An Anchor for the Soul

Hebrews 6:13-20 (excerpt: "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure."

What an amazing passage. Not having a nautical background, I looked up some facts on anchoring. Particularly interesting is the fact that the flukes, or pointed ends of the anchor, are created in such a way as to dig deep into whatever surface lies beneath, unseen, in order to secure a boat or ship, whether in the shallows or on the high sees. The anchor line must be very long and the part of it we see is very short. Enough slack must be set to allow some movement of the vessel as the seas pitch without creating too much drift. The flukes are especially designed to dig deep into the seabed and hold fast. Interestingly, when we say we will stick with something, "to the bitter end," it refers to the last length of anchor line after the line has been fully extended - which, if there is not enough line, is a horrifying thing for a ship that will then be adrift without a secure mooring.

Having this background, I looked at this passage and noted the beauty of the metaphor. Our hope is an anchor with two flukes, the typical looking anchor you see on movies, or like those used in naval symbology. The flukes are each the "unchangeable things" of verse 18, things in which God cannot lie. One fluke is his promises, the other his oath. God swore to Abraham that his promises would hold true, giving Abraham the knowledge that he could rest assured that what God had promised would, on His Word and His honor, one day come to pass as he had stated. God's promise was the enduring seed of Abraham - there will always be a faithful group that follows him. The oath was God's stamp of surety that he would not fail, and could not lie.

But anchors lodge in places unseen. Every ship's captain, while an expert in anchorage, recognizes the mystery of the depths, and myth and lore have explored throughout history, until modern deep sea exploration, what may lie beneath. God's promise and oath lie in His very character - He cannot lie, and his personhood reveals "the unchanging nature of his purpose." The anchor flukes are embedded in who God is...and our presence with him in Heaven will include an eternal revelation of that mysterious personhood of God. Our anchor is secured "behind the curtain," or deep into the Holy of Holies, which is a type of Heaven, where God's glory fills all and is in all. Our hope is buried deep in Heaven, secured by his promise, on his oath, even though it is out of our sight, shrouded in the mystery of the watery veil between the ship and the ocean floor.

The beauty of the anchor is that we are never at our "bitter end." The ship that is the Church is secured to the anchor by "a great cloud of witnesses," by the fullness of Scripture itself, and by our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and the works that spring from that faith. No matter how the storm tosses and the rocks loom large in the distance, we hold fast to our blessed hope, the one day consummation of all things, the reuniting of all the saints of God in His presence for eternity, secured by oath and promise. The myster of the deep is revealed in Jesus Christ, the One who was able to go before us beyond that veil in order to secure our place in the Holy of Holies, "our great high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek."

Finally, note that there is no one greater than God by whom He might swear out an oath. If there were another, greater god, or multiple gods, or some nebulous, cosmic consciousness of a god out there, in whom could we place our hope? In Jesus Christ we find the fullness of God, in whom there is no shifting or shadow, and from whom can proceed no lie or false promise. His oaths and promises are as intrinsically a part of him as our sin is a part of us. We cannot anchor ourselves, neither can we fathom the depths of the vast trenches between the wild oceans on which we ride and the mysterious floors beneath them. The divide has been conquered by the Captain of our souls, Jesus Christ. In Him we see that God Himself is our hope, and that is a firm and secure anchor for our souls.