Heb 6:4–12 — The Danger of Apostasy

This is a well-known, famous passage of scripture that is highly debated among Christians. This passage here, especially the part where it lists all of these spiritual blessings that have come to former apostates, those who were once enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift and so on, if they fall away, that is if they turn their back upon Christ, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance. And so this passage is highly debated because Some point to this and say, look, this passage clearly teaches that it is possible for someone who is a recipient of the Holy Spirit who is a Christian, who is saved, it is possible for them to reject Christ and to lose their salvation. The passage clearly teaches that.

Can True Believers Fall Away?

That is what the Arminians argue. The Arminians argue, and not just the Arminians, there are others as well, who argue this point, that salvation is clearly being described here. All of these blessings sound Like salvation, enlightenment, tasting the gift of God, receiving the Holy Spirit, tasting the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come. Arminians use this passage as one of their primary proof texts. To attack Calvinism.

Calvinism teaches that God preserves within the faith all those who have been brought to saving faith by the power of the Spirit, that the elect cannot lose their salvation because they are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, not on the basis of their faith, but on the basis of God’s sovereign mercy and grace. The five points of Calvinism. The fifth point is this point, the doctrine of the preservation and perseverance of the saints. The fifth point of Calvinism is that God preserves in the faith all those whom he effectually calls by his sovereign grace.

But the Arminians say, look at this passage right here. Your whole Calvinistic understanding of the gospel is shattered upon the rocks of this clear and explicit text. And admittedly, we must say that the initial impression that you get from this passage does seem to support them.

Covenant Blessings without Regeneration

The initial impression, just reading through that, these four verbs that are given here, Those who have once been enlightened, that is the first verb. The second verb is they have tasted the heavenly gift. The third verb is that they have shared in the Holy Spirit. And the fourth verb is tasted again, but this time tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come. These four verbs sound like salvation, sounds like genuine saving blessings, especially the one where it says they have shared in the Holy Spirit. That one seems the hardest of all.

So how do we as reformed people, how do we who hold to the five points of Calvinism, including that fifth point, the perseverance of the saints, how do we explain this passage? How do we deal with this passage? Let me give you some big picture arguments to think about to help us to approach this text.

Just kind of looking back at the whole letter of Hebrews, there are some things that may cause us to have second thoughts about that initial impression that we get from the text. Consider the overall thrust and message of this wonderful letter to the Hebrews. If you are simply taking these verses right here, verses 4 through 6, and just extracting them from the context and just looking at them, yeah, okay, it may sound like it is saying that you can lose your salvation. By deliberately rejecting it. It does sound that way at first. But remember, this paragraph here is set in the context of a broader argument. What is the whole argument of the letter to the Hebrews?

It is all about Christ and the greatness of Christ, how He is superior to the angels, how He is the eternal, divine Son of God who came into this world and took to Himself a true human nature so that He might go to the cross and save His people from their sins.

Think about some passages, for example, that we have highlighted before back in chapter 2. Remember that glorious passage? I love this verse here in chapter 2, verse 10. Where it says, it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. But the focus I want to highlight there is that phrase, bringing many sons to glory.

The work of this great Christ that the author of Hebrews is extolling is to bring us to glory. And it does not say somehow there that this is conditional like on a footnote, it is conditional upon our persevering in it. It is his work. He is the one who is bringing us to glory. He is the one who is loving us to the end.

There is another verse later on in chapter seven, Hebrews chapter seven, verse 25. He has been in chapter seven, which we are going to get to after I return from vacation, we are going to get into chapter seven about the priestly order of Melchizedek. But notice how in chapter seven, verse 25, he says, one of the things that shows you that Christ’s priesthood is superior to the old covenant priesthood is that he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them, unlike the old covenant priests that were mortal and they were not able to save to the uttermost those that they were offering sacrifices for.

This priest is different. This priest is superior. This priest lives forever. This priest sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven and he accomplishes the salvation of his people. The overarching thrust of the letter then is to say that salvation is Christ’s work and he does it effectively. He effectively and certainly saves his people. He brings many sons to glory. He saves them to the uttermost. Salvation is not partly his work and then partly our work to make sure that we stay within it and receive it. It is his work. Now there is another consideration as well. In Hebrews chapter 3, look at Hebrews chapter 3, verse 14.

Hebrews 3:14 says, we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Now this statement here has a controlling significance upon this passage in chapter six, because what does it say?

In Hebrews 3:14, it says, we have come to share in Christ if we persevere to the end. In other words, those that do not persevere to the end never had a share in Christ to begin with.

