1. Hebrews 6:4-6 “The Danger of Falling Away”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 03 Feb. 2019

1. Introduction: Can a Christian lose their salvation?

• When I was fresh out of college, I did some open-air evangelism with a few buddies on Sunday mornings before church at the flea market in downtown Chattanooga. I was intrigued to discover that there were two kinds of people who frequented that market on Sunday mornings: Seventh Day Adventists (who go to church on Saturday) and Backslidden Baptists (who stopped going to church at all). I was surprised at how many would tell me that they had backslidden, and some of them asked me kind-of wistfully if I thought they could still be saved.

• I’m not going to be able to answer that question in full today, but our text definitely touches on this issue, and there is a lot of scripture with a bearing on this issue – scripture which I hope to marshal over the course of the next couple of sermons.

• My wife once sent a letter to the editor of the staunchly-Arminian No Greater Joy magazine, in which she thoughtfully called them down for a slanderous remark about people who believed in Biblical predestination. Mike Pearl replied with a note that my wife was surely too nice a person to believe in babies going to hell, and he enclosed a free copy of a curious, 600-page tome by Laurence Vance entitled, The Other Side of Calvinism. It reads like an ignorant and biased attack on both Calvinism and Arminianism, but I thought I’d look there for a hairbrained idea I could use in my introduction for this sermon. What I ended up deciding to use was a pretty good quote on the seeming paradox within the scriptures: “The New Testament is abundantly clear in its declaration that Christians may not persevere. It is possible to depart from the faith (1 Tim. 1:4), err from the faith (1 Tim. 6:10), err concerning the faith (1 Tim. 6:20), deny the faith (1 Tim. 5:8), make shipwreck of the faith (1 Tim. 1:19), cast off one’s first faith (1 Tim. 5:12), swerve from the faith (1 Tim. 1:6), and not continue in the faith (Col. 1:23). Believers can fall from their own stedfastness (2 Pet. 3:17), become barren and unfruitful (2 Pet. 1:8), deny Christ (2 Tim. 2:12), and be ashamed when Christ returns (1 John 2:28)… [and yet] “We are kept by the power of God (1 Pet. 1:5), confirmed unto the end (1 Cor. 1:8). We are confident that he who began a work in us will perform it (Phi. 1:6) until we are presented faultless (Jude 24), without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:27). Any man who is saved is predestinated by God “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29)… “we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him,; for we shall see him as he is (1 John. 3:2)… not only can no man pluck us out of his hand (John 10:28), we are part of his [body] (Eph. 5:30)...”

• It’s understandable that some people could look at scripture and say that you can lose your salvation and others could look at Scripture and say that you can’t lose your salvation.

  • Denying one position or the other would seem to be a denial of scripture.

  • One solution is to try to escape into the irrationality of paradox and affirm both positions, but I think there is a better way.

  • Let us begin by examining the conditions under which Hebrews 6 says renewal and repentance are impossible.

Vs. 4-6 The human problem described

• Verse 4 begins with the word “for,” which relates it to the previous two main verbs in the chapter: Hebrews 6:1 “Let us be carried up to maturity” and verse 3 “This we will do, God permitting.”

• Verses 4-6 describe the condition of a group of persons who are in a pickle, so to speak. The original Greek text describes them using a series of temporal participles: five Aorist-tense participles describing events that have happened in the past to them, and two present-tense participles describing what they are doing now. This is the condition they are in:

1. once having been enlightened [ἅπαξ φωτισθέντας],

• In the Old Testament, light symbolized life (Ezra 9:8, Psalm 13:3), teaching, and guidance:

  • 2 Kings 12:2 “And Joas[h] did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all the days that [Jehoiada] the priest instructed/[enlightened] him… 17:28 And they brought one of the priests whom they had removed from Samaria, and he settled in Baethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord.” (Brenton)

