Hope Until the End

Introduction

The longer you walk the Christian walk, the more you will come across a troubling and sometimes devistating phenominon: someone who appears to be so sincere in their faith, so faithful in their service, and so knowledgable in Scripture walking away from it all. It may be a pastor leaving his church and wife to run away with his mistress after an affair. It may be an evangelist being exposed as a habitual abuser to his family, hiding his true self from the public. It may be someone who was once so passionate about Christ turning away from faith entirely. Everytime this has happened to someone I know, sometimes to very close friends, it shakes me and there is always a very difficult question, “how do I know that I will make it to the end?” Afterall, if we are honest, these people probably thought they would make it to the end. They were fully convinced they were on their way to heaven, and now they are clearly not. How do I know I will not one day be one of them? This is not an easy question to answer, and today we are going to face the brutal and disturbing nature of it head on. We must do this because Scripture does, so today let us trust our Lord that this passage is here for our good.

This passage is not meant to give you lasting anxiety about your assurance of salvation, rather it is meant to direct you towards an established assurance that is based on endurance and hope. This passage communicates three points to us:

Anyone can fall into apostacy.

It is not possible for someone to come back from apostacy.

It is possible for a Christian to gain full assurance of salvation.

Anyone Can Fall Into Apostacy

Last week, we saw that the reason every Christian must pursue spiritual maturity is because of the danger of apostacy. The Hebrew readers have been living off of skim milk Christianity for far too long and some are considering a return to the “Foundations” of OT Judaism. This would be a rejection of the reality that the OT pointed to and a return to the shadow. While the readers might have thought of this as nothing more than a return to their previous way of worshipping God, the author warns that if you reject all that the OT was pointing to in Christ, you have rejected God altogether. How can you go back to sinful human priests when the great, heavenly high priest has fulfilled that expected role? This would not only be a rejection of the new, but of the old as well since the old only existed to bring about the new. As we saw last week, you cannot build a foundation, build a house, and then tear down the house and think that a foundation will be good enough. In order to keep from going backwards into spiritual death, apostacy, each Christian needs to be eager to move on to spiritual maturity by growing in knowledge of the Scriptures, understanding in how to apply them, and spiritual wisdom by adopting the mind and heart of God, walking in his ways, guided by his Word and led by the Holy Spirit.

Last week, we saw that the readers must be careful to move forward and not backwards because of the danger of a permenant loss of their faith. Today, we will dive a little deeper into this difficult passage with the hope that we may be warning, but ultimately that we may be encouraged and assured in our salvation.

Started in verse 4, the author begins to speak of someone who has fallen away - There has been an attempt to soften the idea here in a couple of ways. Some have tried to take these fallen as purely hypothetical, but if this were the case the warning wouuld hardly carry any weight. I could warn you that if you go outside a dragon could eat you, but as long as that dragon is hypothetical I cannot expect you to take that warning seriously. Others have tried to see these fallen as having fallen away from heavenly rewards but not from salvation, but this doesn’t make sense of verse 8 and the language of judgement, recrucifixion, or the impossibility for repentance. Especially since the parallel examples are the Israelites who died in the wilderness and never made it into the promised land, the best way to understand these fallen as those who have ceased to live a life of discipleship and have turned away from the practice of the faith. Commentator Peter O’Brian:

“(Apostacy) ‘alludes to an entire pattern of disobedience and faithlessness following upon a first deliverance’.”

This can likely refer to at least three types of apostates:

Those who reject the Christian faith outright. This may be in pursuit of another faith, a previous faith (such as Jewish religion), or a rejection of religious faith in general.

Those who unrepentantly reject the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, such as the divinity of Christ and the Trinity, the resurrection, the second coming, salvation by grace through faith, and so on. If heresy is pursued it will lead to apostacy since the way to salvation has been rejected.

Those who live in unrepentant sin but continue to call themselves Christians. A growing pattern of hiding sin leads to making excuses for sin, and can ultimately lead to a place where any desire to follow Christ has been abandoned and the name Christian remains only as a way of generating a false sense of spiritual security or to fool those around them.

Who are these people that fall away? Surely, there has to be something about their life or experience that makes it so that we can know who will fall away and who will not, right?

Enlightened - Unfortunately, the passage does not get easier to read as it defines who these people who may fall away are. Verse 4 says that these apostates were enlightened. In the mid second century, this word would come to refer to those who were baptised, but in the NT context it most likely refers to those whom you would baptise; that is, those who have come to understand and accept the Gospel. These are not simply people who grew up going to church and over time drifted away, nor does it refer to those who reject a version of Christianity that is not truly biblical. This is someone who knew the Gospel, who accepted the Gospel, who was baptized or seeking baptism into the church, and for all intents and purposes could be called a Christian believer who entered into the faith with a genuine desire to follow Christ.