Hebrews 3:14 then is a key theological statement that provides us with the context for understanding the text today. Because when it talks about those who fall away and do not persevere to the end in their faith to the Lord, that shows that they were never truly sharers in Christ from the beginning.

If that is the case then, then it causes us to wonder if these statements, remember those four verbs, being enlightened and so on, and tasting of the good gifts, it causes us to wonder if those statements are really referring to sharing in Christ, or if they are referring to external benefits of membership in the visible church.

And I believe that is the proper interpretation. We have good reason to question whether the initial assumption of the text that is talking about the possibility of loss of salvation is correct. Because the terms in verses four through six by themselves are actually rather vague. They could be said of both true believers and false believers, that is people who profess faith in Christ but are not genuine believers.

Because these statements here, this list of four verbs, enlightened, shared, tasted, and so on, these are about what they experience within the visible church. They are not statements about the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. For example, the first verb, they were enlightened.

That verb is used later on in chapter 10, verse 26. Chapter 10, 26, is the fourth warning passage. There are five warning passages in Hebrews. We are in the third one today. But in the fourth warning passage in Hebrews 10, verse 26, it uses this same term, enlightened.

It says, if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. It is not the exact same word, but it is the same idea, receiving the knowledge of the truth. This idea of being enlightened then need not imply saving enlightenment, but may only be referring to receiving the knowledge of the gospel and giving intellectual assent to it for a time. The other statements there, for example, they have tasted the heavenly gift and shared in the Holy Spirit. That is the hardest one of all because it sounds like they have the Holy Spirit, but remember, this is referring to what they experience, just like being enlightened and receiving the knowledge of the gospel and giving assent to it, but not truly believing it in their heart. The same thing is true of the Spirit.

Remember in the Old Testament, that the Spirit came upon King Saul. This is in 1 Samuel chapter 10. We are going to look at that story. And King Saul, for a time, even prophesied. And yet we know that King Saul was not a believer, that he was someone that God had rejected. In the book of Acts, there is an example where an individual named Simon the Magician tasted the power of the Holy Spirit for a time, but he was not truly converted. That is in Acts chapter 8, the story in Acts chapter 8 about Simon the Magician.

He was very in awe of the miraculous abilities of the apostles. And he wanted to have that same gift and power. And by doing so, it showed that he was not truly converted. Even though for a moment there, it says that he believed, at least he gave an outward profession of faith in Christ.

The Impossibility of Renewal

These four verbs then need not be understood in the most truly salvific sense as the regeneration and effectual calling that is given only to the elect, but are simply describing what is experienced or tasted. That word tasted actually is a good word for it. What is experienced by those who have some connection to the visible church. And who for a time professed faith in Christ, but without the inner working of the Holy Spirit to genuinely transform them and regenerate them. Notice as well that after this statement here, it is impossible to renew them to repentance if they fall away.

We then have this parable. In verses seven and eight. The parable in verses seven and eight reinforces this interpretation because it talks about the good land and the bad. The good land that receives the rain produces a crop. It is receiving the benefit of the rain. But the bad land, it receives the rain, but it does not produce a crop. The bad land represents the unregenerate heart, and the good land represents the regenerate heart, and the rain that falls upon the land is clearly looking back to those blessings that were described in verses four and following.

The blessings of God, these are the covenantal blessings of being a part of the visible church and receiving God’s blessing. The blessing then did not produce fruit because the land itself was bad. That is, the land was not regenerated, was not transformed by God’s grace.

We in the Reformed tradition have a very helpful theology that can explain this passage better than most other theological systems of interpretation. That is called covenant theology. We have this doctrine of the covenant. In covenant theology, we believe that the covenant of grace is a covenant that includes membership within that covenant, and not necessarily everyone who is in that covenant is elect. You can think of it as like two concentric circles, the membership of the covenant of grace, and then there is the membership of the elect, those who are elect within it, the smaller circle of the elect. That means that it is possible for someone to be a member of the covenant, at least in an external way, and to receive these real benefits of membership in the covenant, tasting the good word of God, tasting the powers of the age to come for a time, and yet to fall away from that. This reality that the two circles are not perfectly overlapping, that there is a concentric circle within the big circle, that the circle of the elect is smaller than the circle of the covenant.

