Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews YI. 10, 11. 439
the whole man has not been converted, so much the greater danger
is there of a seeming conversion and a subsequent falling away.
What the man has gained by mere dialectics may again be ent/rely
lost by mere dialectics, amid the temptations of the flesh and the
trials of suffering. The only sure mark of conversion is the presence
of sanctification ; the only sure mark of continuance in the
state of grace is progress in sanctification.
Upon this truth the sentiment of ver. 10 is founded. Because
the readers have already evinced, and do still evince, the visible
fruits of faith in works of love and service, the author cherishes the
persuasion that God will not let them fall* will not withdraw his
Spirit and the help of his grace from them. It is striking, however,
that he here appeals to the justice of God. The Koman Catholic
theologians have made use of this passage by way of confirming
their theory of the meritum condigni. The natural man can indeed
perform no good and meritorious works ; but the converted man
can, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, perform works perfectly
good and therefore meritorious, which God rewards by the communication
of new gifts of grace. The evangelical theologians have
justly opposed to this theory the truth, that the best works of the regenerate
are still stained with sin and imperfect, and, in fact, that
nothing is said in our passage of rewarding -particular works. But
the evangelical theologians have, in general, been able to find no
other way of explaining this passage than by supposing, that the
good works of the regenerate, although imperfect, yet received a
reward of grace from God. This, however, is a contradictio in adjecto;
what God gives out of grace in spite of our imperfection
wants precisely for that reason the quality of a reward.—The truth
is,
there is another righteousness besides that which recompenses or
reicards. The righteousness of God spoken of in our passage is
that which leads, guides, and governs, every man according to the
particular stage of development which he occupies. It is here
affirmed of God that he does not give up to perdition a man luho can
still in any way he saved, in whom the new life is not yet entirely
extinct, and who has not yet entirely fallen away ;
but that he seeks
to draw every one as long as they will allow themselves to be drawn.
This is not a judicial or recompensing righteousness towards man
(for man has no right to demand the assisting grace of God as a
thing deserved), but it is the righteousness of the Father towards the
Son who has bought men loith his blood, and to whom ive poor sinners
still belong until we have fallen away from him. Not towards
us but towards Christ would the Father be ddtaogj were he to withdraw
his gracious assistance from a man ere he has ceased to belong
to the peculium of Christ.
Yer. 11.—The writer now expresses his earnest wish that his