 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on New Start Here at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 184, Hebrews, chapters 5, verse 11 through chapter 6, verse 20. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, I sincerely apologize for the beatdown that I put on you this weekend for the fantasy. Well, I told you, you caught me at the perfect week. I had a point beatdown, almost. Yeah, I didn't have anybody to play, so that's how bi-weeks work. Yeah. So, but you know, I'm looking forward to the end of the season because one of your main guys will be on suspension. Well, we shouldn't say he's back on so. Yeah, well, he won't be back on at the end of the year. He will serve time and it's going to be over the playoffs. Well, if he serves time now, he'll come back week 16, which will be the Super Bowl, which I will clearly be in. No, he's going to play this weekend, so the fact that he's battling is going to shift it just enough. It shifts it to week, he returns week 16, which is going to be the Super Bowl, which I will be in. You're going to be out of the picture. That'll be my secret weapon. Yeah, you're not going to make it. You're not going to make it that far without him. Probably not. Yeah, well, we shall see. It doesn't matter. I'll be at full strength then anyway. The pugs will be looking for vengeance. I'm sorry to run your seven game win streak. You're undefeated. You don't want to run into an angry pug. Let me just tell you. Do they get angry or do they just get cuter and cuter? I'm sure Mori gets angry, but I can't tell. I don't know if I want to get into it. I was going to say something about Stranger Things. We have a new name for Mori, but I probably don't have all that. I'm only on episode four. Okay, I'm not going to say anything to you. I'm only on episode four. Yeah, it generated a new name for Mori, so I'll just leave it at that. Awesome. Well, I'll try to guess what it is as I'm watching it. So that gives me something else to do while I watch Stranger Things. Mike, also I want to mention that the conferences are coming up. So again, we will be covering those with several interviews we have lined up. And then also we're going to try to do a live Q&A like we did in San Antonio. And we're going to shoot for Friday, November 17th in Boston. So they're about, we're going to be looking for another coffee shop. We don't know where. So if anybody lives in the Boston area, has any good ideas, where's our hotel again exactly, Mike? Yeah, for the, for SPL, it's in Woburn, Massachusetts. So yeah, it's a little outside central Boston. If there's any listeners out there that are in that area that knows a good coffee shop, send me an email. TraceTrickland.gmail.com and let me know. We'll try to set up Friday evening. We're going to try to do a live Q&A, record it again and it'll be fun. Yeah, maybe we'll get Burnett again. Who knows, I just saw on Facebook that he's already feeling a little harried now that he has to do some teaching and grade papers and stuff like that. So it just kind of made me laugh, even though I didn't put anything on there. So I go, well, you know, hey, there you go. Welcome to the club. So he's going to have to bring it with him like, like, you know, I bring my stuff with me to these conferences too. So he's going to be a busy boy, but we'll see. What a deal. All right, Mike. Well, back into Hebrews, I guess. Yep. Yep. Hebrews 5, 11 through the end of chapter six. So technically it's Hebrews 5, 11 through 6, 20. And again, we decided to group things this way because there's a thematic relationship here. We're actually going to talk a little bit about priesthood again. But again, I sort of cautioned people when we got into the priesthood of Jesus in Hebrews, that's going to really extend on into chapter 10. So we just keep running into that. But then also the issue of, you know, apostasy, losing faith, that sort of thing, or drifting away from faith or rejecting the gospel again for some of the reason. But typically it's cast as the problem of unbelief, you know, losing faith. And Hebrews 6 is sort of known for that. So that's what we're going to hit on today. So let's just jump in to Hebrews 5, 11. I'm going to read 11 through 14. We'll start out that way. Reading ESV again, we have about this, we have much to say, the writer says, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Now this line here that Hebrews 5, 11 opens with about this, we have much to say, and it's hard to explain. Well, what's hard to explain? What is this that he's talking about? Well, I'm with most commentators here who would say that verses 7 through 10, again the preceding four verses to verse 11, are the immediate reference points. So let's just read those again. So Hebrews 5, 7 through 10 says this, in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect. He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. So that's 7 through 10. Now that's the stuff that the writer says, boy, about this we have much to say and it's kind of hard to explain. Well, there's a lot in there. I mean, we talked about this last time where you have a reference in verse 7, Jesus offering up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. Again, apparently a reference to the Garden of Gethsemane scene. Interestingly enough, the writer here in Hebrews says that Jesus was heard. His prayers were heard, but how were they heard? Well, you know, he had to do the will of God. You know, remember that the prayer, you know, let this cut past for me. But nevertheless, not my will, but your will. And because that was the answer and because Jesus was faithful, we have verse 8, although he, Jesus was a son. He learned obedience through what he suffered. In other words, we talked about this last time. Jesus learned what it was to overcome weakness. Remember last time we talked about the passage where Jesus, you know, had to go through all the weaknesses and the temptations that are common to human beings, and he emerged on the other side sinless. And so in verse 9 here, you know, after he learns obedience, he learns what that's all about, you know, overcoming weakness of the flesh because he's human in the incarnation idea. He learns obedience and being made perfect. Verse 9, he became the source of eternal salvation, all who obey him. So because he endured because he conquered weakness, he conquered temptation. He was made perfect. He was validated. He was shown to be true. Okay, in every way, nothing diminished, no, no blemish at all. And he becomes again, the perfect sacrifice. He fulfills the, the role of high priest verse 10. He's designated by God, a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. He performs that his priestly duty in this case offering up himself as a propitiation, as an atonement. And because he is eternal, then that sacrifice is eternal. He becomes the source. He grew seven, nine of eternal salvation because of it again, his faithfulness in this. So, you know, these things are difficult. You know, it's hard to explain how could the Son of God learn obedience? Well, it's because he became a man, he lived through the weaknesses and temptations common to human experience. He learned to persevere and remain sinless despite again experiencing what it was to be human weakness, temptation to sin. He felt all those things. Another issue, how is Jesus the source of eternal salvation, a high priest after the order of Melchizedek? Well, he's appointed that, but he, his obedience, his faithfulness again, validate the appointment. He does what he was supposed to do. And there's a lot of layers to this. You know, we've seen some already in chapter five. We've seen again, you know, that the priesthood idea is going to continue through. So, we're going to be running into more of this. So, the writer keeps kind of returning to this because this is what he really wants to talk about. This is the meaty stuff. He doesn't, you know, we'll see in a moment what he sort of wants to get away from, what he wishing when he doesn't have to talk about. But of course, you know, he's in a situation with his readership that he has to go back and sort of rehearse, you know, the things they should have known, things that they should already be mature and he shouldn't have to repeat. So, he's struggling, you know, with this a little bit. He says, this is the stuff that you should be ready for, but you're not. This is the good stuff. It's hard to explain since you become dull of hearing. Okay, that's Hebrews 511 again. About this, we have much to say and it's hard to explain since you'll become dull of hearing. So, the problem isn't like an intellectual one. Like, oh, this stuff is just too deep. You're not smart enough to get it. No, it's because they become dull of hearing. Well, what aren't they hearing? What aren't they getting? Let's just keep reading and again, back into verse 12. For though, by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again. Again, the basic principles, the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. You can't handle the solid food. And of course, the solid food is this stuff from verses 7 to 10, you know, the work of Christ, the order of milk is like all that kind of stuff. You know, the incarnation, these are big topics. They're theologically significant topics. They have lots of layers to them and they're deep. I think we've already sort of seen that and the writer saying, well, this is where I really want to park, but I can't. Verse 13, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he's a child, but solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Now, why