Hebrews 10:31

10:26-31 The exhortations against apostacy and to perseverance, are urged by many strong reasons. The sin here mentioned is a total and final falling away, when men, with a full and fixed will and resolution, despise and reject Christ, the only Saviour; despise and resist the Spirit, the only Sanctifier; and despise and renounce the gospel, the only way of salvation, and the words of eternal life. Of this destruction God gives some notorious sinners, while on earth, a fearful foreboding in their consciences, with despair of being able to endure or to escape it. But what punishment can be sorer than to die without mercy? We answer, to die by mercy, by the mercy and grace which they have despised. How dreadful is the case, when not only the justice of God, but his abused grace and mercy call for vengeance! All this does not in the least mean that any souls who sorrow for sin will be shut out from mercy, or that any will be refused the benefit of Christ's sacrifice, who are willing to accept these blessings. Him that cometh unto Christ, he will in no wise cast out.

31 . It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ] Fearful for the deliberate apostate and even for the penitent sinner ( 1 Chronicles 21:13 ; 1 Samuel 24:14 ; LXX. Sir 2:18 ), and yet better in any case than to fall into the hands of man. of the living God ] Hebrews 3:12 .

31. fearful … to fall into the hands—It is good like David to fall into the hands of God, rather than man, when one does so with filial faith in his father's love, though God chastises him. "It is fearful" to fall into His hands as a reprobate and presumptuous sinner doomed to His just vengeance as Judge (Heb 10:27). living God—therefore able to punish for ever (Mt 10:28).

(31) The living God. —As in Hebrews 3:12 ; Hebrews 9:14 the exact meaning of the writer’s words is “a Living God;” and a reference to the first of these passages (and to Hebrews 4:12 ) will show clearly what is their force in this place. There can be little doubt that Deuteronomy 32, from which he has been quoting, is still in his thought. See Deuteronomy 32:40 —“I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.”

The punishment of these apostates is further aggravated from the inflicter of it, the knowledge of which should make them tremble; the thoughts of it might affect them, as the hand-writing on the wall did Belshazzar, Daniel 5:6 . It should strike horror into their heart, trembling into their persons, Deu 28:65,66 , by apostacy from him as a Father, to be subjected to him as a Judge, and as obnoxious to his severest judgment. Him in whose hand is power inexpressible, 1 Chronicles 29:12 , to avenge himself on his enemies, Psalm 90:11 , who have renounced him as their God, and provoked him to fury by it. A God that will not repent of vengeance, and who liveth ever to inflict it; who lifts up his hand to heaven, and saith, I live for ever, Deu 32:39,40 ; to punish with everlasting burning, and a devouring fire, such traitors to himself. So is he described, Isaiah 33:14 Matthew 10:28 . His vengeance on these apostates is like himself, everlasting.

Verse 31. - It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. David, when the option was given him, preferred falling into the hand of the LORD to falling into the hand of man ( 2 Samuel 24:14 ), trusting in the greatness of his mercies. But the case contemplated here is that of its being "too late to cry for mercy, when it is the time of justice." Fearful (the writer would say) is the thought of being exposed, without possibility of escape or of atonement, to the wrath of the Eternal Righteousness. The inspired author of this Epistle had evidently an awful sense of the Divine wrath against sin, and of man's liability to it without atonement. He felt deeply the contradiction between humanity as it is and its ideal of perfection; and hence the wrath attributed to God in Holy Writ would appear to him as inseparable from a just conception of Divine holiness. For the more ardent the love in the human heart of moral good, by so much the keener is the indignation against moral evil, and the sense of the righteousness of retribution.

The existence of such evil at all in the good God's universe is indeed a mystery; but, as long as it is there, we cannot but conceive the face of the holy God as set utterly against it; and so any revelation to us of the Divine nature would be imperfect did it not include the idea which is humanly expressed by such terms as "zeal," "jealousy," "wrath," "vengeance." Hence came the long-felt need of some atonement, to reconcile sinful man to the eternal holiness. This need was expressed of old by the institution of sacrifice, which, however - as is so clearly perceived in this Epistle - could never itself be really efficacious in the spiritual sphere of things. In the atonement of Christ (if rightly apprehended) is found at last a true satisfaction of this spiritual need. But, man's concurrence being still required, the idea of Divine wrath remains notwithstanding, as operative against such as, in deliberate perversity of free-will, after full knowledge, refuse to be thus reconciled. Hence the awful anticipations of future judgment on some, contained in this Epistle. The nature and duration of the doom to come, on such as remain subject to it, are in these passages left in obscurity. They speak only of φοβερά τις ἐκδοχὴ , an undefined expectation of something terrible.