On the Loss of Salvation According to Hebrews 6

"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, 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 again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt." -Hebrews 6:4-6 ESV

One thing that is doggedly defended by Arminians is the idea that a Christian can lose (or, if you prefer, reject) their salvation after it has been granted.  Having previously accepted Arminianism for the greater part of my life, I understand first-hand the furor with which this point is defended.  Regardless, I think you will find yourself very hard-pressed to find a believer who accepts Arminianism and who also accepts the above verse at face-value and will admit that a person who “backslides”, that is, one who falls from grace after having received it, is incapable of returning to Christ in repentance and once more receiving salvation.  Indeed, my experience growing up with Arminianism is that churches are filled with stories of backsliders who return to Christ.  Unfortunately, the above passage doesn’t seem to allow for this at all.

As a former Arminian turned Calvinist, I have no problem with the above passage.  Although on the surface it does refer to the loss of salvation, there are two ways of understanding it.  One (which I do not accept, but will lay out anyway just to be thorough) states that those who have “tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit” were never believers to begin with, but only had a direct and undeniable understanding of the truth and then rejected it.  To me this seems to be stretching the text in order to avoid the idea that it deals with a true “falling away” from grace.  Indeed, how else does one deal with the statement regarding the impossibility of restoring them again to repentance?  How can they be turned again to repent if they had not already truly repented before God already?  The language in the verse is strong, and I can only conclude that it refers to someone who truly shares in the grace of God, not someone who only understands it.  This brings us to the second possible interpretation: that the passage does indeed refer to a true believer rejecting the salvation given, turning from the Holy Spirit who indwells him.  This I accept entirely, as it seems an obvious interpretation of the statements given.

Now as to doctrine, the verse is not a pronouncement that people will turn from God, but is in fact a hypothetical situation intended to make a point.  In the verses prior to this passage, the writer of Hebrews states that the believers should mature in Christ, and not be continually re-laying the foundational doctrine of repentance and salvation; in effect, he’s saying “you know this much, you understand, you’ve accepted and are saved, now let’s study and learn more of God instead of continuously re-hashing the point where you started; after all, if a believer should reject the salvation given, it is impossible for them to turn and repent again, so now that you have been saved let us move deeper into the things of God.”  By no means does this mean that rejecting salvation after receiving it is possible, but it is a hypothetical statement; if it were possible, and someone did reject their salvation, there’s no hope left for them, so in either case, as believers, move on in your walk with God and seek to learn more than just the fundamental doctrine of salvation, which you already know, accept, and walk in.

Indeed, the difficulty this passage presents is not a difficulty for the Calvinist, who regards the idea of rejecting salvation as a peculiar, illogical notion (how can the new creation become old again?), but it is a difficulty for the Arminian, who must come to terms with the finality of the verse’s pronouncement: if a believer should reject their salvation, then it is impossible, according to the Scripture, for them to be brought back to repentance again.  This means that for one who has truly backslidden, they have, in effect, committed the “unforgivable sin” and the doors of grace are no longer open to them.  What does one do with this?

Of course, any given supporter of Arminianism may come up to me and say that they do in fact believe that if someone rejects their salvation, it is absolutely final.  I have simply never met the believer who rejected eternal security and yet accepted this idea that eternal damnation necessarily follows the “loss” of salvation.  But if we choose to soften the argument, to say that one may fall into sin (indeed, we all sin at various times, and are all still prone to weakness), but that this does not mean that salvation is therefore lost to us, I say bravo, and agree.  The Spirit of God draws His children back to Himself, urging them to repent, and will discipline them in order to restore them to a right relationship with Him.  This is absolutely true.  But at no point in that process do those children cease to be children because of this.  This is not a case of rejecting salvation at all, and so that argument has no bearing on Hebrews 6.

As past defender of Arminianism, my own response to this verse was to pretend that this pronouncement of the impossibility of restoring such a person to repentance (without which there is no salvation) was to ignore it.  It was a fearful prospect, and so I simply hoped that there was something else here that I was missing.  Certainly I couldn’t live under this assumption, especially since my own father was a professed Christian who turned from his faith shortly after marrying my mom.  The idea that he could never be saved was a frightening thought that I simply could not accept.  In the end, my father did return to Christ, and has been following Him now for years.  What do I make of this?  Well, as a Calvinist, I can only conclude that either his professed faith before was never truly within his heart, or else that he never truly lost that salvation but was simply living as a disobedient child for some time.  If the former, then at some point in his life (as many others have openly testified of their own lives) the truth of the Gospel suddenly became real, whereas before it had only been an intellectual acknowledgement or a ritual they had been trained to march in.  If the latter, then his life simply shows the incredible patience of God with His children, whom He by no means rejects but will always restore back to Himself without fail.  But if for any moment I accept that his prior salvation was genuine and his falling away equally genuine, then his restoration would have been impossible according to Hebrews 6.  I thank God that this is not the case.

