For He is faithful that promised.--Much is made of the promises in this epistle,

indeed epaggelia occurs therein 14 times. Much too is made of the faithfulness of the

promiser, especially in Heb. 6: 13-19.

Let us consider one another.--There is a false piety that believes that God is well

pleased with a monastic isolation, that God only wrote four commandments and not ten.

This is a travesty of truth. "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he

love God Whom he hath not seen?" (I John 4: 20). The special "provoking" here is to

"love and to good works". The word "good" here is not agathos, but kalos as in

Heb. 5: 14; 6: 5.

interpretation of this passage revolves around the assembly and its fellowship, urging the

need for regular attendance at the place of worship.  The word "assembling"

(episunagoge), and its cognate (episunago) are never used of an "assembly" in the sense

of a church. Episunago is used in Matt. 23: 37 and the parallel passage for the Lord's

desire to gather the children of Jerusalem to Himself as a hen does her chickens. It is

used in Matt. 24: 31 and the parallel passage of the gathering together of the elect by

the angels. It is used in Mark 1: 33, and Luke 12: 1, for the crowd who gathered for

healing or interest. The only other place where episunagoge occurs is II Thess. 2: 1,

"The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him".

The apostle by the use of the word "forsaking" evidently glances back to such

passages as II Chron. 24: 18, where the "forsaking" of the house of the Lord meant

apostasy, and was visited with wrath, and also to Neh. 10: 39 and 13: 11, where

adherence to the house of God indicated loyalty. The "gathering together to ourselves"

has value only as it foreshadows the hope of "our gathering together unto Him". At the

present time faithfulness to truth and to the blessed hope often cuts one off from the

assemblies of the Lord's people, and the use of this passage may under altered conditions

be an abuse.

The added words, "so much the more, as ye see the day approaching", confirms the

thought that the hope is all the while in view. As we see the day approaching we must

confess that it has cut off from assembling with the Lord's people, simply because

corporate testimony has gone the way of all the earth.

A further confirmation of this higher and fuller meaning is found in the argument that

immediately follows. The forsaking of the assembly is called a "willful sin after the

reception of the truth", and for such "there is remaineth no more sacrifice for sins".

Under the law sins were placed under two heads:--