HAVE YOU LOST YOUR SALVATION FOREVER? THE DIFFICULT VERSES OF HEBREWS 6:4-6
[A]. THE TOPIC BEFORE US
This part of Hebrews chapter 6 is one passage that has such a multitude of interpretations, that it has become very confusing. I get asked about it. Wrong ideas are developed in this chapter relating to salvation and then they cause disputes. So many seem to have their own interpretation and are dogmatic about it. I have to be honest. I tend to be that way myself, but only after decades of examination and then trying to put it all together.
If you don’t agree with me, that will be okay, but only if you have every base covered and all scriptures confirming each other. No matter what topic we open up, or subject a passage to exegetical thought, we must not have stray scriptures that are not fitting in. All must be tidy and in place. Let us look at the three verses –
{{Hebrews 6:4-6 “For in the case of those who have once been ENLIGHTENED and have TASTED of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have FALLEN AWAY, it is IMPOSSIBLE TO RENEW them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame.”}}
This is an important passage and has to be properly understood. Keep in mind that it is addressing Jews in this letter to Hebrews, and that is vital, and is why so much of the Tabernacle and sacrifices are in this book. This letter to the Hebrews was written to Hebrew Christians, and to those Jews who were struggling with making any commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a huge step moving from Judaism to faith in Jesus Christ as it often involved family exclusion and persecution. Some wavered and they are addressed in this letter.
It is essential to see that all the way through this letter, the Jewish application, the substance of which all the Hebrews knew, is very relevant. Now to lay the axe to the base of the tree. This passage from chapter 6 has NOTHING TO DO WITH PERSEVERANCE OF CHRISTIANS FOR SALVATION; or sinning and losing salvation, never to regain it. Those false doctrines are held and delivered to others. This passage must be explained only in context, but it needs explaining. It is so tragic that people have preached that a Christian can lose salvation on the basis of these verses in Hebrews 6. It is vital to know that “born-again Christians” are NOT in focus here.
Here we have the Hebrews passage that constantly causes concern and misunderstanding for those who do not understand it. It is not an easy passage to come to grips with, but we will give it careful consideration, and above all, see the background for these verses, for the background is fundamental in this passage.
It is absolutely vital to understand at the outset that the letter written to the Hebrews, (I absolutely believe by Paul) is a general epistle written to Jewish Christians and Jewish people to explain the development of the Christian faith from Judaism. I can well see those occasions when Paul entered a synagogue and addressed those there. The letter would contain some of the material Paul used in preaching.
This letter would explain that Christ is superior to the Law, and to angels, and to prophets, and the Levitical priesthood, and He fulfilled the types of the Jewish rituals in the Tabernacle/Temple. It is an apologetic for Christianity, written to win over the Jews (meaning, an explanation). It does not record the author’s name, and because Paul is not mentioned, then some dismiss Paul’s authorship, but to have his name in the opening verse would immediately cause Jews to reject the letter. Let’s look at these verses again.
{{Hebrews 6:4-6 “For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame.”}}
THE SETTING
Please bear with me while I attempt to explain what this passage is really saying. Again, it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATEVER to do with a Christian losing salvation!! Jews of course really knew their history and were quite well acquainted with the Old Testament/Toreh so the stories there were well known to them. When the nation left Egypt at the Exodus a huge disaster occurred. It was just a matter of days into the exodus and the Jews sinned by making a golden calf to worship it. Many died as a result. God gave the manna and water but they grumbled and sinned. There was rebellion and idolatry.
Did you know that when God rescued the nation from Egypt, instead of serving God, they served false idols, and THOSE FALSE GODS THEY BROUGHT WITH THEM FROM EGYPT? Here is the passage for that – {{Amos 5:25-26 “Did you present Me with sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel? You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves.”}}. All that shows that Israel was unfaithful to God even when leaving Egypt. The Jews had a consistent history of going back, of inconsistency, of not following on faithfully, of racing after idolatry. They could not be trusted. We must keep this fact in mind when considering this Hebrews passage.
[B]. THE LAND OF CANAAN IS SPIED OUT
In a few weeks after leaving Egypt, they were getting ready to enter the Promised Land, and in preparation sent 12 selected men into the land as spies to check it out. All 12 were impressed with what the land produced BUT only two of them had the faith to believe they could take the land. Ten of them showed unbelief and failure; a trust in humanity and circumstances and not in God. As a result the nation wandered in the desert for another 40 years. Here is the lengthy passage –
{{Numbers 13:21-24 “They went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, at Lebo-hamath. When they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) Then they came to the valley of Eshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes and they carried it on a pole between two men, with some of the pomegranates and the figs. That place was called the valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there.”}}
Canaan was the Promised land because it was promised to Abraham and his descendants, and confirmed to Joshua – {{Joshua 1:2-4 “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness and this LEBANON, even as far as the great river, THE RIVER EUPHRATES, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun, will be your territory.”}} Hamas can rant and rave and carry out terrorist acts but it is God’s land. In fact the land of Israel as given to Abraham stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. What God does is to show the spies the abundance of this land and the richness of it. He laid it out before them. All they had to do is to take God at His word and claim it; to appropriate it.
{{Numbers 13:25-29 “When they returned from spying out the land at the end of forty days, they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh, and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Thus they told him, and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us AND IT CERTAINLY DOES FLOW WITH MILK AND HONEY, AND THIS IS ITS FRUIT. NEVERTHELESS, the people who live in the land are strong and the cities are fortified and very large, and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”}}
The key word in this last set of verses is NEVERTHELESS. In spite of all the Lord showed them, the “nevertheless” overcame 10 of them. It cancelled out all that their eyes saw. The sight of the eyes defeated the faith they should have had.
