Chapter Four

Believers in Christ are led toward a new rest, toward which they must strive (1–11). The word of God in its threats, promises, and gracious actions — as the most powerful inducement to obedience (12–13). With the powerful assistance of such a High Priest as Jesus Christ, we can all obtain (14–16).

Hebrews 4:1. Therefore let us fear, lest while the promise of entering His rest remains, any of you should be found to have missed it. “While the promise of entering His rest still remains” — a promise and rest of a different kind, distinct from the promise and rest of the Old Testament Israel, which had a prefigurative character and relation to the Christian rest.

Hebrews 4:2. For the good news came to us just as to them; but the word they heard did not benefit them, because it was not combined with faith in those who heard it. The meaning of the second half of the verse is as follows: the word they heard did not benefit them (the Jews) because it was not united with the faith which they ought to have received from what they had heard.

Hebrews 4:3. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He said: “As I swore in my anger, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. “We enter” — the present tense instead of the still-awaited future — an expression of the strongest certainty of its coming. Just as those who did not believe were not granted the Old Testament rest, so we too enter into our rest only as “those who have believed.” — “My rest.” About this rest of God and about people’s participation in it, the apostle narrates in the following nine verses (Heb 4:3-11), the sense of which can be rendered more clearly as follows: God completed His works and rested long before the cited words were spoken, yet speaks of this His rest as future for certain people (Heb 4:6), to whom He promised participation in it. If those who were called had proved worthy of God’s promise, the rest would have been attained by them. But these called ones proved unworthy. And the thought of God’s rest for them remained, as it were, unfulfilled. Therefore a new term was appointed for the fulfillment of God’s thought and for the attainment of God’s rest by those who desire it (“still remains... a sabbath rest,” Heb 4:9), which must be used; otherwise the fate of the negligent will be repeated with its former severity.

Hebrews 4:4. For somewhere it has been said about the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works. Hebrews 4:5. And again here: “They shall not enter my rest. Hebrews 4:6. Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, Hebrews 4:7. He again specifies a certain day, “today,” speaking through David after so long a time, as it has been said before: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. Hebrews 4:8. For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken afterward about another day. Hebrews 4:9. So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; Hebrews 4:10. for whoever has entered His rest has also rested from his own works, just as God rested from His. “Whoever has entered His rest has also rested from his own works, just as God rested from His.” The task of man’s works — the second creation — is man’s restoration of the lost union with the Deity. Those who attain this goal through faith in Christ, by His grace, through the conquest of sin and the world, inherit God’s rest and are deemed worthy of participation — to the extent possible for them — in the Divine glory and blessedness. The exhortation to strive to enter God’s rest — (Heb 4:11) — the apostle grounds or reinforces by pointing to the vitality and effectiveness of the Word of God (Heb 4:12), by which one must understand both the word in general — the expression of God’s thoughts — and the Personal Word — the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, who, as the incarnation of living, eternal truth, bears within Himself an inner living power, so that, being received by the human soul in faith, it becomes the seed of manifold fruits (cf. Matt 13:3 and following). — The effectiveness of the Word of God — in the power of accomplishment and fulfillment: “He spoke and it was so” (Ps 32:9; cf. Isa 55:10). — “Sharper than any two-edged sword” — a description of the power and depth of the penetration of God’s Word into the essence of man (cf. Rev 1:16; Wis 18:15). — “To the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow” — to the dividing of the innermost, most mysterious, finest parts of the body, soul, and spirit. Some, on the basis of this passage and 1 Thess 5:23, maintain that Holy Scripture recognizes a threefold composition of human nature: body, soul, and spirit — the body, or flesh, as the higher material shell of man; spirit as the self-conscious, higher, Divinely kindred principle; and soul as what animates the body and serves as the mediating link between it and the spirit; the body being the shell of the soul, the soul the shell of the spirit. These subdivisions of the spiritual side of human existence into soul and spirit can, however, be admitted not in the sense of two distinct parts or essences in man, but only as designations of different manifestations or properties of one and the same spiritual essence in man: the soul that animates the body and receives sensory impressions — as soul in the proper sense — ψυχή; and the soul that thinks, wills, and is capable of knowledge of God — as spirit — πνεῦμα; cf. 1 Cor 15:44; 1 Thess 5:23. From Heb 4:14 the apostle makes a sharp transition to unfolding another subject — the superiority of Christ’s high priesthood over the Old Testament one — devoting nearly 6 chapters to this topic (up to Heb 10:18), in which he examines the high priesthood of Christ in relation to His person, to the sanctuary, and to the sacrifice He offered.

Hebrews 4:11. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall according to the same example of disobedience. Hebrews 4:12. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:13. And there is no creature hidden from Him, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:14. Since then we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to our confession. The title ἀρχιερεύς (high priest) of itself already designates in the Old Testament the “great,” the chief high priest in the full authority of his office. The use of the additional designation “great” (μέγας) aims to note the special greatness of the New Testament High Priest with His higher calling (cf. Heb 10:21). — “Who has passed through the heavens...” In correspondence with the way the ordinary high priest on the day of atonement passed to the Ark of the Covenant through the outer doors and the Holy Place with a sacrifice for the people, it is said of the Great High Priest Jesus Christ that He “passed through the heavens” with a sacrifice for us into the true Sanctuary of God, where, having accomplished the purification of our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty of God as the perpetual intercessor before God for those redeemed by His blood.

Hebrews 4:15. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. As a particular incentive for holding firmly to our confession, the apostle points to the special quality of our New High Priest, which consists in the fact that He, who in every way shared our weaknesses except sin (Heb 7:26; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 John 3:5; 1 Pet 2:22), possesses a special ability to help us in our weaknesses and at the same time shows merciful compassion in helping suffering and burdened people. — “To sympathize” — not merely with sympathy, but with actual participation in the very sufferings themselves (συμπάσχειν, and not συμπαθεῖν; cf. Rom 8:17; 1 Cor 12:26).

Hebrews 4:16. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace for timely help. “To the throne of grace...” — in correspondence with the approach of Old Testament people to the sacrificial altar, the apostle calls for approaching the throne of grace as the new place of God’s gracious presence, the source of His merciful and sustaining actions toward us (cf. Gal 5:7).