Having looked in part one at how the Reformed church has recognized Scripture’s distinction between the law and the gospel, we will look in this article at how this distinction plays out in warning passages.

A Look at Some Warning Passages

There are passages in the New Testament that might be described as “warning passages.” The first passage that might come to mind is the stern warning in Hebrews 4 to those Jewish and gentile Christians who were tempted to turn back to Judaism, to embrace the Mosaic ceremonies, or even to abandon Christ altogether. To such the pastor (preached and) wrote:

Let us fear therefore, while the promise still stands, lest anyone of you should seem to have come short of it. (Heb 4:1)

If we stopped in Hebrews 4:1 we might construe this passages as an exhortation to godliness or obedience as a condition of obtaining the promise, but that would be a mistake. The pastor continues:

For indeed we have had good news preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with those who heard it. (Heb 4:2)

The danger here is that of unbelief. The Israelites heard the gospel preached to them and they failed to enter the rest of salvation. That same danger exists today. The message must be received with faith! And Pastor Paul hastens to add in Ephesians 2 that faith is a gift of God.

Hebrews 10 contains perhaps one of the strongest warning passages in the New Testament:

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. (Heb 10:26–27)

There could hardly be a more frightening passage in all the New Testament. It seems to seek to drive us to holiness by using the threat of final judgment. Once again, however, if we expand the context, the picture changes considerably. Consider the passage just above this warning passage:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb 10:19–25)

In these preceding verses, the preacher to the Hebrew Christians begins with assurance, the confidence, the certain gospel promise that all those who have trusted Jesus have free and full access to the heavenly holy of holies, where Jesus is, through the finished work and righteousness of Christ.

It is in view of the gospel, therefore, that they (and we with them) are to conduct their Christian lives. One of the consequences of faith in Christ is gathering together on the Sabbath in holy assembly for public worship. Because some were being tempted to go back to Moses, back to the types and shadows, they were absenting themselves from Christian worship (perhaps in favor of the Synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath?).

It is in such a context that the preacher warns about the danger of being impenitent—that is, of sinning without repentance. The sin here is apostasy from Christ and his gospel. In other words, we cannot simply fill in the blank with any sin, under any circumstance, and then shake our finger at others and say, “Stop doing x or you’ll lose your acceptance with God.”

That is not what this warning passage says or implies. So much is made clear by the verses following. He reminds these New Testament believers of what happened under Moses to those who apostatized. He writes:

How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Heb 10:29–31)

Who is in such jeopardy? It is they who, having been initiated into the covenant community (in chapter 6 he writes of being “enlightened,” perhaps a metaphorical reference to baptism), who have “tasted of the powers of the age to come,” and who now have walked away from their profession of faith.

To be clear, neither Hebrews nor the rest of Holy Scripture knows anything about the foolish Federal Vision doctrine of a union with Christ created by baptism and preserved by grace and cooperation with grace.¹ This has more do with Romanist sacerdotalism than it has with Scripture, which never teaches that circumcision or baptism has the power to create a real or even temporary union with Christ. Indeed, the apostle Paul positively rejected the Judaizing attempt to confer more power on circumcision than it had. See the books of Galatians and Colossians.

The Federal Visionists make this error because they reject the biblical teaching that there are two ways of being in the one covenant of grace: internally and externally (Rom 2:28). The short of it is that there are those in the visible covenant community, in the church, who have only an external relation to the covenant of grace and to Christ.² They profess faith but they lack the new life that the Spirit alone gives.

We may rightly call them apostates who profess faith and who turn their backs on Christ. They were in the visible covenant community. They did receive signs. They did profess faith. But, as John says, “They went out from us because they were not of us” (1 John 2:19). They were never united to Christ.

Such apostates (as defined above) should be in fear of the holy wrath of God. Jesus has poured out the most holy blood of the covenant, not in bowls or on doorposts, but on the cross, and the angel of death has passed over all those who by faith alone are covered by that righteous and holy blood. All those, however, whether in the visible assembly of the church or outside of it, who are not covered by Christ’s righteousness are in grave danger.

True believers, however, united to Christ by grace alone, through faith alone (sola gratia, sola fide) are in no such jeopardy. The Christian is simul iustus et peccator (at the same time sinner and righteous). As Paul teaches in Romans 7–8, we sin, we repent of it, we confess it humbly before God, we seek and accept his forgiveness in Christ. As he teaches in Romans 6, we seek to put to death that sin by the strength of the Spirit of Christ dwelling within us.

The preacher to the Hebrews knows nothing of a true believer who may fall away. He does, however, know of those who have made profession of faith, who have a merely external relationship to the covenant of grace (Rom 2:28), who are not actually united to Christ by faith. These are two distinct classes of people who coexist within the administration of the one covenant of grace.

One who has made a profession but who is not actually a believer cannot be placed back under the covenant of works because he has never left it. He is still under a covenant of works, an obligation to produce “perfect and personal obedience” (WCF 7.1). A profession of faith that does not flow from Spirit-wrought new life is false. Such a person remains under obligation to produce the perfect righteousness demanded by the law. A believer, however, has already met that demand by virtue of Christ’s perfect righteousness imputed.

The Warnings in Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12 gives us a pattern for relating the gospel, the third use of the law (the normative use), and warnings. The pastor begins the chapter by urging believers to set aside “every weight and sin” (Heb 12:1). To motivate us to persevere in the struggle toward sanctity he reminds us that we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” We do not need to understand exactly who these witnesses are to understand how they function. He also points to Christ, who persevered through death, who was raised and is ascended. He grounds our struggle with sin in Christ, the “perfecter and author of our faith” (Heb 12:2).

