One of the greatest dangers, but one we rarely give consideration to, is the danger of missing out on God’s grace. The Contemporary English version of Hebrews 12:15 begins, “Make sure no one misses out on God’s wonderful kindness.” Other versions say things like “falls short” or “fails to obtain or receive” God’s grace. All of these predicaments sound rather sad, as does the life of Esau, which our author brings up as an example of someone who fell short of experiencing God’s grace.
15 See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; 16 that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. 17 For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.
Verse 15 begins with the words, “see to it.” This is the translation of a participle which tells us the means by which we may pursue peace and holiness (v. 14) and that is by “keeping a vigilant watch over one another’s lives.” The Greek word episkopeo means to “give intense, focused attention to.” In means not getting distracted from this task. It reflects the idea of being a watchman, on high alert to potential dangers.
As a present tense participle it means that this action must be continuous, not letting our guard down for a moment, but being constantly on guard.
Of course, this word episkopeo is the word we get “Episcopal” from, a type of church government. Also, church leaders, which are variably called “pastors” and “elders” are also known as “overseers,” those who watch over the lives of the congregation, guarding them from dangers. Shepherds of God’s flock constantly examining them for “spiritual parasites” and are ever on the lookout for the ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing.
This is not only a responsibility of elders, however. This verse enjoins the whole congregation (plural participle) in this vital task of watching out for one another. In other words, “Ya’ll keep diligent watch” lest this danger happens in someone’s life.
In other words, we should all be meddling in one another’s lives! The idea that my life is mine and mine alone and thou shalt not ask me hard questions is not found in the Bible. That is the American idea of privacy. We should be accountable to brothers and sisters in Christ and for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should let them ask us the hard questions. We should not try to hide away our private sins.
Thomas Manton wrote: “There must be a constant watch kept not only over our own hearts but also over the congregation to which we belong. Members must take care of one another; this is the communion between saints” (Thomas Manton, An Exposition of the Epistle of James).
The great danger to be avoided here, for any one of us, is to “fall short of the grace of God” (Heb. 12:15). This is a danger that all of us face and any one of us might experience. Notice that our author says, “see to it that no one falls short of the grace of God.”
God’s grace is extended to us freely through Jesus Christ, starting at salvation and continuing on through our sanctification until the end of life. In the epistles Paul wrote of the “grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:2). We can experience that grace as we trust the Gospel promises. But we can “fall short” of it and not experience the blessings of grace.
Grace is the divine attitude of benevolence God has toward his children. The image that helps me to picture this is that of a brimming pitcher in God’s hand tilted to pour blessing on us. Jesus came “full of grace and truth” and “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16). I picture this as standing at the seashore and watching wave after wave after wave coming in–a never-ending succession of waves. That is God’s grace.
The Apostle James says essentially this when he declares, “But he gives more grace” (James 4:6)—literally, “great grace.” Thus we confidently know there is always more grace for the humble believer. Earlier in Hebrews 4:16 the preacher/writer urged us, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
The unchanging truth is, we can have no need that outstrips his grace, and we never will! Even if we fall into deep sin, greater grace is available, as Paul said: “But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20b). “For daily need there is daily grace; for sudden need, there is sudden grace; for overwhelming need, there is overwhelming grace,” wrote John Blanchard (John Blanchard, Truth for Life (West Sussex, UK: H. E. Walter, Ltd., 1982), p. 254).
By watching over our own lives and the lives of others, we can help one another fully experience God’s grace so that we can live in peace with all men and pursue personal holiness.
The real problem is not just falling short of God’s grace once or twice, but the present tense of the verb “fall short” shows that what is concerning is someone (like Esau), who continually comes short of the grace of God. One who continually falls short of God’s grace is not a Christian. They may have heard and learned about Jesus, but have never received him and believed in Him. They may seem so near yet be so far from Christ.
