19.2 Keep Confidence High
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
But Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end (Hebrews 3:6). – For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is (called): “Today” (Hebrews 3:14-15a).
The seventh most important verse in the Bible is a merging together of these two lines with 2 Corinthians 2:14. We have become partakers of Christ IF we hold fast the beginning of our confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm/steadfast to the end – for God always leads us in triumph in Christ.
IF
Although I want us to think of these two parts, one from Paul and the other from Hebrews, as one reality, yet we will address each in separate lessons. This word, we are partakers of Christ IF, is a huge line, filled with implications and coming out of a very graphic Old Testament story. This is the jeopardy verse of the gospel – Let us therefore fear lest any of you should seem to come short of it … But here is the extraordinary thing. It is the sixth most important verse, full assurance of faith, that causes us to feel as if we might not be “entering in.” Yet the great IF verse gives us the full answer: CONFIDENCE.
A Steel Baseball Bat
Let’s start by hitting ourselves in the forehead with a steel bat. Let it be to you according to your faith (Matthew 9:29). – We partake of Christ IF we hold our confidence high. Those who are confident that they partake of Christ do; those who aren’t sure don’t. EVERYONE receives from God precisely what they believe to be already true. If you believe that you are an expression of sin, then you are. If you believe, becoming confidence, becoming KNOWING, that you are the revelation of the Father, then you are. Let it be to you according to your faith.
Much More God
I dreamed up one of my favorite illustrations specifically for this lesson, but I liked it so much, I had to use it in the last lesson, “Flesh of His Flesh.” ~~~
We can now walk as if we are the Father, revealing Himself as He wishes, through us. As we do so, God becomes thicker and thicker. Like Alice in Wonderland, when we first knew God, He was hardly God, more of a distant haze who wrote some rules. But as we share flesh with God, He becomes much more muchly, much more God, until we are swimming in God and God goes all through us.
Absolute Reality
Let’s anchor ourselves in absolute reality. God IS. And this IS-God IS ALL EVERYWHERE NOW and HERE – All! Everything that exists, including all beings who act evil, exists only inside of God-IS and God-IS sustains all every moment by the good speaking of Christ passing through each one. Think of fish in the ocean. A fish lives only in the sea-water, and the sea-water passes through the fish every moment, sustaining its life with oxygen. There is no such thing as anything existing outside of God-All or apart from sustaining-Word every moment.
Thick as Water
All things are filled full every moment with ALL of God-IS. God cannot be measured out of anything, else He is not God.
But in thinking of God becoming thicker and thicker, I realized that the thickening stops at water (or blood). God is not syrup. In other words, all things move freely of themselves inside of this God who contains and fills all things as LIFE. God never imposes Himself on anyone, yet no one goes outside of God nor ceases God through them.
The entire question is ignorance versus knowing. To be ignorant of God is to be unregenerate. The first entrance of God by knowing we call being “born again.”
Active Participation
Thus we see that having boldness to enter into the Holiest has nothing to do with making something happen that is not. Entering the Holiest is the discovery of what IS already true.
But the knowledge of God-IS comes into us ONLY through our faith, and faith is ACTIVE participation, effective receiving. That the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus (Philemon 1:6).
Every believer in Jesus is filled full with the good speaking of Jesus and absolutely nothing else. Living in ignorance of God-IS has a name: stupidity.
The Setting
And yes, we have been very stupid all of our Christian lives. Now, I use that harsh term, even though God is gentle and kind, because the Bible is very clear that God often grabs us by the shoulders, shakes us hard, and hollers, “Hey, stupid, I Am!” “HELP me, God!” – “I AM, already; change your seeing.” And that is the setting of the seventh most important verse.
The story is found in Numbers 13 & 14; the most awful story in the Old Testament. God had purposed that Israel enter the Promised Land as the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles in their second year out from Egypt.