  • Psalm 19:8b “...the commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes... 119:130 The manifestation of thy words will enlighten, and instruct the simple.” (Brenton)

• In addition, Jesus is personified as the light from Isaiah’s prophecies of the coming of the Messiah to John’s:

  • Isaiah 60:1 Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee... the Lord shall appear upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.” (Brenton)

  • John 1:9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. (NKJ)

• So, in the New Testament, when someone was “enlightened,” they had heard and understood the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus:

  • Ephesians 1:16-21 “...pray[ing] that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of the Glory may donate to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart having been enlightened, resulting in [you] knowing: what the hope of His call is, what the wealth of the glory of His inheritance in the saints is, and what the hyperbolic greatness of His power into us believers is, according to the energy of the might of His strength, which He worked in the Christ when He raised out of the dead and seated Him in His right hand in the heavens above every ruler and authority and power and lordship and every name being named - not only in this age but also in the impending one.” (NAW)

  • 2 Tim. 1:10 “...Jesus Christ... brought to light life and immortality through the gospel” (NAW)

  • And clearly the recipients of this letter had associated themselves with that early Gospel preaching to the extent that they were persecuted as Christians, for it says in Hebrews 10:32 “But recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated/[enlightened], you endured a great struggle with sufferings” (NKJ)

• the next thing for these evangelized folks was their...

2. having tasted of the heavenly gift [γευσαμένους τε τῆς δωρεᾶς τῆς ἐπουρανίου]

• The phrase “taste a heavenly gift” doesn’t occur anywhere else in Scripture,

• But the last time the word “heavenly” occured was in: Hebrews 3:1 “In view of which, holy brothers, companions of a heavenly calling, nail down in your minds that the One so commissioned and the High Priest whom we acknowledge is the Messiah Jesus.” (NAW), which could indicate that “tasting the heavenly gift” is equivalent to receiving an invitation from God, which could mean they heard a presentation of the Gospel. Let’s see if that fits other uses of these words:

• In the Gospel of John, the words “heavenly” and “gave” occur close together in chapter 3. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “...how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” and then He says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (NKJV, John 3:12b,16) There the “gift” is the “only begotten Son of God.” He is “heavenly” because he came from heaven, which is God’s abode (Psalm 67:15, Eph. 1:3 & 20). Jesus is also the “heavenly” man in...

• 1 Corinthians 15:48 “Whatever the man of dust is, such also are those of dust, and whatever the heavenly one is, such also are those who are heavenly.” (NAW)

• The word for “gift” also occurs in Jesus’ discourse with the woman at the well in John 4:10 "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you,`Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." (NKJV) “Gift of God” is in parallel with “Him… who is speaking” - that’s Jesus!

• This same word for “gift” is applied in Romans 5:15-17 to the gift of Jesus’ salvation: “But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”

• Then in 2 Cor. 9:14-15 the Apostle speaks of “the exceeding grace of God in you.” and immediately follows that with, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” Jesus and the Gospel seem to be the “heavenly gift” these folks have “tasted.”

• But nowhere does God tells us to merely “taste” His free gift, but rather He says to “eat” it (John 6:51) – to “receive” it (Rom 5:17, etc.). The word “taste” here seems to point to a difference between the limited experience these hard-hearted unbelievers had with Christianity and the relationship a believer has in fully embracing the Gospel and making it part of himself.

• But that’s not all they tasted. Throughout the book of Acts, the “gift of God” is the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38, 8:20, 10:45, 11:17), which leads us to the next point:

3. having become companions of the Holy Spirit [μετόχους γενηθέντας Πνεύματος ῾Αγίου]

• Like the word “taste” I find the word metochous/companions/partners to come short of the fulness of relationship that God calls us to have with the Holy Spirit. Nowhere else in the Bible is this word used to describe a relationship with the Holy Spirit, so I am suspicious that this is not describing a true faith.

