Tuesday after the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on October 4, 2022 by under
Scripture: Hebrews 10:35-39 (NKJV)
10:35 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:
37 “For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry.
38 “Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.”
39 But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.
Devotion
This passage is all about faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But the apostle does not use the word “faith”; instead, he uses the word “confidence”. He calls faith a “confidence” to show that faith is not an opinion. Faith is not merely the best option among other religions. Calling faith a “confidence” also shows that faith is not mere knowledge. Even the demons know the truth of God and of the Christ, but their knowledge is not counted as saving faith (James 2:19). True faith means having the confidence through Christ to approach God in prayer. For this reason, Dr. Luther taught in the Large Catechism, “I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true. And, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together, [that is] faith and God.” (Part I, 1st Commandment) Faith is a living response to God and is, therefore, called interchangeably “faith”, “confidence”, and “trust”.
The fruit of true confidence, according to our text, is “the saving of the soul.” Faith has confidence in God not only for bodily needs and right morals, but for salvation. It includes all these things in addition to the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Prayer: Lord, we pray Thee, that Thy grace may always go before and follow after us, and make us continually given to all good works; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
