The Apostates, Part 2 – Hebrews 6:4-6

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The Apostates, Part 3 – Hebrews 6:4-6

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And now please turn, if you will, to Hebrews chapter six. We will read together verses one through verse eight.

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Hebrews chapter six. If we're leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

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And this we will do if God permits. 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

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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

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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.

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And if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.

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Let's pray together before we begin. Father, we know and admit that this is a challenging text for us to understand, and it is one that requires us to be thoughtful and contemplative and to really meditate and think clearly, and we pray that you would help us to do that today.

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There are gems and precious truths in this passage which are here for our edification and our equipping, but it requires some effort and effort, some effort for us to be thoughtful in how we treat it and how we handle it and how we think about it, and so we pray that by your grace, you would enable us to do that.

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For the glory of Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray. Amen. All right, I made it through another week, which is a good thing, because I told you last week

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I didn't want my last sermon to be a presentation of a theology that I reject with every fiber of my being, and so the

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Lord, by his grace, allowed me to live to today to at least present to you what I think is an alternative understanding of Hebrews chapter six, one that is consistent with a reformed understanding of the security of the believer.

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And so last week basically was one long introduction to today's sermon, and I have a little bit more of that introduction to lay out before we get into verse four, but we will.

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In last week, we went through sort of an overview of the heart of this morning passage, verses four through six we kind of got a bird's eye view of the flow of the passage and the argument that the author is making.

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We observed a few things that are going to become very significant in some of the things that we're looking at today and over the next few weeks.

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Then I presented to you three of the most common understandings of the warning passage in Hebrews, and I will review those here in a second.

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And then the last thing that we did was we focused in on one particular understanding of Hebrews six, which is that this describes believers who can and do genuinely lose their salvation.

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So that's what we did last week. And those three positions that we covered last week, just for sake of real quick review, number one, that this is a reference to backsliding

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Christians. That they fail to press on to maturity, that instead they continue to draw back and to slide into apathy and immaturity and to regress in their spiritual life.

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And that what is lost in the passage is their blessings, their nearness to the Lord, their kingdom usefulness in this life, or the glory in the kingdom that is to come, or eternal rewards, but it does not refer to losing salvation.

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That's the first view. The second view is that this is a hypothetical scenario. This was Spurgeon's position, that this describes a hypothetical scenario, and Spurgeon is running it out to show us the absurdity of believing this.

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If it were possible for one who has received these blessings to be lost, then they could not be renewed again to repentance, and they could not be saved again, because then they would need more of the

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Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit has already done that. They would need repentance again, but they've already repented. They would need another sacrifice for their sins, but they already have

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Christ. And so the argument is, since they have received everything possible to save them the first time, it is impossible for them to lose that salvation, because then a second run at salvation would be absurd or impossible and undoable, because Christ couldn't be re -crucified all over again.

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So the hypothetical scenario, and the third one is that this means that a believer can genuinely lose their salvation.

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And that's the one that I explained to you last time, that what is described here as true believers, what is described here in terms of the loss, is not just the rewards, not just kingdom usefulness, and not just eternal blessings, but of their salvation.

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And they are the ground that is burned in verse eight. So there is something that is common to all three of those positions, and that is that all three of those understandings of the passage believe that this is describing somebody who is a genuine and true believer.

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That these four phrases that we have in verses four through six, that they have once been enlightened, they have tasted of the heavenly gift, they have been made partakers of the

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Holy Spirit, and they have tasted of the good word and the powers of the age to come, that those four phrases describe genuine and true

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Christians. That is what all three of those views have in common. Is there an alternative to that?

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There is an alternative to that, and I'm going to present it to you. So in the words of Spurgeon, who believed, of course, because he took the hypothetical view, that this describes believers, remember what his claim was, here's what

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Spurgeon said. If the Holy Spirit intended to describe Christians, I do not see that he could have used more explicit terms than are here.

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How can a man be said to be enlightened, to taste of the heavenly gift, and to be made a partaker of the Holy Spirit without being a child of God?

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And that is the position of all the others who hold those other three positions, that this has to describe a believer, and it can't describe somebody who is an unbeliever.

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So is there an alternative to that position? There is, and here is my own view on this, and I'm not alone in this.

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And again, I would just remind you, I'm not pulling this stuff out of the ether on myself, so mostly

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I am relying in what we are about to go through in the next several weeks, a chapter in a book called

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Still Sovereign by Wayne Grudem. I don't agree with everything that Wayne Grudem says, but much of what Wayne Grudem says is really, really good.