  • For instance, in 2 Corinthians 13:14 the proper relationship is described as “the communion [koinwnea, not metochos] of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (NKJ) The Biblical ideal is a full partnership of giving and taking, not just a casual acquaintance you hang-out with some.

  • Ephesians 1:13 “you… were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (ESV) Being “sealed” sounds a lot more permanent than being a “companion.”

  • Ephesians 6:18 “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit...” (NKJ) Being “in” the Spirit sounds a lot more intimate than being a “companion” to Him.

  • 2 Thessalonians 2:13 “...God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (NKJ) This isn’t just hanging out with the Spirit, but it’s letting the Spirit interfere with your life and make changes in you.¹

• Can a person experience the Holy Spirit and not be a believer?

  • Numbers 24:2 says that “The Spirit of God came upon” Balaam, the pagan prophet who was trying to harm God’s people and who died in God’s judgment against the Canaanites.

  • 1 Samuel 10:10 says that “The Spirit of the LORD came upon [Ungodly King] Saul and he prophecied.” That God would deign to do such a thing was commemorated in a Hebrew aphorism, “Is Saul among the prophets??” because it seemed so incongruous.

  • Nehemiah 9:19-28 “Yet thou in thy great compassions didst not forsake them in the wilderness: thou didst not turn away from them the pillar of the cloud by day, to guide them in the way, nor the pillar of fire by night, to enlighten for them the way wherein they should walk. And thou gavest thy good Spirit to instruct them, and thou didst not withhold thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water in their thirst... And thou didst multiply their children as the stars of heaven, and broughtest them into the land of which thou spokest to their fathers; And they inherited it... But they turned, and revolted from thee, and cast thy law behind their backs; and they slew thy prophets, who testified against them to turn them back to thee, and they wrought great provocations. Then thou gavest them into the hand of them that afflicted them, and they did afflict them: and they cried to thee in the time of their affliction, and thou didst hear them from thy heaven, and in thy great compassions gavest them deliverers, and didst save them from the hand of them that afflicted them.” (Brenton)

  • If the hypothesis that I mentioned at the outset of this series is correct that the original recipients of the book of Hebrews were being drawn away from the Gospel preached by the Apostles into an Essene Quamram-like community that was trying to go back to the pristine Law of Moses as it was practiced in the desert before Israel got into all its compromises in the Promised Land, these significant allusions to Balaam and the idolatrous Israelites in their years of wandering are a warning that those weren’t the glory days; that’s not God’s goal for us. It also stands as a warning today against the Messianic groups who are trying to dial back Christianity to its pre-Gentile days. That’s not God’s goal for the church.

  • I believe that this pal-ing around with the Holy Spirit in Hebrews 6:4 is like what we see of the unfaithful people in the old nation of Israel: They are in a community of believers, enjoying the benefits of God’s blessings on the community, but not personally committed to the true faith. They are like the church-goer in our age whose involvement in church is just to look good socially, do some good things, make nice friends, enjoy the good cooking at the fellowship meals, and relax in the peaceful environment, but doesn’t believe she needs anybody dying on a cross for her.

  • In the New Testament, Jesus indicated that there would be folks who prophesied, cast out demons, and even did miracles who will not enter the kingdom of heaven because they never actually knew Him².

  • It’s possible to know the Gospel and enjoy some of God’s blessings, and even have some supernatural interactions with the Holy Spirit, but still miss out on true Christianity. Verse 5 goes on to list some more things:

4. having tasted the good word of God and also of the powers of the coming age
   [καλὸν γευσαμένους Θεοῦ ῥῆμα δυνάμεις τε μέλλοντος αἰῶνος]

• Numbers 24:13 says that Balaam heard the same “good rhema of God” too, but it didn’t do him any good!

