Hebrews 6 & 10 and falling away
Some readers were asking about Eternal Security and especially in connection with Hebrews 6 and 10. Listen, I’m convinced that the scriptures teach this: a saving relationship with God exists by faith. God’s grace and his sufficient work in Jesus Christ is the ground and inspiration of that faith that brings us into and keeps us in a saving relationship with God. We don’t get to it by moral grunting and sweating. It’s God’s work in us but it's notGod’s work independent of us. However we look at it (and this is the view of the centuries as well as the plain teaching of scripture) we stand in grace through faith! If there was no grace there could be no salvation or faith. If there is no faith grace doesn’t save us. It’s true that faith is a gracious work of God in us (Philippians 1:29, Romans 10:17, Acts 18:27 and elsewhere) but God doesn’t inject it into us and by its very nature it doesn’t exist unless it has our free and vital ongoing consent and commitment. The graciousness of the gift doesn't render us incapable of despising it and throwing it away from us.
Salvation is an aspect of our relationship with God and our relationship with God is not, I repeat, it is not a legal decision! It is God’s holy and gracious work reconciling us to himself. He draws us in Christ to believe in and love him in and through Jesus Christ. We are at one with him—our hearts are in tune with him—it isn’t just a "status" it is a "relationship". But this relationship has the free consent of our hearts and minds. We aren’t zombies or automata. We are friends of God in Jesus Christ. And we can turn from him (2 Peter 2:20-22) and refuse to abide in him (John 15:5-6). To do that is to reject God and the relationship is ended. To say that we’re powerless to reject God and the relationship is to ignore the meaning of "reconciliation" and "friendship" with God.
There are verses which make this point but I think we should be looking more at the nature of our relationship in Christ, the nature of reconciliation and what it means to be at one with God. As soon as we drop the notion that it is some kind of once-for-all legal declaration of "acquittal" and see it as a free and glad surrender of our heart drawn to God in and through Jesus Christ it becomes clear that we can walk away. Then we don’t have to hunt for verses to prove this or that. Can we fall away from the grace that is in Christ and nowhere else? Yes! Galatians 5:4 expressly says so. But in saying that Paul was trying to prove they could fall away, he was proclaiming it. If they turned salvation into (in that context) Jewish national righteousness they fall away from God's grace extended to them in and through Jesus Christ..
Some of the Hebrews Christians were threatening to turn from Christ and some had already done it (Hebrews 6:1-4 and 10:25-26). They were going back to a sacrificial system that had served its temporary but important purpose and in doing that they were rejecting the sacrifice of Christ. The judgement on such people is clearly spelled out. Leave Christ and there’s no other sacrifice that will bring them to God. If they did that they were leaving their only hope of salvation. What awaited them was what Hebrew 6:8 and 10:27-31 lays out.
Twice the Hebrew writer says such people can’t get back or be renewed to repentance. But he makes those remarks on the assumption that they will continue to hold on to their old sacrificial and shadow system. It’s as if he said, "As long as they cling on to their old ordinances and sacrifices there’s no way back." He isn’t saying that it was literally impossible for them to hear the gospel again at some point and come to faith again. No! But he is underlining the danger that having drunk deeply of the truth about Christ and then blatantly rejected it, that there is no way back except by the one they’ve just betrayed. They saw him in all his glory and experienced him and then they walked away. What would it take to get them back? The only way back is through the One they just spurned. Looking for another way would always be vain and they’d never get back to God. They would have burned the only bridge by which they could get back to God.
You understand he could be saying it is literally impossible for them to be converted once they’ve fallen away under those circumstances, butthere’s no need to understand it that way. A thing may be "impossible" practically speaking given the actual situation, that is, if the conditions are so against them—see what Christ says about rich men, camels and needle’s eyes in Mark 10:24-27 and the parallel texts. As long as wealthy men adore their riches they can’t enter the kingdom and as long as those Hebrews clung to the old system to which they went back there’s no way for them to be saved. See what you make of the piece on the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit also in this section.
This I know. The New Testament teaches the security of the believer. While we have faith in Christ we’re to be perfectly assured. If we walk away from Christ we should worry indeed. Hebrews 10:27-31.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.