Treating God like Dirt
Israel refused because they saw giants rather than I AM with you; they saw sin and death instead of seeing God. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? (Numbers 14:3)
We are concerned here with God’s response. Then the Lord said to Moses: “How long will these people reject Me? And how long will they not believe Me, with all the signs which I have performed among them? (Numbers 14:11) The Message Bible puts God’s frustration this way: Why do they keep treating Me like dirt?
Nothing honors God more than to respond to His word with absolute confidence that it is the only thing true personal in us.
Greek Words for Hebrews 3:6/14
But Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end (Hebrews 3:6). – For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is (called): “Today” (Hebrews 3:14-15a).
The seventh most important verse in the Bible is a merging together of these two lines with 2 Corinthians 2:14. We have become partakers of Christ IF we hold fast the beginning of our confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm/steadfast to the end – for God always leads us in triumph in Christ.
IF
Although I want us to think of these two parts, one from Paul and the other from Hebrews, as one reality, yet we will address each in separate lessons. This word, we are partakers of Christ IF, is a huge line, filled with implications and coming out of a very graphic Old Testament story. This is the jeopardy verse of the gospel – Let us therefore fear lest any of you should seem to come short of it … But here is the extraordinary thing. It is the sixth most important verse, full assurance of faith, that causes us to feel as if we might not be “entering in.” Yet the great IF verse gives us the full answer: CONFIDENCE.
A Steel Baseball Bat
Let’s start by hitting ourselves in the forehead with a steel bat. Let it be to you according to your faith (Matthew 9:29). – We partake of Christ IF we hold our confidence high. Those who are confident that they partake of Christ do; those who aren’t sure don’t. EVERYONE receives from God precisely what they believe to be already true. If you believe that you are an expression of sin, then you are. If you believe, becoming confidence, becoming KNOWING, that you are the revelation of the Father, then you are. Let it be to you according to your faith.
Much More God
I dreamed up one of my favorite illustrations specifically for this lesson, but I liked it so much, I had to use it in the last lesson, “Flesh of His Flesh.” ~~~
We can now walk as if we are the Father, revealing Himself as He wishes, through us. As we do so, God becomes thicker and thicker. Like Alice in Wonderland, when we first knew God, He was hardly God, more of a distant haze who wrote some rules. But as we share flesh with God, He becomes much more muchly, much more God, until we are swimming in God and God goes all through us.
Absolute Reality
Let’s anchor ourselves in absolute reality. God IS. And this IS-God IS ALL EVERYWHERE NOW and HERE – All! Everything that exists, including all beings who act evil, exists only inside of God-IS and God-IS sustains all every moment by the good speaking of Christ passing through each one. Think of fish in the ocean. A fish lives only in the sea-water, and the sea-water passes through the fish every moment, sustaining its life with oxygen. There is no such thing as anything existing outside of God-All or apart from sustaining-Word every moment.
Thick as Water
All things are filled full every moment with ALL of God-IS. God cannot be measured out of anything, else He is not God.
But in thinking of God becoming thicker and thicker, I realized that the thickening stops at water (or blood). God is not syrup. In other words, all things move freely of themselves inside of this God who contains and fills all things as LIFE. God never imposes Himself on anyone, yet no one goes outside of God nor ceases God through them.
The entire question is ignorance versus knowing. To be ignorant of God is to be unregenerate. The first entrance of God by knowing we call being “born again.”
Active Participation
Thus we see that having boldness to enter into the Holiest has nothing to do with making something happen that is not. Entering the Holiest is the discovery of what IS already true.
But the knowledge of God-IS comes into us ONLY through our faith, and faith is ACTIVE participation, effective receiving. That the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus (Philemon 1:6).
Every believer in Jesus is filled full with the good speaking of Jesus and absolutely nothing else. Living in ignorance of God-IS has a name: stupidity.
