Hebrews 6:4-6 - Exposition

For it is impossible for those who have been once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come, and have fallen away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. It is not, of course, implied that the Hebrew Christians had fallen into the condition thus described, or were near it; only that such a condition might be, and that, if they went back instead of advancing, they might arrive at it. The process intimated is that of complete apostasy from the faith after real conscious enjoyment of the gifts of grace. In such a case the hopelessness of the fall is in proportion to the privileges once enjoyed. This is the drift of the passage, though other views have been taken of its meaning, which will be noticed below. "Once enlightened" denotes the first apprehension of the light, which could be but once; when those that saw not began to see ( John 5:39 ); when the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ shone once for all upon believers ( 2 Corinthians 4:4 ); when (according to the cognate passage, Hebrews 10:26 ; cf. Hebrews 10:32 ) they received the knowledge of the truth. The verb φωτίζω means in the LXX ." to enlighten by instruction," and was in common use in the early Church to express the enlightenment that accompanied baptism; whence baptism itself was called φωτισμός . Thus Justin Martyr ('Apol.' 1.62) says, καλεῖται δὲ τοῦτο τὸ λοῦτρον φωτισμός ὡς φωτιζομένων τὴν διάνοιαν τῶν ταῦτα μανθανόντων Cf. the title of Chrysostom's 'Hem.' 49., πρός τοὺς μέλλοντας φωτίζεσθαι , Since the expression was thus commonly used as early as Justin Martyr, there may probably be in the text a special reference to baptism as the occasion of the enlightenment. But, if so, more is meant by the phrase than "those who have been once baptized:" an inward spiritual illumination is plainly pointed to; and it would not have been said of Simon Magus that he had been "once enlightened" in the sense intended. And this is indeed the real meaning of φωτισμός as applied to baptism by Justin Martyr, as his explanation, above quoted, shows. So also Chrysostom, "The heretics have baptism, but not enlightenment ( φωτισμα ); they are baptized indeed as to the body, but in the soul they are not enlightened; as also Simon was baptized, but was not enlightened." This consideration is important in view of one misapplication of the passage before us, which will be noticed below. But, further, those whom it is impossible to renew unto repentance are supposed net only to have been enlightened, but also to have "tasted of the heavenly gift," the emphatic word here being apparently γενσαμένους : they have had experience as well as knowledge (cf. Psalms 34:8 , "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;" and 1 Peter 2:3 , "If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious"). The word "gift" ( δωρεά ) is elsewhere used both for that of redemption generally ( Romans 5:15-17 ), and especially, and most frequently, for the gift of the Holy Ghost (cf. 2 Corinthians 9:15 , "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable Gift"). They have become also partakers of the Holy Ghost, not merely been within the range of his influence, but actually shared it; and tasted (the same word as before, and with the same meaning, though hero followed by an accusative) what is further spoken of. The expression ῥήματα occurs, Joshua 21:45 ; Joshua 23:15 ; Zechariah 1:13 , for gracious Divine utterances. The idea of the Word of God being what is "tasted" may be suggested by Deuteronomy 8:3 , quoted by our Lord in Matthew 4:4 , "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proeeedeth out of the month of God." By the powers ( δυνάμεις ) are to be especially understood (as in Hebrews 2:4 and elsewhere in the New Testament) the extraordinary ones in which the gift of the Holy Ghost was manifested, the χαρίσματα of the apostolic Church. But why said here to be μέλλοντος αἰῶνος ? For the meaning of this expression, see under ἐνσχάτεν τῶν ἠμερῶν τούτων ( Hebrews 1:1 ), and οἰκουμένην τὴν μέλλουσαν ( Hebrews 2:5 ). It denotes the predicted age of the Messiah's triumph. And if (as has appeared most probable, and as μέλλοντος here seems evidently to imply) that age was regarded as still future, not properly beginning till the second advent, still the "powers" spoken of are of it, being earnests and foretastes of a new order of things (cf. Ephesians 1:14 , where the "Holy Spirit of promise" is called "the earnest of our inheritance;" also 2 Corinthians 1:22 ; 2 Corinthians 5:5 ). There are other passages in which Christians are regarded as already in the dawn of the future daybreak, and irradiated by the coming glory. The falling away ( παραεσόντας ) after such enlightenment and such experience means (as aforesaid) total apostasy from the faith. This appears from the expressions that follow, and still more from those in the cognate passage, Hebrews 10:26-31 . "Non relapses mode dicit in pristina, sed nova pernicie praeterlapsos a toto statu illo lautissimo, simulque a fide, spe, et amore " (Bengel). Such an utter apostasy was possible to Hebrews oscillating between Church and synagogue: they might be so drawn at last into the atmosphere of the latter as, with the unbelieving Jews, to reject with contumely, and so to themselves recrucify, the Son of God. The force of "to themselves" is illustrated by Galatians 6:14 , where St. Paul says that he so glories in the cross of Christ that through Christ the world is crucified to him, and he to the world; i.e. all fellowship between him and the world is broken off. So here the ἑαυτοῖς implies the breaking off of all fellowship with what a man is said to crucify. "They crucify again the Son of God, repeating what their fathers had done formerly when they gave him over to the death of the cross; and this, be it observed, still more culpably., since it is after personal experience proving him to be "the Son of God." And they not only make him as one dead to themselves: they also expose him ( παραδειγματίζοντας : cf. Numbers 25:4 , LXX ) to the reproach and mockery of the world. "Ostentantes , scil aliis" (Bengel). The above explanation is adopted from Delitzsch. Be it observed next what is said of those who do this—not that no repentance can henceforth avail them, but that even unto repentance it is impossible to renew them. Such falling away after such experience precludes the possibility of repentance. On such persons the powers of grace have been exhausted. It is not in the nature of things that they should return to Christ, or see the things that belong unto their peace any more. The correspondence between the state here described and the consequence of the "blasphemy against the Holy Ghost" suggests itself at once; our Lord's words, in speaking of that unpardonable sin, being rightly supposed to point to obduracy in spite of experience of the Holy Spirit's power. Especially obvious is the correspondence with St. Luke's account of the Savior's warning—one of the not infrequent instances of resemblance between our Epistle and the writings of that evangelist. For St. Luke records the saying as spoken, not to the Jews on the occasion of their attributing Christ's works to Beelzebub, but to the disciples themselves, after a warning to them against "the leaven of the Pharisees," and against being moved by the fear of men, and immediately after the words, "He that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God." Compare also the "sin unto death" spoken of by St. John ( 1 John 5:16 ). Misconceptions of the drift of this passage, once prevalent, or possible, remain to be noticed.