Next, we read that these enlightened believers Tasted various aspects of the Christian life - In the past, when I have read this text I always interpreted tasted to mean a limited, momentary experience; tasting as opposed to a full eating or feasting. However, this is not correct. NT authors use tasting to refer to a full experience of something. The author of Hebrews said that Jesus tasted death, meaning that Jesus didn’t just have a little bit of death, but fully experienced everything it means to die. Apostates have the same Christian experience as the rest of us before they fall away. If there is an experience in this life that a Christian can have, these apostates have had them.

The heavenly gift - This heavenly gift is singular and refers to salvation itself, the gift of faith granting justification before God. The author might have the Lord’s Table and what it represents in mind, and the gift of Christ’s body given for our salvation which we recieve by faith. While this is uncomfortable and may seem to clash with our reformed theology, but it is hard to read this as referring to anything else. While I am openly a Calvinist, I am first and foremost a preacher of God’s Word whether it fits into my Calvinistic framework or not. While I firmly believe that the doctrines of grace known as Calvinism or Reformed Soteriology best describe the teachings of the NT above any other theological theory, there is no doubt that this text is one of the most difficult for us to fit into that system. Instead of being afraid of this, we should be curious to understand what the author intended. What is clear here is that the apostate recieved what can only come from heaven, the gift of faith. If this does refer to the Lord’s Table, the author would have still seen this not as a simple taking of the elements, but a spiritual experience with what they represent. They approached God in faith and, according to God’s promises, they were taken out of spiritual Egypt, though they would never make it to the promised land.

The goodness of the Word of God - They have experienced divine revelation fully. They can be very familiar with the Scriptures, they have a firm grasp of theology and they have heard good preaching. Not only that, but they have experienced how good these things are. They are not like the unbelievers who are offended by the Word of God, nor are they simply tolerent of it. They loved the things they read in Scripture, they enjoyed good doctrine, they said amen during powerful and convicting sermons; they perhaps preached powerful and convicting sermons themselves. They do not perish for lack of knowledge, nor are they like the purely unregenerate who hate good doctrine; they have tasted God’s word and, at least for a time, it tasted good!

The powers of the age to come - This may refer to the spiritual gifts that the early church often recieved as a sign of the coming of the New Covenant and the Word of God coming to all peoples in all languages. Whatever you think of the use of the commonly named charismatic gifts today, there is no denying that these gifts were much more common and universally experienced in the early days of the church than they are today. According to 2:4, God used these signs, wonderes, and various miracles as gifts of the Holy Spirit to bear witness of the truth of the Gospel. Shockingly, it was possible for someone to recieve these supernatural gifts and then later fall away from their faith. The ability to do great things for God, even supernatural things, is no proof of a faith that will endure to the end.

Shared in the Holy Spirit - If we were not already convinced that the author of Hebrews sees these apostates as previously having been true Christians, this one is hard to ignore. We are told they shared in the Holy Spirit, meaning that they shared in the Church’s experience with the indwelling of the third person of the Trinity. This does not speak to an outward display of Christian faith, but a real spiritual experience with God.

Again, when we read that these apostates have tasted and shared, we are not reading about people who pretended to be Christians or who were hiding unbelief the whole time. These people experienced what you experience in your Christian life. The point is that no one can sit back and think they are beyond falling away. There is nothing about your Christian experience that is unique to the elect.

What About Unconditional Election and Perseverance of the Saints?

Now, we know that the elect can never fall away. This passage does not negate the reformed doctrine of perseverance of the saints, the biblical teaching that all of the elect will be saved through perseverance in God’s grace. In fact, the author of Hebrews himself teaches this in Hebrews 3:14

Hebrews 3:14 ESV

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

In this passage, we have come to share is referring to something that has been accomplished from the perspective of the readers. It is not something that will happen, but has happened. However, the reality is attached to something that has yet to happen, holding our original confidence, our faith, firm to the end.

Those who have truly come to share in Christ will hold firm to the end, affirming our conviction of perseverance of the saints. So, we must make a distinction between these two kinds of “Christian”; one which is elect and the other which is not. One which truly knows Christ in a spiritual covenant, and one which experienced the power and goodness of Christ without a true sharing in him.

What is uncomfortable for us is that these two have much more in common than we would like them to. Both have had a very real experience of enlightenment and faith. Though that faith is not lasting for the apostate, it is indiscernable from the faith of the elect at the time. While only the elect have the eternal seal of the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13-14), both have a real experience of the Holy Spirit’s power and work in their lives. It is possible for the non-elect to come to Christ in a way that is genuine enough to begin to experience the work of salvation. Peter speaks of such people in 2 Peter 2:1

2 Peter 2:1 ESV

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

Christ keeps his promise and, like the Israelites leaving Egypt, they begin to experience salvation, forgiveness, the work of the Holy Spirit, and even something like regeneration (or as the author calls it, Enlightenment and the heavenly gift).

