Recently a member of the church asked me about the mystery found in Hebrews 6:4-6.
It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance...
This is what I said.
These verses are given in the context of moving on towards perfection (Hebrews 6:1) and growing up in the Lord. As it is a natural progression for a person to grow from infancy to adulthood, the same is also true in a spiritual sense.
In his language, the writer of Hebrews is admitting that it is possible to look like a Christian, behave like a Christian, and even be – or have been – a Christian when, in realtiy, the person is not a Christian. In essence, it is a sobering exhortation for all followers of Christ to, in Jesus’ words, “see to it that the light in you is not darkness.” (Luke 11:35)
This is one of the most difficult passages in Scripture – as it allows room for apostasy, or the breaking away from the faith. The idea of apostasy is common in both OT and NT. Remember the Israelites who were marvelously rescued from Egypt? Many of them turned away from Yahweh and worshipped other gods (and were consequently destroyed in the meantime). They were redeemed as “the chosen people” yet, over the course of time, turned away because of their own free will and intentional decisions to turn their backs on God.
In addition, the NT is filled with warnings about “false teachers” (2 Peter 2 and 1 Timothy 4) who were formally “one of us” (1 John 2:19) but strayed into the enemy’s camp. These Scriptures speak unequivocally to the fact that it is within a person’s fallen nature to choose another god and that, on some level, God chooses to honor that decision.
The difficulty in the passage lies in its allusiveness. It either says, “You can be a full hearted believer, make a mistake and/or intentionally throw it all away, and wind up in hell,” or it says, “’Christians’ who seemed to have had it all together can fall away from God - and that they could have only done that because they were never of God in the first place. God knew that so they were predestined for their particular [chosen?] fate.”
Either way, the passage raises considerable uneasiness among the faithful.
While the intent of the passage is to encourage us to press forward and not drift away, it serves a wonderful reminder that God is a holy, consuming fire. He is God; we ought to fear and revere him as the one who has the power to “destroy both the soul and the body in hell.” (Matt. 10:28)
Conversely, Jesus said that there is only really one sin that can lead us away from the bosom of the Father – only one sin that is unforgivable and, therefore, circles back around the punishment of eternal separation from God through one’s one deliberate rebellion – and that is the sin of Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. (See Matt. 12:32) In its most basic definition, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is an intentional failure to recognize Jesus as the Son of God.
Whew!
You may say, “I love God. Sure I mess up, sin, and even succumb to years of addiction and intentional mistakes. Does that mean I’m out of the Loop?” Nope - not at all. Have you abandoned the faith? No. Are you concerned about your relationship with the Lord? Yes. That says it all.
If you weren't concerned about it you wouldn't have raised the issue. You wouldn't have raised the issue if you weren't fearful of loosing it. The fact you're fearful of loosing it says you still have it.
Sometimes even married people fight because they fear loosing what they have. Their fighting and wrestling, in a sense, proves their lifelong love for one another.
While we may never know why people backslide from Faith one thing is certain (and I couldn’t say this any better than Gerald Hawthorne in his Commentary on Hebrews, The International Bible Commentary, ed. F.F. Bruce, Zondervan Publishers): [This] is not the result of a quick decision in a weak moment, but of a gradual hardening process within the mind which has crystallized now into a ‘constant attitude’ of hostility towards Christ.”
The take-a-way here reminds us of the double-edged coin of God’s mysterious ways. At the same time wherein we are reminded of the tremendous rebellion and its eternal potential of our own humanness – and therefore stirred in our souls to press on in the Faith – we are simultaneously arrested with the revelation that the Blood of Christ’s Forgiveness runs deeper than any sin and that we are securely sealed by the Holy Spirit for the glorious Day of Redemption. (Ephesians Eph. 1:14)
