Part Two
ASSURANCE: YOU CAN'T LOSE A FREE GIFT FROM GOD!
This is a continuation of a previous blog, ASSURANCE: YOU CAN'T LOSE A FREE GIFT FROM GOD! (Part One). This is the second in a three-part series. Here, we will examine a difficult passage in Hebrews that suggests that Christians CAN lose their salvation.
For many years I have studied the Scriptures that indicate that a true Christian can lose their Salvation and I have found the most difficult to understand and refute is Hebrews 6:4-8. There are three doctrines that interrelate in our pursuit of truth: preservation, perseverance, and assurance. Preservation is God's keeping his saints saved to the end. Perseverance is the saints' continuing to believe the gospel, to love God and other believers, and to live for God. Assurance is the confidence that a true believer, a Christian, cannot lose God’s free gift of Salvation. It is “Assurance” that I believe these passages and the book of Hebrews will confirm.
Hebrews 6:4-8
“For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned” (Hebrews 6:4-8).
Some scholars who begin with the Hebrews warning passages as 6:4-8 end up affirming the view of religious apostasy as being possible for genuine believers. Meanwhile, those who give other passages more weight generally advocate that the epistle warns against those who merely profess to be Christians and are not genuinely converted.
Formerly, this was my point of view using numerous “Assurance” Scriptures to prove my case. But now I see that in the context of Hebrews alone, a true believer cannot lose their Salvation. The intention of this blog is to prove that this is the true meaning of 6:4-8.
Rule in Biblical Interpretation
One rule in Biblical hermeneutics is that you interpret hard-to-understand or difficult passages in context and by other scriptures that have obvious clear and straightforward meanings—Scripture interprets Scripture. Therefore, it is important to put Hebrews 6:4-8 in context with the entire Bible. There are four key Scriptures to keep in mind as we look at this difficult passage.
One, Jesus says to the religious fraud,
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father (believes) who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform miracles? And then I will declare to them, I NEVER KNEW YOU; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS’” (Matthew 7:21–23).
Two, Apostle John says to the religious pretender,
“Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen...they went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:18,19).
Three, Jesus says to the religious hypocrite,
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So, you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matt 23:27, 28).
Four, Apostle Paul says about the religious imposter,
“holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power... always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth...evil men and impostors (that) will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:5, 7, 13).
Appearance or Reality
Sometimes people are not who they appear to be! Most commentaries have at least two interpretations for the following scriptures that I will discuss.
one, you can lose your Salvation after you are born again by rejecting Jesus (which my old Pastor agrees with) and
two, (the one adopted by me) is that these were people who looked like, acted like, talked like, spent time with, and even professed to be Christians but were not.
They even prophesied, cast out demons, worked for Jesus, and held high places, such as Judas; but Jesus said, “I never knew you.” They were not “born-again,” they were either religious frauds, pretenders, hypocrites, or impostors. Judas Iscariot was an example of this. To the people, he was a disciple of Jesus and had a position of authority (the treasurer) but Jesus never knew him to be one of His sheep; he heard the word, he saw the miracles, he was right there with Jesus doing all the right things, but he did not believe and did not repent after he betrayed Christ. True repentance leads to Salvation. If you are not saved, you truly haven’t repented.
“For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation; but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).
Two Assurance Views
Phenomenological Unbeliever View
A Phenomenological Unbeliever View proposes the fallen seemed to be genuine Christians as they participated in the community of believers; from outward appearance, they look like believers, but in fact, by their rejection of Christ, they have shown themselves to lack genuine or true faith. They may have been instructed in the basics of the faith (6:4), heard the Word of God and seen his power (6:5), experienced the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit (6:4), shared the blessings associated with God’s salvific activity (6:4), and even repented publicly (6:6). Still, they have not borne fruit (6:7-8), and therefore do not manifest the “better things” associated with Salvation (6:9-10). Participation in Christian Community does not necessarily equal Salvation. This is taken from Guthrie, The NIV Application Commentary, pages 226-231. I would agree with this view as far as it goes.