is the writer's audience not ready for this? I mean, in this description, we just read again for the second time, verses 11 through 14. What are their problems? You know, what's going on here? Well, the writer says they're dull of hearing. They're low on discernment. They are apparently untrained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. We see in that little encapsulation, dull of hearing and low on discernment, of course, discernment again, being defined as you're not practicing enough on how to distinguish good from evil. We see a relationship there between spiritual maturity and understanding, comprehending the nature and point of Jesus' role as the mediator of eternal life that his obedience is what satisfies God is not just about intellectual understanding. Again, when he goes into them being dull of hearing and lacking discernment, he's referring to the stuff that he wishes he could teach them and the stuff he wishes he could teach them are in these preceding verses, 7 through 10. It's the Melchizedek order. It's the incarnation. It's how eternal salvation is brought to humans and made possible not by our works, not by anything we do, not by our obedience, but by his, by Jesus' obedience. That's the stuff that they're dull of hearing about. That's the stuff that's just not getting through. And this whole idea of discerning good and evil, we tend to read that and think, well, that's about specific sins. It's about moral behaviors. And there might be some of that in there, but at the very least, they are unable to discern, again, good and evil defined against verses 7 through 10. Well, what would be evil about, you know, failing to understand incarnation, priesthood and Melchizedek? Again, the obedience of Christ, how Jesus learned obedience. What would be evil about that? Well, the answers should be kind of evident that either you don't comprehend what all this stuff accomplished for you and you're substituting your own obedience in there, or you're just sort of rejecting it. You just, you don't want to believe. Either you're sort of unable to grasp it and you're still kind of going back to, as he's going to say right in the very next verse, in chapter 6 verse 1, you keep going back to dead works. That's bad, that's evil. Okay, that is something that the immature do, the people who are dull of hearing because that results in death. Okay, that is not the basis of eternal life. It's not the basis of eternal sonship, eternal membership in the family of God. You know, the whole basis of that is what he's been talking about from the very first verse in the letter. Okay, when we got into, again, this language about Jesus being the radiance and again, pre-existence and all this stuff, that's important because you mix that with incarnation and you have an eternal sacrifice. And it's through the obedience of that one, that person, Christ, that we have an entryway into the family of God. This should be our hope. The writer of Hebrews keeps saying, this should be the reason why you should be confident. You can be confident in Jesus. He didn't fail you. Don't be confident in yourself because your dead works, even your best works, frankly, have nothing to do with this. Well, if you can't get away from that, then you're dull of hearing. You lack discernment. You're not discerning the true gospel from a false gospel, which is not a good thing. So while I'm willing, of course, to admit, because they're going to be places in the passage where there are issues of moral obedience and disobedience and that sort of thing, we tend to focus on that, at least a lot of preachers do that, that I've heard. We tend to focus on that and we don't connect lack of discernment. We don't connect embracing good versus embracing evil with the knowledge of who it is that actually achieved our salvation for us. I mean, having a false gospel, a gospel that doesn't work, a different gospel, another gospel, that's not good. By definition, that would be, again, a theological or an evil in that sense because it's going to result in destruction in hell. So that's part, definitely, of what he's talking about. He hasn't even gotten to specific behaviors yet. He will. But at this point in Hebrews chapter five, what he's talking about is the stuff that he just got that we discussed on the last episode. This is how he's connecting back into that. He's saying, I want to go on and talk about this stuff more because this is really the heart of the matter. This is really the guts of the gospel, but you're dull of hearing. It's just not getting through. And you just lack discernment. I can't move on to the good stuff because you haven't grasped or embraced fully the fundamental things. And again, that's just not a good thing. So there's a direct relationship, again, between understanding those things and comprehending the nature, point of Jesus' role as the mediator of eternal life, that it's his obedience that satisfies God and not your own. There's a direct relationship between understanding those things intellectually and being spiritually mature. Again, just as a sidebar here. I wish I could had a dollar for every sermon I heard growing up that wanted to dichotomize depth of knowledge with spirituality. Here, the writer of Hebrews actually fuses them. He brings them together. So what should be happening is that the more you understand about these doctrines and about scripture, the more you understand biblical theology, it should produce maturity. But if you lack, again, spiritual maturity, if you really fail to grasp these things in your heart, not just your head, that's a problem. So lack of discernment, lack of spiritual maturity is in fact related to what you understand your knowledge of doctrine, your knowledge of biblical theology. The two are not mutually exclusive. Now, again, this is what the writer's concerned about. We have a problem here. If I could say it this way, when we really grasp what grace means and what the offer of eternal life really requires, that is belief. Not our own performance, but belief. When we really grasp what that means, and that's what grace is, we can think of ourselves as spiritually mature. But that means grasping some really significant core theological ideas. Those who are spiritually mature understand grace. They really do. Those who are spiritually mature understand grace. What do I mean by that? Well, they understand that eternal life is not about any merit of our own. The spiritually mature do not redefine the gospel in the wake of their own failures and sin. I mean, think about how many times we do this as believers. And I know we can all think of somebody else that does this. Well, think about yourself as well. I mean, in my own life, I had a time where I really struggled with this. But if you're spiritually mature, if you really understand what the basis of salvation is and who accomplished it, if you really understand, if you're spiritually mature, you're not going to redefine the gospel in light of your own failure, in light of your own sin. A sin is awful. It's disgraceful even at times. But since the offer of eternal life never hinged on your moral perfection or near perfection, your failures do not change your relationship to God through Christ. The spiritually mature person, the person who understands grace, will resist redefining the gospel in light of their own failure. That's part of maturity. It's part of grasping theology becoming mature. And then the writer in Hebrews is basically going to point out that I still have a whole lot of you that just this is where you're at. This is where you are redefining the gospel in light of your own failures. That shows me you don't understand it. It shows me you really don't understand it. Another thought about forsaking faith, moving from belief to unbelief. That's really the only thing that can actually affect your standing before God. If you reject grace, if you reject the gospel, you know, and this is different. Let's just say that you're prone, you have a propensity to redefine the gospel in light of your own failures. That doesn't mean you're rejecting it. But if you mentally and in your heart, let's just say if you say, well, no, I believe this is the gospel. I believe I have to have work. So I believe I have to do X, Y, or Z. And people who don't, I'm just going to label the letter they're going to hell. And I'm trying to achieve perfection here. And I need to to have eternal life. Okay, if you're there, if that's where you're at, then if that's your deliberate choice to redefine the gospel and then pursue it intentionally, you've rejected the real gospel. And that's really the only thing moving from belief in what God has done through Christ, trading the true gospel to a false gospel. That's really the only thing that can affect, you know, your standing before God. It's a rejection of the truth. Okay, you can only reject the gospel. You can only reject eternal life if you don't believe it. It has nothing to do with a specific sin that you commit. That's not what it's about. If you believe the gospel, you are eternally secure. If you don't, you're not. And I've said this many times and in the series here on Hebrews already, the point is that you must believe and it's very clear what you must believe. You must believe in the gospel as presented, in not only book of Hebrews, but the New Testament, biblical theology. You have to believe who it is, in who it is that accomplished your salvation. This has been the constant drumbeat of this book, book of Hebrews. It's about this one person, his faithfulness, not yours. You can stumble, he