Hebrews 10 – {22} Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. {23} Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for He is faithful that promised;) {24} And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: 

    True, genuine faith is a gift from God whereby a sinner, having been convinced of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, flees to Christ for all of salvation.  God-given faith is based on the revelation of God in the Gospel – the good news of how God saves sinners, freely giving them all the benefits and blessings of eternal life, and full entitlement to all of heaven based on the righteousness of Christ (Rom. 1:16-17).  God-given faith, therefore, inspires confidence in Christ, pleads His merits alone as the only ground of the whole of salvation, and results in repentance of dead works and of any confidence in anything else. The writer of Hebrews understood this.  True, God-given faith inspires....

    CONFIDENCE IN WORSHIP AND COMMUNION WITH GOD (10:22) – The true heart before God refers to a sinner who is confident in the full assurance of faith, believing God's promise and trusting in Christ, knowing that Christ has totally removed both the guilt and the defilement of sin so as to make us holy and unblameable before Him in love.  We know we can have no confidence based on our character and conduct, based on our best efforts, because even our best efforts are yet marred by the presence of inward sin.  We are confident that one day even the presence and power of sin in our lives will be totally removed, but not yet.  Any person who claims to have faith in Christ but who has any confidence of worship and communion with God based on anything other than the righteousness of Christ has an evil, a legal, conscience.  This is dishonoring to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but it is honoring to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to have such confidence in worship and communion based on the righteousness of Christ alone.

    CONFIDENCE IN PERSEVERANCE (10:23) – This proves that Godly perseverance is a believer continuing in the faith, not believing our final glory in heaven is conditioned on our persevering, but seeing ourselves as certain for heaven's glory based on the righteousness of Christ.  This is one of the main evidences of being a child of God (Heb. 3:6,14). "He is faithful that promised" shows that we are not to look to ourselves but to Him who made the promise, and the promise is all of salvation, including the work of the Holy Spirit in us, including our final glory in heaven, all based on the righteousness of Christ.  This confidence in perseverance shows that true believers, all who would honor Christ, are to see themselves as fully entitled to all of heaven based on the merits of Christ's obedience and death before they take the first step in persevering.

    CONFIDENCE IN OBEDIENCE (10:24) – It is from this attitude of confidence based on Christ's merits that believers are equipped to obey God acceptably.  Here we see that all acceptable obedience, all good works, all attempts to love God acceptably and to love our neighbor as ourselves are motivated by the absolute certainty of all of salvation and final glory based on the righteousness of Christ.  We are to encourage one another in this obedience as we seek by God's word to have our hearts established with His grace in Christ.  This means that believers are to see themselves as completely justified and certain for heaven, fully entitled to all of heaven, before they take the first step in seeking to obey God's commands in any area of life.  Having our confidence in Christ, we dare not seek to approach God, to persevere, or to obey any commandment, thinking that our efforts in any of these areas could attain or maintain any part of our salvation.  We recognize that our sins cannot bring us under the wrath of God nor can they bar our access to God because Christ has put away our sins.  We recognize that our efforts to obey Him cannot gain God's favor toward us nor can they give us any more access unto God, because Christ has already provided all that we need for eternal favor and access to God our Father.  It is with this confidence that we as believers are to seek and to try hard to bring our character and conduct into conformity to Christ.