Classical Reformed View
A Classical Reformed View starts with the expression of perseverance, where God, not man, perseveres. Perseverance may be defined as that continuous operation of the Holy Spirit in the believer, by which the work of divine grace that is begun in the heart is continued and brought to completion. Because God never forsakes His work, believers continue to stand to the very end. The warnings in Hebrews about falling away and the exhortations to endure are intended to urge the readers to maintain faith in Christ’s high priestly work, not to provoke fear that they may lose their standing with God, nor primarily to test the genuineness of their faith. Nevertheless, those who repudiate Christ thereby give evidence that they have never partaken in the benefits of Christ’s cleansing sacrifice, and the writer wants his readers to see the consequences of this in the starkest terms, be motivated to endure by God’s grace, and so show them to be true “partakers of Christ.” I think this is an extremely accurate view that gives God all the glory. (Taken from the Bible Knowledge Commentary, Four Views, 218-219.)
More Rules in Biblical Interpretation
A crucial law of biblical hermeneutics is Scripture is interpreted historically, grammatically, and contextually.
Interpreting a passage historically means we must seek to understand the culture, background, and situation that prompted the text. It does not mean we try to change the meaning to fit into modern cultures, norms, beliefs, or morals.
Interpreting a passage grammatically requires we follow the rules of grammar and recognize the nuances of Hebrew and Greek. This is where you could use the expertise of commentaries or lexicons.
Interpreting a passage contextually involves considering the context of a verse or passage when determining the meaning.
The context includes the verses immediately preceding and following,
the chapter, the book, and, most broadly, the entire Bible.
Another law of biblical hermeneutics is that Scripture is always the best interpreter of Scripture. We constantly compare Scripture with Scripture when determining the meaning of passages. In our case, I will explore in detail the book of Hebrews contextually as well.
Literary Context of Hebrews
There are those who read 6:4-6 in the light or context of an Old Testament (OT) background which illustrates the history of the Israelites of old and is repeatedly set before the readers as a warning against the imitation of their evil example or unbelief. In our text lies a reference to the wilderness generation and the Kadesh-Barnea incident (Ex Nehemiah 9, Numbers 13-14, Psalms 95) showing the failure of the Israelites to enter Canaan.
The writer of Hebrews places a warning before the new covenant community not to rebel and refuse the promise of rest which lay before them as a present reality, (rest for Israel being entering the promised land, rest for the new covenant community as Salvation in Christ). They are in danger of committing “a total attitude reflecting deliberate and calculated renunciation of God.
The wilderness generation had experienced (God's good word, provisions, and miraculous powers, yet responded in unbelief and rebellion and subsequently incurred God’s wrath. Likewise, the subjects of this text had experienced all these things (“have been enlightened,” have “tasted the heavenly gift,” have become “partakers of the Holy Spirit,” and have “tasted the good word of God and the powers of the coming age”) all of which they have experienced by virtue of belonging to the new covenant community, and now had rebelled and fallen away as their ancestors once did. It appears that in analogy to the old covenant community of people in 6:4-6 are not genuine believers or true members. Like their OT counterparts, they have experienced all the blessings, but like the wilderness generation they are hardhearted, rebellious (3:8), and possess an “evil heart of unbelief."
Wayne Grudem states the people were not yet Christians but had simply heard the gospel and had experienced several of the blessings of the Holy Spirit’s work in the Christian community. The falling away v. 6 is not a falling from Salvation, but a failure to exercise saving faith in light of the blessings to which they had been exposed. These are people who failed to believe and rejected what they had experienced and came under the covenantal curse.
Warning Not to Fall Away
The preceding context that is of importance is Hebrews 3-4 where the author frequently compares his readers to the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness. As he does in chapter 6, he warns his readers not to fall away. But here he gives more explicit statements about the initial spiritual state of those who eventually fell away. The parallels are instructive, for they show that the author believed that the people who fell away in the wilderness had several blessings similar to the enlightening, tasting, and partaking in 6:4-8, but never were saved. For example, the fact that the people in 6:4 had been “enlightened” (6:4) means at least that they had heard and understood the gospel.
Similarly, the author has already noted that many Israelites with Moses had heard the gospel (in old covenant form) but had never come to a saving faith: “For good news came to us just as to them; but the message which they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers” (4:2). The same logic can be used for “taste” or experienced something of excellence of God’s Word and great power breaking into their life. The Israelites experienced remarkable miracles in the plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna from heaven, the water from the rock, and even the very presence of the glory of God among them in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Yet they had never been truly saved: “Your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts; they have not known my ways’” (3:9-10).
