If we haven’t heard the cliché recited to us personally, we’ve certainly witnessed it in one of the myriad films that continue to repeat the line. Suspended on a rope over a chasm, crossing a dangerous bridge far above a cataract, or navigating a ropes course at a summer camp, the seasoned veteran looks into the scared eyes of his or her charge and says, “Don’t look down!”

We understand the motivation for such advice. There’s truth to that other common cliché – dizzying heights. Sometimes a person can be so paralyzed by the realization of danger that they are unable to take another step, reach for another handhold, or leave a precarious platform. “Don’t look down!” comes the confident instruction, and the fearful hearer is reminded to focus back on the reality of the present situation and not the terror of potential calamity.

The author of Hebrews, however, is writing to an audience that spiritually is facing a very different problem. There is another sort of person who is so confident, independent, and unthinking, that he is tempted to abandon the very ropes and harnesses that would keep him alive. In our passage from Sunday, Hebrews 10:26-31, it is as though we are being told to look down! “Stare at the chasm below,” comes our challenge, “and consider what inescapable doom would accompany a fall into that abyss!” The warning is not coming because of a fear that the ropes, anchors, and harnesses are insufficiently strong, but that they are insufficiently valued.

Without Christ, there is nothing to bear the sinner up to heaven. No sacrifice remains. Indeed, nothing remains but a fall through empty air into an eternity of divine judgment. The thought should be terrifying to us – truly terrifying. The sufferings of the Lake of Fire should not be for us a mere theological category, but a visceral knowledge that affects us emotionally.

Why? Why does the author of Hebrews afflict us with these heavy truths repeatedly in his sermon?

Is it not so that we will cling the more tightly to Christ? Is it not so that we will turn our gaze then up to the heavens and climb steadily in the direction our Savior has left for us?

As we labor slowly up the slopes towards the top of the celestial Mount Zion, it is good for us occasionally to be told, “Look down!” Our stomachs quavering at the death that lies below us, we will in faith grasp our Gospel hope with white knuckles as an anchor of the soul, steadfast and sure, cast there above within the veil where Christ has already triumphantly entered as forerunner for us.