This is part of my Exegetical Commentary series which I’m sllloowwwlly posting up here.
Heb 10:26-39; “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. …] For it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God!” If Hebrews 6 is one of the big guns shot against the hope of final salvation from sin, this is an even bigger gun, often combined with the former chapter, and reasonably so because the topics overlap so well. By the same token, any conclusions specially due to the extra detail, will count back in the proper interpretation of Heb 6.
Once again, like Heb 6, hardcore Arminians appeal to this chapter as evidence that it doesn’t matter how far into the life of Christ someone might be, they can still permanently lose their salvation from sin and be permanently damned instead. Calvinists, and softer Arminians (who acknowledge God’s victorious persistence but who unlike Calvs think someone has to properly convince God to persist before He’ll persist), naturally argue against this by various methods (including by testimony in this chapter which we’ll get to presently); but if the punishment isn’t hopeless, and actually aims at a sure and certain salvation from sin after all, then much of the dispute can be immediately resolved.
To start with, who is being warned? People who have already “received the knowledge of the truth” (v.26); and just in case someone doesn’t recognize that phrase as involving salvation (as in 1 Tim 2:4 for example, where the context definitely involves salvation in regard to “coming to the knowledge of the truth”; also 2 Tim 2:25, where God grants “repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth”), the Hebraist goes on in verse 29 to say that such a person has already been sanctified (or at least is being sanctified) by the blood of the covenant! This isn’t aimed at those pagans or non-Christian Jews over there, or even at people superficially in the church who were only pretending to be sanctified. (See also comments on Heb 6.)
It is true that the Hebraist feels pretty sure, or at least has good hope (as also in chapter 6) that his congregation is not among those who shrink back to destruction ({apôleian}, a cognate of a standard term for being lost or punitively unmade), in whom the soul of God has no pleasure (vv.38-39), and so he exhorts them not to throw away their confidence (v.35). But he does clearly treat them as though they can throw away their confidence rather than enduring to the end so as to receive the promise (v.36).
So how are these who are already being (or have been) sanctified sinning? And why is such a sin so great?
If, after being sanctified and receiving the knowledge of the truth (and drawing near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having a heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and having bodies washed with pure water, 10:22), we go on sinning willfully? Then obviously there is trouble.
Note that these are people who have previously been delivered from an evil conscience! And yet they are continuing to sin, not being troubled in their conscience (or not yet) about this for some reason. And this isn’t an accidental or incidental sin, this is some kind of continuing willful sin.
Naturally, so long as they continue to do this, no sacrifice remains for them; which implies that if they will stop, and repent of their sin, the sacrifice will apply again. Which sacrifice? The sacrifice of the Son of God, which by doing whatever they are doing they are trampling underfoot. And there at verse 29 the Hebraist gets more specific: such a person is regarding as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was, or is being, sanctified, and has thereby insulted (or blasphemed) the Spirit of grace.
Well, obviously, so long as someone regards the blood of the covenant as unclean, trampling down the sacrifice of the Son of God, and thus blaspheming the Spirit of grace, that person is certainly not going to be saved from God’s punishments! Again there are obvious parallels to Hebrews 6: so long as they are holding up Christ to scorn, even crucifying Him again and this time to themselves, they cannot be renewed to repentance.
And yet, as Calvinists and softer Arminians will properly stress in reply, the Hebraist has not long previously (back in 9:14) stressed that the blood of Christ Who {dia pneumatos aiôniou}, through His eonian Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God, shall surely (“how much moreso”) cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God! Whereupon, not incidentally, he goes on to talk about Christ as the mediator of the new covenant, specifically referencing the Abrahamic covenant made not actually between God and Abraham (except by proxy) but between the Father and the Son, with the Son vouching for Abraham as the descendant or seed of Abraham.
So if the Hebraist (and St. Paul in Galatians) is stressing that the covenant cannot fail or be broken by the sin of any of Abraham’s descendants (which by the incarnation of the Creator Himself must be all rational creatures, not by physical descent but through Christ), so long as Christ dies for any sin in order to ratify the covenant and keep it in effect – then how can anyone say that the covenant will be finally broken and Christ’s sacrifice be made of no effect?!
Because the problem, as each side is aware when critiquing the other side, is that each side is claiming (even using this scripture as evidence!) that the covenant between Father and Son will be of no effect one way or another.