However, Christ knows the human heart well and, just as he knew the heart of Judas, just as he did not entrust himself to the people of Jerusalem because he knows what is in the heart of man (John 2:24-25), he is aware that these people don’t truly know Christ with the kind of faith that endures. Matthew 7:22-23

Matthew 7:22–23 ESV

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

In this case, there are many who had the power of the Holy Spirit to do miracles and yet Christ never knew them. For those who are known by Christ, who are elected and chosen by God’s grace, they will persevere to the end. John 6:44

John 6:44 ESV

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

So, while there is clearly a difference between those who have truly come to know Christ and those who fall away from the faith, there is nothing in the Christian experience, from the human perspectice, to differentiate between the two apart from the fact that one will endure to the end and the other will not. You can never come to a point in your Christian walk where apostacy is impossible to fall into until you reach the end of your earthly life and go home to be with the Lord.

The reason this is important to take seriously is because you are much more likely to fall into a pit you are ignorant of than to fall into the pit you are aware of. Every Christian should be aware that, until we get to heaven, a lack of spiritual growth puts us in danger of becoming apostate. The elect will take that warning to heart and, by God’s grace, make it to the end.

It Is Impossible to Return from Apostacy

Again, in verses 4-5 we read it is impossible to restore such persons to repentance. Before we say anything, we should note that what is impossible is the restoring to repentance, not forgiveness. In other words, this isn’t talking about someone who bears the fruit of repentance after a time of wandering or backsliding.

Last week, we saw that someone who has so fully experienced the blessings of the Christian walk and then reject it is not going to return. If you go to a restaurant and hate the meal, you may be convinced to return, although you may feel unwilling. However, if you’ve eaten there enough and hate each and every meal, there will come a point where you will so thoroughly reject that restaurant that you will never return willingly. Likewise, the more experience someone has with the Christian life, the true Gospel, and the power of God, the less likely they are to return if they should reject Christ. At a certain point, it is impossible.

Now, this impossibility again isn’t necessarily without exception. God can certainly do a work in whoever he wants. But it is normative, and any Christian considering an abandonment of their faith should consider such a move permenant. You must not think well I’ll just change my mind later if I want to. Leaving the faith will be a bridge burned in your own heart and you cannot have any reasonable expectation that God will undo that permenant act.

But the text goes deeper into answering the question as to why such an abandonment of faith is permenant. The reason the author gives is that they are “crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.” There are a few things to say about this.

First, they are crucifying again, or more literally, they are crucifying the Son of God themselves. The cross is the centre of the Christian faith, and our hope hindges on how we interpret what happened on the cross. Is the death of Christ the execution of a controversial Rabbi who upset the wrong people? Is it the just execution of a blasphemer of God? Or was it the Son of God dying for the sins of the world? When one becomes a Christian, they accept the last of those interpretations. For his readers to go back to Judaism would mean abandoning this view and abandoning any treatment of Jesus as the Son of God. Given what Jesus said about himself, the only conclusion you could be left with is that he was a blasphemer who deserved to die a shameful death. To reject Christ now would be to put yourself on the side of those who had him crucified, seeing the cross as an instance of deserved shame rather than sacrifice leading to glory.

Second, while the author of Hebrews will emphasize several times throughout the letter that Christ died for sins once for all, the apostate carries out their own personal, second crucifixion in rejecting Christ. Like Judas whose betrayal led to the death of Christ, these apostates betray the one who shed his blood for their salvation. This puts the apostate in the horrifying position of having wasted Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice by throwing it aside, leaving them without any sacrifice for sins. Later on, the author will state that the blood of animals could never take away sins, but rather always pointed to the reality of the cross, which means they cannot go back to finding forgiveness in the blood of animals. There is no sacrifice for sins left, and their abandonment of the cross is a rebellion against God that leads only to their own harm. While those who crucified Christ the first time had hope of being drawn to repentance and faith, those who crucify him again do not.

Third, just as those crucified Christ did so as an expression of their hatred, someone who has seen the beauty of the Gospel experienced the full joy of the Christian life, the power of the Spirit, and so on and yet rejects it all shows a deep hatred, a contempt, of Christ. Whatever they may say, their disposition towards Jesus is one of hatred and enmity. Having once been a disciple, they now see nothing good to them there and there is nothing new that you could show them to change their mind. Like the restaurant analogy, once you’ve had everything on the menu there is nothing that is going to make you like the restaurant. Nothing will convince you at that point. Likewise, someone who has fully experienced the Christian life has nothing more that could convince them. All that a Christian loves they hate, not because they misunderstand it or don’t get it, but because they do understand it and they do not want it.