Indeed, I thank God for the promise of His salvation that was not granted on the basis of my actions, nor can be sustained by them.  If I do good, it is not through myself, but because the same God who turned my heart to Him is also at work in me, “both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13, ESV).  To will, that is, to desire to follow Him, and to do, that is, to perform the actions that please Him.  Remember that Galatians 5:22-23 details what the fruit of the Spirit is, not what the fruit of our own efforts are.  It is the Spirit who bears the fruit of good works and virtues within us, so that those who are saved will necessarily show the grace of God in their actions as He works within them.  It is not our own effort that produces good within us, but the good that our lives produce is a direct result of the eternal salvation He secured for us, a salvation that was given when we were altogether lost so that we might never be lost again.

The Liturgy of Love

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." -Hebrews 13:8, NLT

I love my wife.  I love the small, daily rituals we have, the continual, domestic liturgy of laying down together at night, kissing whenever we first meet after work, sitting down to watch TV in the evening. It is in these small moments of ritual, not in a continual splash of new experiences, that I feel closest to her, that my heart is free to be itself and simply enjoy and relish her presence.

Love is not hindered by ritual, but thrives in it the same way a rose thrives in the day to day sameness of morning, noon and night, water and sunshine.  The ritual itself is not love, but it is within the comforting familiar that our hearts relax.  Those who seek thrills are not seeking love, because ultimately love always settles into a kind of comforting sameness, and thus the thrill-seeker must constantly be running to new "loves" all the time to keep the spark of newness alive.

As believers, we do well if we consider this principle as we approach God.  It is fashionable within churches today to pounce upon anything deemed "religious" as a kind of Pharisaical heresy, a legalistic wall to be torn down.  Liturgy, ritual and traditions are dashed and, despite scriptural uses of the word "religion" being used to describe our faith (as in James 1:27), we treat the word as though it were comprised of only four letters.

If, as believers, we approached the Lord with half the reverence shown by our more devote (and liturgical) Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran brothers and sisters, we would do well.  Unfortunately, the fashion is to chase after new experiences, or after revivals to refresh us and pep us up for another spiritually draining year, or month, or week.  For my own part I put little stock in these things.  We shouldn't be seeking after experiences, thrills or revivals; it is enough to simply know the God who is the same "yesterday, today, and forever."

To know that the same God who commands the day and summons the night, calls forth the seasons in their turn and causes the flowers to grow, to bloom, to wilt, and then to grow again; this God who keeps the world moving by His direct, tireless and continual thought, who never grows weary of making the grass grow or the cycle of the rain continue onward throughout the years; to know, I say, that this same God looks down upon me, a man, a beast, an ultimately insignificant speck in the vast universe He created, and does so with the same tireless, unending, continual love, fills me with awe, as it ought to fill each one of us who are called by His name.

So continue to wake, kneel by the bedside and pray to your Father, without concern for whether your prayers are the same as yesterday, for He hears them with the same constant care today as He did then.  Sing your songs of praise without bothering to worry if your Heavenly Father is bored with the lyrics, for He is overjoyed to hear the voice of His child singing to Him.  Walk throughout your day without seeking for newness, without looking for sparks, but instead resting in the continual comfort that comes from knowing that He is near, never taking His eternal, loving gaze away from you.  Within that endless comfort, let our hearts rest and delight themselves in Him.

Avoiding Spiritual Adultery: Preaching an Offensive Gospel

"You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God." -James 4:4 (NLT)

One manner in which we as believers court friendship with the world is in the endless striving to be "relevant" to the world around us, and to make the Gospel message palatable to unbelievers.  This behavior is not left to some fringe of the church, nor is it the sole property of "seeker sensitive" churches; this attitude can be observed in all walks of life and in all manner of churches, from the most liberal to the most conservative, and it can truly appear as a wolf in sheep's clothing as it operates in the name of that most noble goal: saving souls.  How can this be?