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And this one chapter in this one book is worth the weight of that book in gold. It's worth the weight of all my commentaries on Hebrews in gold.

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It is absolutely fantastic. It is the best exegetical work on this. And so Wayne Grudem would agree with most other

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Reformed commentators, or people who would hold, generally speaking, our position on the security of the believer, he would agree with that.

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And so I'm gonna be drawing much on what he says, and you may even hear me quoting him in the weeks to come. So here's my own position.

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I'm going to do this, I'm going to state it, then I'm gonna give you four statements to clarify it, and then

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I'm going to show you what it is that I have to prove to you in order to demonstrate that this perspective on the warning passage is legitimate.

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Okay, I'm gonna state my position, give you four clarifications so we know exactly what I'm saying and exactly what I'm not saying, because that's important, and then

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I'll show you what it is that I have to demonstrate to you, and then I will start demonstrating that all today. You get all of that for the price of admission.

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Okay, so here is my position. This is what I believe that the passage is teaching. I do not believe that the author, whoever it is,

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I do not believe that the author of Hebrews is describing people whom he knows to be

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Christians. I do not believe that he is describing people whom he knows to be non -Christians.

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I believe that he is describing a group of people whose spiritual state, from his vantage point of observation, is undiscernible and unknown, okay?

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Not people he knows to be Christians, not people he knows to be unbelievers pretending to be Christians, but a group of people who, from his vantage point, their spiritual state is inconclusive, it is unknown, it is undiscernible from what he knows about them.

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He knows enough to describe them with these phrases, but in terms of whether they have genuine saving faith or not, that is not something that the author can know for certain.

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So not that he's describing believers, not that he's describing unbelievers, but that he is being intentionally inconclusive regarding their spiritual status.

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So one of the things that we observed last week is that there are here four positive statements, right? We just went over them, four positive statements and one negative statement.

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The four positive statements, the question is, do they describe a genuine and true believer? And the one negative statement, that they have fallen away, we're going to set that negative statement aside for just a moment, actually for this week and probably the next week.

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We're gonna set that aside, we're not gonna neglect it, we'll get to it, but we're just gonna focus on these first four positive statements, which all of these other folks seem to say genuinely describes, without any doubt, beyond a shadow of a doubt, genuine and true believers.

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So we're gonna set aside the fallen away, because we all agree they fall away, we all agree that something is lost, that's, we all agree on that, but the question at the heart of the issue is that these first four positive statements, that they have once been enlightened, have tasted the heavenly gift, et cetera, do those four positive descriptions of these people describe certainly, conclusively, unequivocally, beyond any shadow of a doubt, genuine and true

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Christians who possess saving faith and have experienced salvificly the blessings of salvation in Jesus Christ?

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I'll say that again. Do those four phrases describe positively, conclusively, definitively, unequivocally, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that these people whom he is talking about have experienced salvificly, that word is important, in a saving sense, genuine salvation and the new covenant blessings in Jesus Christ?

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That is the question that is at the heart of the issue. Okay, so my position is not describing people who he knows to be believers, not describing people who he knows to be unbelievers, pretending to be believers, false believers, but that he is describing a group of people whom he would say, if he were to put it in our language, he would say,

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I'm not quite sure. They seem to have experienced things that are common to Christians, seem to have, they look as if they might be in, but I don't know, they could be out.

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They've experienced these things, but the question of whether or not they have true, genuine, saving faith, that the author cannot know for sure.

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So he's being intentionally vague in his description of these people. Okay, that's my position, now let me give you four clarifying statements and you might think that these four clarifying statements are gonna go by rather quickly, but they're not.

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Here's the first one, and this is gonna sound like I'm just contradicting what I just said, but listen carefully.

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These four phrases could describe a believer. They could describe a believer. I'm not saying that they definitely do not describe a believer, because these four phrases could describe a believer, because I would argue that every true believer in Jesus Christ would be described by all four of those phrases.

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If you're a believer in Christ, you have been enlightened, you have partaken of the heavenly gift, you have, or better made, partaker of the

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Holy Spirit, you have tasted the heavenly gift, and you have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. If you're a believer in Christ, those four things could describe you.

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So these four phrases could describe a believer. For instance, but they don't necessarily, let me put it this way, these four phrases could describe a believer, but not everybody that these four phrases could describe would necessarily be a believer.

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Does that make sense? Let me illustrate it. Let's say that I were describing somebody, and I said, he has heard the gospel, he has felt the guilt and the sting of his conscience, and he has come to understand his need for a

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Savior. Do those three phrases describe a believer? They could, but they can also describe an unbeliever, right?