couldn't. If he stumbled, then we're all in a whole lot of trouble, but he didn't stumble. He was validated. He learned obedience through suffering. He did perform the duty of the High Priest. He did everything that needed to be done so that you don't have to perform in a... You don't have to have a certain track record of behavior to have eternal life. It's just not the point. But again, our propensity is, again, to add behavior to it. And in so doing, we redefine the gospel, which demonstrates that we are spiritually immature. We are not ready for real meat. We're not ready for the details. We're not ready to drill down because we're still struggling with, again, what should be apparent on the surface. So, again, I'm belaboring this because we're going to get into Chapter 6. Okay, you must believe to have eternal life. That is the requirement. You must believe. Believe what? Again, believe in the fact that God has accepted the work of Christ on your behalf. You believe in what He did, not in what you're doing or what you think you need to do. It has nothing to do with your own merit. You must believe. And if you do believe, if you believe the gospel, you're eternally secure. If you don't, you're not. Now, Hebrews and other passages, again, inform us. We're going to get into this as we drift into Chapter 6 here. That this belief must endure. Okay? You can't just like, well, I believed, you know, 10 minutes on a Sunday morning, 20 years ago, when I prayed this prayer. And now I can, you know, since I prayed that prayer, I'm in and now I can more or less, you know, believe whatever I want. No, I'm sorry, that's not the truth. Okay, you must believe. A biblical theology of belief, again, believing, it really involves believing loyalty. Okay, you're a loyal, not that, oh, well, I got to believe and I got to do all these works. That's how loyalty is defined, doing works. No, you believe and you keep believing. You are loyal to that belief. Salvation is by grace through faith, through belief. Has nothing to do with your own merit. You don't earn it. A biblical theology of belief, believing loyalty, remaining loyal to that belief. And of course, the object of that belief, which is Christ, you know, what he did, not what you do. That theology of belief does not mean we can pray a prayer of confession and then choose to follow another God or choose to follow another gospel or choose to follow no gospel at all. Belief is not uttering a prayer like it's an incantation. Now, let's think about Abraham because Abraham is going to be the example in the book of Hebrews. It's the example, you know, in Romans and other passages too. Just a little hypothetical, you know, pondering here. Let's consider Abraham in a hypothetical way. If Abraham heard from Yahweh, let's say, okay, Yahweh shows up, speaks to Abraham, and Abraham confesses his belief in Yahweh. Then he gets circumcised and then he later drifted into the worship of another God. Would Abraham have eternal life? Now, for me, that's not difficult. There are no Baal worshipers or worshipers of other gods. There are no people who are trusting in other gods in Yahweh's house. You have to believe in what he tells you to believe and stick with it. You have to be loyal to that belief. Israelites, okay? You know, if Abraham just decides, well, I'm going to follow Molek now. I mean, I kind of like Yahweh, you know, and I got circumcised. And I can remember back in that day, you know, I really, you know, I put my faith in him and did what he asked me to do. But, you know, I'm doing the Molek thing now. Okay, he's not going to be there. He's not going to have eternal life. You have to believe. Well, Israelites, the elect. Okay, what about them? Well, you know, okay, they're quote-unquote elect, but they massed of them, apostasized and went after Baal and Molek and Asherah. And what about them? You can have a bunch of Israelites who say they believe in the God of Israel. They do the circumcision thing. They do the festival thing. They observe Torah. They don't eat pork, you know, all this kind of stuff. But if at some point they drift off and they worship Baal, they worship Molek, they worship Asherah and any other deity, they're not believers. They're not believers in Yahweh. They're believing somebody else. They're believing some other deity can save them. You're not going to have Baal worshipers in heaven. You just aren't. And again, this is the greatest. This is why it's the greatest command, you know, in both Old and New Testament. It's about believing loyalty, remaining in that belief. It's not adding works. Okay, the word loyalty doesn't have it. It has to do with, okay, I believe and then I got to do so many of this. I got to do so much of that. I got to spend an hour here and there. No, no, no, no, no, no, and no. All right, it isn't about what you do. It's about what you believe. Do you believe, again, in the gospel of grace, again, that it's all about what Christ did, His obedience, not yours. And that's just, that's the simple truth and that's what the writer of Hebrews wants us to see and wants his readers to see. Now, all that kind of makes the comment, again, about discerning good and evil, interesting. Good, again, is at least includes, maybe not the whole thing about good, but good at least includes grasping the true nature of the gospel. Evil would therefore be following another gospel or altering it or changing it. Forsaking faith in what really gives salvation. And forsaking faith, turning toward unbelief is different than doubt. Turning toward unbelief intentionally is different than feeling an uncertainty or hearing something and then having your belief shake and well, I'm not sure now, I gotta think about this. I gotta try to answer this question. Again, that isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about a deliberate turning away. Forsaking faith is different than having a doubt. Forsaking faith is a decision. It's yielding to deception, perhaps, to follow another God or another gospel. Turning from the faith apostasy isn't passive. You have to decide to do it. It's something that requires volition and decision. Now, all of that is important as we turn into chapter six. Look at the first verse, he writes, therefore, light of all this stuff, we wish we could talk about it, but you still need the milk, okay? Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity. I wish we could just get these points down and then move on to the really deep stuff. Let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity. Not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and a faith toward God, okay? Repenting from dead works, turning from your own dead works and having faith in what God wants you to believe. We should already be past that point, but we're not. That's the problem. So, the nature of the gospel, faith in Christ instead of works, should be elementary doctrine that we should all be able to move on from. But you know what? Many believers, I know them, you know them, and one of them might be you. Many believers still struggle with this. By definition, then, they are not mature believers. It doesn't matter what kind of factual knowledge they have in some other area of biblical study. If they can't get over this by what the writer of Hebrews is saying here, they still need the milk. They still need the basic message. They need to just fully understand it and embrace it. What about this language, foundation of repentance? You know, the writer says, I don't want to lay this foundation again. Well, what's the foundation? Well, the foundation is repenting from dead works and having faith toward God. Well, what is that? Well, notice he doesn't contrast repentance from sin with faith toward God. That's not what he says. The contrast here is repenting from dead works and faith toward God. Those are the two things that are juxtaposed there. Again, I think what he's talking about should be clear at this point. You repent from dead works. Again, this is think about the gospel, what the gospel really is. It's about Jesus' obedience, not yours. Repenting from dead works is turning away from the things that don't save. Your works are not going to save you. They are dead works, okay? This isn't what's going to give you eternal life. You need to turn away, i.e., repent. Turn away from that stuff. Turn away from thinking that's what saves you and realize what actually does save you is faith toward God, toward what God has promised. God has given promises. And earlier in the book of Hebrews, again, in a few episodes back, there was this language about, again, the promises of God. They're still on the table to be claimed. God has promised certain things. That's what we need to have faith toward. Faith toward God is faith in what God has said, what God has promised. You go back to the earlier chapters. How does God say you get eternal life in his home as part of his family and household? The basis of that promise is, as we've seen in really chapters three, four, and five, is believing what God's son has done, not what you've done or what you're doing. Okay? That isn't the issue. Now, a little bit of a rabbit trail here, but I think it's kind of necessary. And Paul in Romans six, anyway, takes this rabbit trail. When he, you know, if you think about Paul in Romans four, it's kind of similar to what we have here in Hebrews, where he's using Abraham as an illustration of what faith really is, what the gospel really is, justification by faith and not works and all that stuff. And then he hits chapter six in Romans and he says, what shall we say then? Or do we continue in sin that grace may abound? Well, if it's not, if salvation is not about anything I do, I guess I can do anything I want. I guess I can just go sin, sin, sin. You know, as long as I believe that Christ is the only means of salvation, I can do whatever I want. And there might be some here at this point in our study in Hebrews that might be thinking that. And again, Paul actually addresses this in Romans very bluntly. So, you know, we'll just take a little segue, you know, because Paul raises the question, he ran into that. