Don't Fall Away

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

In 2001, a professor at a college in Bordeaux, France conducted two experiments among his students in the winemaking and wine-tasting program. In one experiment he had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine and then describe each wine in as much detail as possible. What he didn’t tell the students was that both glasses contained the same white wine. He had just dyed one of them red. Interestingly not one of the 54 students could tell that the red wine was actually white.

In the other experiment he emptied a bottle of cheap wine into an empty bottle that had previously contained a very expensive wine. He then asked the students to compare the wine in that bottle to another bottle of the cheap wine. The students described the wine in the expensive bottle as “complex and well rounded”. But the same wine poured out of its own bottle was described as “weak and flat”.

Tension

Those experiments demonstrated how our preconceived ideas can influence our thinking. And unfortunately, that can happen when we study the Bible, too.

This morning we’re going to look at a passage that many consider to be the most difficult passage in the Bible to understand. And after both studying the passage on my own and reading numerous commentaries and sermons on this passage, I can certainly understand why.

But, at least to some degree, I think many make this passage much more difficult than it should be because they try to force the text to fit some preconceived theology. Obviously when the author of Hebrews, whoever that was, wrote this letter, they hadn’t heard of Jacob Arminius or John Calvin, since they wouldn’t be born for another 15 centuries. And if you’ve never heard of either of those theologians either, perhaps that is actually going to be an advantage for you because you won’t be tempted to view this passage through your preconceived ideas that fit in with their theologies.

While I am certainly prone to view Scripture through my own theological biases, I am going to do my best this morning to just let the text speak for itself.

Truth

Hebrews 6:4–12 ESV

4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. 7 For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. 9 Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. 10 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. 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

The first thing I want you to note is the one word that I think is the key to a proper understanding of this entire passage. And it’s probably not the word you might think. It is the word “for” that begins this section. That is an important connecting word that connects this section to the passage that immediately precedes it. And last week, Ryan did a great job of explaining that passage. The exhortation to grow up in their faith and not remain spiritual babies was undoubtedly addressed to the genuine believers in the local congregation to whom the letter is addressed. That means that this section we’re looking at today is meant to give further explanation to that exhortation

We also find another connection between last week’s passage and the one we’re looking at this morning in verse 12:

…so that you may not be sluggish...

Although it’s not clear in our English translations, the word translated “sluggish” there is the very same Greek word that we saw in Hebrews 5:11 last week:

…you have become dull of hearing...”

So it seems pretty clear to me that we can’t separate what we’re going to study today from what we learned last week about our need to grow spiritually.

This is now the third warning that we’ve come across in Hebrews. And I’m going to take the same approach that I’ve taken with the first two. I’m more convinced than ever that the author intended for these warnings to be used pastorally in a local congregation. That congregation, just like ours, contained people at all different points in their walk with Jesus. So, at least to some degree it was applicable to all of them, and it’s also relevant for all of us.

While the letter is primarily addressed to the genuine believers in that congregation, it is also relevant for those who are just exploring Jesus for the first time as well as those who might look like Christians on the outside, but who have never made a genuine commitment to make Jesus their Lord as well as their Savior.

Every single approach to this passage that I’ve looked at for the past several weeks essentially answers three questions about the text. Before we look at these questions, let me say that while I am confident in the answers I am going to share with you today, there are others, most of whom are far smarter and more educated than me, who have reached different conclusions.

But as your pastor, I feel like I am obligated to share with you what God has put on my heart. So I’ve been very diligent to develop answers that are consistent with the surrounding context and how Jewish Christians in the first century would have understood what is written here in the context of their religious background.

I am also approaching this a little different than usual in that I am not giving you blanks to fill in. And I don’t really have one big idea that I’m going to give you. Instead I want to encourage you to come up with a main theme that is relevant to your life. As we talk about each question, I’m going to encourage you to write your own answer based on what I am going to share and what God reveals to you through His Holy Spirit. And then I’m going to ask you to develop what you think is the big idea. And during the coming week, I hope you’ll share what you come up with in our Faithlife group so we can discuss this further.

THREE QUESTIONS:

Is the author writing to Christians or non-Christians?

To answer that question, we must first consider the purpose of the letter as a whole. This letter was likely written to a specific church congregation made up of primarily Jewish Christians. And the purpose of the letter was to encourage those Christians not to return to their Jewish religion, because it was far inferior to Jesus.

Next, let’s consider the text itself, and verses 3-5, in particular. In those verses there are four descriptions of the group of people to which this section is addressed. I suppose that taken separately, none of the four phrases could be said to definitely describe a genuine disciple of Jesus. And based on my study this week, those who come to the text thinking it can’t possibly apply to genuine disciples have not problem explaining why these characteristics don’t describe a Christian.

