Commentaries:
According to Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon, the words let us go on mean "to carry some burden," "to bear with oneself," or "to move by bearing." It can also suggest "to endure," "to endure the rigor of a thing," or "to bear patiently one's conduct." Jesus says, "He who endures to the end shall be saved" (Matthew 24:13). It seems that the writer of Hebrews is warning that we may have to suffer a bit to reach perfection.
This should come as no surprise since Jesus, the One whose example we follow, walked this road: "For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Hebrews 2:10; see also Hebrews 5:8-9). What about the apostle Paul? He writes in Philippians 3:8, 10-14:
Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ . . . that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
What is the goal? It is to be perfected in Christ Jesus! That is the heart and core of the lesson of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is why our primary focus needs to be on the eating of the unleavened bread. Unleavened bread is symbolic of that perfect unleavened bread from heaven, Jesus Christ (John 6:32-33, 48-51).
In Psalm 138:7-8, David combines these two thoughts of suffering and perfection:
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch out Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and Your right hand will save me. The LORD will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O LORD, endures forever; do not forsake the works of Your hands.
This is why we eat unleavened bread. It is the message of Ephesians 2:10: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Eating unleavened bread reminds us that we are to become unleavened, to be purified, to be perfected!
So, what are we to be perfected in? It can be summed up in one word: love. God is love (I John 4:8, 16). He is fashioning, shaping, and molding us into the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ, changing our human nature, filled with lusts and sin, into His divine nature, which is love. Notice I John 2:3-5:
Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep his commandments. He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.
The apostle John states in I John 3:2 that when Christ returns for us, we will see Him as He is because we will be like Him. We will have been perfected in love! This is why our primary focus during the Feast of Unleavened Bread should be on eating unleavened bread, symbolic of that perfect Unleavened Bread of Life from heaven, Jesus Christ. Our eating of it for seven days also depicts perfection because, in Scripture, the number seven symbolizes perfection.
In II Peter 1:5-7, Peter writes about adding virtue to our faith, knowledge to our virtue, and so on. It is a kind of outline of the conversion process. The final step he mentions is adding love. In the resurrection, when we are finally perfected in love and have received an incorruptible body, we will no longer sin because we will be love like God is love, and our perfect love will not allow us to sin, just as God does not sin. Won't that be wonderful?
All the hard work we put into cleaning our houses and automobiles of leaven profits us nothing unless we put that symbolic act to work, doing our part to replace our sinful, carnal nature with God's divine nature, which is love. This is what the Feast of Unleavened Bread is all about! Remember the words of our Savior in this regard, "Therefore you shall be perfect [in love!], just as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).
Clyde Finklea
The Unleavened Bread of Perfection
Eternal judgment is one of the basic doctrines of the church of God, equal in importance to repentance, faith, baptism, etc. Webster's New World Dictionary defines judgment as "a legal decision, order or sentence given by a judge." In eternal judgment, God decides a person's reward or punishment for all eternity.
Staff
Basic Doctrines: Eternal Judgment
During the time of the Exodus, the people of Israel heard a message of good news from Moses (Hebrews 4:2). It consisted of redemption from slavery, the Passover, baptism in the Red Sea, and a journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land. The good news, then, included the occurrences of and the knowledge about all the steps along the way, all of the benchmarks. The purpose for which all those events occurred was the most important part. What good was it to have the death angel pass over their house, for them to receive the forgiveness of sin and redemption from slavery, if they never made it to the Promised Land? That is Paul's warning. The steps, though vital in themselves, are not as important as the goal.
This warning applies especially to today. What Jesus Christ did in His life, in His death and in His resurrection, is awesome, a wonderful and great gift. It is good news that these things have occurred, but they are not the good news. The good news is the goal, and that has not yet occurred. What Jesus Christ did is exceedingly important to the fulfillment of God's purpose, but it's still possible for us to reject the Son of God even after we have accepted His blood for the forgiveness of our sins, as Hebrews 12 also shows very clearly. So in this analogy, life in, possession of and governance of the Promised Land was the culmination, the good news, the fulfillment—at least physically—of the promises to Abraham.
The message that Jesus Christ brought, the gospel, is about the Kingdom of God, the culmination, the goal, the fulfillment. Certainly it includes the knowledge of and information about those benchmarks along the way, but the Kingdom of God is the goal toward which every Christian is aiming.
These doctrines or principles are very important, as Hebrews 6:1 shows. God will grant us repentance and forgive us through the blood of Jesus Christ. What good news! But it is not the good news. That is the principle: Being granted repentance and having faith in and through Jesus Christ are good news, but the result of those things is the real good news. It is the culmination of the process—"let us go on to perfection"—that is the good news.
What if the gospel concentrates solely on the person of the Messenger and overlooks the message He brought? If it focuses on the greatness of the Messenger, all of the good news about Him, and His importance to the process, His significance actually begins to diminish. If one concentrates on the Messenger, he will believe that salvation comes merely because he believes in the Messenger (see Matthew 7:21). Further development of that human being stops because he has made the wrong choice. That is the problem with concentrating on the Messenger, as important as He is.
The gospel does not specifically concentrate on Christ, yet we do not want to denigrate the major role He plays either. The process pivots around Him, though its ultimate purpose will end when He delivers the Kingdom to the Father (I Corinthians 15:24). The Messenger became the High Priest, and we are saved through His life. Christianity has to go beyond the fact that He was the Messenger. Now He is the High Priest in heaven. And though He is High Priest, we still have choices to make in relation to the Kingdom of God.
That is why Hebrews 6:1 says, "Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection." As we go through the process that the Messenger went through and begin to experience what He accomplished, He is magnified in our eyes, because we try to do what He did and realize how awesome and difficult what He did was. While we try to imitate Him, the process of creation is going on. If we stop trying to imitate Him, He becomes diminished. That is why we have to go on to perfection, to completion, because the process is not complete with just believing in Jesus Christ.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Guard the Truth!
The seven doctrines listed in Hebrews 6 are not all the doctrines of the church, but represent a basic understanding of God's truth early in the process of conversion. The first, "go[ing] on to perfection," means pressing on to or striving for spiritual maturity. It is not enough for a Christian to maintain a basic level of understanding - He must grow toward perfection, completion, or maturity in the doctrines of Christ. Part of this process we call "overcoming sin."
Martin G. Collins
Basic Doctrines: Doctrine
