If you grew up at the beach like I did, you've probably done some sailing in your lifetime. I've sailed everything from a tiny Hobie Cat to a 35 foot yacht. Maybe that's why I'm so fascinated by all the nautical metaphors we find in the New Testament. The earliest Christians often compared the church to a ship with Christ as the steersman and the cross as the mast. Hebrews (my favorite New Testament letter) shares this perspective. Paul often traveled by ship, so that's not very surprising. He can tell the readers Don't drift (2:1), Hold fast to your anchor, Christ (6:19), and Keep on voyaging until you reach Peace Harbor (4:1; 6:9-10). In Hebrews we are invited to imagine our Christian life as a voyage in which we must always stay anchored to hope (Christ) and prevented from drifting into doctrinal error by constant attention to the Captain of our salvation (2:10).
Now, you've heard me speak about this a million times before, but there's a nautical metaphor in 6:1 that nobody seems to talk about. In fact, I myself didn't notice it until I began working on the base translation of Hebrews for the ISV. I had always understood the main verb in this verse to mean something like "Let us us press on to maturity" (see the NASB), that is, let us make every effort to become mature in Christ. Actually, I discovered that the verse is saying the exact opposite. The verb Paul uses here is pherÅ, whose basic meaning is to carry, to bear, or to bring. "Honey, can you please bring me my phone?" Not only that (yes, it gets even better!), Paul uses a tense that implies continuous action. He then couples that thought to the notion of something being done to us rather than by us. In other words, he uses the passive voice here rather than the active.
Shall we put all this together? When we do, the result is a rendering something like "Let us continually be carried along to maturity." See the difference? It's HUGE. The original NIV rendered this as "let us ... go on to maturity." Later they changed it to "let us .... be taken forward to maturity." I love that! Doctrinally, we can put it this way:
Sanctification involves Christ-empowered effort.
It is a work of God that requires intentional actions on our part. I like to put it this way: Holiness is required for the believer, but it is also enabled. The effort is not done alone but through the Holy Spirit. Hence I might paraphrase the idea here in Heb. 6:1 as follows (using the nautical metaphor Paul employs here): "Let us raise our sails as it were and allow the wind (Spirit, Greek pneuma) of God to carry us along to maturity in our faith."
What a fantastic truth!
Friend, never forget that God requires our active, obedient, and diligent pursuit of holiness. It involves working hard because God is already working in. Let's tap into that power today, shall we?