My intern Phillip Bethancourt reflected recently on the nature of warnings. Phillip writes: “In our overly-insured, safety-conscious culture, we come across warning labels all the time. On the right side mirror of your 2003 Toyota Camry, it warns ‘objects may be closer than they appear.’ On the side of your non-fat Vanilla Latte with skim milk, the cup warns ‘Caution: hot beverage.’ On a pack of Virginia Slims, the surgeon general warns, ‘Smoking may cause cancer.’
“But the directness of the American surgeon general pails in comparison to his British counterpart. On every pack of cigarettes sold in England, the warning label is more to the point: ‘Smoking Kills!’
“Yet, every place I passed that sold cigarettes during the four months I lived in London would always have a line 5-10 people deep waiting for their turn to purchase more smokes. Why is that? Because the warning was not impacting the way they lived. Though they were warned of the dangers of their actions, it did not change their activity.”
Phillip relates these ineffectual warnings with the ‘warning passages’ of Scripture. How should these often very scary verses affect how we follow Jesus? Must we choose between ignoring the warning passages or abandoning our belief in the perseverance of believers? Should Christians pay attention when these passages are read, or should we simply acknowledge them as addressed to someone else?
It is questions like that maturity that our study of Hebrews examines, in this installment of the series, Blood Brother: The Word of Christ in the Gospel of Hebrews, from Hebrews 6:4-12. You can listen to it here, and to the entire series here.
Warning: Smoking Kills. So do a whole lot of other things. But the Word and the Spirit bring life.
