Hebrews 12:16 Commentary and Bible Study

The word fornicator covers all forms of sexual impurity and uncleanness. ‘Let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints’, says the apostle Paul (Ephesians 5:3). There are not many sins concerning which the New Testament is this emphatic – ‘Let it not once be named among you.’ It does not say that about telling a lie, even though that too is utterly wrong, and yet, because of our sinfulness and our weakness, some dishonest excuse may slip out. This is not to defend lying: we repent of it and we sorely regret it. But the sin of fornication is handled with much greater firmness; it is so avoidable. There is no excuse whatsoever for a believer falling into this sexual sin.‘Or profane person’ – what is a profaned person? The example is given as Esau. The Greek word indicates a threshold walker, somebody who passes easily across the threshold. Maybe the emergence of the word into profanity works like this: here is somebody who will go rushing across the threshold of the temple in ancient times without a prayer, without a thought, without reverence. This person knows no boundaries, but just works on impulse. So the word comes to mean an irreverent person, a person who treats high and holy things lightly. There is no respect for high and holy things, and yet this is something which God so detests; it is put right next to fornication. There is a failure to make a difference between worldly things and divine thing; This is someone who treats the things of God almost with contempt, treats them lightly. Esau treated his birthright lightly. He was destined from human point of view to be the leader of the family, the guardian, the protector of the family of God in ancient times, yet he thought so lightly of that, he was so shallow, so irreverent. He sold that privilege in a moment for just a morsel of food.