Hebrews 2:3

Heb. 2:3. How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation: which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard (him);

In his early sermon, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners, Edwards related this text to the infinite guilt of sin:

The greatness of the benefits offered: which appears in the greatness of the deliverance, which is from inexpressible degrees of corruption and wickedness of heart and life, the least degree of which is infinitely evil; and from misery that is everlasting; and in the greatness and glory of the inheritance purchased and offered, Hebrews 2:3. "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?"

The History of Redemption locates this text in the Old Testament development of doctrine.

If it was now first that men were stirred to get together in assemblies to help and assist one another in seeking God so as they never had done before, it argues something extraordinary as the cause, and could be from nothing but uncommon influences of God's Spirit. We see by experience that a remarkable pouring out of the Spirit of God is always attended with such an effect, viz. a great increase of the performance of the duty of prayer. When the Spirit of God begins or works on men's hearts, it immediately sets them to calling on the [name of the Lord]; as it was with Paul after the Spirit of God had laid hold of him, then the next news is behold he prayeth. So it has been in all remarkable pourings out of the Spirit of God that we have any particular account of in Scripture, and so it is foretold it will be at the great pouring out of the Spirit of God in the latter days. It is foretold that it will be poured out as a "spirit of grace and supplication"; Zephaniah 3:9 ["For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord."] And when it is said then began men to call upon the name of the Lord, no more can be understood by it than that this was the first remarkable season of this nature that ever was; it was the beginning or the first of such a kind of work of God. Such a pouring out of the Spirit of God, after such a manner, such an expression is commonly used in Scripture; so 1 Samuel 14:35, "And Saul built an alter unto the Lord: the same was the first altar which he built unto the Lord." In the Hebrew it is as you may see in the margin, "that altar he began to build unto the Lord," Hebrews 2:3, "How shall we escape [if we so neglect so great salvation;] which [at first] began to be spoken [by the Lord.]"

Later in the same work, observation of the urgency of the text is stressed.

O that you who live negligent of this salvation, would consider what you do; what you have had from this subject, may show you what reason there is in that of the Apostle, Hebrews 2:3, "How shall we escape, if we neglect [so great salvation]." And in that Acts 13:41, "Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish." God looks on such as you as great enemies of the cross of Christ, and adversaries and despisers of all the glory of this great work. And if God has made such an account of the glory of salvation as to destroy many nations, and so often overturn all nations, to prepare the way for the glory to his Son in this affair, how little account will he make of the lives and souls of ten thousand such opposers and despisers as you, that continue impenitent, in comparison of that glory. When he shall hereafter come and find that your welfare stands in the way of that glory, why surely you shall be dashed to pieces, as a potter's vessel, and trodden down as the mire of the streets. God may through wonderful patience bear with wicked, careless sinners for a while but he will [not long] bear with such despisers of his dear Son and his great salvation, the glory of which he has had so much at heart, before he will utterly consume them without remedy or mercy.

In the sermon lecture on Ephesians 3:10 admiring the wisdom of God, Hebrews 2:3 is seen as revealing a negative effect of the revelation of the gospel.

Unlike the sermon on the preceding text the one on 2:3 was preached after the Great Awakening in the mid-forties. We have only an Andover copy of the missing original manuscript. Beginning on a somber tone, Edwards informs his congregation that if disobedience to the Word of God in the Old Testament brought punishment they could not hope to escape far greater light. In this sermon he associates the word spoken by angels with that at Mt. Sinai and finds the message of Hebrews 2:3 to be, "They that neglect so great salvation as is offered in the gospel, do bring themselves into exceeding danger of damnation."

The salvation offered is very great. No previous revelation of God compares with that in Christ himself. It is far greater than deliverance of Noah's family by flood, or Israel from Egypt. This deliverance is from sin and hell. The good offered is as much greater as heaven is than its type, Canaan. By the same token, neglect is so much more worthy of damnation. What can God do more than offer such salvation? Edwards warns his people that if they reject deliverance from sin they reject deliverance from hell.

The application consists of an extended awakening appeal. Edwards hears the objection of some that they cannot of themselves accept Christ. No, but you can reject him. "God is the fountain of all light, and therefore you must be the fountain of all darkness." If faith is from God, unbelief is from you. It is no argument that a man cannot poison himself because he cannot cure himself. That your sin does not trouble you is argument of guilt that you have no sense of the greatness of this sin, he concluded.

If this sermon was delivered in the mid-forties after the Great Awakening and at the beginning of the great strain between Edwards and his congregation that would explain the ever greater urging against ever deeper neglect. The very justification by sinners that only God could give faith may have become a dug-in defense of those who remained without faith after two great revivals in Northampton. Edwards will not let them off his gospel hook by that commonly attempted escape from ever greater neglect of the divine offer of so great salvation. His unbelieving people had no excuse. The offer was God's; neglecting the escape offered was theirs.