Hebrews 4:1Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

See Heb 3:15. He takes his persuasions sometimes from pleasant things, saying, "We have become partakers of Christ," and sometimes from grievous things: "Let us fear, lest, while the promise of entering His rest still remains, any of you should seem to have come short." For this is certain and known.

"Therefore let us fear, lest, while the promise of entering His rest still remains." Here there is a return to the passage where it says, "Today, if you will hear His voice" (Heb 3:7). Then, in order, comes, "Let us fear," lest the same thing happen to us. The word "therefore" resumes the discourse, which had been interrupted by a long repetition.

"Lest any of you should seem to have come short." That is, lest somehow one should be completely deprived of the possibility of entering this promised rest. Softening and moderating his speech, he did not say, "lest he come short," but, "lest he should seem to have come short."

Therefore let us also fear, lest any of us should be found to have fallen behind. Let us not, through our negligence, be deprived of the possibility of entering into rest, not into that land of promise, but into the true rest of God, which is the Kingdom of Heaven.

David, says the Apostle, announced to us that there is another rest. Therefore let us strive to be counted worthy of it, lest we suffer something like what the Jews suffered.

After setting forth this weighty thought, the Apostle seeks to put the Jews in fear and make them wait for the hopes given to them. At last he begins to speak of rest, teaching that the Prophet David had foretold it from ancient times.

Verse 1: "Therefore let us fear, lest, while the promise of entering His rest remains, any of you should seem to have come short of it." Verse 2: "For the Gospel was preached to us, as also to them. But the word they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it."

If we transpose the words previously cited and join them with what is said here, we receive the following sequence of thoughts.

"As long as it is said, Today, when you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at the time when the Israelites embittered the Lord, let us fear. While the promise of entering His rest still remains, let none of you be found late."

But the man who has truly and precisely found the truth of these images has found it in stillness. For his eyes become like a spring of water for two years or more. After this he comes to the peaceful settling of thoughts. After the settling of thoughts, so far as nature can partially contain it, he enters that rest of which Saint Paul spoke. From this peaceful repose, the mind begins to contemplate mysteries. Then the Holy Spirit begins to reveal heavenly things to him. God dwells in him and raises up in him the fruit of the Spirit. From this, though somewhat indistinctly and as in a riddle, a man senses within himself the change which the inner nature is to receive at the renewal of all things. I have written this as a reminder to myself and to everyone who reads this work.

"Let us therefore fear." Having presented the historical example of how unbelief deprives one of the possibility of receiving the fulfillment of the promise, the Apostle confirms his exhortation. Let us fear being deprived of the rights we have received. Or, as the Russian translation suggests, let us fear lest we arrive too late for the time when the promises are fulfilled.

Distrust of God's promises, stubbornness, and disobedience slow the journey, as it were, and prevent one from entering the land of rest at the proper time.

According to the Apostle, the material rest of the promised land points to another and higher rest in the spiritual sense. The land of Canaan served only as a distant type of it. It is precisely of this rest that Saint Paul says the promise concerning it was preached to us as to them, that is, to the ancient Hebrews. Therefore he also says further, "For we who have believed enter that rest" (Heb 4:3).

Since Christians from among the Jews thought that the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies about the completion of God's kingdom was possible only in the people to whom they were given, the Apostle refutes this error with special insistence. He says that Christians themselves have received the proclamation of God's rest, into which they may enter. He asks his readers to take care that no one think it is already impossible for Christians to enter God's rest. Since the promise of entering God's rest still remains in force even now, καταλειπομένης επαγγελίας being a genitive absolute, no one should think that, by separating himself from his Jewish tribe through accepting Christianity, he has thereby lost hope of sharing in the divine rest.