{{Numbers 13:30-33 “Then Caleb made the people quiet before Moses, and said, “WE SHOULD BY ALL MEANS GO UP AND TAKE POSSESSION OF IT, FOR WE SHALL SURELY OVERCOME IT,” but the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people for THEY ARE TOO STRONG FOR US,” so they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out saying, “The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim), and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”}}
There you have a great disaster of faith. Just two men possessed the faith that would conquer in God’s strength, and 10 of then dismissed God from the equation. The nation was faithless and could not possess the land. All must always be of faith. To whom do you look – at the problems around you, OR at God who overcomes problems because He created the universe.
Now understand that the twelve had a great enlightenment while in the land they were spying out. They actually held the produce of the land in their hands. They tasted of the produce - grapes, pomegranates, and figs – for they were in the land for up to 40 days and tasted and ate there. They saw that all was good; they saw the potential . . . they actually began to experience it all . . . BUT 10 of the 12 did not have the faith to believe they could take the land. Only two had the faith that was prepared to accept all God set before them - Joshua and Caleb. The ten faithless spies did not have the faith to appropriate all that the land offered. They actually had their feet in the land, were enlightened as to its truth, its taste, but they turned back and gave it up. They turned away, turned back, through lack of faith.
[C]. WHAT ABOUT THE 10? WHAT DO THEY REPRESENT?
Were the 10 in the land? Yes.
Did they hold the produce? Yes.
Did they taste initially of the fruit? Yes.
Did they have the faith to claim the land? No.
In other words, the 10 were in the land, seemingly part of it, to all intents and purposes, BUT DID NOT HAVE THE FAITH to appropriate what God was wanting to give them. They rejected it; turned away, and the whole of that nation died except two of them. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to renew them again to go forth in faith. They doomed themselves. {{Deuteronomy 1:25-26 “Then they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us; and they brought us back a report and said, ‘It is a good land which the LORD our God is about to give us.’ Yet you were not willing to go up, but rebelled against the command of the LORD your God.”}}
[D]. WHAT ABOUT THE 2? WHO DO THEY REPRESENT?
Were the 2 in the land? Yes.
Did they hold the produce? Yes.
Did they taste initially of the fruit? Yes.
Did they have the faith to claim the land? Yes.
In other words the 2 were tasting the good land with the others BUT THEY DID HAVE THE FAITH to appropriate what God was wanting to give them. They accepted it; went forward. They had the faith in God to claim the gift God was giving to them.
[D]. THE EXPLANATION
I hope you can understand that, because it is essential in understanding the Hebrews passage, chapter 6. What it says is this. The Gospel was being preached to the Jews (the Hebrews) and some of them were hovering on the edge about making a decision to follow Jesus Christ. They had one and a half feet over the line as far as becoming a faithful Christian was concerned, and had become enlightened about the Gospel. They were beginning to “taste the goodness of the fruit” on the Christian side. It’s as if they were holding it all in their hands. They realised this was a good life and that God was in it. They still had half a foot back inside Judaism. What decision would they make?
The passage means that those who are at that point of full commitment to God, but turn back, because they did not have the faith to accept what God was offering, (we speak of the Jews here of Paul’s time), could not appropriate the promise by faith, or claim the promise of faith, and turned away in rejection. Applied to the Jews, it means they knew what was right, but at the final point were not prepared to break with the Jewish religion and traditions. They then turned back, fell away, and Hebrews 6 verse 6 says they never more will come to the brink of repentance again. The Jews could not play around with the sacrifice of Christ. The Jews knew that story very well and it was the motivation for what Paul was declaring.
[E]. THE VERSES DO NOT APPLY TO CHRISTIANS FALLING INTO SIN
It is so wrong to apply this event to Christians as it is from the Jewish background. A person who places faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has a number of things happen at conversion. This is the first – {{1Corinthians 12:12-14 “Even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ, for by one Spirit WE WERE ALL BAPTISED INTO ONE BODY, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit, for the body is not one member, but many.”}} The great importance of these verses is to teach us that there is one Body, and all believers are all members of that Body. The entry into that Body is through the baptism of the Spirit. The purpose of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to unite all believers into the one Body, and to seal them as those who belong to Christ, whether they are Jews or Gentiles.
The same thought is in these verses – {{2Corinthians 1:21-22 “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, WHO ALSO SEALED US AND GAVE US THE SPIRIT IN OUR HEARTS AS A PLEDGE. Again, the same idea is contained in these verses – {{Ephesians 1:13-14 “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation - having also believed, YOU WERE SEALED IN HIM WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT OF PROMISE who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.”}}
Now the purpose of the baptism of the Spirit, and the sealing of the Spirit, both happening at the point of salvation, and once only, final, not to be repeated, is to make us members of Christ's Body. That means we are absolutely secure in Him. We do not lose our salvation or our standing in Christ. As family members, we might be disobedient children, and we displease the Lord, and grieve the Holy Spirit, but HE DOES NOT DEPART FROM US. What God wants us to do if we sin, is this – {{1John 1:7-10 but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”}}
If we sin we do not lose our salvation. The Hebrews passage has nothing to do with Christians, or with Christians sinning or with Christians losing salvation. I think it is dishonouring to God to say that a believer He redeemed, will have his salvation taken from him because he slips up. We are children of the living God, not hired slaves.
The chapter 6 passage applies to the Hebrews on the brink of salvation. Will they appropriate the salvation of God, or will they see giants and turn away, never to come again to the point of repentance?
