How Shall We Escape? Hebrews 2:3

The salvation that I am about to describe to you that is found in Christ Jesus indeed is great, but what is it exactly that makes it so great as to be of interest to us in this modern age?

Author: Randy Pritts

(⇓)

From the SoGreatSalvationSeries

Today's Text:

Escape What?

There have been a great many famous preachers deliver a message based upon today's text. It is a very well known and delivered text. Entire books have been given focused on the phrase "so great salvation". I would like for this time, however, to focus our attention on those words in front of this "How shall we escape".

"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation..." v3a

To understand verse 3, one has to understand verse 2. What is is that the author is describing to us that we would be escaping from?

"...every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward" v2b

It is a tough concept for the postmodern moral genius to comprehend "just recompence of reward". These postmodern men have constructed their deities to be "all compassionate"; so they claim. It doesn't matter to them what they have said or done or refuse to believe, their deities love them just the same, just the way they are no matter how they are, there is nothing "just" about holding a man or a woman to an exceedingly high standard, so exceedingly high in fact that only their belief in our Messiah could ever possibly satisfy its' every to the letter and intention.

Yes, it is a very tough concept for the postmodern moral genius to comprehend "just recompence of reward". To them salvation is universal and relative, all except for maybe Hitler, oh and maybe Dahmer, oh and maybe that child molester and that rapist and the fascists and that republican and that capitalist or that car that cut them off, oh and that board that caused them a splinter. You see what deserves just recompense to them is whatever ticks them off, or has done them wrong, or has caused them great wars and bloodshed. It is not anything that they have done, it is what they've decide you have done. That to them is justice.

For the God Jehovah of the bible, what is really "just" and deserving "recompense" is an entirely different matter; it is rather accountability and due reward for "every transgression and disobedience". Transgression dict:strongs G3847 means violation. Disobedience dict:strongs G3876 comes from a word for inattention. Every, you might already know means all/without exception.

How often here in the West we think of sin as the breaking of one of the Ten Commandments. "I have not committed adultery nor coveted my neighbors ox.... therefore I have not broken God's commandment". Beware then westerner, "Every" does not mean one of any of the ten, it means any without exception of all the many possible transgressions or disobedience's. That is why Jesus could say that it is not just to murder but to think harm upon another, not just adultery but to look upon with the desire or intent. If accountability to every transgression or disobedience be so, how could any one of us hope to "escape" this "just recompense" without the salvation offered to men and women through the blood of Christ Jesus?

Tell me friend, if this Bible be true, how do you plan to "escape" the "just recompense" deserved by "every transgression and disobedience"?

Do you plan to

• Do you plan to talk your way out of this just recompense?
• Do you intend with some kind of penance or purgatory to pay this recompense back off?
• Do you plan rather to take your chances, suffer the recompense of this in vile opposition to the so called "just-ness" of this so called Jehovah God in plain spite?

Is such a Recompense as Hell Just?

Perhaps the greatest sin of all is not the tiny transgression or disobedience and the consequential damage it caused in and of itself, it is how the collection of them add up. Perhaps the greatest sin is that in our effort to somehow justify this, that those tiny splinter have festered and made the whole heart sore and infected toward God, caused the person to harden themselves even more, to not turn back, to encourage the heart to transgress and disobey all the more; to not make confession or reparations, to become just that much more bitter towards type of God that would hold their every thought and deed accountable.

Perhaps the greatest sin of this matter is that in a world so filled already with the pain and the consequence of sin, we just keep adding all the more. Big sins, little sins, retributions, retaliations, its many intended and unintended victims; sin as a collective, sin as an oppressive whole, sin as a massive plague or open floodgate; that we fully justify and exclude ourselves from any of this so often and so freely.

How can the individual soul be held accountable for all of this? Friend, I provide this rather as a proof or comparison, the individual can be held to both the sins of the person (or the family or neighborhood or congregation) and the sins of the population (just as Israel has been held accountable historically in the Bible for the sins of its nation).

If this be true, then what hope has any of us? not to receive God's just recompense? We have no hope. That is what I am saying unless there be a Christ or Messiah added to the consideration to deliver us from such recompense and into "so great salvation" there is no hope to be found.

