Hebrews 3:6

But Christ as a son, over his house; whose house we are, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end.

Reiterating the supremacy of Christ, the author, on the basis of a bold deduction, names Christians themselves as components of God's house, "whose house we are"! The old Israel is no more. The Son having been revealed, men are no longer under a servant, even so true and faithful a servant as Moses (Romans 2:28; 9:6-8; Galatians 6:15; John 8:39). Think of the house of God. He laid the foundations of it, even before the world was (1 Corinthians 2:7), provided the blue prints of it in the dispensation of Moses, and extended it upward and outward to include all the families of man in the church of Christ; and, finally, he shall present all to himself in that glorious fulfillment of the everlasting kingdom at the last day (2 Peter 1:11).

If we hold fast our boldness emphasizes the necessity of perseverance in the Christian life, if one is to win the crown. Bruce wrote:

The conditional sentences of this epistle are of special attention (Hebrews 3:14; Hebrews 10:26). Nowhere in the New Testament more than here do we find such repeated insistence of the fact that continuance in the Christian life is the test of reality.[4]

Bruce might have meant by that comment that a failure to continue means there was no reality to begin with, such being the thesis of Calvinism; but continuity must be viewed as a divinely imposed condition of salvation, upon the fulfillment of which destiny depends. Roddy put it squarely thus,

There is no shallow "once saved always saved" here. No superficial being saved and lost, in and out, experience either. But a realization that the evidence of the reality of the grace of God in the life is a constant and living faith regardless of circumstances and inward questions.[5]

The climate for the proper maintenance of faith is not exclusively produced by, nor does it depend solely upon, external conditions. On the other hand, it must be aided by and controlled by the attitude of the believer himself, who has the power to further and strengthen his own faith by a constant, bold, and optimistic proclamation of it. Thomas was aware of this when he wrote:

Weakness is a spiritual peril; and this emphasis on boldness and glorying is a significant reminder that only as we continue courageous and confident can we expect to be firm unto the end. There is an old saying about "whistling to keep up the courage"; and there is no doubt that in things spiritual the secret of courageous and steadfast living is to be bold and to glory constantly in our Christian hope.[6]

Thus there devolves upon the believer himself a frightful responsibility for the preservation and development of his own faith; and this coincides with the fact that faith, rather than being exclusively intellectual, also rests upon and flows out of moral considerations of the highest order (John 3:19).

[4] F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), p. 59.

[5] Clarence S. Roddy, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1962), p. 41.

[6] W. H. Griffith Thomas, Hebrews (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), p. 41.