He does not say that they once had believing hearts and then went astray, but rather, “they have not known my ways.” They had heard the good news, heard the voice of God, and tasted the powers of the age to come, but they had never believed. In 3:16-19 the Israelites had left Egypt—they had been “redeemed” in the great exodus from Egypt, but they were rebellious and continued in unbelief. In clear and explicit language, the author that the Israelites who fell away were never saved in the first place. In both, the author shows us only two kinds of people are in his mind: those who do not believe and fall away and those who believe and persevere. Taken from James Strong, The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.
God’s Assurance by an Oath
The context following our text is in Hebrews 6:17-20 which gives us God’s assurance in an oath. Christ is himself the supreme pledge of God. He renewed the promises, rebuilt our faith in them, and lived his own life around them. “For all the promises of God find their yes in him” (2 Cor 1:20). Indeed, the promise of which our writer is here thinking, and which the believers are to find as the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,” is the oath by which God promised a priest after the order of Melchizedek (cf. 7:21).
The whole nature of God is involved in HIS PROMISES. When the promise is reinforced by an oath, we can rely on these “two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God should prove false. It is as though God himself were to say, “If I should break my pledged word, I should cease to be God; my very nature would dissolve.” Biblical faith is always trusting in the nature of God, his fidelity, his justice, and His mercy. Taken from The Interpreter’s Bible, 651-652.
You “Cannot” Lose Your Salvation Commentary
The position I most agree with, and feel is extremely scholarly on Hebrews is by Wayne Grudum from his work entitled Perseverance of the Saints, pages 13, 162-169). He answers the question of who the people the author are speaking to in 6:4-6, quite emphatically, as unbelievers and not genuine Christians. He carefully analyzed the terms used to describe these people and concluded that the spiritual status could not be determined on the basis of the terms in 6:4-6, in essence, it could be Christians or non-Christians.
He then examined the metaphor of the field in verses 7-8, which showed that these people were like a field that received frequent rain but only bore thorns and thistles and were not saved. An examination of verses 9-12 led him to a similar conclusion. The author felt sure that, in general, his readers were in possession of “better things” than the preliminary experiences in 4-6, and that the better things were in fact “things belonging to salvation.” A comparison with chapters 3 and 4 showed that they were people just like the rebellious people of Israel in the wilderness.
Then an examination of descriptive terms used by the author to describe Christians elsewhere in Hebrews revealed that only one (“enlightened”) was used elsewhere to describe believers and none of the other seventeen descriptions of true Christians in Hebrews was used in 6:4-6. Therefore, confining his attention to the Book of Hebrews itself, and examining 6:4-6 in its immediate and broader context, leads him to the conclusion that the people in this passage who experienced many blessings and then fell away had never truly been saved in the first place.
Scriptures That Prove Assurance of Your Salvation
THIRTEEN: Believers are born again (regenerated) when they believe. For a Christian to lose his salvation, he would have to be un-regenerated. The Bible gives no evidence that the new birth can be taken away.
The phrase translated “born again” can also be translated as “born from above.” Nicodemus had a real need. He needed a change of his heart—a spiritual transformation that could only come from above. New birth, being born again, is an act of God whereby eternal life is imparted to the person who believes.
"As Jesus talked with Nicodemus, He said, “‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’ ‘How can a man be born when he is old?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again’” (John 3:3–7). "he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1 Peter 1:3).
"Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God" (1 John 5:1-2).
John 1:12–13 indicates that being “born again” also carries the idea of becoming “children of God” through trust in the name of Jesus Christ.
"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12–13).
The next blog in this series is, BY GOD'S HAND, YOU ARE ETERNALLY SECURE! (Part Three). This is the third in a three-part series. Here, we will continue to examine the book of Hebrews and how it reinforces assurance and continue with Assurance Scriptures.
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We All Have the Same Dilemma, We're Dead in Sin
Every human being, ethnic group, race, or gender finds themselves in this same dilemma. Therefore, there are three questions you would be wise to ask yourself and extremely prudent to answer.
One, why do I need to be saved?
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