It’s said, and I think true, that what we hear we forget, what we write we remember, and what we do, we know. In the time in which we are now living, doing more than ever, is everything.
The unbelieving Jews who rejected the warnings of Jesus died in great numbers in the three year siege from 67-70 AD. It was 40 years after Christ’s crucifixion when the Romans stormed Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Nearly one million Jews perished and thousands more were sold into slavery.
Hebrews 6:4-8 contains similar warnings. Applicable to all who are tempted to “draw back”, they were written to those Jews who had been “enlightened”, had “tasted the “heavenly gift”, had “shared in the Holy Spirit”, and had tasted “the good word of God and the powers of the world to come”. The NT Greek word translated “tasted” in verses 4 & 5 is used in John 2:9 of the MC of the wedding feast tasting the water that had been made wine.
We experience Jesus and God’s Word, and it delights us, but then we have a choice: Go On or Go Back? The sixth verse begins with “If”. Their salvation was conditional on them continuing in the faith right to the end. They are sternly reminded that good, well-watered soil is blessed, but that a harvest of thorns and briers is rejected as good for nothing but burning. We are to be, first and foremost, judges of ourselves. We are to “examine (test, scrutinize) ourselves to see whether we are still in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5).
Not, mind you, whether we have faith but whether we are still in “the” Faith, meaning, still genuine followers of the Lord Jesus, his teachings, and those of his Apostles. If in the next world we are to judge angels, it’s good for us to examine ourselves while still in this one.