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Because we would say all three of those phrases would describe every believer. Every believer has heard the gospel, he's felt the sting of his conscience, and he has become aware of his need for a

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Savior. But those three phrases do not tell me whether that person has responded in saving faith and repentance or not, whether they have been justified or not, whether they have believed or not.

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All of that is up in the air. So those three phrases would describe every Christian, but not everybody that those three phrases would describe is a

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Christian. And I would suggest the same thing is true with these four phrases. Yes, these four phrases could describe a

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Christian, but not everybody described by these four phrases would be a Christian. Are you able to make that distinction in your mind to see where I'm going?

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Let me flesh it out a little bit more. Let's say that you ran across these four phrases that we find in Hebrews chapter six, and they were in, say, the book of Acts, written by Luke, and Luke uses them to describe the

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Apostle Paul. Would you assume that he is describing they're a believer or an unbeliever?

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You'd say, well, those four phrases they have to describe, he's talking about a believer there, that's the Apostle Paul, obviously. But let's say that you saw those same four phrases, not in the book of Acts by Dr.

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Luke, but in the gospel of Luke by Dr. Luke, describing not Paul, but Judas Iscariot and his apostasy.

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Would you then conclude that those four phrases must describe a believer? Since by Jesus's own words,

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Judas was a devil from the beginning, chosen because Jesus knew that he would betray him? Would you say that that has to describe a believer?

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You would say, no, those four phrases could describe a believer, because every believer has experienced those things, but not everybody who has experienced those things is necessarily a believer, okay?

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So here's the second statement to qualify my position. Second, the phrases by themselves are inconclusive.

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That is to say, you cannot read these phrases and say, oh, conclusively, we have to conclude from these phrases that that describes a believer, because we can take each one of these phrases and examine it by itself and say, does this positively, again, unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt, definitely describe somebody who is a believer?

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No, not necessarily. The phrases themselves are inconclusive. Third, the meaning of these four phrases must be determined by their context.

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The meaning of these four phrases must be determined by their context. Now, this is something that even people who are on the other side of the theological aisle from us would agree with.

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For instance, Grant Osborne, in the book, The Four Views on the Warning Passages of Hebrew, he presents what he calls the classical

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Armenian view, which means you can lose your salvation. He's defending that. So he's somebody who believes that you can lose your salvation, and in the introduction to his contribution to that book,

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Grant Osborne writes this. If this passage were found in Romans 8, we would all hail it as the greatest description of Christian blessings in the entire

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Bible. Close quote. Now, guess what? That's true.

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If this passage were found in Romans chapter 8, we would hail it as the greatest description of Christian blessings in the entire Bible. You know why?

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Because in Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul is speaking to true and genuine believers whom he knows are saved, and he is telling them, you are secure in Jesus Christ, not because of anything you have done, but because God chose you in eternity past, put you in the soul of Jesus Christ.

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He died in your place, and in God's eyes, you are glorified. You are secure as you could possibly be. See, in Romans chapter 8, Paul's describing the security of the believer, but these phrases don't occur in Romans chapter 8, do they?

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They occur in where? In Hebrews chapter 6, which describes the damnation of apostates. So why would we assume that these phrases used in this context would describe believers?

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You see, those who are on the other side of the theological aisle want to say, context is important, and if we found these phrases in another context, we would assume that they're describing believers.

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You're right, context is important, and in this context, we have no reason to assume that they're describing believers, since he is not describing what we know to be believers.

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He's describing people whom we know to be what? Apostates who suffer damnation. So context is important.

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And fourth, these describe people whose spiritual state is unclear. Now, I've kind of already said that.

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I'm just restating it again, as an issue of clarification. I'm not suggesting that these phrases could kind of be taken possibly as describing unbeliever, and so since there's a little bit of wiggle room in the passage, we're gonna slot our theological traditions and our presuppositions into that wiggle room.

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We're gonna try and be comfortable in there, and just sort of live in the unknown area of the interpretation. That's not what

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I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that the author is intentionally vague. He is intentionally not coming down on one side or the other as to whether these people are clearly into the camp or clearly out of the camp.

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I'm not suggesting that he's describing believers or unbelievers, but people about whom he can say, they might be believers, but I wouldn't wanna be handcuffed to them when they die.

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They might be unbelievers. He can't judge that, since he can't see the heart. He doesn't know the genuineness of their faith.

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He cannot see if they've repented and believed in God. There are things externally about them that might think, that make him think that they might be in, but there are things about them that make him think they might be out, and so he is inconclusive regarding the spiritual state of this group.

