Scripture simultaneously forbids and encourages fear, yet this is no contradiction. Noting the variety of persons and topics and senses in passages about fear helps us appreciate the perfectly consistent biblical teaching. For example, the unconverted should be terrified by the announcement of God’s coming wrath (Nah 1.2), while believers are reassured we will not suffer it (1 Thess 5.9). Likewise, we Christians must never fear what people might do to us since the faithful Lord is on our side (Heb 13.6), and yet we should always fear sinning against Him (Prov 28.14). The third distinction that should be noticed in Scripture’s counsels about fear is the sense intended in a given passage, so that though two places may use the same word, they do not mean the same thing. In one place fear may refer to dread and terror (Exod 15.16); in another, to reverential awe (Psa 2.11).
Consider, then, Hebrews 4.1 that recommends a healthy fear:
Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
This verse should be read in its context. The previous chapter (Heb 3.7 ff.) expounds and applies Psalms 95.7–11 to the presumably Christian readers of the sermon-letter of Hebrews. The exhortation based on the OT Scripture begins in Heb 3.12 ff., “Take heed, brethren” (q.v.). A parallel is drawn between the history of ancient Israel in the wilderness and the present situation of Christian believers in the world. Many among the Jews proved unbelievers at last and died under God’s wrath. Hebrews 4.1 makes practical application to us of that dreadful event.
Three basic matters arise in this verse. We would note, first of all, that we Christians have “a promise left us of entering into [God’s] rest.” Secondly, notice that having such a promise also entails a danger, suggested by the word “lest” (introducing an undesirable possibility), namely, that “any of you should seem to come short of” the promised rest. Thirdly, this gracious promise and associated danger, considered together, suggest our spiritual duty which is to “fear.” That fear in view is urged upon us in exhortation, “Let us fear,” all of which stems from a reverent meditation and application of the foregoing discussion in Hebrews 3, as indicated by the word, “therefore,” appearing early in 4.1.
Our Promise
In a way comparable to the ancient Jews, we Christians have “a promise being left us of entering into his rest,” that is, a rest promised and to be granted by God. Their promise of rest, a type of ours, was to enter and dwell peacefully in the land of Canaan. And as a people they largely enjoyed that promise, but very few of the specific ones who left Egypt forty years earlier actually experienced it because of their unbelief. At Kadesh Barnea, the holy nation as a whole rebelled against God’s command to go up and conquer Canaan, except for their two spies Joshua and Caleb, and so the Lord announced His just exclusion from Canaan of all the Jewish unbelievers above twenty years old, which seems to be an age of adulthood, and therefore of greater responsibility and consequence. Besides this especially great evidence of their gross apostasy from God, there were, in the wilderness journey, many other incidents aggravating their guilt and revealing their hard hearts.
Our promise is the gospel (4.2). Indeed, this gospel was also preached to them, but more obscurely than it is preached to us since its Savior has now come into the world, and it is much more obvious that He is the fulfillment of God’s Word. It is by believing the gospel, that is, by trusting in Christ, that we experience salvation in Him (4.3), which is here characterized as “entering into His rest,” the spiritual parallel to the rest of dwelling peacefully in Canaan.
Our Danger
Our danger is represented in the phrase, “lest . . . any of you should seem to come short of it,” that is, the promised rest. The writer’s pastoral concern for each and every one of his readers appears from the phrase, “any of you,” and in this he represents “our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep” (13.20). They are addressed, according to their profession, as Christian believers, a much more exalted spiritual identification than Jews in the wilderness. And yet, individuals even among them, were in danger of “seeming to come short.” I agree with John Owen that this way of speaking refers to even small evidences of remaining unbelief in genuine Christians.
He desires them to take heed that none of them do, by foregoing their former zeal and diligence, give any umbrage or appearance of a declension from or desertion of their profession (Works XXI.225).
We should be alarmed and repent immediately at the first and faintest signs of apostasy in us without losing our assurance of salvation. These spiritual shortcomings make it “seem” that even we shall “come short” of rest.
Our Duty
Our duty is summed up here in the phrase, “Let us fear.” While the verb has several possible senses, our interpretation must be consistent with the principles of analogia Scriptura (analogy of Scripture) and analogia fidei (analogy of faith), that is, the biblical context and the Christian faith. Owen offers the interpretation that satisfies both when he wrote that this is the “fear of circumspection, care, and diligence, with respect unto the due use of means, that we may attain the end proposed to us” (ibid. 204). This is not a fear of our not really possessing or of losing our salvation (the opposite of faith in true believers), but it is rather a fear which induces us to use and improve faithfully all the means of grace at our disposal by God’s gift and appointment. Diligence in these, as well as in every Christian virtue, is how we make our calling and election sure and eventually enjoy entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Pet 1.10–11). Ω