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? His answer is pretty obvious, verse two, by no means. Some translations have God forbid. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. What's Paul's point? We died to sin. In other words, we're united to Christ is his point. I mean, that's the best way to encapsulate verses three, four, and five. We who died to sin, verse two, what does that mean? Well, he tells you in verse three, okay, we were baptized into Christ. We were put into the body of Christ. He uses this language elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 12, 13. It's being placed in the body of Christ. It's being united to Christ. It's being in Christ. We are, we are grafted together with him. There's all sorts of language and metaphors that Paul uses and not just Paul, but Paul primarily uses to get us to understand or to try to understand that we are sort of fused with Christ. We have become part of his body. We are united to him. He hints at this in Hebrews two where it's Jesus talking about that we're siblings, we're brothers, we're part of the same family because of the incarnation and all that sort of stuff. It's really talking about, again, this idea that when you embrace what Jesus did on your behalf, you are joined to him. God looks at him, God looks at you and he sees him because you are embracing what God asked you to embrace. You are embracing what God wanted you to do. And that's it. Nothing else added to it. Again, you are fixated. You are attached to, you are glomming on. Again, all, you know, however you want to say it, you have become united to what Jesus did for you. You're not depending on what you're doing for you. It's what he did, not what you do or what you did. You know, we're joined to Christ. So what Paul's getting at here in Romans six with this, well, you know, if it's just about Jesus, I can do what I want. He says, look, we don't sin. You don't sin so that you get more grace. This isn't incremental. So the idea that, oh, well, let's sin so that grace may abound. That shows point blank. You don't understand it. It's not something that, you know, you go get infusions of it every day. And if you miss a few, you know, appointments with the grace infuser, then, you know, you're in trouble. No, the grace of God is shown to you through the work of Christ that doesn't keep repeating. You don't need infusions of it. You don't need injections or pills or something like that. So the idea that you're going to just keep sort of getting it as you sin shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what you're being asked to believe. So that's one point. You know, we, as believers, again, Paul is going to, I'm not going to go through Romans six, but Paul gets into Romans six and makes the larger point. Look, if you're a believer, if you really, you know, are clinging to this belief and you understand it by definition, if you really understand it, you'll be grateful. You'll be grateful. And gratitude is what should motivate you to do what's right and to refrain from doing what's wrong. So if you're living a life of sin, you're either ungrateful, which of course would, you know, kind of make you wonder, do you really understand the gospel or not? You're either really ungrateful or you, in fact, just don't get it. You think you do, but you don't. You know, does we have died to sin here? Mean we've stopped sinning? Think about that. You know, Paul says, you know, are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by no means? How can we who died to sin still live in it? Well, he obviously doesn't mean how can we who stopped sinning still live in sin because he knows believers are going to sin. I mean, he knows he sins. So that's not what he's meaning here. He's not saying that how can we who've stopped sinning as though like now we have to throw our works into the pot here and we have to add a little merit of our own. That's not what he's saying here, but people will read it this way quite mistakenly. It doesn't mean now that, you know, those of us who stopped sinning or those of you or those of us who now have found a way to make God happy with us doesn't mean that at all. Dying to sin, again, it means being united to Christ and then imitating Christ. Okay, trying to live in such a way that would honor him or that would show our gratitude toward him. It does not refer to this idea. Well, now that we believe the gospel, we have to add moral perfection to it. And that's not what the text says. Our dying to Christ is linked to being united to Christ in his death, his death, which was in our place. Christ died for our sin. We're joined to him in that payment for sin and his resurrection to eternal life. And think about that. The reason we have eternal life is not because we've stopped sinning. It's actually because Christ was raised. And again, we have this joining metaphor. We are part of that. How do we become part of that? How do we become joined to the body of Christ? Well, it's as simple. Believe. Again, that's what Paul's message is in Romans 6. It's what the message of the book of Hebrews is here. Look, Hebrews 10. 10 is kind of interesting, you know, in this regard and again, a little ahead of ourselves, but that verse says, And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Did you catch that? What sanctifies us? Does Hebrews 10 say we have been sanctified through stopping sin? We have been sanctified because we figured out how to stop sinning. No, it doesn't say that. It says we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. This is the consistent message of Scripture. Salvation is about believing in what Jesus did, not trusting or believing in what you do or what you abstain from. And again, if you're really joined to Christ, if you really get it, if you really understand the Gospel, you're not going to use the Gospel as a means by which to gratify your flesh to do what you want. People who really understand the Gospel are going to try to imitate Christ because they want to honor Him. We don't do works so that we can add our own merits to the Gospel. What you do isn't going to change God's disposition toward you in any way because your salvation from the get-go was not based on you earning God's favor in any way. It's never based on how well you perform. If salvation is divorced from that from the beginning, why would we assume later on that somehow God changes the definition of salvation or that somehow now while we were yet sinners, God loved us and Christ died for us. But now after we've embraced the Gospel, now God's watching us. And if we sin, He's angry with us. He looks at us differently. And we better do something to make God happy again. That is a way of processing things that shows that you don't understand grace. And by definition in this passage in Hebrews, you're not ready to move on. The writer of Hebrews does have to lay again the foundation of turning away, repenting from dead works. Because you need that. That's what you need. He wishes you didn't need it, but that's what you need. Turn away from dead works and look toward, have faith in what God has said. And it's on one level, it's a simple message, but on another level, it really sort of defies human propensity. We want to think that we're contributing something or we feel badly enough because we want to imitate Christ. We want to. We want to be useful to God. We want to please Him. But we take this desire to please God and we actually take that idea. I want to please God. And then we redefine the Gospel. We put words in God's mouth. We turn the Gospel into something that it isn't and it never was. Well, again, you have to have in the head and the heart. You got to know what it is the Gospel is and then believe it. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, look, you can tell he's frustrated. I wish I could just not have to talk about this again, but I do. So again, just want one little summary here before we run into the real apostasy passage here in Hebrews 6. I just want to, again, just for the sake of emphasis because we spent a lot of time on grace and then people want to talk about, what about repentance? What about good works? And hey, it's good to not do things that are sin. It's good to do things that please God. But if you take your behavior and you insert it into what God says is the basis for Him accepting you and making you part of the household of God to use terminology in Hebrews. In other words, if you add that, here God, I'm going to help you out a little bit. I'm going to supplement what the Gospel is. God says, look, I'm accepting you because of the obedience of my son. I'm not looking at your obedience because frankly, you're going to be a disappointment. Frankly, that's unrealistic. Frankly, why would I make the Gospel about your behavior when I know you're going to fail? So stop adding it. Stop adding it. And we take this good compulsion to please God and then we end up redefining what God says. Well, frankly, God just doesn't like that. That's a dangerous thing because you can deceive yourself into following a Gospel that isn't a Gospel. He's concerned about that. He doesn't like it. So why should we seek to refrain from sin? Why should we try to live a holy life? Well, it's really about gratitude. It's not about merit. And that's the struggle for a lot of people. They want to add works to the Gospel. They think they've got to do something to keep God happy with them. You know, it shows, you know, works are designed. You know, works are important because they show to whom our believing loyalty is given. Do you have believing loyalty in the Gospel? If you do, if you really understand it, that's not going to make you say, oh, great. This is awesome. I can go sin all I want now. Okay, if you really have believing loyalty, you're going to want to do good works, but you're also going to realize that, you know what? These works aren't adding to my salvation. God doesn't require them for salvation. God loves to see them because it shows our gratitude to Him. God loves when we're grateful and it helps us to be useful. Helps us to be, you know, people that are open to service. You know, where God doesn't have to spend his time correcting us all the time or, you know, chastising us. We can actually be, you know, an effective servant. Has nothing to do with merit. It has, it's about appreciation. It's about being useful. We practice holiness not to merit God's favor, but to show love and appreciation to Christ, to show the world and its powers where our spiritual loyalty is. God loved us while we were yet sinners when we were lost, when we gave no thought at all to pleasing God. It was the last thing in our minds, but even in that state of the last thing in our minds would be making God happy. God loved us. You don't need to add works to that. It was already there. You don't need to add what's already there. You don't need to manufacture what is already there. You don't have to make God love you. He already does. He did and does. So we've got to get away from this mentality and we have to stop trying to make God love us or to keep God liking us. He already did that. He already loves us. He already likes us, okay? He had that disposition before we ever cared. We work, we do good works to imitate Jesus, the loyal son of Hebrews 5. We try to be loyal sons too. This is gratitude. It's a gratitude motivation. We're not working for any other reason. We do work to imitate Jesus. That's why we should do it, to be grateful to God. We don't work to replace Jesus as the means of our salvation. Pop some works on his lap here. Jesus, we're helping you out. You've got to get past this point. Understanding the role of works, what works are really about. They validate something that's already there. They validate your faith. This is James. James never says that works earn you merit and it has a merit-based salvation. His whole thing is if you don't have works, then there's like, boy, is your faith real? He doesn't say, well, if you don't have works, then obviously you haven't done enough to earn salvation. No, he says, if you don't have works, is your faith real? Because it's faith that saves you. Is your faith real? And they're just a means to look at somebody, look at ourselves, and examine ourselves. Again, not in a merit-based system. We don't replace Jesus. We don't need to convince God to love us. He did that while we were yet sinners before we ever had a single glimmer of a thought that we should care about what God thinks. It was already there. Now, with all that as a backdrop, look at the rest of Hebrews 6. Okay, I'm just gonna read. Let's just read these 12 verses here in Hebrews 6. We'll go with that. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity. Now, let's leave the basics here. Go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance, turning from dead works having faith toward God. Let's be mature, in other words. That's the first verse. Let's be mature. Let's escape from spiritual infancy. Let's go beyond this. Now, verse 2, we also want to, again, leave instruction about washes, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Again, these are basic doctrines. It's the point here. Let's move past basic doctrines to get to the really amazing stuff. Back in Hebrews 5. Now, a few words here, washings. Now, Luke Timothy Johnson has a little summary of this, I think is worth reading, so I'm gonna read it about what's referred to here. He says, this is a teaching about ablutions and imposition of hands. Okay, this phrase, washings laying on of hands. He says, ablutions is sort of a ritual term for ritual washing. And then this practice, which he terms the imposition of hands, kind of an interesting phrase. He writes that the term baptism that's used here for ablutions was used for John's baptism of repentance, also for the ritual initiation, practiced by Jesus' followers. It's the same normal term for baptism. But Hebrews here uses the noun baptismos, which is used for ritual Jewish washings, again, a slightly different form. And for John's baptism, in Hebrews 9-10, Hebrews speaks of diverse washings, diverse baptismoise. Together in that passage, Hebrews 9-10 mentions it together with Jewish practices of eating and drinking. The usage in the present passage suggests the ritual initiation of baptism, but the plural, baptisms, okay, washings, he says the plural is puzzling. We must remember, however, that a single person could conceivably have undergone in sequence a proselyte baptism, circumcision, John's baptism and baptism into the Jesus' movement, again, into Jesus' community. So that's the end of his quote. I mean, what Luke Timothy Johnson is saying here, that the plural is a little bit unusual, shouldn't throw us off because people might have done this more than once. But the same basic point sort of stands. This is a basic idea. This is a basic practice. This is something connected with, again, sort of the beginning point of a person's spiritual journey. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, look, must we go back over this stuff again, again, turning away from dead works, turning toward faith in God, more talk about baptisms, more talk about the laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead. That's important, but it's a basic doctrine. Eternal judgment, important, but a basic doctrine. In other words, we cover this stuff all the time. Can we just talk about something else? We cover this stuff all the time. It's not that these are unimportant items, but they're sort of basic ideas that become the focus at the beginning point of someone's salvation, experience, salvation journey. However, we want to put that. This is the beginning point of being a believer, being born again and however we want to put that. This is the kind of stuff you talk about at the very beginning, but we're still talking about it. Can we just move on? Can we move on to some other, more deep things? Verse three, the writer says, well, we'll do that. This we will do if God permits. So he's hopeful that, okay, maybe at some point, we'll be able to do that. And then he expresses this lament again, this lament that we have to go over the basic stuff again, including the elementary doctrine of Christ. I mean, how many times do we have to go over the gospel? Boy, I'd like to move on. Maybe we'll get a chance to if God permits. And then he hits verse four and he writes this. And here's the most controversial part of the passage. I'm going to read verses four through 12. 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. For a 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. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it's worthless and near to being cursed and in its end is to be burned. Though we speak in this way, yet in your case beloved, we feel sure of better things, that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for His name and serving the saints as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Now many think of this section of Hebrews, you know this section of Hebrews 6. They believe it teaches that believers who lapse into unbelief cannot return. Like they are just cut off. It's over for them. Many also contend that this section teaches that believers who sin too much or too badly, whatever that means, like how much is too much and what's too bad. They say, you know, believers that sin too much or too badly lose their salvation. Now I think personally it's easier to see the flaws in the second idea than the first. You know, since salvation cannot be merited, there's a whole host of passages that make that point, including material we've seen in Hebrews to this point. Since that's the case, lack of merit cannot result, you know, in the loss of a thing that can't be merited. So if salvation cannot be earned by good works, it can't be lost by not having good works, okay? Since it's not earned by abstaining from sin, it's not going to be lost when we sin. This is just axiomatic. This is again, simple stuff, straightforward stuff. Verse 12, you know, sort of actually deserves some focus here. Again, about the, you know, what's really going on here. If sinning too much or too badly is supposed to be what loses salvation, one would expect moral performance to be what brings salvation, but that isn't what verse 12 says, okay? Hebrews 6-12, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. You have belief and then belief that endures. That's what saves. So if we can't say that he's arguing earlier in Hebrews 6 that, oh, wow, if you sin too much, if you don't have enough good works then you're going to lose salvation. No, because you would expect the contrast then to be in verse 12. Well, you