The Setting
And yes, we have been very stupid all of our Christian lives. Now, I use that harsh term, even though God is gentle and kind, because the Bible is very clear that God often grabs us by the shoulders, shakes us hard, and hollers, “Hey, stupid, I Am!” “HELP me, God!” – “I AM, already; change your seeing.” And that is the setting of the seventh most important verse.
The story is found in Numbers 13 & 14; the most awful story in the Old Testament. God had purposed that Israel enter the Promised Land as the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles in their second year out from Egypt.
Treating God like Dirt
Israel refused because they saw giants rather than I AM with you; they saw sin and death instead of seeing God. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? (Numbers 14:3)
We are concerned here with God’s response. Then the Lord said to Moses: “How long will these people reject Me? And how long will they not believe Me, with all the signs which I have performed among them? (Numbers 14:11) The Message Bible puts God’s frustration this way: Why do they keep treating Me like dirt?
Nothing honors God more than to respond to His word with absolute confidence that it is the only thing true personal in us.
Greek Words for Hebrews 3:6/14
Hou oikos semen hemeis,
Whose house we are,
Metochoi gar tou Christou gegonamen,
Partakers indeed of Christ we have become,
Ean ten parresian, kai to kauchema tes elpidos,
If indeed our confidence and boast of our hope
Eanpar ten archen tes hypostaseos,
If indeed the beginning of the assurance
Mechri telous bebaian kataschomen. (Identical in both verses.)
Unto the end firm we should hold.
Whose house we are,
Metochoi gar tou Christou gegonamen,
Partakers indeed of Christ we have become,
Ean ten parresian, kai to kauchema tes elpidos,
If indeed our confidence and boast of our hope
Eanpar ten archen tes hypostaseos,
If indeed the beginning of the assurance
Mechri telous bebaian kataschomen. (Identical in both verses.)
Unto the end firm we should hold.
Partakers of Christ
Whose house we are is related directly to Ephesians 3:17 – Christ dwells in our hearts. The word “dwells” is the action of Christ, the word “house” means the home in which Christ resides.
- Metochos: (Partakers) sharing in – properly, change due to sharing, i.e. from being an "active partaker with.” Participant, i.e. a sharer; by implication, an associate – fellow, partaker, partner (adapted from biblehub.com).
If Indeed
- Ean – if indeed. Eán (a conjunction … showing a statement is conditional) – if, referring to a condition extending to its "spin-off" possibilities – i.e. that happen if the condition is actualized or is valid.
This is real, this is true, this is you – on ONE Condition. Here is that one condition!
Hold WHAT?
The English places the direct object in the middle of the action, IF – we hold (the direct object – the what) firm, but Greek puts the direct object into the mind of the hearer before the action. If we hold WHAT? Three specific things (and this is why we put the two verses together – the English shows only two, but the Greek three). 1. ten parresian, 2. to kauchema tes elpidos, and 3. ten archen tes hypostaseos.
1. Freedom of speech – our confidence.
2. The boast of our hope.
3. The beginning of the assurance.
Confidence
The word at the heart of Hebrews 10:19-22, having boldness to enter the Holiest, is the same word here, meaning first “freedom of speech,” and thus by implication, “confidence.” The definition of parresian is in Lesson 16.1, here we want to know the meaning of confidence (from Webster’s 1926).
- Confidence: 1. Act of confiding, trusting, or putting faith in; trust; reliance; belief. 2. State of feeling sure; assurance; certitude.
- Confidence: 3. State of mind characterized by one’s reliance on himself or his circumstances; a feeling of self-sufficiency such as leads to a feeling of security; self-confidence. 4. Assurance, in a bad sense, overboldness, presumption.
- Confidence: 5. That in which faith is put or reliance had. 6. Relation or state of trust or intimacy, or the communication between two persons who confide in each other.
- Confident: 1. Trustful, confiding; frank; unreserved. 2. Assured beyond doubt; having confidence or strong belief; sure.