But if we look how several of those terms, especially “enlightened”, “tasted”, and “shared” are used elsewhere in Hebrews, we find they clearly describe genuine believers in those other passages. So it seems unlikely they would have a different meaning here. And when you put all four descriptions together, it sure sounds like a genuine believer to me. So for me, the arguments that try to explain why this is not describing a genuine disciple of Jesus just aren’t convincing.

So take a minute to write down your answer to this first question: Is the author writing to Christians or non-Christians? If you happen to disagree with me, that’s OK. You won’t be the first.

I think the reason that a lot of pastors and commentators are reluctant to say these are believers is because of how they answer the next two questions we’re going to look at.

What does it mean to “fall away”?

In order to answer that question correctly, we have to consider the context, which at a minimum includes:

The letter as a whole. While the letter is certainly applicable to unbelievers who were associated with the local church to whom the letter was written, its primary purpose was to encourage believers to remain faithful to Jesus.

The example of Israel failing to enter the Promised Land in chapters 3-4. In that section, we saw another warning against falling away from God. When we looked at those passages, we determined that “rest” was not equal to salvation and that what was lost due to disobedience and unbelief was not salvation, but rather God’s blessings. Although many of the Israelites repented of their unbelief and God forgave them, they still bore the consequence of not being able to enter the Promised Land where they could have experienced the blessing of God’s rest.

The immediately preceding section that focuses on the immaturity of these Jewish Christians. I don’t know of any pastor or commentator who would conclude that their lack of maturity means that the immaturity of these Christians meant they were in danger of losing their salvation.

The entire section that runs from chapters 5 to chapter 10. In this section, the author explains in detail why Jesus is the great high priest who far surpasses any earthly high priest. The emphasis in this section is not on salvation as much as it is on how Jesus makes it possible for us to boldly draw near to the throne of grace when we need help and how Jesus’ suffering is an encouragement for us to persevere in our trials.

I want to spend a bit more time on this idea because we are not nearly as familiar with the high priest and the Jewish sacrificial system as the readers of this letter would have been.

In the Old Testament sacrificial system, the sacrifices were never intended to atone for a person’s sins in the sense that they provided “salvation”. Their main function was to restore fellowship between God and men who had sinned and impaired that fellowship. The writer of Hebrews will confirm that later in the letter:

Hebrews 10:4 ESV

4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Hebrews 10:11 ESV

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

In fact, if you study carefully the sacrificial system, the prescribed animal sacrifices were only designed to cover unintentional sins. There were no sacrifices to atone for deliberate rebellion against God. The only way those sins could be atoned for was to first repent and make restitution when appropriate and then make the sacrifices. So the main purpose of that system was to restore fellowship with God. It was incapable of providing payment for our sins, which is why it was only temporary and merely pointed ahead to the great high priest who could do that - Jesus. Only His sacrifice is capable of atoning for all our sins and making salvation possible.

So I really don’t think this passage is merely presenting a hypothetical situation. It is addressing a real situation in which Jewish Christians were in danger of making the terrible decision to abandon all they had received as a result of their faith in Jesus in order to return to their Jewish rituals.

This warning is therefore relevant to all of us because we daily face the temptation to abandon our commitment to Jesus in order to return to our old way of life in which we lived life on our own terms. I think that is what the author means by “falling away” here. It means returning to my old way of life in which I rely on what I can do rather than what Jesus has already done for me as my great high priest. It means that when I run into trouble in my life, I try to fix it on my own rather than boldly approaching the throne of grace where Jesus is waiting to give me the help that I need.

So go ahead and take a moment to answer our second question: What does it mean to “fall away”?

For both the Jewish Christians in this church and for us, I strongly believe our eternal salvation is secure. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still severe consequences for falling away and failing to grow up in our faith. That leads us to our last question.

What is the “penalty” for falling away?

Verses 7 and 8 are really helpful in answering this question. Here the author gives us an illustration of land than produces both a useful crop as well as thorns and thistles. It is important to note that “land” is singular. This is not two different parcels of land that represent believers and unbelievers, but rather one single parcel. So this is really not analogous to the parable of the soils where there were four different kinds of soils.

Within this illustration, we also see the concept of blessings and curses - one that would have been familiar to the audience because that was a central theme in the Old Testament covenant. This is most clearly seen in Deuteronomy 28-30. Those three chapters enumerate the blessings that were promised when the people fulfilled the stipulations of the covenant and the curses they would face when they did not.

That section also described how when genuine repentance occurred, the curses would be removed, though the consequences of sin were not always removed. We saw this play out back in chapter 3. After the Israelites failed to believe God and enter the Promised Land, many of them eventually repented. And we saw that God specifically said He had pardoned them. But they still were prevented from entering the Promised Land.

The purpose of curses was always to draw Israel back to a place of obedience. So throughout the history of Israel we see a repeated cycle of obedience accompanied by blessing, disobedience accompanied by curses, and repentance accompanied by either a retraction of the curse in some way or the restoration of blessing. The cycle gives evidence that God’s covenant people never lost their position when they rebelled. But they did lose their blessing or receive a curse.