got to work harder, got to work more, got to sin less. That's not what he says. Those who inherit the promises, the promises of eternal life do so through faith and faith it endures. It's always about faith. So Hebrews 6 actually contradicts, again, this losing salvation by committing too many sins or some specific sin or something like that. It actually contradicts that. And frankly, it denies, again, work salvation. Hebrews 6, again, I think really we need to that's where your attention needs to be to help you think through that second, kind of flaw. And he actually illustrates the point, that salvation, those who inherit the promises do so through faith and, again, faith it endures. They inherit the promises. And then he goes into verse 13. I'm just going to read the rest of the chapter. For when God made a promise to Abraham since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves and in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope, not our works, okay? To hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner. He went ahead of us on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So he uses Abraham as an illustration that you look at Abraham. Abraham is the one again that God counted his belief, his faith. He counted it to him as righteousness. Again, Hebrew Jews are going to know the story really well. Abraham was not saved by works. This is Paul's point over in Romans 4. He was saved by faith. The line about God countering, counting it, his faith to him, to Abraham as righteousness was before he was circumcised. It has nothing to do with the works, with the Torah, with rules or whatever. You didn't have anything to do with that. And ultimately, what it depends on is God's own character, God's own loyalty to his own promises on your behalf. And frankly, God's loyalty to his promises on behalf of Jesus, because Jesus was the linchpin to his means of salvation, the salvation he provides for us. And Jesus did the job and he did it perfectly. He was unblemished. He was validated. He was made perfect as we read a few minutes earlier in this book, in this chapter. So for God to change the terms after the fact, well, he's not going to do that because of his own character. God swore upon his own self that he would do this. And since Jesus did this all, he performs the office, high priest forever after the order of milk. Because God is going to be loyal to him and in being loyal to him, he'll be loyal to you, he'll be loyal to us. So this is the basis of salvation, faith and patient, patient-enduring faith. It's not about works. So this whole passage in Hebrews 6 about falling away and being renewed to repentance and so on and so forth, it's not about works. It's not about committing a specific set of sins or a sin or a specific number of sins. It has nothing to do with that. So let's go back to those two things that many people think. So many people think that the section of Hebrews teaches that if believers lapse into unbelief, they can never return. That was the first idea. And the second idea, the one that we just sort of covered was that people believe that believers who sin too much or too badly, they're going to lose their salvation. Well, that idea, again, is demonstrably false because of what the rest of the passage says. Now, again, what about the first suggestion? This one, I think to me, is harder to sort of see or at least harder to embrace. What about the first suggestion that many people think this section of Hebrews 6 teaches that if believers lapse into unbelief, they cannot return. In other words, God is going to cut them off. Now, it may sound from the ESV like that's what's going on, but I think it's a misreading of some of the wording. So let's read Hebrews 6, 4 to 6 again. 4 is impossible. This is ESV. It is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared the Holy Spirit, who 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. Now, first, it seems pretty clear that the writer is talking about people whose profession of faith at some point was genuine. He's talking about people who believed. They at one point said, yeah, I believe that. Now, Hagner writes this to make this point. He says the Christianity of the readers is not in doubt. They are described as enlightened, verse 4, meaning that they have been brought from darkness to light. Again, Hebrews 10.32 echoes that idea. They have also tasted of the heavenly gift and the goodness of the Word of God. Word here is not Lagos referring to Christ as the Word of God, but Ramah referring to what God has spoken. The word taste does not mean that they only partook of Christianity partially and did not participate fully, again, in Christian salvation in the Gospel. In a similar way, the word taste in Hebrews 2.9 can't mean that Christ did not fully die. Hebrews 2.9, I'll just read it to you. Same word here. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In other words, it's not just a nibble, okay? I mean, he really did it. He tasted death for everyone. He really died, so it's not this partial idea. So those who have tasted the heavenly gift, the Gospel, Hagner saying, look, these are people who heard the Gospel, understood it, believed it, okay? He writes, again, these people had become partakers of the Holy Spirit, which was a certain mark of genuine Christians. That's the end of his quote. Now, given this assumption, which is with the majority of scholarship, the key line here to me is this one. It says, to restore them again to repentance. What repentance are we talking about? Now, most scholars, and I would agree again, argue this statement in verse six. Now, let me just read the verse again so we don't lose the context. So he says, verse four, for it's impossible in the case of those who've been in light and taste the heavenly gift, share the Holy Spirit, taste the goodness of the Word, and all that stuff. When they fall away, it's impossible that after that, then they fall away. It's impossible to restore them again to repentance, okay? So this line, again, to restore them again to repentance is crucial. Now, again, most scholars, again, would feel that we need to connect that statement about repentance, this one in verse six, with the statement made in verse one, okay, about repentance. Let me read you verse one again. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go into maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God. Now, if the statement about being impossible to renew them again to repentance has a relationship to this idea of repentance from dead works, if they're connected, if that's the case, then the writer has someone or something specifically in view. Someone who embraced the idea that salvation was by faith in Christ's work on the cross, who then turned away from the true gospel and re-embraced went back to dead works. Now, here in the context of Hebrews, that would be essentially law keeping, Torah keeping. So that this person, this person in view, is going back to works salvation. And so they would need to, again, once more, turn away from trusting in dead works. They would need to, again, repent from trusting in dead works. Now, this person, okay, who no longer thinks correctly about the works problem is in danger of committing an apostasy so serious that the writer of Hebrews, under inspiration, can't guarantee that they'll ever return. Now, that's how I take this impossibility language. That language, I think, has to be balanced with God's desire in many passages, that those who are trusting in their works turn to salvation, that they actually turn to the gospel. Trusting in works doesn't make salvation by faith impossible, nearly everyone, nearly every human being who is saved turns to Christ from some form of work salvation mentality, some other religion. They all teach works, okay? So the point can't be that trusting in works makes salvation impossible. Rather, the difficulty here is that the person we're talking about rejected salvation by faith. In other words, they understood what the truth was and then they went back. They went back to works. That makes the possibility of them sort of coming to their senses, so to speak, makes it much more difficult. Salvation by faith is no longer like a revelation to them. It's no longer news to them. They've been there. They used to believe that, but now they've turned back to dead works. If they again become disillusioned by their dead work system, where are they going to go? They've already abandoned salvation by faith. This is why. This is why the writer adds the note that those who return to works, again, it's like crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up in contempt. If they reject the truth of the gospel, at one point they saw, okay, I can't be saved by works. I'm going to embrace the gospel. And then for some reason, they go back to a works mentality. If they see the futility in that again, where are they going to go? There is no other sacrifice. There is no other way to resolve the human sin problem. So if they reject, if they've already rejected that, if they've already rejected the cure, in favor of a return to works, it really does look like they're just not going to make it back. It really does look like that they can't be saved because they've already rejected the solution. Haggner puts things this way. He says these Jewish Christian readers who had so clearly participated in the fruit of Christian salvation now contemplated turning away from it all, nothing could be more serious in our author's view. He insists their apostasy would be a form of betrayal and the shocking equivalent of crucifying Jesus and subjecting him to public shame once again. In effect, their apostasy would be a mockery of the cross itself. Unquote. Now, all of that lurks behind this impossibility language. On one level, it still is hypothetical though because trusting in works in and of itself is no obstacle to having eternal life. Most people are saved out of that. The person who trusts in works must use the language of Hebrews 6-1, repent from dead works, turn away from that idea. They have to turn toward believing in God's promises. But on another level, the fact that someone had understood all that and embraced it and then turned from that back to a work system makes any future repentance seem very unlikely, seemingly impossible. I say seemingly because, and I think this is really important in the passage, the adjective used here that gets translated impossible is adunatas. It doesn't have just one meaning. It doesn't always mean impossible. For example, it can generically mean powerless or weak. Romans 15-1, let me read you the verse. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Again, the word weak there is adunatas. Same word here in Hebrews 6. There's no sense of fatalism there in Romans 15-1. In other passages though, it does refer to it kind of an absolute impossibility. For instance, later in this chapter, Hebrews 6-18, we read it is impossible for God to lie. Okay, well, that's absolute. Romans 8-3 would be another one of these. Let me read that one to you. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. Okay, there you have that, you know, this could not do. The law is never going to bring salvation. So again, that would be sort of a categorical impossibility. Now, it's still other times. We have a generic kind of reference of weakness. We got in some contexts, we've got a certain impossibility. I would say though, that there's even another alternative. At other times, and I'm suggesting that we read Hebrews 6-4 in this light, the term adunitas refers to more severe weakness or inability and therefore, you know, great unlikelihood, but not absolute impossibility. I think that's what Hebrews 6-4 is talking about. You know, that's something that's really unlikely, doesn't look like it's going to happen, but it's not actually impossible. Now, here's the passage that makes me think this. The eye of the needle passage in the Gospels actually illustrates this perspective. This is Matthew 19, 23-26, also Mark 10, 27, 18, 27. Let me just read you the larger passage in Mark. Jesus said to his disciples, Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Let's balance those two sayings. Jesus says only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of God. He doesn't say, well, there aren't a rich people in the kingdom of God because they just can't, you know, it's impossible. He doesn't say that. He says it's really difficult and then he gives this illustration. Again, I tell you, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished saying, well, who then can be same? But Jesus looked at them and said, with man, this is impossible. There's our word, adunitas, but with God, all things are possible. And of course, in the Gospels, we have the illustration of Zacchaeus, rich man, very rich, and he came to faith. So Jesus point here is that, look, to people, this might look impossible, but with God, all things are possible. Yeah, it's really hard. It's really difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. It's so hard. It's like, man, it's like a camel going through the eye of an needle. It's really hard. But what man looks at as impossible isn't impossible with God. This is the same term used in that Gospel passage as our verse in Hebrews 6. And so I think that is really how we need to read Hebrews 6.4. That when you have a situation, then the bottom line is that when you have this situation where you have a person who understood the Gospel, they had turned from dead works at one point. They really understood the Gospel. They believed it. But then they forsake it. They reject it. They reject the Gospel. They go back to a work system or in theory, nothing at all. And I think even a work system would be harder than nothing at all. But if they go back to the work system, Hebrews 6.4 through 6 is saying, it's really difficult. It's really unlikely that that person is going to come back to faith. But what we can't say is that it's impossible. It looks impossible to us, but with God, all things are possible. Why is it so hard? Because the unbeliever has to re-believe in the thing that they rejected, that they understood at one point and then they rejected. God has nothing else to offer. There is no other sacrifice for sin. There is no plan B. This is the thing that gives us eternal life. This is the only thing that can do that. And so if they've already rejected it even after understanding it, that's really hard. It's really hard, but it is not, again, technically impossible. Now, before we wrap up, again, that was the major point of it, at least this half of the episode, these verses in 4-6, again, it reinforces the message that, look, this sounds, you know, oh, so complicated, but I think that there's a way to sort of, you know, uncomplicated. Just believe. You know, some would question what I'm arguing for here in this idea of you are eternally secure if you believe. If you don't believe, you're not. Okay, some would argue that that's inconsistent with concepts like election or passages like 2 Corinthians 1-22 and Ephesians 1-13. When it comes to election, hey, Israelites were elect, but that didn't guarantee salvation. They had to believe. They couldn't profess a belief in Yahweh and then do the circumcision thing and do the Torah thing and the Sabbath thing and then go worship Baal. Okay, the evidence for that, that the view I'm articulating here is correct, that election did not guarantee salvation. You want evidence for that? It's called the exile. Okay. Because you had a bunch of circumcised Israelites who, you know, at one point, you know, the Israelites weren't always, you know, doing all this stuff, but they drifted off into worship of other gods and then they paid the price. Their election. Israel was elect, yep, yep. But their election didn't guarantee salvation. Election means something different. I blogged about that a lot. The exiles also the context for the spirit language in the New Testament. These two verses that I reference, 2 Corinthians 1.22 and Ephesians 1.13. God will not share his living space or his family membership role with other gods. Let me read 2 Corinthians 1.22. This is a verse about that God has put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee and then Ephesians 1.13. In him also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation believed in him, we're sealed with the promise to Holy Spirit. What does it mean to be sealed with the spirit? We act as though it means I have my salvation ticket and can now believe whatever I want or nothing at all. Again, that is to treat the promise of salvation, the gospel message like an incantation to be uttered or whispered or a genie's bottle to be rubbed. Okay, sealing is actually about identification. When we are sealed with the spirit, we are marked as gods, basically in a way similar to the role of works. Works identify those who believe, but works don't merit salvation. Okay, these are identifying characteristics, not that which takes away guilt and sin. Works testify to faith. They do not replace faith or supplement faith so that salvation is merited. Now the spirit of God, I would say it works the same way. The spirit of God, God's presence residing within us, identifies us as members of his family, but we must believe to receive the spirit and to remain in God's family. We must keep believing. We cannot turn to another God or another gospel. Israelites were sealed by circumcision. The Bible actually does use that language. Israelites were sealed by circumcision as part of their election and election didn't guarantee salvation. Therefore circumcision didn't guarantee salvation either. Romans 411 in fact separates the sign and the seal of circumcision from salvation. What saved Abraham was his faith, not his circumcision. God's choice, his elective choice to speak to Abraham also isn't what saved him. Abraham had to believe. This is a consistent, simple, straightforward biblical theological idea, but we mar it with the way that things are preached. We mar it with theological traditions. I mean, this gets us into the Calvinist idea of perseverance, for instance. But Calvinism isn't a synonym for biblical theology. I'm sorry, but it's not. On one hand, yes, we must persevere in belief. Sure, we have to do that. If we believe we are eternally secure, God guarantees our eternal destiny. If we don't believe, we aren't. There's nothing in Hebrews that guarantees professing believers will continue to believe. That's what the writer fears. That's what he's afraid of, that believers will reject their belief. A Calvinist might say, well, such a statement is a contradiction of Romans 8. Romans 8, 29, 30. Let's just read them. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the first born among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now, I don't see a contradiction. The passage is actually talking about sanctification. Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. The passage is actually talking about sanctification, which isn't salvation, but of course it's connected to salvation. Think about the passage this way. It is absolutely true that anyone glorified was justified and anyone justified was called. And anyone called was predestined and things that are predestined are foreknown. Because God foreknows everything, even the stuff that doesn't happen, in which case his foreknowledge doesn't necessitate predestination. But what's the predestinating about? It's about being conformed to the image of God's son. Now, here's how I read Romans 8. In the context of other passages, anyone who keeps believing and who therefore inherits eternal life will be glorified because that's part and parcel of eternal life. Severs, too, were made members of God's council family. And that person, the glorified person who makes it all the way to the end, is glorified because they were justified. And they were justified because they believed and didn't turn from belief. The person who makes it all the way to glorification was indeed justified, called, and predestined. The latter part really is about remnant theology. But all of that, all of it, depends on believing the Gospel. Calvinists want to predestinate belief, but the passage never actually says that. Calvinists want to link predestination with faith and then argue that faith cannot be surrendered because the person's belief was foreknown and therefore must have been predestinated. Well, again, news flashed to the hard-line Calvinists. God also foreknows people who will forsake faith. The people that the writer of Hebrews is worried about were and are real. In Calvinist logic, therefore, saking of faith must also therefore have been predestinated. So not only does God predestinate the lost in that system. In other words, the non-elect. And one wonders about elect, because the non-elect in the Old Testament later become elect. But let's just set that aside. In Calvinist logic, the forsaking of faith must also have been predestinated. But God also predestinates the loss of what he predestinated earlier. So you have, in Calvinist system, you've got, okay, those predestinated hell. I'm talking about the hard-liners here. Those predestinated to heaven. Well, if God foreknew that some people would have faith and then lose it, they would believe and then abandon it. Well, then now you have God predestinating both the loss of what he had predestinated earlier. If both belief and unbelief for the same person are predestinated because both decisions of that same person are foreknown, that's what you get. This is why Calvinists must say that the people in Hebrews 6-4 and 5, or Hebrews 6-2-4, the ones who were enlightened, who taste the heavenly gift, who shared the Holy Spirit, Calvinists must say they weren't really enlightened. They didn't really taste the heavenly gift and they didn't really share in the Spirit. If those people are believers, then God both foreknew and predestinated their embracing of the gospel and their apostasy, because they were both foreknown. One act of predestination un-predestines the other. Again, look at the quandary. You either have to deny in Hebrews 6-2-4 plain language used elsewhere that describes believers and taste the heavenly gift, share in the Holy Spirit. We're enlightened, went from darkness to light. You have to deny that that refers to believers here when it refers to believers in lots of other places. You either have to deny that to avoid this predestinating and then un-predestinating what was earlier predestinated. Look, this is why systems just complicate things. The person who believes whose faith remains was certainly glorified. Okay, they're going to reach the end. They're going to be glorified. And if they're glorified, they were called. They were justified. They were foreknown. They were predestinated. God knows all that. It's when we start to get into this causative element that we run into problems. When we link without any qualification, foreknowledge and predestination, it forces us to deny clear biblical language for salvation in Hebrews 6. Else our system sounds ridiculous. That's just what you get. It's so much simpler to just affirm what the text says. Okay, that's what we try to do here in the podcast. Here are the simple facts as we wrap up. Salvation is only by faith or belief in the one who secured it. The one who secured atonement. That's Christ. Hebrews 1 through 5. We've been there for weeks now. Number two, we must all repent. We must all change our thinking about dead works. We have to stop behaving, living, thinking as though our works can save us. They cannot save us because there's no merit. Third, we cannot sin away salvation because salvation was never about doing enough good works or abstaining from enough bad works to merit salvation. But salvation can be rejected even by those who once claimed to believe it. You know, people who profess to believe it, they can reject it. Four, it is very unlikely that anyone who believes the gospel and then rejects that same gospel to return to dead works will come back to faith. It's very unlikely, but it's not truly impossible. It's just very unlikely. Fifth, we are therefore eternally secure if we believe. That cuts through the whole thing, cuts through all the mess. We are eternally secure if we believe, if we don't believe we aren't. Yet I'm tempted to say, don't go away from this episode scared and say, oh, this is so hard. What do I do? How can I be saved? Well, it's actually easy. But the writer of Hebrews actually wanted his readers to feel a little trepidation here because belief is eternally serious. I would say that the takeaway from Hebrews 6 in this episode is the same that we've already seen. You can actually reduce the takeaway to one word, believe. What's that journey sign? Don't stop believing. Actually, it comes to mind on that. But you know, I was going to say, leave it to you to think of that trade, but you actually have a point. Let's edit that out. No, but I think this repentance and works versus grace and faith is very important. I've never really been able to articulate grace versus repentance or works versus faith and that. But I think what you're doing here now is giving us a tool that we can say, here you go, go listen to episode 184. The merit is the key. You know, why are you doing, Christian, why are you doing the works that you're doing? If you're doing them thinking that you need to do them to keep God happy, that you want God to still look at you the way he did a year ago, a week ago, whatever, then you don't understand grace. The correct answer is I'm doing this because I'm grateful. I'm doing this to be like the obedient son. I'm doing this to be like Christ. I know it doesn't earn me anything. I just want to do it. You have a lot of Christians that really pound home the repentance. They can't get over that. They're stuck on it and the works. Right, and if we're living in sin, we ought to repent. But again, why are you repenting? Are you repenting because you're convinced that you made your profession of faith and you really do believe in the gospel? But are you repenting now because you want God to love you? Are you repenting now thinking that you need to get saved again? Merit is the issue. Are you repenting so that now you can feel like you've earned salvation? A lot of Christians would say like, No, I mean, I would never think that. Well, that's good. So hold that thought in your head. Your act of repentance. Yes, you need to stop cheating on your wife. You need to repent of X, Ys. You need to repent. But when you do, I'm glad to hear that you know you're not doing it to earn salvation. You're doing it because it makes you less useful to God. It's a terrible testimony. It's self-destructive. It's going to destroy people around you. Lots of good reasons to repent. But we don't repent so that we can redefine the gospel. That's not why we do it. But a lot of people are just stuck in that loop. And that's why guilt is such a factor. You know, I'm not saying we shouldn't, if we're deep in sin, we shouldn't feel good. I'm not saying that. But once you do repent, the cycle of guilt shows that you're really stuck in this loop of you wonder if you're good enough now for God to like you again. That in itself is really self-destructive. That shows that you haven't quite escaped from this mentality that says, what I do is really important to the way, you know, to whether God loves me or not. And that is something, those are two things you have to clearly distinguish in your head, you know, to be able to move on. So yes, you know, live a holy life. Yes, repent from sin, but understand the relationship of your repentance, your behavior, your works to how God looks at you while you were getting a sinner before this ever would have been a conversation. Christ died for you. He had the disposition way back there. He doesn't, you're not going to give him the disposition toward you that he already has. All right, Mike. Another good episode next week. Chapter seven, milk is a deck. Back in the muck is who we got more to say about it. Can't get rid of that guy. Yeah, yeah, there are a few there specifically to think two places we're going to drill down on that. But yep, yep, he's he's coming back. He's back. I figured you all you it's going to be a five minute show. You're just going to reference the past. Go listen to that other stuff. Yeah, listen. I figured that's what it'll be consistent about. But all right, Mike, we're looking forward to that. And again, if you haven't done so, go read us, review us wherever you consume us. Let us know how we're doing and we want to thank everybody for listening to the naked Bible podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the naked Bible podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.ermsh.com.