The Greatest Risk to the Church Today

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you and evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
Hebrews 3:12-14

American society walks the line between dethroning Christianity and smothering it. The former can be seen in the fall of the Bible Belt and in the overthrow of the Christian domination of culture. The latter is more aggressive; it isn’t glee at the loss of Christian primacy, it is nothing short of full-blown participation. So when I say the greatest risk to the Christian church today isn’t dethroning or smothering, it is not to minimize the dangers from outside but to emphasize what the Bible teaches us. The greatest risk to the Church today is your absence.

The first thing we ought to see in Hebrews 3:12-14 is a progression of sin. Sin begins innocently enough: a quick glance, a few dollars, a little hate, and an ounce of gossip. That is its deceptive charm, at first it is never that bad. And yet, the deceit leads to a hardness. In Acts 19:9 this word is used to describe those who “continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way.”

To be hardened is to be unmovable, doubting, stubborn. The word is used in the the same chapter to refer to the Israelites at Meribah where they doubted the goodness of God and accused Him of bringing them out into the wilderness to die.Sin deceives us by telling us its not as bad as God says and then hardens us against God’s goodness and trustworthiness. Eventually, this “evil, unbelieving heart” leads to falling away entirely. Total rejection and apostasy. The sin which was once a cute lion cub grew up to be a man-eater.

You may be wondering at this point what this progression of sin has to do with whether you attend a local church or not. Why should someone else’s problems with sin and belief, especially some random person at church, be pinned on you?

The Biblical author writes his answer plainly:

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you and evil, unbelieving heart…”
“But exhort one another every day as long as it is called today that none of you may be hardened…”

Take care is translated from the common Greek verb for “to see”. The author is commanding the brothers, a.k.a. the local group of believers, to watch each other. The reason for this observation is so that no one would have an evil heart hardened by sin. The implication of the verse is that without watching, there would be some who fall away from God. And so, we must watch each other’s backs and hearts to make sure that no one is being deceived and hardened by sin.

But watching is passive, how are we to help when we see someone tangled up in the progression of sin? We are to exhort one another every day. This verb has a large range of meaning but in this passage is most likely referring to earnest urging and encouraging. This exhortation is to take place “every day”. This again refers back to earlier in the chapter where Meribah is once again in view. We are to urge each other towards faith in the trustworthiness of God and the evil of sin consistently and earnestly.

When you are absent from the local body of believers, you are not only isolating yourself from exhortation, you are depriving the church of your own watchfulness and exhortation. It is not the pastor’s job to maintain spiritual health. It is the members (which includes the pastors of course). When you are absent, your job goes undone. And the Word tells us that lives hang in the balance. The greatest risk to the church today is that you won’t be there.

All of this rests on an important foundation. Why are these people in our charge? Are we our brother’s keeper? Why am I responsible for the random lady in church whose face I know but who’s name will always evade me? Because we have come to share in the same Christ.

In the final verse of our passage, the author of Hebrews gives us this intentional tension where we have come to share in Christ together, we are bound together forever as the people of God,a holy nation, a royal priesthood, and yet, some of us may fall away by not holding fast to Christ. That’s the point of the passage and something the author of Hebrews uses throughout his book.

There are people in your church that may not be in heaven because of your absence. There are people in your small group who are barely hanging on to faith. And if you share in the blood of Jesus Christ and have fellowship in Christ, it is your responsibility to watch and to exhort.

Does this mean that people can lose their salvation? No. But that’s a topic for another article.