(1) It has been from early times a main support of the strict Church discipline according to which deadly sin committed after baptism precludes re-admission to Church communion. It was so cited by Tertullian as early as the second century ('De Pudicitia,' cf. 20), and in the third used to justify the Novatians in their refusal of communion, even after penance, to the lapsi. The passage, as above explained, was really irrelevant, since it refers, not to the treatment by the Church of penitents, but to the impossibility of some persons being brought to penitence at all.

(2) The Catholic Fathers, rightly rejecting the Novatian position, generally understood the text as forbidding the iteration of baptism; thus turning it against the Novatians, who rebaptized those who joined their communion. So Ambrose, Theodoret, and others. But, though their position on this subject was in itself sound, the passage, as above explained, is as irrelevant to it as to that of the Novatians.

(3) This, and the other texts referred to in connection with it, have led some Christians to despair of salvation, however anxious for it, under the idea that they had themselves committed the unpardonable sin. This desperate view goes beyond that of the Novatians, who only precluded from Church communion, not of necessity from the mercies of God (Socrates, 'Hist. Eccl.,' 4.21). But the very state of mind of those who entertain such fears is a sign that they are not of those to whom this text applies. They cannot have entirely fallen from grace, if they have the grace to repent and long for pardon.

(4) Calvin's predestinarian views compelled him and his followers to do violence to the plain meaning of the passage. Holding the doctrine of the indefectibility of grace, which involved

(a) that one really regenerate cannot fall away, and

(b) that consequently one who falls away cannot have been really regenerate, he had to explain away the clauses descriptive of the grace enjoyed, as meaning only a superficial experience of it. With this view he laid stress on the word γευσαμένους as meaning "summis labris gustare." Only dogmatic prejudice could have suggested such a sense of the word as intended in this place, any more than in Hebrews 2:9 , where it is plainly inadmissible. Nor can an impartial reader fail to see in the whole accumulation of pregnant clauses an intention of expressing the very reverse of a mere apparent and delusive experience of saving grace. The depth of the experience is, in fact, a measure of the hopelessness of the fall. Art. XVI . of the English Church is a protest against all the erroneous conclusions above specified.