God spoke into being our salvation, our marvelous inheritance, from the foundation of the world. God has already perfected our inheritance and now is resting. We must work out what God has declared concerning us. We must "labor" to enter that rest, that finished work. We labor to enter our foreordained inheritance by seeking the Lord, by studying the Scriptures, by fellowshiping with the saints, by obeying God, by giving, by serving, and by doing all the other good works of the Christian life. When we do not do our part the Divine program is delayed or destroyed.

Hebrews 2:3 (above) often has been preached to the unconverted, but it is not directed toward them. Apollos, Paul, or some other learned and experienced saint penned these remarkable words to the Hebrew Christians of the first century.

The persons being addressed in the Book of Hebrews were not novices in Christ. They had suffered for the Gospel.

But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; (Hebrews 10:32)

They had been taught doctrine.

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1,2)

These Hebrew Christians had been saved, born again, and filled with the Holy Spirit.

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, (Hebrews 6:4,5)

But after having made this strong start in grace they had grown cold and were slipping into sin.

Not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, (Hebrews 10:25,26)

The writer of the Book of Hebrews is urging his readers to press on past the elementary experiences of being born again and baptized with the Holy Spirit. They were growing lukewarm and slipping backward into sin rather than pressing forward "to perfection" (Hebrews 6:1).

The author of Hebrews refers to perfection, to the goal of our discipleship, as the "rest" of God.

Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. (Hebrews 4:1)

Salvation, in the sense in which the word is used in the Book of Hebrews, is the same as the "rest" of God. We are not to neglect the struggle, the fight, the labor to enter the rest of God.

To be continued.