Hebrews 10:34 Commentary and Bible Study

He gives them a personal example of this. The writer was personally known to them. They knew what he too had suffered for the faith, and at the time they had not disassociated themselves from him and left him without friends and without support. It makes a huge difference to those who are persecuted to know that the Lord’s people stand with them. They are not alone; they are not left without those who visit them in prison, pray for them, make representations on their behalf, share their shame with them, the same shame that Christ also suffered.In this case, their close identification with the writer had cost them the loss of their own goods. The persecutors had abandoned justice and simply sought to exact revenge by coercion. They had in effect stolen the goods of those who were Christians just because they did not yield to intimidation and turn against the servants of God.What was it that made the hebrew believer willing to do this? Will a man easily give up his property, to which the eighth commandment gives him a right? No, but there is something more valuable which he is even less willing to part with: his eternal inheritance in Christ. He knows that part of the price he must pay in order to follow Christ is to identify with the Lord in his trials and that means identifying with his people: ‘I was in prison, and ye came unto me’, for ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:36, 40). If the time comes when it is obvious to us that we are being forced by an unbelieving world to make a choice, we will make that choice. We will choose to be faithful to the Lord rather than to our earthly possessions.