Hebrews Part 1: Shallow ChristianitySýnishorn

Faith Doesn’t Float

When our kids were little, we enjoyed spending our vacations on a lake a few hours from our house. After a fun day of riding a jet ski, we tied it up to the dock outside the home we were borrowing, ate dinner, and went to bed. When we turned on our phones the next morning, there was a voicemail from someone who found the jet ski on the shore of the complete opposite end of the lake. Apparently, the jet ski somehow became disconnected from the dock. It was surprising how quickly it drifted as far away as it possibly could.

Christians who stop reading their Bible, praying, repenting of sin, and gathering with fellow believers in a church are a lot like that jet ski. Quickly after becoming disconnected from these holy habits, we can drift far off course. This is precisely what this section of Hebrews warns against, urging us not to “drift away.”

Speaking of the original Greek text from which our English Bible translations are adapted, a Bible commentary says, “Our failure carefully to attend to what God is saying to us in the gospel of Christ is arrestingly explained with the use of a word (pararuōmen) which is used in other contexts to describe a boat which is allowed to drift away aimlessly, so missing the landing point.” (1)

Technically, to “drift away” is referred to by Christian scholars as apostasy. A Bible Encyclopedia says, “Turning against God, as evidenced by abandonment and repudiation of former beliefs. The term generally refers to a deliberate renouncing of the faith by a once sincere believer rather than a state of ignorance or mistaken knowledge.” (2)

We must always be on guard that we do not allow ourselves to drift away from faith in and a genuine relationship with God. We must fight to maintain the holy habits of Bible reading, praying, repenting of sin, and gathering with other believers at church.

Has there been a time in your own life when you drifted away, and how did you come back to a fear of God and genuine faith?

(1) Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 47.

(2) James D. Price and Luder G. Whitlock Jr., “Apostasy,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 130.