The illustration of the land here in our passage confirms that this principle still holds true for the New Testament believer. The same field can produce either a fruitful crop or thorns and thistles. When a believer obeys and serves God faithfully, a blessing ensues and fruit occurs. But if a believer remains immature, he or she will not bear fruit and what they produce will be worthless. And that will result in a curse. It’s absolutely crucial to notice here that what is burned up is not the field, but rather what is produced - the thorns and thistles. This is the same idea that Paul writes about in his first letter to the church in Corinth:

1 Corinthians 3:12–15 ESV

12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Paul confirms that while our useless works - the thorns and thistles - will be burned up, our salvation is not at risk.

For a farmer, the purpose of burning the thorns and thistles is to make the unproductive land productive in the future. And just like the Old Testament curses were intended to bring the Israelites to repentance so they could return to God, God often brings curses or chastisement into our lives for that very same purpose.

So the penalty for not heeding this warning against falling away is not the loss of our salvation, but rather the loss of blessings. When the author writes that it is impossible to restore such a person to repentance, the idea is that as long as the believer remains disobedient to God and unrepentant, it is impossible to restore him or her to the place of blessing that comes with repentance and faith in Jesus. This is exactly what we concluded back in chapter 3 when we said that unbelief will always keep me from entering God’s rest.

So go ahead and take a minute to write down your answer to this third and final question: What is the “penalty” for falling away?

Application

Let’s close by making this practical as we discuss three...

IMPLICATIONS FOR ME

Don’t unnecessarily question my salvation

Regardless of whether or not I’m right in my approach to this passage, the one thing I can say with absolute confidence is that this passage is not meant to cause genuine disciples of Jesus to doubt or question their salvation or go around worrying that they might somehow lose it.

In verse 11, the author makes it clear that his purpose here is for his readers to have “full assurance of hope until the end”. His goal here is not to get his audience to doubt their salvation, but rather to give them confidence that their faith in Jesus alone has guaranteed that their salvation is secure. That is because it is not dependent on anything they have done or can do, but rather it depends 100% on what Jesus has already done for them.

Don’t go back

Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken a few golf lessons from a friend. And I’ve found that it’s really hard to break the bad habits that I’ve developed over many years of playing golf. But when I’ve made time to practice what I’ve learning, I’ve been able to make the changes to my swing that give me more consistency and accuracy, although my golf game still needs a lot of work. But sometimes when I’m actually playing, especially when I have a difficult shot, I find I often revert back to my old swing habits.

I think that happens a lot in life and sometimes even in our relationship with Jesus. We’re doing a pretty good job of growing in our relationship with Jesus and living according to His blueprint for our lives. But then some trouble our difficulty comes into our lives and we’re tempted to go back to our old way of living or to try to fix things on our own without His help.

When that happens, what we’re really doing is rejecting Jesus’s role as the great high priest in our lives. That doesn’t mean we reject Him completely, but it does mean that we have essentially made a decision that we don’t trust that He has made it possible for us to come to God’s throne and find our help there.

And the way I make sure I don’t do that is what Ryan discussed last week...

Be diligent to keep growing

I’m not going to spend a lot of time here because Ryan covered this really well last week. If you missed that sermon, you need to go back and listen to it or watch it.

The problem with spiritual laziness is that it almost always leads to the situation today’s passage addresses.

If I don’t intentionally practice what I’ve learned in my golf lessons, I will almost certainly revert back to my old bad habits. But even more importantly, if I’m not being intentional about growing in my relationship with Jesus, it becomes easier and easier to fall away and to return to my old way of life where I live life on my own terms rather than rely on Jesus. And when that happens my life no longer bears fruit and I open myself up to the loss of blessings and the discipline of Jesus.

Action

While we’ve spent a lot of time this morning making it clear that a genuine disciple of Jesus cannot lose his or her salvation, it is also true that if you have never genuinely committed your life to Jesus, this passage, as well as the rest of the Bible, ought to be a serious warning about the consequences of not making that commitment. So if that describes your life, I can’t possibly overestimate how badly you need to make that decision today.

For those of you who have made Jesus your Lord and Savior, this message should be both a source of great comfort and a sober warning. On one hand, if you are a genuine disciple, there is nothing you can do to lose your salvation. But on the other hand, if you fail to grow up in your faith, you are going to fall away at some point and when that happens you face the distinct possibility of facing God’s discipline, which may come in the form of blessings lost or curses incurred. So you need to make sure you’re taking intentional steps to grow in your relationship with Jesus.

Inspiration

But the good news is that, even when we fail Him, God loves us so much that His discipline is always intended to get us to return to Him. And as our great high priest, Jesus makes that possible for all who will submit their lives to Him.