John Brown, Hebrews Quote 12

Hebrews  by John Brown  p. 180

    To be hardened is to become insensible to the claims of Jesus Christ, so that they do not make their appropriate impression on the mind, in producing attention, faith, and obedience.  He is hardened who is careless, unbelieving, impenitent, and disobedient.

     Into this state the professors of Christianity among the Jews were in danger of falling “through the deceitfulness of sin”—that is, through sin’s deceiving them.  By “sin” I apprehend we are to understand anything inconsistent with the law of Christ, whom professing believers acknowledge as their Lord and Master; for example, the neglecting to assemble themselves together for the observance of the ordinances of Christianity, to which the Apostle particularly refers in a subsequent part of the Epistle.

    But how is such a sin as this calculated to deceive them, and by deceiving to “harden” them—to make them careless, unbelieving and disobedient, so as that they depart from Christ, and, in departing from Him, depart also from “the living God?”  It is natural for man to wish to stand well with himself.  Self-condemnation is one of the most intolerable of all feelings.  When a man has, from whatever motive, done something that is inconsistent with the law of Christ, he naturally sets himself to extenuate, to excuse, and, if possible, to defend his conduct.  There is perhaps an attempt made to convince the mind that there is really no violation of the law of Christ; that the ordinary way of interpreting that law is unduly strict; or that, if there was a violation, it was in his circumstances scarcely avoidable, and, if not justifiable altogether, yet deserving of but very slight blame.  In this state of mind, doubts of the reasonableness of the law he has transgressed, and of the authority to which it lays claim, present themselves to the mind, and, instead of being immediately dismissed, meet with a welcome reception.  These naturally lead to a repetition of the act of violation of the law of Christ, or to other violations to the law of Christ; and just as the backslider proceeds in his downward course, the process of thought above described is apt to become more and more habitual to him, till at last he becomes completely hardened against the claims which the word of Christ has on his attention, faith, and obedience, and finally “makes shipwreck of faith and a good conscience.”