If you examine the lives of the Apostles presented in the New Testament, you will find that the message of the Gospel is always presented in a direct, some today might argue "insensitive" manner: It is the message of Jesus, come down from Heaven, his body nailed to a cross and hung out to die in the sun, bleeding and in tremendous pain.  It is also the message of his incredible resurrection; that being God, the grave could not contain Him.  This alone raises eyebrows, not just today, but back then as well.  It is a bloody story about a savior given an ignoble death, and...resurrection?  Even Paul was mocked when he preached that Jesus rose from the dead (see Acts 17:32), but preach it he did, and said with confidence that "The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God." (1 Corinthians 1:18 NLT)

But it does not stop with the bloody and incredible story of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection; no, the reason for His death is the sinfulness of man, and this is the most offensive point of all.  You see, "He [Jesus] personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right." (1 Peter 2:24 NLT)  Jesus died because of our sins...not us as a collective race of animals strutting about on the planet, generally being good but occasionally mucking things up, no, he died for my sins, and for your sins.  We are each, individually, inescapably, sinners before God: "For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard." (Romans 3:23 NLT)

People don't like to hear that they are sinners.  In today's cultural and philosophical climate, all assertions of morality, in particularly the assertion that people may be less than upstanding, is seen as judgmental, condemning, and evil in its own right. Suggest that someone is a sinner, and you have labeled yourself a sinner of the most heinous sort: a man who passes judgment on others.

Faced with this cultural pressure to be inclusive and non-confrontational in our religious convictions, it is easy (oh how easy!) to soften the message to appeal to modern ears.  Indeed, we may soften the message without thinking to ourselves that doing so will avoid social ridicule; we may soften the message, instead, in an attempt to be heard, an attempt to ease our way through people's psychological walls. We rationalize that if we start right out with the cross and the resurrection and (how much worse!) the sinfulness of our hearers, they will shut their ears and immediately walk away. So instead we begin by speaking of God's love, of His gentleness and mercy and of His deep, passionate desire to have a relationship with us.

All true, and all generally meaningless to those who are without Christ.  The culture already spreads a message that, if there is a God, He must be a kind of gentle universal grandfather who loves us and just wants to see us happy.  When we focus entirely on the love of God without ever touching on His justice, we gut the crucifixion of all meaning, and indeed make the incarnation itself an exercise in futility; apart from man's fallen, altogether helpless, wretched state before God, there was no reason for Jesus to die, and apart from faith in Jesus' death and resurrection, there is no salvation at all.  Paul wrote "If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9 NLT) There is no good in talking of Jesus' resurrection if you do not also speak of His death, and that death was meaningless if not to pay the penalty for the sins of every human being who places their faith in Him.

Indeed, it is only when we recognize our great sinfulness that the true love of God can be seen.  Every man and woman must first humble themselves and admit their own sinfulness before they can comprehend the magnitude of the love of God for them, for "God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners." (Romans 5:8 NLT)

Thus, if we are to preach the Gospel, if we are to truly place God at the forefront of our lives and seek His will, and not adulterate ourselves by seeking the friendship of the world, then we must preach as Paul preached, as all the Apostles preached: We must preach Christ, and Him crucified (see 1 Corinthians 2:2). And if we preach Christ crucified, then we must also preach that all men are sinners, under the just condemnation of God, for it is in this message that God's love and mercy in Jesus shine out.  We must affirm with the psalmist "God looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one!" (Psalm 53:2,3 NLT)

Someday, someone may stand before you and ask (and people do), "Do you think I am going to Hell?" That is an inflammatory, confrontational question; nevertheless, as sure as there is a Hell your answer must be "Yes." Anything less than this only serve to affirm to the unregenerate that, in fact, there may be some merit left within them, some means of escaping condemnation apart from the work of Christ; that they still have a chance on their own and need not worry too much about the message of Jesus and this awful business about crucifixion, about denying oneself, taking up one's cross and following Jesus (per Matthew 16:24).

Brothers and sisters, it is not judgmental to affirm that someone is hopeless and lost apart from Christ, altogether dead in sin and incapable of gaining favor with God; indeed, it is the most loving thing that we can proclaim, because along with this message we proclaim the tremendous, magnificent news that despite our wretchedness, God loves us, sent His Son Jesus to die for our sins, and offers us eternal salvation. That is the Gospel, and that is what we are called preach to all.