That makes apostasy a real thing, a real danger. Apostasy means that you once professed faith in Christ and then you have turned your back on Christ and rejected him. There is a big difference, is there not, between an unbeliever who was raised with no connection to the church and someone who had a connection with the church, maybe even professed faith at one time, and then turned away from the Lord. There is a significant difference between those two unbelievers. They are both unbelievers. They are both unregenerate, but the unbeliever who has no connection with the people of God, no connection with the church, never heard the gospel, never was raised in a context in which the gospel was proclaimed, had no contact with all of these blessings of membership in the visible church. There is a big difference between that unbeliever and the unbeliever who did have contact. And who was connected to these blessings and tasted these blessings of God from membership within the visible church and then turned away from it. The letter to the Hebrews is warning against that possibility, that second case, apostasy, which is different from simply unbelief. And the author of Hebrews is warning, that is a serious thing, it can happen. And so we need to be aware of it and think about it.

Now there is one feature of our text here that you may be wondering about, which is, what does the word impossible mean? What does it mean there at the beginning of the text in verse four, where it says, it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away to restore them. So it is impossible to restore them again to repentance. What does that mean? I do not believe that it should be taken in an absolute sense, as if, let us say this happened. Let us say somebody was once a part of the church, and then they left the church, and they are not walking with the Lord, they are living a worldly life, but then they repent, and they decide they want to come back to the church and come back to the Lord. I do not believe this text is saying that God will not allow them to come back.

God does not, Say, you cannot repent. If somebody truly repents and wants to come back to the Lord, they will be forgiven. The Lord has promised to pardon all of those who truly repent. What it is describing though, when it says it is impossible to restore them again to repentance, is that it is impossible from their point of view. It is not impossible in the sense that God will not forgive them and allow them to repent.

It is that they cannot repent. It is impossible because they have committed such a terrible sin in not only, not simply wandering from the fold for a time, not simply failing to go to church, but they have turned against Christ. They have betrayed Christ. They have disowned him with contempt. And that action of doing that, it creates something in their own heart that it makes it morally, spiritually, psychologically impossible for them to repent and to come back to the Lord.

One commentator puts it this way. This is FF Bruce. His commentary in Hebrews is very good, . He says, God has pledged himself to pardon all who truly repent, but scripture and experience alike suggest that it is possible for human beings to arrive at a state of heart and life where they can no longer repent.

I think that is what the word impossible is focusing on there. It is a moral impossibility because they have so hardened their heart against Christ that they simply cannot do it. They cannot repent. They cannot come back to the Lord. And again, this passage here is not describing the case of the professing believer who for a time is no longer going to church and is living a worldly life. It is not simply describing that case of the of the Christian who is backsliding and is living in a way that is not pleasing to the Lord for a time. It is talking about something much more severe. It is talking about an act of apostasy in rejecting Christ.

Crucifying the Son Again

In fact, it even mentions that in verse 6. It says it is impossible to restore them. Why? Because of what they are doing. They are crucifying, once again, the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. This is describing a very specific case of somebody who is not simply wandering from the Lord for a time, but somebody who is outright rejecting Christ in a public way, even though they once professed Him. They are renouncing their profession. They are saying, I used to be a Christian, but I now believe that Jesus was a fraud. I now reject Christ. I believe that he died in vain. He died as a criminal. He did not die for my sins.”

In other words, they are holding him up to contempt. They are crucifying him again. It is as if they had gone back to, the days when, the day of the crucifixion of Jesus and the mob is crying out, crucify him, crucify him. It is as if they have joined the mob again. And they are saying, they are right there saying, yeah, he should be done away with. They are mocking and scorning the one that they once believed and the one they once professed. They are scorning his death as something that he deserved. Yes, he deserved to die. Because of his wickedness, because of his false prophecy, because of his false claims, which is just unthinkable.

That is just the most, the holiest thing in the Christian faith is the death of Christ for our sins, that he loved us and gave himself for us to deliver us from our sin, to absorb the wrath of God in our place so that we might be forgiven. And made right with God through his death, through his holy, precious offering of himself for us. The author of Hebrews is going to talk about that more when we get into chapter nine and 10 and so on. He is going to dwell upon the wonderful beauty of the offering of Christ. He did not offer the sacrifice of blood of bulls and goats. He offered his own self as a sacrifice for his people. What a precious sacrifice that is. What a glorious sacrifice that is. The cross is our glory. The cross is our hope.

The Warning and the Encouragement

But these apostates, they have turned against that. And they despise that. They despise the cross of Christ. They scorn his death as something that he deserved. And so it is a much more serious thing, is it not, than simply walking away from the Lord for a time and living a worldly life. There is always hope for those that wander from the Lord to repent and come back. But in the case of an apostate, in the case of somebody like this who rejects Christ and holds him up to contempt and in effect crucifies him all over again, that is a different situation.

