Hebrews 2:3

‘How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation? Which having at the first been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard,’

That being so how can we hope to escape judgment if we neglect an even greater offering of salvation, ‘so great a great salvation’, such as is revealed in the words of the Son, Who is a far more wonderful deliverance vehicle than anything the Old Testament could produce? If we neglect this new ‘word’ that was originally taught directly by the Lord Himself, and which we have heard confirmed to us by eyewitnesses, that is, by those who personally heard it and knew Him, what hope of escape from just punishment can we possibly have?

For to neglect a message is to treat it with contempt, but to neglect such a message delivered by such a Person is to be in total contempt of God Himself. This is in fact the great sin of the majority of the world. It is not that they reject the truth out of hand, it is that they simply do not bother with it. They neglect it. They often claim to honour Jesus but they disregard His word as ‘Lord’.

‘So great a salvation.’ In considering its greatness we should consider certain factors.

1) The greatness of the Son Who achieved it (chapter 1).

2) The greatness of the judgment from which it rescues the sinner (Hebrews 10:27-31).

3) The greatness of the eternal future which is promised through it (Hebrews 11:10; Hebrews 12:22-23).

4) The greatness of the Father’s love that has provided it (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9-10).

5) The greatness of the humiliation and suffering endured by the One Who obtained it. (Hebrews 2:9; Hebrews 12:2-3; Philippians 2:6-8; Isaiah 53:0).

‘Having at the first been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard.’ Central to Christian truth is that its source is in Jesus. Only what is in conformity with His words can be accepted as ‘Gospel truth’. This was why Paul himself stressed that what he taught came directly from Him, and this was why the Apostles were inspired by the Holy Spirit to later fully remember His teaching.

Much is often made of this verse as though it required that the writer had not himself heard the teaching of Jesus personally. But while the writer does use ‘we’ (emphasised, in contrast with those who were not Christians) he may well be using it rather loosely, signifying by it the group to which he was writing of which he saw himself a part, and continuing the use of ‘we’ with which he had begun the chapter. Thus he may simply be saying that while his readers had not heard it directly from the Lord, they, along with the whole church, had nevertheless heard it from eyewitnesses, from those who were actually there and heard His words, without necessarily saying anything about himself. But it is not characteristic of Paul who tended to stress his own special reception of revelation.

For it was ‘the Lord’ Who spoke it, and reliable eyewitnesses confirmed it, as they all know, and the authority of it is therefore unquestioned, and its certainty assured. What hope then can there be for them if they neglect it, when it has such authority behind it?

‘The Lord.’ We become so used to using the term glibly that we can easily not notice its force. It was because it was spoken by the Lord of glory, God’s true Son, the Creator and Sustainer of the world, the One Who is higher than the angels, that it was to be heard.