishes the heart and strengthens the soul. It serves as a bulwark against a hostile world - a world that increasingly hates Christ, and views Christian virtue as evil or regressive.

Even  the Apostle Paul, who suffered so much for the sake of Christ without wavering from or doubting his calling as evangelist and church planter, greatly desired the fellowship of like-minded believers, as he writes in Romans:

For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established-- that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. (Romans 1:11, 12, NKJV).

The true church is an aggregation of powerful relationships in Christ that transcend socio-economic background, ethnicity, and even language. It is an organism much more than an organization, which is why the church, the true church, is likened in Scripture to the body of Christ.

One final point. Note the explicit assumption that brotherly love already exists, and that the encouragement is to simply let it continue. Like all things truly Christian, brotherly love can't be a result of gritted-teeth effort. It is a byproduct of surrender to the Spirit of God. Anything else is a human work, doomed to failure.

Consuming Fire

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28-29, NKJV).

The only things that will survive the transition from this age to the next are those things whose origins and foundations are spiritual. All other things, the things that are made, will be consumed and remade, shaken to the point of regeneration. While the New Heavens and the New Earth will consist of the physical, the present separation between that realm and the eternal realm of the spirit will be eliminated. Then it will be as it was in the beginning, with both conjoined as one. 

The prospect of this coming to pass should fill the child of God with unspeakable joy, but the unbeliever should tremble with fear - for it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. For our God is a consuming fire.

What does this mean? And what exactly is the difference between ungodly and godly fear, since both are either explicitly or implicitly in view in these latter chapter of Hebrews?

Godly fear leads to repentance and hope; the turning of a human heart from the deadly pursuit of sin to the pursuit of life-giving righteousness. In this context, "hope" is the present certainty of a guaranteed future event, and righteousness is not the petty popular concept of religious stodginess, but the very inviolable righteousness of God, Himself - the righteousness which serves as the bedrock of all that is good and beautiful and the source of all true joy.

Ungodly fear is the opposite in every respect. Instead of repentance, it fosters paralysis and hatred. Rather than hope, utter despair. It is that state of being that until death, spirals downward and inward toward complete depravity, and after death is the very substance and ecology of Hell.

The depiction of God as a consuming fire is both ecstatically and excruciatingly accurate. It is what MUST be the case for a holy, righteous, and all-powerful Being who offers either forgiveness and regeneration, or promises destruction and eternal judgement if the miraculous offer is rejected.

The world hates God, and all the things of God, and this hatred can only be overcome by the miracle of faith, which recreates a human heart, and enlivens a dead human spirit. There is no other means of escaping the consuming fire. All creation will be brought through the flames, and either refined and remade, or consigned to be forever burning in unrelenting agony.

As declared in these verses, it requires grace to serve God acceptably, with reverence. That ability is not something we can grit our teeth and drum up somewhere inside us. If that were the case, then Christ would not have had to die. No, that ability is a gift, a grace of God. And we are instructed to have it, that is, to receive it with open arms, for grace is something God delights in giving.

Acceptable service to God is nothing done in our own strength motivated by our own delusional self-sovereignty. It is ever and only that which He empowers us to do for his purposes through our complete surrender. In essence, it is walking in those good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. From simply supplying a cup of water to someone who thirsts, to being burned at the martyrs' stake as His witness.

So yes, our God is a consuming fire. He is NOT that grandfatherly and loving curmudgeon in Heaven who "winks at our sin". Nor is He someone with whom any bargain can be struck. Instead, He is the almighty ruler of all existence, who offers us, not only an eternity of blessedness, but Himself as our exceedingly great reward. But ONLY on His terms.

And that too is eminently fitting. He is the Maker, the Eternal King, the One Who is Who Was and Who is to Come. The Source and Power and Intelligence and Personhood from which all else proceeds and has its being.

No Escape

See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. (Hebrews 12:25-27, NKJV).

There is coming a day - inevitably, irrevocably - when every mouth will be stopped and all the world will become guilty before God. Until that day, there is hope for repentance, a hope of escape from the wrath to come, but it entails a conscious, willful, and committed acquiescence to an authority and a Person who, for now, allows refusal.

This is a test, the same test taken and failed by our forefather, Adam, who through the beguilement of Eve, his own god-like pride, and the vicious contrivance of the Enemy, refused Him who spoke in the Garden.

The consequence of refusal is death, not merely physical death and illusory annihilation, but eternal and conscious death in the excruciating torment of everlasting regret and separation from the only Source of life and light and good. For separation is the essence of death, though the world would have you believe otherwise.

We are either absent from the body and present with the Lord, awaiting the regeneration of all things, or, through refusal to heed His immeasurably gracious offer of forgiveness and salvation through faith in Christ, we are forever separated from God Himself - sentenced to an inescapable prison where the fire is never quenched and the worm never dies.

The Old Testament picture of this ultimate fate was repeatedly played out in the lives of the Children of Israel, whose actual history entailed both the blessings and curses of the Mosaic Law, the personification of Him who spoke on earth.

That declaration is followed by yet another comparison of the superiority of Christ as Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. Christ, as the Word of God, speaks with the same authority and power now, from His position at the right hand of God, as He did long ago at Mount Sinai in delivering the Law.

[But] now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.”  What made physical reality shake at Sinai will, in a time yet future, shake all of Causality - earth and Heaven.

Given this, the statement, much more shall we not escape follows as incontrovertibly as all the promises of God. The forgone conclusion is this: what was inescapable in the past under the Old Covenant, is even more inescapable under the New. No possibility of reprieve exists outside of faith in Messiah.

And to eliminate any doubt of his meaning, the writer of Hebrews, under Divine inspiration, explains that “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Know this, there are two realms of existence; the spiritual realm, which precedes and is the foundation of existence itself, and the physical realm - the sphere of 3-dimensional space and time. It is the physical realm that consists of things that are made, while the eternal and unshakeable spiritual realm is that which will remain.

This is not to say that God did not create them both, but it is to emphasize that He who transcends both space and time, will remake them both - a new heaven and a new earth - and the only thing that will survive the transition are those saved by faith in Christ; the things which cannot be shaken.

To be saved, you must heed the invitation from Him who speaks. You must set aside any false sense of conceit and confidence in your own understanding, and surrender to the unsearchable wisdom of God.

Not that He does not provide sufficient evidence to make this choice rationally and logically, for the evidence is in the anthropomorphic construction of the Universe, the undeniable fulfillment of prophetic history, and the miraculous demonstration of changed lives. Indeed, it does not involve a surrender of intellect or reason, but of pride and arrogance.

These truths were once well accepted, but are now increasingly viewed as wishful thinking. The marginalization is no accident. It is yet another fulfillment of Biblical prophecy:

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power... (2 Timothy 3:1-5, NKJV).

The warning is clear. When the Day of Judgment comes, no one will have an excuse. God has inscribed His existence on our very DNA, expressed His power in the very vastness of the Universe, and shown His intelligence in the complexity of the life that He has designed and brought forth by the Word of His power.

To deny the God of the Bible is to deny your own source of being. To refuse Him who speaks results only in inescapable destruction.