There is some key takeaways that we can take from this sobering text. Yes, it is a sobering text, but let us think about what the Lord wants us to hear from this passage. I think the first thing that comes to my mind is this. It really reminds us and kind of hammers home the point, does it not, that the Christian religion, what we are doing here as Christians on Sunday morning, gathering together as God’s people, who profess faith in Christ, this religion that we hold to, this Christian faith, is serious. It is not a joking matter. It is not just a social club. It is not just a nice way of life to learn how to live a good life and provide some moral structure for your life. The Christian religion is deadly serious.

It is about Jesus, the Son of God. It is about this great high priest who offered the one final sacrifice for sins. It is about his glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven where he now lives as our great high priest. It is all about Christ and about how we need this Christ.

For apart from him, we are lost. Apart from him, we are worthy of hell. The Christian religion is a serious thing. Heaven and hell are at stake. It is not a light matter to believe in Jesus or to reject Jesus. To reject Jesus Christ as the Lord, to reject his sacrifice is a serious matter and leads to tremendous spiritual impacts on a person’s heart.

Someone who rejects Christ in this high-handed, contemptuous way is crucifying, once again, the Son of God to their own harm, it says. To their own harm. They are doing something to their own soul that is devastating. And they are in danger, then, of being cursed and of having that end of being burned. In hell. That is what is at stake.

But conversely then it shows us on the other hand what is this what the positive side of it for us. That our whole point of being Christians, the reason why we believe in Jesus, the reason why we trust in Him, the reason why we go to church and receive communion and are reminded again of His glorious death for our sins, is because He is our deliverer from the wrath to come. He is our Savior from sin and from the consequences of sin. The Christian religion is a serious matter. Let us not take it lightly. Let us not turn it into something other than what it really is.

I think of it merely as, there are different ways that people do this. People think of the Christian religion as just, oh, it is just a matter of going to church and enjoying the liturgy and the beauty of the liturgy. This a lot in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox context. Where their Christian religion is not a matter of trusting in Christ to save them from hell. It is just an aesthetic experience of experiencing the beauty of the worship and the liturgy and so on. No, our Christian religion is far more serious than that. It is not just an experience of aesthetic beauty. It is about heaven and hell. It is about Christ the Savior from hell and who brings us the glory by his grace.

A second thing that we can take away from this passage is to be reminded of this truth which we sometimes forget, which is that the visible church prior to Christ’s return is a mixture of true and false believers. Now hopefully, hopefully the majority, hopefully 99% of us are true believers. But we must always remember that the visible church, this side of heaven, is a mixture. It contains both true believers and those that are false believers, that believe for a time, that believe for social reasons, that believe in seem to participate in the life of the church in an outward way, but are not genuinely saved and not genuine believers in the Lord. We should not be surprised then, we should not be shocked if we see some who once professed Christ, they fall away from the Lord.

That does happen. And if you have been a Christian for any length of time, you have probably witnessed that. You have probably seen that. People who you thought they seemed like really solid Christians, but then you realize that they have rejected Christ and turned away from him. This online today. There are many online who are, what they call, the term that they use now for it is deconstructing. They are deconstructing their faith. Have you heard that one?

And now they go online, they have YouTube channels where they say, I used to be a Christian, I used to believe all these things, but now I reject all of that. And they mock the faith that they once upheld. And they mock Christians who are still holding on to Christ and following him. And they attack the authority and inerrancy of scripture, and they try to call into question whether the Christian faith is true or not, and whether the word of God is really the word of God, and whether it is true.

Do not be surprised at that. Do not be shocked. Do not think, how could this be? How could it be that someone would turn away from the Lord like that? They seemed real. How could that happen? Our text is warning you that can happen. Do not be shocked. Do not be surprised. It is a reality. Jesus himself said that.

Remember in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, where he said that there will be weeds that will come up within among the true wheat. There’ll be weeds that come up that look a lot like the wheat, but they are not true. And they will be gathered out of Christ’s kingdom, but only at the end, only when he returns.

In the meantime, we have to deal with this reality that the church is a mixture of both true and false believers. So the first takeaway is just to really sober up and see the seriousness of the Christian faith. The second thing is to have this realistic view of the church, that it is a visible church with a mixture of true and false believers. But there is a third thing as well that we can take from this text.

