Our Heavenly Calling

Human beings need two things: We need to hear from God so that we know what He is like, what His purposes are for the world, and what He requires of us. And we need a way to God, because to be cut off from God in death would be darkness and misery and torment forever. So we have these two great needs: to hear from God and to go to God. We need revelation from Him and reconciliation with Him.

Now consider how Hebrews 3:1 addresses these two needs. It says to Christians: “Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.”

It’s a heavenly calling, which means it is a word from Heaven, a word from God. Christians are people who have been gripped by this calling. The word of God broke through our resistance, and took hold of us with the truth and love of Christ, and reconciled us to God and is now leading us home to Heaven. This means that Christians are people of great hope. God has spoken from Heaven, and made a way to Heaven, and we have believed, and our hope and confidence are firm.

The hope of a heavenly calling does not hang on our righteousness. If it did, we would be hopeless. Our hope and confidence hang on Jesus. This is why verse 1 continues: “Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus …”

Don’t holy brethren automatically consider Jesus? The answer is No. Remember the warning back in Hebrews 2:1, “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”

The text concludes by saying we are His house—we are His people, we are partakers of a heavenly calling—“if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope” (Hebrews 3:6). The evidence that we are part of the household of God is that we don’t throw away our hope and drift into indifference and unbelief. Becoming a Christian and being a Christian happen in the same way: by hoping in Jesus—a kind of hoping that produces confidence and boasting in Jesus.

 —John Piper