The verb “fall short” is hustereo and has the basic meaning of showing up late (in time), and thus miss out. Hustereo has the basic meaning of being last or inferior. It fails to reach the goal. It appears in that familiar verse in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
When you fall short of something, you can miss it by an inch or by a mile, but you still miss it! So those in Romans 3:23 have missed it by a “mile.” But there are others who miss it by an “inch.” For example, consider the man that Jesus talked about in Mark 10, the rich, young influencer. This man had asked, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 20:17). After indicating that the only truly good person is God, which should have clued this man in to the reality that he was talking to God, the Son, Jesus directed him to the second table of the law, dealing with “loving your neighbor.”
This man, mistakenly, said to Jesus, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” Jesus was willing to grant this possibility, but then confronted him with the real issue that kept his heart from being fully devoted to Jesus, and that was his money, which was his idol.
And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21).
When Jesus said, “you lack one thing,” that word “lack” is hustereo. This was going to be the area in which this young man would “fall short.” Jesus was telling this young man “you are coming short of God’s grace, of the eternal life you seek, in just one thing, one seemingly little thing.
Well, this young man couldn’t do it. Money was his god and had a strong hold on him. Our text says “he had great possessions” as the reason for his reticence to give it up, but in reality, his great possession had him…by the throat.
It was just one area, yet he missed God’s grace by an inch.
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23)
Isn’t it amazing how some can come so close! They are in a good, Bible-believing church, they know stories and verses in the Bible, they know the message of good news, they are “good people,” etc. etc.–but they lack one thing–they’ve never confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior of their lives, the importance of which Paul explains in Romans 10:8-11.
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”
To drink from the pitcher of grace we must know the grace-giver, Jesus Christ.
This text describes three ways in which one might fall short of God’s grace. Remember, God’s grace is there for our sins, but in some way these sins keep us from experiencing that grace.
The first is a “root of bitterness.” Our text says, “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.”
Now, what is “root of bitterness”? I’ve always thought that this bitter root refers to the attitude of holding onto grudges and remaining unreconciled, and worse, unreconcilable to others.
There are a lot of mean, bitter people in the world. Aesop tells the fable of a man wronged by his neighbor. He was angry and bitter at his neighbor. The angry man was visited by Zeus, who said, “I will grant you any wish that you want. The only stipulation is that I will grant to your neighbor, whom you hate, twice as much of whatever you ask. If you ask for 500 diamonds, your neighbor will receive 1,000.” The bitter man agonized over the wish he should request of Zeus. So intense was his hatred for his neighbor that finally he said, “I know what wish I want and you can double it for my neighbor. I wish you to make me blind in one eye.”
Bitterness creates a cycle of animosity. The root of bitterness produces the fruit of anger, and the fruit of anger often is expressed as harmful, hurtful words that we speak. In the book of James, we learn that a mark of spiritual maturity is the ability to control the unruly tongue. By the same measurement, a mark of immaturity is hateful, harmful speech. Words really can wound more than sticks and stones.
That is certainly a serious problem in some people’s lives that does not allow them to experience God’s grace and it is certainly something that “causes trouble” and “defiles many.”
Jesus told us that, “if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:15). I really don’t believe that means that if we fail to forgive others that God will cancel the forgiveness that He has promised to us through the Gospel. Our unfaithfulness does not negate His promise to us.
However, I do believe that what this passage means is that if we cannot forgive others, then we will have a hard time believing that God has forgiven us. We will quite naturally doubt it and question it. Satan’s accusations and our own doubts will nag at us until the “joy of our salvation” is gone and we begin to wonder whether we are God’s children.