What is just in God Jehovah's economy is that no matter what the transgression or disobedience, how much or how little or how many, what has been proven impossible for man and mankind to work their way back out of, it is readily resolved by the belief and reliance upon the substitutionary work and gift of God Messiah, seed of Abraham, seed of Adam, God's only begotten: Christ Jesus on our behalf. It is as easy as belief and depending, changing life course the opposite direction, His direction instead of self's direction, that is what is just.

It would not be just for instance

1 If God's plan depended upon the sinner doing something that the sinner was mostly unwilling and humanly incapable of doing. 2 If it required you to save up and buy this great salvation by yourself, or by the extra unused merits of your spouse or your parents or some saints from another age when merits were a plenty. 3 If it required you being in the right place at the right time in the right generation in the right country born to the right parents etc..

No, God told of this "just" plan to Eve and Adam. HIS promise has been carried on and relied upon from Noah to Abraham to David and onward. It has been HIS plan all along and has made absolutely no changes nor deviations. The plan has been laid out front and center upon the much blessed nation of Israel and told forth by its' many God proven prophets. And if the section of verse 2 before this is of any indication, even the angels have made it know that this is what is fair and equitable about God's impending judgment; it is that the gracious remedy to escape such due recompense has all along been offered via this promise of "so great salvation".

Where the question up to now has been "how shall we escape" the broader question shall be "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great (and all along promised in Christ fulfilled) salvation. Great it is - that the bankrupt and indebted soul no longer has to pay for all of this. Great it is that God's only begotten Son, through whom all things were created, has condescended down to the point of becoming a man below the angels Himself to obtain all this. Great it is that this most beloved Son gave so dearly of His own self (His own blood). Great it is that the whole means by which we are purchased out from death's clutches is by a means so perfect and complete that it is obviously so divinely preordained and righteous. What more could be said of this salvation than to call it "So Great".

Isn't "Just Reward" Another Sign of Angry God?

God here by HIS "so great salvation" is shown to be the exactly opposite of irrational angry God. HE is shown here to compassionate and caring enough about man's current present condition and dilemma to have from the beginning of time done something "so great" about it. Even before creation, it is said that this plan had been decreed and set into motion; to be "conformed to the image of HIS Son" ( kjv@Romans:8:29 ).

Brethren, it is no surprise to God that mankind has fallen, that every one of us in some way shape or form transgressed and disobeyed, hurt our selves and each other and most of all hurt HIS best intentions and holy compassion. What for me is the only surprise is how long and how much we have made ourselves to suffer not believing that HIS remedy to all this in Christ Jesus is so. But brethren, what other form of salvation could get us there back into HIS arms? what form could straighten us out and revive us? what other hope could so sustain us as can this "so great salvation" from the "So Great Messiah/Savior" Christ Jesus?

In deed, we have the testimony of the angels. In chapter one we have the testimony of two millenniums worth of prophets, who gave to us the seed Torah, also the chronicles of a chosen nation's sorted history, the corrective actions taken by God to again revive and sustain it. Whom also have given us the psalms and the proverbs and short and long range prophecies/dreams and the visions and appearances that announce and confirm it. We have the good news accounts and letters of Christ's apostles. We have a healthy and most generous sampling of Christ's own words and the signs and wonders that followed Him without fail from city to city. We have the profound witness of His unjust capture and unjust trial and unfathomable crucifixion. But, with this comes the matters of His resurrection, then ascension by the Fathers satisfied pleasure, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All this friend testifies of a "So Great Salvation".

How great is this "so great salvation"? It is great enough that by such great grace and mercy and unimaginable compassion, by the substitutional work of atonement of the only begotten, God has made the very same offer of escape from so just and due recompense to any man/woman/child of any nation of Adam's descendants equitably available by faith. By Faith in this alone.

Consider this beloved:

How shall we? How shall I? How shall you new or old sinner escape?

Please answer today: My Lord and Savior Jesus - Son of God - sent by God, crucified to redeem Adam's children, raised to the right hand throne in powerful confirmation!

Comment Board: HowShallWeEscape Tags: Salvation, Jesus, Recompense, Angels, Testimony,

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