Hebrews 10:39

But we are not of them who draw back More tersely in the original, "But we are not of defection unto perdition, but of faith unto gaining of the soul." "Faith," says Delitzsch, "saves the soul by linking it to God … The unbelieving man loses his soul; for not being God's neither is he his own." He does not possesshimself. The word for "gaining" is found also in Ephesians 1:14. In these words the writer shews that in his awful warnings against apostasy he is only putting a hypotheticalcase. "His readers," he says, "though some of them may have gone towards the verge, have not yet passed over the fatal line." The word Faith is here introduced with the writer's usual skill to prepare for the next great section of the Epistle.