• Likewise, Moses said the same of the Israelites who would perish in God’s wrath: “And it shall come to pass, that as all the good things [which the Lord God spoke to you] are come upon us which the Lord God will bring upon you all the evil things, until he shall have destroyed you from off this good land... when ye transgress the covenant of the Lord our God… and go and serve other gods, and bow down to them.” (Josh. 23:15-16, Brenton)

• The “powers of the age to come/of the impending eon” is another phrase found nowhere else in the Bible, but the word dunameis does occur often in the Greek Bible to mean an “army.”

• Occasionally, it refers to angelic hosts, as in Ephesians 1:20-21 “...He raised Him [Christ] from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” (cf. Rev. 7:12)

• And, since the book of Hebrews opened with making a big deal out of Jesus being better than the angels, this could be well what is referred to here.

• It could be speaking of someone like Balaam who saw an angel while he was riding his donkey one day.

• Colossians 2:18-19 says, “Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head...” (NKJV) – that is Christ!

• I think there are a lot of people who think they saw an angel, but who won’t make it into heaven. The reason is that merely hearing words from God or merely seeing angels isn’t what makes anybody right with God, especially when they are...

5. v.6 yet having fallen aside [παραπεσόντας]

• This word refers back to the prophecies of Ezekiel which are unique in their frequent use of this word parapiptw: prophecies such as:

• Ezekiel 18:24 “But when the righteous man turns away from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, according to all the transgressions which the transgressor has wrought, none of his righteousness which he has wrought shall be at all remembered: in his trespass wherein he has trespassed, and in his sins wherein he has sinned, in them shall he die.” (Brenton) Biblically it is possible to look righteous and then fall off the wagon. Biblically, it is possible to be part of God’s people and still be an outsider to God’s promises due to sin.

• Ezekiel 20:27-28 “...Thus saith the Lord: Hitherto have your fathers provoked me in their trespasses in which they transgressed against me. Whereas I brought them into the land concerning which I lifted up mine hand to give it them; and they looked upon every high hill, and every shady tree, and they sacrificed there to their gods...” (Brenton)

• It doesn’t matter if you have heard the Gospel, attended church, or even done miracles and seen angels, if you are walking away from Jesus and worshipping anything or anybody else, repentance and salvation is not possible. This has happened to Jews who knew God’s word, and it happens in the Christian community too.

Next we come to the present tense participles which describe what they are trying to do now:

1. while re-crucifying for themselves [ἀνασταυροῦντας ἑαυτοῖς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ]

• This verb occurs nowhere else in the Greek Bible, but it obviously means to crucify Jesus repeatedly. Since He was actually only crucified once, we have to consider this a figure of speech that means these folks are wallowing in sins, callously committing over and over again sins that, to be atoned for, would require Jesus’ death on the cross.

• Heb. 10:29 “Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” (NKJV)

• It’s as though they are saying, “It was no big deal that Jesus went though all that suffering to pay for sin. If I sin more, He could just hang on the cross more. No problem.” The Spirit of God is saying, “No, that attitude IS a big problem.” And it gets worse;

1. and παραδειγματίζοντας/holding up to contempt/subjecting to public disgrace/put to open shame the Son of God

• They seem to be not merely callous concerning their own idolatry; they seem to want to accuse Jesus of being the problem. “Jesus is that troublemaker that got me persecuted for being a fraud. He deserved to be crucified! Let that be an example to anybody who claims to be God! The memory of Jesus should be shameful, disgraceful, contemptable.”

• Hypocrites who claim to be Christians on Sunday and then live like they don’t belong to Him the rest of the week certainly drag Jesus’ reputation in the dust.

Now for the main point:

• For persons in this awful condition, our passage opens in v.4 by saying that it is “impossible” – literally “there is no power” (using the same Greek word for “power” as as found in v.5 of the “powers” of the age to come), and continues in v.6 with the infinitive “to renew/bring back/restore again into repentance” [πάλιν ἀνακαινίζειν εἰς μετάνοιαν].

  • In Greek, this thought is split between verses 4 and 6. The NASB puts it all together in v.6, and I put it all together in v.4, but the point is that no power exists to fix these apostates back up.

