The Anchor For My Soul
Prophetic Christian Art
By Mindi Oaten
A MEDITATION FROM THE BOOK OF HEBREWS
CHAPTER SIX
Therefore let us go on and get past the elementary stage in
the teachings and doctrine of Christ, the Messiah, advancing steadily
towards the completeness and perfection that belongs to spiritual maturity.
Let us not again be laying the foundation of repentance and abandonment of
dead works (dead formalism) and of the faith by which you turned to God.
With teachings about purifying, the laying on of hands, the resurrection
from the dead, and eternal judgment and punishment. These are all matters
of which you should have been fully aware long, long, ago.
If indeed God permits, we will now proceed to advanced teaching.
For it is impossible to restore and bring again to repentance those who
have been once for all enlightened, who have consciously tasted the heavenly
gift and have become sharers of the Holy Spirit.
And have felt how good the Word of God is, and the mighty powers
of the age and the world to come.
If they then deviate from the faith and turn away from their allegiance-
it is impossible to bring them back to repentance, as long as they
nail upon the cross the Son of God afresh as far as they are concerned,
and are holding Him up to contempt and shame and public disgrace.
For the soil which has drunk the rain that repeatedly falls upon it and
produces vegetation useful to those whose benefit it is cultivated,
partakes of a blessing of God.
But if that same soil persistently bears thorns and thistles, it is
considered worthless and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.
(Genesis 3:17, 18)
Even though we speak this way, yet in your case, beloved, we are now
firmly convinced of better things that are near to salvation and accompany it.
For God is not unrighteous to forget or overlook your labor and the
love which you have shown for His name's sake in ministering to
the needs of the saints, His own consecrated people, as you still do.
But we do strongly and earnestly desire for each of you to show
the same diligence and sincerity all the way through in realizing and
enjoying the full assurance and development of your hope until the end.
In order that you may not grow disinterested and become spiritual
sluggards, but imitators, behaving as do those who through faith,
by the leaning of their entire personality on God in Christ in
absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness,
and by practicing of patient endurance and waiting
are now inheriting the promises.
For when God made His promise to Abraham, He swore by
Himself, since He had no one greater by whom to swear.
Saying, Blessing I certainly will bless you and multiplying
I will multiply you.
(Genesis 22:16-17)
And so it was he, Abraham, having waited long and endured
patiently, realized and obtained in the birth of Issac as a pledge
of what was to come, what God had promised him.
Men indeed swear by a greater than themselves and with them
in all disputes the oath taken for confirmation is final, ending strife.
Accordingly God also, in His desire to show more convincingly
and beyond doubt to those who were to inherit the promise,
the unchangeableness of His purpose and plan,
intervened, mediated with an oath.
This was so that, by two unchangeable things, His promise
and His oath, in which it is impossible for God ever to prove
false or deceive us, we who have fled to Him for refuge might
have mighty indwelling strength and strong encouragement
to grasp and hold fast the hope appointed us and set before us.
Now we have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,
it cannot slip and it cannot break down under whoever steps out
upon it, a hope that reaches farther and enters the very certainty
of the Presence within the veil.
(Leviticus 16:2)
Where Jesus has entered in for us in advance,
a Forerunner, having become a High Priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.
(Psalm 110:4)
In The World, Not Of The World
A painting by Greg Olsen
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