- Confident: 3. Having self-reliance; bold; undaunted. 4. Having an excess of assurance; bold to a fault; presumptuous.
Boast in Our Hope
- Kauchema tes elpidos – boast in our hope. Kauchema: a boast. A boasting; a ground of boasting (glorying, exultation). Boasting, focusing on the results of exulting/boasting. This boasting (exulting) is always positive when it is in the Lord, and always negative when based on (the imaginary) self.
- Elpis: expectation, hope. Expectation of what is sure (certain) (adapted from biblehub.com).
Our Hope
We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure (1 John 3:2-3).
We MUST understand this word hope, not from the dictionaries, but from the context of Scripture. God tells us exactly what He means by Hope, this thing that we BOAST IN with all reckless presumption.
We ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance (Romans 8:23-25).
Christ IN You
God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).
Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever … (inside of us) (Hebrews 6:17-20).
Substance versus Appearance
The element of the gospel that God calls “Hope” lies exactly at the juxtaposition, the crossroads, the point of transition, between substance and appearance. The substance of all things coming every moment out of the good speaking of Christ, VERSUS the temporal appearance of everything right now inside this enormous process by which the New Creation swallows up the old. The more we understand the conflict God creates by these two things, the more we see substance versus appearance in so much of Scripture. It is right at this crossroads, this point of transition, that the writer of Hebrews places our jeopardy: IF indeed!
The Source of the Substance
It is clear that hope does NOT mean “maybe someday,” yet that sad definition is the heart of the Christianity we have known.
Hope and the grace to come, now come in us, are the same. Walking, thinking, living, breathing AS IF all that God speaks is already entirely true right now, personal in us, without regarding our outward appearance in any way. That’s where the presumption of our boasting comes in; we are presumptuous AGAINST outward appearance.
Then the third Hold What? refers directly to the substance. Ten arche tes hypostaseos – the beginning of the assurance. The source of the substance!
Title of Possession
- Arche: properly, from the beginning (temporal sense), i.e. "the initial (starting) point"; (figuratively) what comes first and therefore is chief (foremost), i.e. has the priority because ahead of the rest ("preeminent") (adapted from biblehub.com).
- Hupostasis: a support, substance, steadiness, hence assurance. Hypóstasis: ("title of possession") is the Lord's guarantee ….
To Full Possession
Unto the end firm we should hold.
- Mechri: as far as, until, even to.
- Telous: (in this context) the principal end, aim, purpose. Télos – properly, consummation (the end-goal, purpose), such as closure with all its results. This root (tel-) means "reaching the end (aim)." It is well-illustrated with the old pirate's telescope, unfolding (extending out) one stage at a time to function at full-strength (capacity, effectiveness).
Hold Firm
- Bebaios: firm, secure, steadfast, enduring, certain. Bébaios (an adjective, derived from bainÅ, "to walk where it is solid") – properly, solid (sure) enough to walk on; hence, firm, unshakable; (figuratively) absolutely dependable, giving guaranteed support (security, surety). Bébaios (literally, "what can be tread upon") then refers to what is fully dependable, i.e. worthy of confidence because on "solid footing." (from biblehub.com)
- Katecho: to hold fast, to hold back. I hold fast, I bind, I restrain. I take possession of, I lay hold of, I hold back, I detain.
Filled with All of God
We will place the final line of these two verses from Hebrews 3, unto the end firm we should hold, into the next lesson.
This seventh most important verse in the Bible is the HOW relating directly to being filled with all the fullness of God. FILLED with ALL the FULLNESS of GOD! is a word sitting quietly on the pages of the Bible. Those who think, “Well, maybe someday,” fail utterly the IF INDEED of our jeopardy. But those of us who boldly and with all confidence boast (mostly to ourselves) in being filled with all of God now, possess and are part of Christ, the All-Speaking of God.
We who convince ourselves that we are filled with God honor God at His Word – and we ARE filled with ALL of God-Is.