He reminds us that our Lord resisted sin to the shedding of blood (Heb 12:4), whether in the Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross. The contrast with our own spiritual sloth is clear.

This battle with sin he calls “the discipline of the Lord” (Heb 12:5). We are not to interpret such Fatherly discipline as a sign of God’s disfavor (as if the only sign of his Fatherly care is earthly prosperity) but rather as a sign of God’s love for us in Christ (Heb 12:5–11). Just as we have earthly fathers who discipline us because they love us (ordinarily), for our good (that was certainly true in my case), so it is even more true that the Father sometimes chastises us in order to drive us to see our sins, to see our need for Christ, and to seek to die to sin and live to Christ. Sometimes the Lord may even withdraw from us a sense of his presence. During such chastisements we continue to trust the Lord, to wait, and to make use of those means he has appointed for our spiritual growth: the preaching of the gospel, the holy sacraments, and prayer.

In verses 18–24, the pastor reminds us of God’s awesome holiness. This reminder is intended to create in us a sense of due reverence for our Holy God—one that is sorely needed in our day—Notice, however, that Hebrews 12:18–21 says “we have not come” to the gloomy, frightening old covenant mountain. He reminds us that, instead, in the new covenant, by faith, we have come to “Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering” (Heb 12:22).

This is a much more optimistic, encouraging picture.

God is no less holy, however. As he says, we have come to “God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:23–24).

The person at the top of the mountain, as it were, is he who gave his life for us, our Mediator.

There is jeopardy associated with the new covenant mountain. We who hear, who profess faith, may not “refuse him who is speaking” (Heb 12:25). Now that we are in the period of fulfillment the jeopardy of unbelief is even greater: “Much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven.” The next “voice” will not just shake a mountain but will rattle the entire world (Heb 12:26)!

We who believe should be grateful for “receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” As the redeemed, we want to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:28).

If we look at other warning passages in the New Testament we find the same pattern repeatedly. 1 Peter warns not that believers may fall away if they are not sufficiently sanctified—that would be to put believers back under the covenant of works, which is impossible. Rather, Peter warns them, for example, that if they were to be in trouble with the civil authorities let it be for being a Christian rather than being an idiot (breaking the civil law). He reminds them of the impending return of Jesus in the final flood, as it were, to set all things right. We should therefore be prepared to suffer patiently in view of that reality.

Jude warns about false teachers and other false Christians, who profess faith but who are really hypocrites. They present a danger to the congregation. We do not know who is and is not elect. We may not be presumptuous. God works through instruments. We must therefore be on guard lest such wolves enter congregations and do irreparable damage. This is why we have the process of church discipline (Matt 18).

Our Lord himself made use of warnings and promises of reward, but how should we understand them? Consider his teaching in Matthew 6:2–4:

Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Clearly he intends for us to do one thing (give to the needy) and not to do another (do so in an ostentatious way). Did he, however, set up a conditional reward structure whereby if we give appropriately, we will have a reward (whatever that is), but if we fail to meet the condition we will not?

No, that is not what the Lord says. Such a reading is an example, mentioned earlier in the series, of setting up false conditions and imposing them on the text. Our Lord is contrasting two different attitudes and intentions. The ostentatious giver has no love for the needy. His desire is recognition. When he gives ostentatiously, he gains recognition and thus has his reward, such as it is. By contrast, the secret giver does so out of gratitude for God’s gift to him in Christ. He has another secret reward: Jesus the gift. He does not have the gift because he gave, but he gave in secret because he already had the gift. There is no “if . . . then” condition for acceptance with God here. This is a classic case of an “is” (“this is the case”) that some would turn on its head to make into an “if.”

When we turn Jesus’s words into conditions for acceptance with God we miss his point. In context he is describing the antithesis between belief and unbelief, between true faith, which produces fruit, and hypocrisy, which produces dead works. Jesus is describing true faith and prescribing behavior that flows from it. The warning here is to make sure that we have true faith, that we believe, to make sure that we are not hypocrites. That is a salutary warning.

There are warning passages in the New Testament, but they must be read in their context. They must be read the way they are intended to be read. Isolated and collated, they can be formed into an intimidating and unduly frightening list of conditions to be fulfilled for acceptance with God. The passages of this class, however, were never intended to be understood or used this way.

The key to unlocking the warning passages is the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. This is not a formula for making the passages go away. It is the biblical way of reading these passages in context and applying them fruitfully toward conformity to Christ.

Now I have an exhortation for preachers: Brothers, it is well for us to desire sanctity for our people. As we do, however, we must be careful to make this foundational, biblical distinction. We will help our congregations a great deal by taking a few moments regularly to explain it to them and to illustrate it by treating the New Testament warning passages with that distinction in mind. When we preachers fail to do this, we unintentionally place our people back under the covenant of works, which can never produce in them the sanctity we all earnestly hope and pray to see.

The God who redeemed us is also sanctifying us by his Spirit, working in us a love for his holy law and bringing us into conformity to Christ. By virtue of the power of the Spirit, with which we are endued, we must struggle against sin, more and more recognizing God’s holiness and bringing our desires into conformity to his. In this life we will only make a beginning, even if only inchoate, but let us make that beginning. “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1).

Notes

1. See R. Scott Clark, “For Those Just Tuning In: What Is The Federal Vision?”
2. I have written on the question of “Baptism and the Benefits of Christ” in an essay available online at: R. Scott Clark, “Baptism and the Benefits of Christ,” The Confessional Presbyterian no. 2 (2006): 3–19.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on the Heidelblog in 2012.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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