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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
5.I will therefore put you in remembrance, or, remind you. He either modestly excuses himself, lest he should seem to teach as it were the ignorant things unknown to them; or, indeed, he openly declares in an emphatical manner, (which I approve more of,) that he adduced nothing new or unheard of before, in order that what he was going to say might gain more credit and authority. I only recall, he says, to your mind what you have already learnt. As he ascribes knowledge to them, so he says that they stood in need of warnings, lest they should think that the labor he undertook towards them was superfluous; for the use of God’ word is not only to teach what we could not have otherwise known, but also to rouse us to a serious meditation of those things which we already understand, and not to suffer us to grow torpid in a cold knowledge.
Now, the meaning is, that after having been called by God, we ought not to glory carelessly in his grace, but on the contrary, to walk watchfully in his fear; for if any trifles thus with God, the contempt of his grace will not be unpunished. And this he proves by three examples. He first refers to the vengeance which God executed on those unbelievers, whom he had chosen as his people, and delivered by his power. Nearly the same reference is made by Paul in 1Co_10:1. The import of what he says is, that those whom God had honored with the greatest blessings, whom he had extolled to the same degree of honor as we enjoy at this day, he afterwards severely punished. Then in vain were all they proud of God’ grace, who did not live in a manner suitable to their calling.
The word people is by way of honor taken for the holy and chosen nation, as though he had said that it availed them nothing, that they by a singular favor had been taken into covenant. By calling them unbelieving, he denotes the fountain of all evils; for all their sins, mentioned by Moses, were owing to this, because they refused to be ruled by God’ word. For where there is the subjection of faith, there obedience towards God necessarily appears in all the duties of life.