August 18
“How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?” Hebrews 2:3-4.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews asks a soul-searching question: “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” Salvation for all people was gained for us through the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There is only one way to eternal life. Jesus spoke of the one way to His troubled disciples. He had told them that He was on His way to Jerusalem where He would be taken captive and be given a trial and that He would be condemned and crucified.
The disciples were very upset. You wonder what they really heard and believed while they sat at Jesus’ feet during the three years of His public ministry. When Jesus told His disciples that He would be killed on Calvary’s cross, Scripture reports, “Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’” Matthew 16:22. Then Jesus rebuked Peter: “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men,” Matthew 16:23.
If the apostle Peter would have had his way, we would not have a Savior! Peter made the same mistake that every person makes as a sinner by nature. Our sinful nature thinks that we have to do something to get right with God. No, it is not what we think, say, or do that opens the gate of heaven for us. The great salvation for all people is based upon what Jesus did for us. He told His troubled disciples and He tells us that there are not different ways to get to heaven. There is only one way, and He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me,” John 14:6. We cannot escape God’s judgment if we try to get into heaven some other way.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that the one way, “At the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.” After Jesus’ suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, the apostles and evangelists who had heard and followed Him continued to proclaim the great message of salvation. God bore witness to the truth of what the apostles and evangelists proclaimed, “Both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
By the grace and mercy and promise of God, the message of our great salvation has been preserved for us and for all future generations in the written Word of God, the Bible. Anyone who neglects or rejects the message of salvation revealed in Holy Scripture and refuses to believe in Jesus Christ as God’s Son and the only Savior will not have eternal life in heaven.
Following in the footsteps of the prophets, apostles, and evangelists, every faithful pastor and religious teacher will extend the invitation, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved,” Acts 16:31.
“O Jesus, who my debt didst pay,
And for my sin wast smitten,
Within the Book of Life, oh, may,
My name be also written!
I will not doubt; I trust in Thee,
From Satan Thou hast made me free,
And from all condemnation.
Therefore my Intercessor be,
And for Thy blood and merit
Declare my name from judgment free,
With all who life inherit,
That I may see Thee face to face,
With all Thy saints in that blest place
Which Thou for us hast purchased.” Amen.