What is the purpose of the warning passages in Scripture?

But Paul never doubted that he had eternal life. He intimates here the means by which God teaches practical holiness to those whom He has saved. He calls us to glory through a pathway of self-denial and holy obedience, and these warnings and exhortations are the moral means by which He keeps us in the path. They are as thick edges on each side of the road to prevent our breaking through and leaving the right track. Even if a saint through not judging down the flesh does break, grace must bring him back, for it is impossible that one having eternal life should perish. The wolf may scatter the flock, may catch and tear one of the sheep, but the roaring lion shall never devour him. Our gracious Lord put a thick edge around Peter when He warned him of his denial. Peter broke through by not giving heed to the warning; he had not yet learned to judge his flesh. But he had eternal life, and so the Lord Jesus restored him. At the last supper Judas was warned, but he paid no heed. The Master would have put a hedge around him, but He who knows all hearts and who knows His own sheep said to him, "That thou doest do quickly." Judas had no life and went to his own place. Paul learnt what the flesh was and gave heed to the danger, not that he doubted his salvation, but he gave proof of it by judging all that was contrary to holiness and true service. All this is written for our learning that we may have the same confidence, the same jealous fear of the flesh, the same diligence in keeping the body in subjection. And doing all by the power of Him works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

There are some other texts, nearly akin to the standard passage in Corinthians, which we may now take up. I believe we shall find, if we have got hold of what has now been before us, that we have already the key to the understanding of these also. In Col. 1:22-23, for example: "To present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight: if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel" or again, in Heb. 3:6: "Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end;" and verse 14: "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end." Addressing a number of professed Christians, these "ifs" had their right and necessary place. Men were giving up faith in Christ, as this epistle to the Hebrews conclusively shows. The warning was perfectly in place. Nor could men be saved while giving up this faith; drawing back from Christ would be drawing back unto perdition. Yet this same apostle could in the selfsame epistle put those who had believed unto salvation in a different class altogether from those who could so apostatize: "We are not of them who draw back unto perdition" — not simply, "who have drawn back," which there could be no need to say, but "who draw back;" we are not the sort of people who do that — "but of them that believe to the saving of the soul;" that is the class to which we belong, and it is a different one to the other.

Most clearly, then, the apostle did not mean that such believers, positively saved ones, could draw back unto perdition. It was needful, on the other hand, to warn professors about it for two reasons at least. First, because the giving up of Christ put outside the possibility of salvation altogether, for none else could save. Secondly, because it was and is important, that men should not rest in a faith they had, or thought they had, in times past, which was not true for the present moment. Faith that I had faith once is not faith in Christ, and may be a dream of my own. Just so, the vain argument that "I was converted once, and therefore" — which is vain because it is a mere belief in what my heart may have deceived me. If I am trusting my conversion or my faith, the result may prove I had neither. If I trust Christ, He cannot deceive, and so I am safe. "Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." (Ps. 2:12.)

And surely, if a single thing depends upon our faithfulness, well may we tremble. If our salvation depends in any measure upon our own faithfulness, then we are lost indeed. But the object of these exhortations is to stir up the nest like the eagle stirring up her young, casting them out of the nest and seeing whether or not they are going to use their God-given wings and fly, or whether they are going to sink to the earth. So here the Spirit of God would stir up this nest of Hebrew Christians, to see whether they are in danger of sinking down to a mere carnal Judaism and turning from Christ, or whether they have the eye fixed by God Himself upon the Apostle and High Priest of their confession. It is only false professors who are driven away by warning.

Wholesome indeed are the "ifs" of scripture; not indeed to distress the believer, such being by no means the object of the Spirit, but to sift and test those who profess the Lord's name. Where divine counsels are expounded, as in Ephesians, "ifs" are not found, for there all is of God. But where human responsibility comes in, as in Colossians and Hebrews, they are brought forward solemnly again and again by the Holy Ghost. There is a right use of such warnings, and there is a grave misuse. W. W. Fereday.

Moreover, in the wilderness the reality of our profession is put to the test by the dangers we have to meet. These Hebrews had made a public profession of Christianity. With profession there is always the possibility of unreality, and hence the “ifs” come in. So the writer says that we are the House of God “if indeed we hold fast the boldness and the boast of hope firm to the end.” This is not a warning against being too confident in Christ and the eternal security that obtains for the believer for, it has been truly said, “There is no 'if' either as to Christ's work or as to glad tidings of God's grace. All there is, is unconditional grace to faith.” The warning supposes that those addressed have this assurance, and they are warned against giving it up. That the true believer will hold fast, or rather that God will hold him fast through the priestly grace of Christ to the end, in spite of many a failure, is certain. The believer's reality is proved by his enduring to the end. The wilderness that tests the true believer exposes the unreality of the mere professor.

"Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." The apostle here is certainly not seeking to unsettle faith, but to encourage it. But he would definitely unsettle anyone who rested upon anything but Christ. All false confidences would eventually leave souls bereft and hopeless. Pro­fession must necessarily be tested, and its reality is prov­en only by continuance. Some of the Hebrews who had publicly embraced Christianity were giving it up, and returning to Judaism. Did they actually then have part in the house of God? No: their giving up proved they had never really been brought in faith to the Lord Jesus. Faith is not a mere cloak one may put on and later put off again. It is rather the vital gift of God (Eph. 2:8, 9), which purifies the heart, remaining as the settled attitude of its possessor; and it is proven only by holding fast the confidence and rejoicing of hope firm unto the end.

As was the Old Testament type (see Ex. 12:38; Num. 11:4) so also was the New Testament antitype. Early in the church's history "the mixed multitude" became all too manifest, and so in the New Testament epistles we have many a searching question and warning designed to act as a home thrust to the conscience of any mere professor; — for instance, 1 Corinthians and Hebrews both refer to Israel, with her multitudes falling in the wilderness through unbelief, as a warning of what might happen to those in outward relationship with God if vital faith be lacking. (See 1 Cor. 10: and Heb. 3, 4) If people take up Christian ground God accepts them at their own valuation for the purposes of His holy judgment, and condemns them out of their own mouth like the wicked servant of Luke 19:22.

As it respects the weak but real Christian, against whose tender conscience the warning in these verses may be falsely directed by the enemy, let him consider that the very object of the warning is to perpetuate in the believer's mind, that thorough sense of personal worthlessness, and impotency for all good, which, by the grace of God, first made the name of Jesus grateful to his ears. The passage does not teach the manner of the sinner's justification. It applies a searching test whereby to ascertain whether Christ or self is in the hearts of those who by outward profession seek the rest of God.

It behoved them, then, to fear, lest such a case should seem to be their own. For they, too, had received a word of promise. God's rest was set before them as the object of their hope (verses 1, 2). But God had not changed. His promise now, as then, can profit only when held fast by faith. It is that the children's faith may stand, not in vain words, but in the power of God, that the word of admonition is thus searchingly applied.

As to the exhortations and warnings which we so constantly find in the Scriptures, they are of infinite value to us, for “By the words of Thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer” (Ps. 17:4). Pilgrims and Servants have to take heed to their ways, lest in the end they be rejected, for they may be true believers or otherwise; but as to children of God, as to all in vital relationship with Him, they are just as safe and as sure of glory, the kingdom, the inheritance, and all else in the way of blessing, as they shall be in the day in which they shall be glorified.