Anne Peterson warns: “Bitterness starts out small. An offense burrows its way into our hearts. We replay it in our minds, creating deep ruts that will be hard to build back up. We retell our hurts to any available listener, including each sordid detail. We enlist support, pushing us further into our resentment. We hear the offending person’s name and cringe. We decipher the offense as intentional and our offender as full of spite. We look for other reasons, both real or imagined, to dislike our villain. With each new piece of information, we form another layer of bitterness. We fool ourselves into thinking no one will know, but anger and resentment have a way of seeping into everything. Resentment is like a beach ball we try to submerge in the water. No matter how valiant our efforts, it pops up with all its vitality, splashing everyone around (Anne Peterson, How to Deal with Bitterness).
A bitter, grudge-holding spirit does cause trouble. It will end up poisoning other relationships. It will likely cause physical trouble— including high blood pressure, increased heart rate, and a weakened immune system. Over time, chronic stress can contribute to serious conditions such as cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders. There’s an old saying that goes like this, “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
And it does “defile many.” J. Vernon McGree compares bitterness to quinine in water. It only takes a small drop to make the water bitter. Bitterness affects the whole family or the whole congregation. It spreads because bitter people need to release their own stress by sharing it with others.
Warren Wiersbe says, “An unforgiving spirit is the devil’s playground (cp. Eph. 4:29, 2 Cor. 2:11) and before long it becomes the Christian’s battleground.”
Anger and bitterness are formidable detriments to biblical love, harmonious relationships, and maturity in Christ. Failing to put off anger and bitterness grieves the Holy Spirit, gives Satan an opportunity in your life, obscures your witness to others, and disrupts the unity in the Body of Christ. Dealing biblically with anger and bitterness requires wholehearted obedience to God’s Word in every circumstance and with every person, even if your feelings dictate otherwise (John Broger, Self-Confrontation Manual, Lesson 11, Page 2).
On the other hand, forgiving another person who has hurt you can be the most life-changing path you can take, releasing you from the stranglehold of bitterness and the poison of an angry heart. When we do forgive, we have more confidence that our own sins have been forgiven.
Forgiveness breaks the bitter chains of pride, self-pity and vengeance that lead to despair, alienation, broken relationships and loss of joy.
Most of us have heard of Corrie ten Boom. Corrie’s family started praying for the re-establishment of Israel and for the peace of Jerusalem in 1844 and their family prayed every week for a hundred years, from 1844 until 1944, when the family was arrested by the Nazis for harboring Jews. Corrie ten Boom never saw her parents alive again, and she and her sister Betsie were taken to the infamous Ravensbrück prison camp. Betsie died before Christmas that same year. Corrie was made to endure hard labor and she witnesses terrible atrocities carried out by the Nazi guards.
A few years after the war, Corrie was speaking at a church in Germany when one of the former prison guards came up to her. He put out his hand and asked her to forgive him. At that moment, Corrie realized her heart was still full of bitterness and hatred toward him and the other Nazis. Let me describe what happened in her own words: “I stood there with coldness clutching my heart. But I know that the will can function without the temperature of the heart. I prayed, ‘Jesus, help me.’ Woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current started at my shoulder, raced down my arms, and sprang into our clutched hands. Then this warm recognition seemed to flood my whole being bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother.’ I cried with my whole heart. For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands—the former guard and the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did at that moment.”
Let me read that last statement again, because it speaks to the life-changing power of offering forgiveness: “I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did at that moment.”
The problem with a “root of bitterness” is that it starts underground. Far too often a bitter person will not admit their bitterness. It is always someone else’s fault.
Let me end today with this little poem by Anna Russell in which she expresses this idea—that my problems are everyone else’s fault:
“I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed.
to find out why I killed my cat and blackened my wife’s eye.
He put me on a downy couch to see what he could find
and this is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind.
When I was one my mommy hid my dolly in the trunk.
And, so it follows naturally that I’m always drunk.
When I was two I saw my father kiss the maid one day
and that’s why I suffer now from kleptomania.
When I was three I suffered ambivalence from my brothers
and so it follows naturally that I poisoned all my lovers.
I’m so glad I have learned the lesson it has taught
that everything I do that’s wrong is someone else’s fault.”
Grace Still Amazes 