  • Not only can they not do it, the grammar indicates that nobody else can do it for them either, because they are not the subject of the verb as it stands in Greek, but rather the object.

• It’s a truly-frightful thought, that a person could get themselves in a position where they can’t be brought back! To be irecoverably lost... At a church with a name like “Christ the Redeemer” we naturally recoil at the prospect of someone not being redeemable.

Powerless/impossible/Αδύνατον

• Used often in the Greek translation of the book of Job (and a couple of times in the NT epistles) to denote “weak/poor” persons.

• The only time it is used in the gospels is the time described in Matthew 19:24-26, where Jesus said, “...it is easier for a camel to go through a needle hole than for a rich man to go into the kingdom of God… According to humans, this is impossible, but according to God, all things are possible.” (NAW)

• It occurs three more times in the book of Hebrews:

  • 6:18 “it is impossible for God to lie”

  • 10:4 “it is impossible for the blood of bulls... to take away sins”

  • 11:6 “it is impossible to please God without faith”

• The last passage in Hebrews 11:6 is key. Anyone with a healthy Biblical understanding of the seriousness of sin against God - and the systematic consequences of sin on the human body and mind - should be able to see that it is impossible for a human of their own accord, once they have broken God’s law once, to completely recover themselves from that sin, patch up all its bad consequences, and somehow restore their relationship with God. I think we can all agree on the impossibility of that.

• I also think we can all agree on the power of God to intervene and do the humanly-impossible by atoning for our sin by the blood of His Son Jesus and making us new creations, regenerating us to be alive spiritually, replacing our stony hearts with responsive ones, and working through us to do good.

• But it is “impossible to please God without faith,” and that is the missing ingredient in the toxic recipe of a dysfunctional human soul described in Hebrews 6.

  • They’ve left Christ (v.1),

  • they’ve torn down the foundation of repentance and faith,

  • they have rejected all that they have observed and experienced regarding Christianity when it was first preached by the Apostles (v.4),

  • and now (v.5) they are speaking of Jesus as though He were a run-of-the-mill charlatan who deserved to be executed as a criminal.

  • There is no faith in Jesus being held by these Hebrews, so it is impossible for God to be pleased with them.

• Ephesians 2:8 tells us that even our faith is a gift of God. So without God giving us that gift of faith, it is impossible to please God.

• It is impossible to renew into repentance those with no faith in Jesus. And it is impossible for humans to renew themselves in repentance without the Holy Spirit doing that for them, as it says, using the same verb in Titus 3:5 “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (NKJ). It’s the renewing, spiritually life-giving work of the the Holy Spirit that is the agency of our salvation.

Initial Conclusions

I will have to continue this study next week, but I hope that at least a few things have come clear:

1. Human beings cannot make themselves right with God. You can’t save yourself; and you can’t save anybody else. We need God to make us right with Him.

2. Pretending to be right with God by merely attending church or doing good things is fruitless.

3. A lackadaisical approach to disobeying God’s commandments is perilous.

4. If you’re not all-in, don’t kid yourself about this; your soul is in terrible danger.

5. We must pursue faith in Jesus and repentance from sin if we want to be saved.

2. APPENDIX: Side-by-side Greek Text & English Versions of Heb. 6:3-6

The Greek is the Majority text, edited by myself to follow the majority of the earliest-known manuscripts only when the early manuscript evidence is practically unanimous. My original document includes notes on the NKJV, NASB, NIV, & ESV English translations, but since they are all copyrighted, I cannot include them in my online document. Underlined words in English versions indicate a standalone difference from all other English translations of a certain word. Strikeout usually indicates that the English translation is, in my opinion, too far outside the range of meaning of the original Greek word. The addition of an X indicates a Greek word left untranslated – or a plural Greek word translated as an English singular. [Brackets] indicate words added in English not in the Greek. Key words are colored consistently across the chart to show correlations.