There is a specific kind of loss that is worse than any other. Not the kind where you were outmatched from the beginning, or where the other team just had an extraordinary day. The worst kind of loss is the one where you had it won. Victory was in your hands. And then you gave it away.
In the 2025 NCAA Elite Eight, Duke faced UConn in a game for the ages. UConn had clawed back from 19 points down, but with 10 seconds left, Duke held a two-point lead and had the ball. All they had to do was inbound it and hold on. One thing they could not do was turn it over. And then their point guard made a pass over two outstretched defenders. The ball got deflected. It landed directly to UConn's sharpshooter, Braylon Mullins, who buried a 35-foot shot with 1.9 seconds left. UConn won by one.
Duke had not been beaten. They had thrown the game away.
You Are Not at Halftime
The writer of Hebrews opens Hebrews 10:35 with a command that assumes something: "Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward." You cannot throw away something you do not already have. The command assumes that Christians are holding confidence in their hands right now.
That matters, because Christians often do not think about themselves that way. We talk about salvation like it is a 50-50 proposition, like we are sitting at halftime with the score tied, and we will see how it all turns out. But that is not what the Bible says about the condition of a person who has been washed in the blood of Christ.
Romans 8:1 says it directly: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." No condemnation. Not reduced condemnation. Not condemnation pending further review. None. A few verses later Paul asks who can separate us from the love of Christ and runs through the whole list — tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword — and answers his own question: "In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37).
Christians are not people waiting to see how this thing turns out. Christians are people who are up by two with the ball in their hands and 10 seconds left on the clock. Jesus took us there. The cross took us there. Victory is ours.
There is just one thing we cannot do.
The Victory Jesus Already Won
Hebrews 10 builds this case carefully. In verses 10 through 14, the writer contrasts the endless sacrificial system of the Old Testament — priest after priest, sacrifice after sacrifice, year after year — with what Jesus accomplished on the cross. One offering. Once for all. And because of that offering, those who belong to him have been "perfected for all time" (Hebrews 10:14).
God then makes a promise through the prophet: "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more" (Hebrews 10:17). Not reduced. Not on a payment plan. Remembered no more. The writer draws the conclusion in verse 19: since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.
Full assurance. That is what we are holding.
When someone is baptized into Christ, they are not getting a second chance at a perfect life. They are entering a new covenant. The old covenant said: if you sin, you die. The new covenant says: when you sin, you have the blood of Jesus. And that blood can cleanse any sin, any transgression, any act of wickedness, so long as you are willing to repent, confess, and bring it to him. That is the promise of 1 John 1:9 — not because we deserve it, but because he is faithful and righteous. He will do what he promised.
Victory is already in our hands. The question is whether we will throw it away.
What It Looks Like to Throw It Away
First: Stop striving against sin.
God made human beings capable of choosing rightly. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says he made us upright, but we have sought out many devices. The Christian life is a lifelong battle between the flesh and the spirit — between what is right and the pull toward what is wrong. What Jesus asks from us is not perfection. It is persistence. He asks us to keep fighting, keep growing, keep reaching for deeper righteousness.
The blood of Christ covers failure. It is not a license to stop trying. Hebrews 10:26 is direct about this: "If we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." The word sin comes from an archery term. It means to miss the mark. God wants you to keep shooting — to study his word, to learn it deeply, to aim as carefully as you can, to acknowledge when you miss, and to try again. What you cannot do is put down the bow and walk away.
Striving against sin also means continuing to pursue the knowledge of God's will. You cannot decide to live according to what you think is righteous without anchoring that to what he has actually said. Willful sin in Hebrews 10:26 is defined partly as sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth. We cannot throw away that knowledge.
Second: Cave in when suffering comes.
Hebrews 10:35-36 makes a direct connection: "Do not throw away your confidence... for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised." You will face trials. You will face pain. You will face seasons when life presses in from every side. And in those moments, there is one thing you cannot do — you cannot shrink back.
The Greek word translated endurance here is hypomone. It means to stay under. Not to wait passively for circumstances to change. Not to grit your teeth and survive. To stay in your place. To hold the ground you are standing on and refuse to be moved.
The writer holds up the believers to whom he is writing as an example. They had been made a public spectacle. Their property had been seized. They had watched friends imprisoned (Hebrews 10:32-34). And through all of it, they had stayed. They had not been moved. He is calling them to remember what they had already done — and to keep doing it.
Jesus himself modeled this perfectly. With all power in the universe available to him, the Son of God stayed on the cross. He did not call the angels. He stayed in his place, under the weight of the suffering, so that he could win the victory for us. When we face our own cross — whatever form it takes — we are called to do the same.
Third: Look somewhere else for salvation.
There is no confidence to be found anywhere other than Jesus. Not in another teacher, another system, another tradition. Not in our own accumulated record of good behavior. The sacrifice that works, the covenant that holds, the blood that actually cleanses — it is only found at the cross of Christ.
Christians cannot drift toward confidence in their own merit. They cannot start trusting in their track record rather than his promise. The moment we start looking for something to hold on to other than him, we have thrown away the only thing worth holding.
Hard to Be Lost
There is an old saying among preachers: It is hard to be lost. That is true in two ways.
If you are a Christian, if you have been washed in the blood of the lamb, it is genuinely hard to be lost. Jesus has done too much. He has put too much in your hands. You would have to give up, stop striving, walk away from the gift on purpose. That is hard to do — and it is the one thing you must never do.
But it is also hard to be lost in another sense. When we try to find satisfaction and meaning outside of Jesus, when we pin our hopes on the things of this world, when we save ourselves by our own effort and dedicate ourselves to our own ambitions instead of God — life does not work the way it is supposed to. It is hard. It does not satisfy.
If you have been living that way, Jesus offers you something better. The confidence and victory that his people carry — you can have it today. The new covenant he offers to anyone willing to believe, confess, repent, and be baptized is not a second chance at perfection. It is a new deal with God altogether. One where, when you fail, the blood of Jesus is always there.
Hold fast to your confidence. It has great reward.