watching lest [there be] any one who lacks the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble [you], and many be defiled by it;
This verse gives every believer a job: watch over one another. One person who falls short of God's grace becomes a root, and what grows from it troubles the whole group and defiles many.
The word behind "see to it" does not point inward. It makes every believer a watchman over the rest.
The word for "looking diligently" does not mean looking at ourselves in case we fail. We are to be overseers. Cain asked with contempt, "Am I my brother's keeper?" We can answer, "Yes." We are to see that none of our brothers fails or lacks the grace of God. Notice that oversight aims first not at how a person lives, or the details of daily life, but at its source. If you see anyone beginning to lose the sense of God's grace, if the free grace and love of God stops delighting the soul, that is the danger sign. Often we would be the greatest help to one another by guarding against this.
Some think this care is the job of gifted leaders alone.
One thing is clear: this passage in Hebrews 12 says nothing about pastors. It is a stirring call to all Christians to care for one another, and to watch that no root of bitterness springs up.
Falling short of grace means the heart has stopped resting on Christ.
If the heart does not rest on His grace, and so on Christ and His work, all is empty. It is all man — fallen man — trying to gain acceptance with God some other way. In that condition there can never be a real sense of sin, or of holiness. Grace, the grace of God, lets the soul judge itself without holding back, and delight in the pure nature of God. It can do this because it gives in Christ the life that suits God perfectly, and the propitiation that blots out our sins.
Another writer names what is lost, and what follows.
Failing of the grace of God is losing confidence in God's grace and the practical enjoyment of what God is for us. As a result some root of bitterness may spring up and trouble God's people. Many may then be defiled by holding bitter thoughts about one another.
The root is not planted from outside. It already lies in us, and only one thing holds it down.
If grace is lacking, some bitter root of self-will is bound to come up. The bitter root is in the flesh, and only grace can keep it down. When it springs up and troubles us, how many does a bitter root defile! Achan did not suffer alone, and Korah's rebellion came with widespread complaining.
Evil spreads. Other passages picture that spread in another way.
Even more obviously hateful to God is "any root of bitterness," which springs up, causes trouble, and so defiles the many, the mass of the people. That is how evil works. Scripture pictures it as yeast in 1 Corinthians 5 and Galatians 5, and here as a root of bitterness.
Small beginnings are the usual pattern.
The matter may seem small on the surface. But it is very easy to "fail of the grace of God." Then some small difference lets a "root of bitterness" spring up, and it troubles us all, so that "by it many become defiled." A great fire may start from a little spark.
Deuteronomy also warns of a root of bitterness, but the cause there is different.
Look at Deuteronomy 29 when you have time. You will find a root of bitterness spoken of there, but it is a different kind from this. There it arose from someone taking up false gods; here it is failing of the grace of God. The whole letter aims at one thing: to fasten your ear to the doorpost of the One who speaks of grace. You do not hear a lawgiver here. You hear One who publishes salvation from the highest heavens.
The remedy is ordinary, early and personal.
How often we have been sure of this. A little wise pastoral care, or even the care of a fellow believer, a little loving, godly counsel, might have nipped the evil in the bud. It would have prevented untold trouble and sorrow. May we all take these things to heart. May we seek grace to do what we can, so that roots of bitterness never spring up and spread their defiling influence.
- Grace first. Falling short of grace is the cause; everything else in the verse follows from it.
- Root next. Self-will lies in the flesh already, and only grace keeps it buried.
- Reach. Once it springs up, it works like yeast — bitter thoughts pass from one to many.
- Result. Achan and Korah show that no one sins alone; the whole group suffers.
- Remedy. Every Christian, not just gifted leaders, watches the source in another's soul and speaks early.
lest [there be] any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one meal sold his birthright;
The verse belongs to a chain of warnings written to people under pressure, and it names two dangers by pointing to one man's bad bargain. Older translations call the two "fornicator" and "profane person," which raises two questions: what makes a person profane, and how could anyone sell what God gave for one meal?
Esau's story is set here for a reason, and the pressure on the first readers explains it.
The mention of Esau comes as a warning light. It warns anyone against the danger of trading future blessing for present ease and passing enjoyment. Many people today live where there is no persecution. They may not grasp how great this danger was to the Hebrews. Anyone who has lived through persecution would see the divine wisdom in this reference to Old Testament history.
Two Greek words sit close in meaning here, and their difference explains the charge.
The word for "profane" and the word for "common," though close in meaning, are used differently. Both seem to have started with the meaning "common." The word for "profane" is linked to a word meaning "a threshold" — a doorstep anyone may walk on and dirty. It stands in contrast to a set-apart place or shrine, which is fenced in and guarded so that nothing defiles it.
The verse couples sexual sin with profanity, and one writer sees a shared root in both.
In Hebrews 12:16, Esau is called a "profane person," and coupled with a "fornicator." The connection fits when we remember what each word means. The second of these sins, fornication, pictures unholy ties between the believer and the world. The profane person lives wholly for this world, and shuts God and His world out of his thoughts. Esau had not only done this but had also despised what was of God. When people go so far as to despise God and His blessing, they perish, as Acts 13:41 says.
Nothing forced Esau's hand. He had grown up where God's promises were household talk, and help was within reach.
