For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.

In woodworking, most injuries in the workshop are the result of not paying attention. Accidents on the highways often come from being distracted, taking our eyes off the road. In baseball or golf, when an athlete takes his “eye off the ball,” he will often produce an errant hit. In all these illustrations, the individual must pay attention. So too with faith, to avoid straying back into the old way of life, living by the law or a set of rules, we must “pay closer attention” to the message revealed to us in the Word of God, namely, Jesus Christ.

This theme is repeated throughout the book of Hebrews. Verse 2:9 says, “But we do see Him …”. Verse 3:1 instructs us “Consider Jesus …”  4:2 warns “… the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” We need to keep focused, or the Word is useless to us.

When the writer uses “we” he refers to himself and his readers, the community of faith. Judging from the tenor of the book, his original audience was most probably Christians with a Jewish background, who are being pressured to return to living under the Mosaic law. For non-Jewish believers, like most who are reading this today, legalized religion has a pull on them as well. At its core such a thinking involves the pride of believing that a person can make himself acceptable to God through deeds of righteousness or religious rituals.  In other words, everything depends upon the individual to merit his salvation.

Against this constant pull toward achieving salvation on our efforts, Christians today need to keep our spiritual eyes on Christ. This takes concentration, this takes effort. What every believer discovers soon after conversion is that the Christian life does take effort, but it is a different kind of effort. In faith we set aside the effort of working our way to salvation and freely receive Christ and His finished effort on the Cross. He made the effort and we accepted His work on our behalf. The effort now, however, is one of keeping focus. Certainly we “work” at doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong. But, no longer are we motivated by the desire to achieve or merit salvation. We need to be careful that we do not drift back to that old way of thinking. We need to pay attention!

Now we cannot drift back so far as to lose our salvation, as we shall see in later portions of the book. Because if one is saved by faith, it is implicitly obvious that one cannot become unsaved by lacking sufficient meritorious works. So we need to pay attention to this great truth. Praise God!