Arminians complain that Calvinists make the scope of God’s covenant between Father and Son to save sinners of no effect; thus God does not effectively apply the covenant to all rational creatures only to some of them despite God sending His Son to be a propitiation not only for our sins but for the sins of the whole world.
Calvinists complain that Arminians make the assurance of God’s covenant between Father and Son to save sinners of no effect; thus the Persons of God are either beaten by sinners in bringing the covenant to fruition, or else one or both Persons choose to quit bringing the covenant to completion even though God could succeed if the Persons of God just kept at it. Calvs also complain that in order to get any assurance (which some Arminians just deny outright anyway), Arms think God has to be convinced to either put the covenant into effect at all or else to not quit on the covenant, when in fact Christ stands as surety by the promise between the Persons given gratuitously between One Another. (Calvs also complain that many Arms tacitly or explicitly exclude any rebel angels from God’s intention to save, meaning those Arminians are actually Calvinists in regard to non-election after all! – while also denying the surety of God’s original chosen intention to save whomever He does intend to save from sin!)
But then all sides look at something like the second half of Hebrews 10; and being committed to the idea that, in effect, Christ’s sacrifice must surely somehow be of no effect to save after all, they exercise themselves in dispute about who the Hebraist must really be warning instead of themselves – except for the hardcore Arminians, who acknowledge that the Hebraist is warning otherwise dedicated Christians, including themselves, not to treat the sacrifice of Christ as being worthless – but who then go on to claim that the threatened punishment involves a result where the sacrifice of Christ is actually worthless to save after all!
Yet the punishment being explicitly referenced by the Hebraist, from Deuteronomy 32, although fierce, and to be avoided if possible (and not by trying to trick God out of it by legal technicalities, nor by someone convincing God not to do it), is the very reverse of hopeless. On the contrary, God through Moses treats it as the only way some sinners will learn to stop sinning.
It is, after all, a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Yet earlier, the Hebraist said (at 3:15) that the problem was falling away from the living God, not falling into His hands; and here again the problem is clearly falling away somehow, not falling into His hands.
Maybe we (since “we” are being warned here) should check just how well “we” know Him Who said, “Vengeance is Mine! I will repay!” and “The Lord will judge His people!”
So, those being punished for doing this, are still His people; God Himself insists they are, including in the context of Deuteronomy the Hebraist is quoting there, where God vindicates His rebel people by judgment against them where necessary, even judgment to the death (until they are neither slave nor free). Consequently, Calvs are wrong if they claim this judgment isn’t being made against people who are really God’s people – just as the hardcore Arminians warn.
But on the other hand, we had better not treat Christ’s sacrifice for His people, for all His people, including for His rebel people, as being in vain. If we insist on interpreting Hebrews 10 as warning about a hopeless punishment for those being judged, we ourselves are the ones who will be trampling underfoot the sacrifice of God! Calvinists themselves insist on this point, except limited to the people they think God specially chose to be saved from their sins: to insist that God’s disciplinary punishment of God’s own people could even possibly result in non-salvation, is itself to trample underfoot the sacrifice of the Son of God!
But again, who, ultimately, are the people of God, in Christ? The prior discussion (going back to Hebrews 6) on the Abrahamic Covenant, tells us who: every creature created by the Creator Who Incarnates Himself in the line of Abraham, which is every rational creature, no matter how many there may be, as many as the stars of the sky or the sands of the sea: the Father and the Son have covenanted with Each Other (the Son standing in for Abraham as Abraham’s descendent) with a promise that cannot be broken by the sin of any creature so long as the Son keeps the covenant in effect by sacrificing Himself for the sin of any creature. Which He does. And that sacrifice is not in vain; God swears upon Himself, the Hebraist says back in chapter 6, since He has nothing any greater upon which to make the promise, so that by two immutable things (the promise of the Father and the Son) we can be assured the promise will be kept, to bring all of Abraham’s descendants into righteousness at last.
The warning is just like Christ’s occasional warnings in the Gospel reports, that God will be unmerciful to those who are not merciful, and will not forgive those who refuse to be forgiving. To insist such a punishment is itself hopeless, not as a mere mistake in doctrine (which could easily happen since the topics after all are rather complicated, strong meat for the mature believer), but as an attitude of our hearts, is to put ourselves under the same punishment, for insisting that the sacrifice of the Son must be in vain after all.
As always, members are invited to discuss interpretations of these verses below, and to link to discussions either here on the forum or elsewhere.
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