Was he not brought up, just as much as Jacob, within the familiar sound of God's word and ways, as far as we know? Yet his test should have been a fairly light one for a hunter. He had resources at hand that had never failed him, and it would be monstrous to imagine they could fail him in urgent need. Still he deliberately sold his own birthright "for one meal," and so earned from the Holy Spirit the terrible stigma of a "profane person."
The sale only exposed what was already true. Esau had never valued the birthright, because he had never valued the God behind it.
His heart was never really on the birthright, because he had no true appreciation of the inheritance... For he was without the faith which alone makes promise precious. Then a crisis comes. The birthright looks unsubstantial, and it is weighed against even the smallest amount or the poorest kind of earthly advantage. The choice is a deliberate preference of the creature over the Creator. Esau had never enjoyed God while he held a title whose only value lay in expecting His favour, so God was no strength to him in his day of trial. Meat was more to him than God.
Commentators differ on whom the verse describes. One reads the person as a professing but unconverted member of the company:
One may "fail of the grace of God." That is, he has known that grace in theory, but his heart has not embraced it. He is a disciple on the outside, but not in heart... The person spoken of as "a fornicator or profane person, as Esau" is of course not a believer at all. He may have passed as one, and for that reason he can be dangerous.
Another turns the warning on Christians. Their place cannot be sold, but their enjoyment of it can be:
For all in the church of God are firstborn ones. The privileges of our birthright cannot be taken from us. Yet if we are worldly minded here, we may lose the joy of them, and even the knowledge of them. Esau, who sold his birthright for a bowl of stew, is called profane. It is as if a Christian would trade his heavenly position and character for some imagined earthly good, for present ease in this world, or to escape the reproach of Christ.
- Common. "Profane" means treating as ordinary what God has set apart — a doorstep anyone may walk over, rather than a guarded shrine.
- Cheap. One meal outweighed God's promise for Esau, because he had no faith, and faith alone makes a promise precious.
- Coupled. Sexual sin and profanity belong together. Both grow from a heart at home in this world, with God shut out.
- Contagious. Such a person may pass as a disciple among God's people, and that is what makes him dangerous.
- Current. The trade is still on offer: swapping a heavenly position for present ease, or for escape from the reproach of Christ.
for ye know that also afterwards, desiring to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, (for he found no place for repentance) although he sought it earnestly with tears.
Esau sold his birthright for one meal, and later he wanted the family blessing back. Two questions follow: what did he fail to find, and can tears ever come too late?
The verse before this one calls Esau profane. Here is what that word describes.
The apostle calls Esau a profane person, who sold his birthright for a single meal. So we learn what a profane person is: one who would like to hold both worlds; one who would like to enjoy the present without giving up his claim to the future. This is by no means an uncommon case. It describes the person who professes faith but is worldly at heart. His conscience has never felt the action of divine truth, and his heart has never felt the influence of divine grace.
Esau's tears are the hardest part of the verse. What was he crying for?
He shed tears of anguish in his desire for the blessing, but he found no place of repentance. Not that he sought repentance. It was the blessing he sought. But he did not care to repent of his proud contempt of the grace of God — which is in fact the only ground on which God will allow the blessing.
Esau's desire was real. One writer compares it with Balaam's.
Yet he could desire the blessing, and he sought it with all his heart after he had lost it. Balaam was the same: he could wish to die the death of the righteous while he had no thought of living their life. So he found no place for repentance. What he sought had only to do with the lost blessing, and it involved no judgment of his ways before God. He valued the gain of godliness without the godliness. God would have had to change His own nature to give him the one thing he wanted.
Commentators differ over whose repentance is meant. Some read it as Isaac's. Esau wanted his father to take back the words he had already spoken.
There came a time when Esau wanted repentance on his father's part. He wanted to change Isaac's mind, but he found no place for it, though he sought it with tears. He said, "Bless me, even me also, O my father." But he could not change his father's mind. His father had expressed the mind of God in the matter.
Others keep the word in its usual New Testament sense. They read the clause as a note about Esau himself.
Genesis 27 is explicit. Esau sought the blessing of his father urgently and with tears. He was a self-willed, profane and unclean man. The account says not one word about repentance. He had already despised his birthright heartlessly. God was in none of his thoughts, but he counted on Isaac's natural partiality. There is no good reason to take the word for repentance in any sense other than the one it always carries elsewhere in the New Testament.
Esau's choice becomes a warning. It lands first on the letter's first readers, then on everyone who professes faith.
This is profanity, and Esau is a solemn example of it. For some passing advantage he treated the birthright lightly, as if it counted for little. That was a solemn warning to these Hebrews, and it warns all who profess faith: do not throw away the blessings of Christianity.
The verse is severe. But it does not say that God turns away anyone who wants to turn back.
A change of mind falls far short of repentance. In its true sense, repentance means a deep and particular turning in the soul. We take God's part against ourselves, judging our past ways — yes, judging what we are in His sight. This Esau never sought; and there never was one who did seek it and failed to find it.
- Sale. One act showed what Esau was. A profane man wants both worlds: comfort now, and the future blessing still in hand.
- Search. What he hunted down with tears was the blessing, not repentance — the loss grieved him, the sin did not.
- Shortfall. He wanted the gain of godliness without the godliness. God would have had to change His own nature to give it.
- Split. Writers differ. Some say the repentance he could not find was Isaac's change of mind. Others say it was his own self-judgment, which he never sought.
- Safety. Do not throw away the blessings of Christianity lightly. Yet no one who has sought repentance has ever failed to find it.