This text is a prime example of what the canons of Dort refer to as the threats or threatenings of the gospel. Have you ever heard that phrase before, the threatenings of the gospel? That is a strange statement. The gospel is full of comfort and assurance and joy, but why would there be threats associated with the gospel? This passage is a great example of that. Probably one of the ones that they were thinking of when the Synod of Dort wrote that. This is from the Canons of Dort, Main Head of Doctrine number five, and article 14. It says, just as it has pleased God to begin this work of grace in us by the proclamation of the gospel, so he preserves, continues, and completes his work by the hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortations, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments. So the Canizadores speak of this idea that the gospel has comfort, it has encouragement, it has promises, but it also has threats or threatenings associated with it.

And this passage is one of those threatenings of the gospel. It is reminding us of this reality. It is possible for someone to have such close connection to the church and the things of God and the truths of the gospel that they could even be considered to have been enlightened and have tasted these spiritual blessings. And yet, if they turn away, to become an apostate and to be in this state of being so far from God that it is practically impossible for them to repent. That is a warning. That is a serious threatening of the gospel, a warning that we need to hear and listen to.

Notice, though, that it is a little bit different from what you might have been expecting. When you think about this idea of the threatenings of the gospel, you might be expecting that the threatening would be this, would be couched in these terms.

It would be couched in these terms to say, you should examine yourself to see whether you are truly saved, to see whether you are truly a believer. You might think that you are a believer because you are associated with all these outward blessings, and you have these things, you have been enlightened, you have tasted all these things. You might think you are a believer, but it is possible that you are deceiving yourself. And so you need to examine yourself to see whether you are truly a believer or not.

Now that is a very common way that many preachers preach today. You have probably heard of a pretty well-known preacher named Paul Washer. He preaches that way. And there are others as well. He is not the only one. But that is not what our text does. Our text does not say it that way. Our text does not say, though you guys should start to wonder and doubt, maybe you are one of these apostates. The text does not say that. What does the text say? How does the author of Hebrews apply it to the people of God? Let us read verses nine through 12.

He says, though we speak in this way, Yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints as you still do. And we desire, here is the key, verse 11, what we desire is that each one of you would show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” In other words, he is exhorting the people, do not turn away from Christ, but rather continue to believe in him, continue to trust in him, and to receive all of his grace that he has for us. Remember that just a few paragraphs earlier, he has that wonderful encouragement to the people of God. At the end of chapter four, he says, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin, including the temptation to waver in your commitment to Christ. So let us then with confidence, verse 16, come drawn near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

The author of Hebrews does issue this serious threat and warning. The threatening of the gospel is real. That if someone turns away from the Lord in this high-handed apostate way, that they are in danger of being in this state. But he says the opposite of that is not to therefore examine yourself to see whether you are saved.

Come to Christ

The opposite is therefore do not turn away from Christ, but rather what? Come to Christ. Draw near to the throne of grace. If you are feeling in your heart that wayward pull away from Christ, and you are starting to feel the hardening effects of sin, and you are struggling in your walk with the Lord, do not turn away from Christ, but rather come to Christ. Rest in Christ.

Trust in Him. And seek His grace. He is there for you as your Great High Priest to help you in all of your sins and temptations, to help you to continue to persevere in the Christian life by His grace. The author of Hebrews does not say, examine yourself to see whether you are truly saved. The author of Hebrews says, believe in Christ, continue to trust in him. And then he is going to go on in the next few chapters to just paint this glorious vision of who Christ is and what he has done for us as our great high priest.

When we sin, when we struggle with sin, what is our biggest temptation? It is that we do not really want to come to Christ. We feel like we are too, we are not really ready. We are not in a good state. We feel dirty. We feel like we cannot really come to Christ. And so we just sort of try to go our own way for a while and let some time pass and not really think about the Lord. Or just do not go to church for a little bit. But what the Lord is saying is that when we are struggling with sin, that is exactly when we need to come to Christ.

And we can come to him because he is there as our sympathetic high priest and he will never turn us aside. Coming to Christ is not simply a one-time thing that you do at the beginning of the Christian life. When you are converted. Coming to Christ is a continual, repeated thing again and again and again. Just like we come to communion on Sunday, again and again to receive Christ, to be reminded again of His fullness of His work and to trust in Him. The great danger is that we turn away from Christ, not that we go to Christ.

Go to Him. He will not turn you away. He is your powerful Savior, and He will see to it that your faith will not fail, and He will bring you safely to His heavenly kingdom.