The example he drives his point home with is a common agricultural picture similar to many in the OT, such as in Isaiah 5:1-7

Isaiah 5:1–7 NIVUK

I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: my loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. ‘Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.’ The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

Like Jerusalem in those days, God has poured many blessings upon these apostates just as rain and sun may fall on a field. A dry field may not produce anything and we wouldn’t blame it, but one that has been irrigated and fertilized and yet continues to be unfruitful is inherently worthless. More water and more sun will not change that, and there is no hope of that land ever being fruitful.

The author says such land is worthless and near to being curse. This doesn’t mean almost but not quite cursed but rather, soon to be cursed which confirms that its end is to be burned. Without the possability of repentance and forgiveness, having squandered their chance to know Christ and be saved, they are like the Israelites who rejected entrance into the promised land: their end is death and judgement, not salvation.

We may close this section with a quote from Thomas Schriener:

Hebrews Bridge

Those who reject what is supremely good will find that they have welcomed evil, and it will be their destiny.

It is Possible to Have Full Assurance

Now, if all of this has been a bit gloomy for you, I want to end by now attempting to convince you that full assurance of salvation is possible. We know this because the following verses tell us so. Verse 11 says “and we desire each one of you to show the same earnnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end”.

A couple of years ago, a young man approached me after the service with a problem. He didn’t like that, when we took the Lord’s Table, I said that you have to be a Baptized believer walking with the Lord in order to take of the Table. He didn’t like this because he said any Christian should be able to take the Table, whether they have been baptised or not. I asked him why he thought this, and he said that the unbaptised Christian will not feel assurance of their faith if they are excluded from the Table. While that may sound compassionate, even biblical, on the surface, there is a deeper problem: I cannot offer assurance to someone who has not yet been baptized. I certainly hope such a person is saved, but until they have obeyed the Lord and united themselves openly to Christ and his people through the method he commanded, I cannot say with any certainty. When Jesus commands us to follow him, this means baptism. While it is ultimately faith that saves, baptism is the expression of that faith and shows that the church has authoritatively brought that person into fellowship. Why would I offer assurance of salvation to someone who has not yet openly entered into Christ and his Church?

Unfortunately, some prioritize feeling assurance of salvation rather than having such assurance. God wants us to be assured, and that is why it is important for us to look the danger of apostacy straight in the face. Anyone who tries to assure you of anything by downplaying the real danger is not helping you, they are putting you in danger because they are seeking to leave you in ignorance that could lead to a disasterous end. True assurance presents the real danger and then shows how that danger may be avoided.

So, when the author says in verse 9 “though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things - things that belong to salvation” he shows that his true intention is not to have his readers live in fear, but rather that they may know the danger and how to avoid the danger of apostacy. Because, despite the reality of apostacy, it can be avoided and a Christian can have assurance of salvation. He gives us two ways in which this assurance can be achieved:

Live your Christian life with earnestness, and not sluggishly. Again, this whole section is meant to convince the readers to push for greater maturity in faith. A lazy Christian life cannot produce genuine assurance. You are not saved by your works, but your works done in the Spirit absolutely do give you assurance of that salvation since good works are the fruit and evidence of true salvation. While the apostate may show this fruit for a little, they will eventually fall into laziness and carelessness. Like an athlete who builds their body’s ability to compete, you can build assurance day by day as you grow in grace and see the power of God at work in your life. This will lead to a full assurance, which is built over time as your move from milk to meat, infancy to maturity, worldliness to godliness.

Be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Flip through your Bible and observe the characters to faithfully endured to the end. Get to know Church history and learn from those who made it faithfully to the end. Find older Christians who have not only stayed in faith for many years, but have visibly grown in maturity over those years. Surround yourself with mature Christians who not only talk a good talk, but are growing in wisdom, love, faith, prayer, knowledge, and godliness. Men and women who radiate hope in Christ in their attitude towards life. This is what the church is meant to be. If you do not know how to grow or where to get the solid food of a mature Christian, find mature Christians and let them mentor you and show you the way. Surrounding yourself with such people will help you grow in faith, and imitating their way of life will keep you from falling away from Christ.

Conclusion

To conclude, we are reminded that salvation is a process that begins with justification and ends in glory. All those who are elect will make it to the end. Many who are not elect will begin that journey, but will not make it because they are drawn away through spiritual laziness. How do you know which one you are? Can you know with assurance that you are elect? Yes, you can. How? Endure. Salvation is begun with faith, but it is completed through enduring faith and patience.

If you want to know that you will make it to the end, the Scriptures tell you to look forward, not back. To strive, not despair. His grace is there for you, if only you will take it and go forward. Don’t look back, don’t get lazy, and don’t despair. Keep running and find with every step and growing assurance of your final salvation.