See, brethren, lest there be in any one of you a wicked heart of unbelief, in turning away from [the] living God.
This verse is a warning, and it is aimed at people who already claim to follow Christ. The danger is not a slip in behaviour. It sits in the heart, and it moves in one direction: away from the living God.
The word "sin" here does not mean open wrongdoing. One writer draws the line:
He is not warning against falling into some outward sin. When this letter speaks of sin, it does not mean immorality or open acts of wickedness. It means the root sin that produces every other sin. It is that evil heart of unbelief that departs from the living God. Unbelief is the source from which every form of sin flows. So when he speaks to people who profess faith, what he warns them against is turning away from the living God and giving up Christ.
Unbelief can look like an honest failure to be convinced. This verse calls it evil instead. One writer, using an older translation that reads "a wicked heart," explains why the word fits:
No wonder it is condemned as "a wicked heart" of unbelief. What else can distrust of such a God be? The more He reveals His love, the more wicked the heart is proved to be when it refuses His grace — or, worse still, gives it up. Nothing is more false than to treat faith as a mere process of the mind, with nothing moral in it.
Nobody departs into nothing. There is always something waiting to take the place of the living God:
It is really a departure from a living God, back to forms that He once used for service before Christ came and died to make atonement — the death that accomplished redemption from under the law... It is a deceptive form of unbelief, a going away from the living God to dead forms.
The substitute is not always a religious form. It can even be the church itself:
To put the church or anything else in the place of Christ is a sure sign of departure from the living God, and evil consequences will follow.
A confession of Christ can be made with the lips only. One writer traces falling away to exactly that:
He is not speaking of weak faith, or of failure in the details of conduct. He is speaking of an evil heart of unbelief, where faith is not present at all. This is the cause of falling away... So a profession made only with the lips, without this vital root, may very soon turn into a hard, deliberate abandoning of the faith, from which there is no recovery.
Departure rarely announces itself. One writer lists the early symptoms a believer can watch for in himself:
Christians, by the grace of God, reach a measure of blessing, and then stop pressing on to know the Lord. The heart secretly turns back to the world — the world Christ rescued us from by giving Himself for our sins. The difficulties of the way look larger than the rest and glory God Himself has set before us. When that happens, we may be sure that the evil heart of unbelief is at work, and that there has been departure from the living God.
Does this warning mean a believer could be lost in the end? One writer keeps the danger real without touching God's faithfulness:
We speak in this practical way. We are not speaking about the faithfulness of God, who certainly will not allow any of His own to perish. We are speaking about the practical danger — about what would draw us away from God, as far as our responsibility goes, and for ever, if God did not step in.
Why is the warning so sharp? One writer points to what the teaching before it has given us:
And what is the warning — what must be the warning — after such teaching as this? "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God." How simple, how needed, and yet how blessed! In Christ Jesus, none less than the living God has become ours. So it is easy to say that our all depends on holding to Him.
- Root, not branch. The sin warned against is not immorality but unbelief — the source from which every other sin flows.
- Heart, not head. Faith is not a mental exercise. Distrust of a God who has shown such love is what makes the heart evil.
- Direction. Departure always moves toward something — dead forms, or anything else put in the place of Christ.
- Test. Have you stopped pressing on to know the Lord? Does the road look harder than the rest God promised? That heart is already at work.
- Balance. The danger to us is real. Yet God is faithful, and He will not let one of His own perish.
But encourage yourselves each day, as long as it is called To-day, that none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
This warning follows a call to watch out for an unbelieving heart that turns away from God. The remedy it gives belongs to every believer, not to leaders alone. Two things drive it: a window of time that will close, and a sin that works by disguise.
The word "today" is not a poetic way of saying "often." It marks a period with a definite boundary.
"As long as it is called 'today.'" It is "today" while God's word is still preached and God is still calling. The judgment will close this call.
God does not tell us when it closes. That is where the urgency comes from.
For those truly born again, this call would stir up and strengthen their faith. For anyone who lacked faith, it might also wake them up and bring them in reality to the Lord Himself, and so prevent such a dreadful fall. Sin will harden, however innocent its face may look at first... The words "as long as it is called 'today'" insist that the present is the time of testing, and it may end suddenly at any moment.
The Greek word behind "exhort" is wider than scolding or correcting.
The word parakaleo means calling on a person to stir him to something. It may be to comfort, but it often refers to other things — to exhortation in general... and in some places it may well be translated 'encourage,' as in Heb. 3:13, "Encourage one another daily."
Another commentator finds the wording sharper still, and shows how the heart hardens.
So the call is to encourage, not quite "one another," though that is included, but "yourselves," which seems more pointed than the other phrase... A little evil allowed is the beginning of very great evil. The heart hardens as we look away from Jesus, and pleasing ourselves takes the place of doing God's will.
The letter does not hand this task to appointed leaders, though the churches it wrote to had them.
Each one, though, should have no doubt about his own salvation, and so be free to watch over his brothers' interests in that way. Clearly this duty was given to no special class among them. There were elders at Jerusalem (Acts 15:6, 21:18), but this charge was not theirs. Saints, brothers in Christ, children of the Father, sons of God — these were to care for one another and to encourage one another day by day.
A daily command assumes something practical: that believers are together often.
If believers are to encourage one another daily, it means they seek one another's company daily. So this verse takes for granted that we find our friends and company among the people of God, as the apostles did when, after they were let go, they "went to their own company" (Acts 4:23)... The general spiritual health of Christians would be much better if that were true of us all. We are far more influenced by the company we keep than many of us like to admit.
Commentators differ on which sin is meant here. One sees a quiet cooling rather than open scandal.
The point is not open evil. It is the slow, unnoticed cooling of the soul's affections toward the living God. It is the gradual hardening of hearts that were once soft and tender, fed by the sure milk of the word and enjoying the sweet love of Christ. They were to care for one another's souls in this way, as they had already shown how ready they were to meet their brothers' outward needs.
Another puts the deceit not in single acts but in the principle behind them.
The deceit here is not the deceit of committing sins, serious as that is, for one sin leads to another. The writer is speaking of the principle of sin, which is lawlessness. We little think how we harden our hearts by doing our own will. So we are to watch ourselves and care for one another. Love should not be indifferent to a brother slipping away by doing his own will.
The damage is a loss of feeling. The conscience stops reacting to what it once could not bear.
Notice that word "hardened." Sin hardens — the heart and conscience become callous, less sensitive. In the joy of first love, Christ fills the heart, and any thought of giving Him up is torture to the soul... The sin of unbelief is a deceitful thing. Without your noticing, it pulls you away from the One your faith rests on, and before you know it, the result is serious dishonour to Christ.
- Today — the window stays open only while God is still calling. Judgment closes it, and it may close at any moment.
- Deceit — the danger inside that window is not open scandal. It is a slow cooling of love, or the quiet habit of doing your own will.
- Hardening — deceit dulls the conscience. What a heart full of Christ once found unbearable starts to look possible.
- Daily — the remedy runs on the same clock as the danger. That assumes believers keep one another's company.
- Each other — no special class holds this job. It belongs to every believer, so love does not stay silent while someone slips away.