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So I don't think it's describing believers or unbelievers, but that specific group of people. And listen, a few weeks ago I made the observation that when you try and tell the difference between somebody who is an immature

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Christian and just has not progressed and grown up in their faith and somebody who is an unbeliever, it can be difficult, nigh unto impossible to tell the difference between those two.

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Can it not? When you run across a Christian who is not really that mature, they've been a Christian for a while, they've been really slow and sluggish in their spiritual growth, and they just do not seem to be progressing at all, they just don't seem to be growing up in the

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Lord, there's not as much hunger there and progress there as you might want to see, you would look at that individual and say, are they an immature believer who really needs to grow and are just in a bad environment, or is this an unbeliever that I'm dealing with?

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Are you able always to tell the difference between those two? Do you have that ability? You don't have that ability.

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I don't have that ability. The author of Hebrews does not have the ability. And who is he talking about in the context?

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Immature believers. And he is telling them, you need to press on toward maturity. Now, in the case of some who have experienced all of these things and then they have fallen away, they are judged and burned.

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But, verse nine, I'm convinced of better things concerning you. So these phrases could describe believers or unbelievers and nothing is for certain known about their spiritual condition.

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We recognize that this category of people exists and we have it in our minds that this group of people exists and we make allowances for that and we think in these terms constantly and we know that this is a large group of people.

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Is it always easy for you to tell the difference between a wolf in sheep's clothing and a genuine sheep? Are you always able to tell the difference?

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Are you always able to tell the difference between a sheep and a goat? Between the wheat and the tare? Between the believer and the make -believer?

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Between the believer and the almost -believer? Is there a light on people's foreheads that goes off when they have genuine saving faith and you say, okay, now they're a believer.

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Now the light on their forehead just went from unbeliever to believer. Does that ever happen in your experience? No, it does not.

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So there is this whole group of people whom we know have heard the gospel and who begin to experience all of the things necessary for conversion.

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They experience things that are attached with the Christian community and the Christian covenant, the New Testament covenant.

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But in terms of whether they have actually crossed from darkness into light or not, that we do not know.

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And we cannot know that. All we can say is they've once been enlightened, they've tasted of the powers of the age to come, they've been partaker of the

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Holy Spirit, and they have tasted of the good word of God, et cetera. We can say certain positive things about them, but whether or not they're genuinely saved or not, that we cannot know.

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That is who the author of Hebrews is describing. Now, though their spiritual condition is unknown, hear this, once they fall away, their spiritual condition is then, at that moment, revealed.

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You see, it is in the falling away that the certainty regarding their spiritual state is made manifest to all.

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Why would I say this? Because this is what John says in 1 John 2, verse 19. They went out from among us, they left us and departed us, they walked away from us.

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They went out from among us because they were not of us. If they had been of us, if they had truly been believers, they would have remained with us, but it went out so that it might be made manifest and demonstrated that they are not truly of us.

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John distinguishes between those who are with us and those who have left us. And those who are left us,

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John says, those who left us, John says, they were never really of us. And their leaving manifests their true spiritual condition.

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So this group of people who are described by these four verses, the author would say, we don't know. We know that these certain things have happened to them, but listen, when they walk away, that reveals and manifests their true spiritual state.

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They're not truly Christians. You know how we know if they are genuine partakers of Christ? Because they will persevere all the way to the end.

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They will hold fast their confidence and their firm assurance all the way into the end. When they depart and they leave from among us, it demonstrates that they are not truly believers.

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Now, that's my case stated. Now I have to prove my case, don't I? And there are a few things that I've got to prove. I'm gonna show you how big of a hill that it is

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I have to climb in order to make the case that what I've just said to you is a right and proper interpretation of the passage. Here are the five things that I have to demonstrate.

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Now these five things have to be demonstrated by anybody who tries to interpret the passage, but here they are. Number one, I have to explain each of these first four phrases and show you that they are not definitive descriptions of a believer.

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I have to describe each of these four phrases, explain them, and show you these are not definitive definitions of a believer.

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Second, I have to show that my view fits the strong language of verse six, that it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.

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I have to show that my view explains the difficult language of verse six when he says they crucify to themselves again the

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Son of God and put him to open shame, that strong language. My view has to explain that. My view has to fit,

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I have to show you that my view fits the illustration of verses seven and eight of the ground that produces fruit and the ground that produces thorns.

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It has to match that illustration and match it well. And then I have to show you that my interpretation of this passage fits the entire context of this warning passage, which

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I think I have shown you that it does just in explaining to it. I've shown you that he's describing immature believers and then he is describing a group of people whose salvation he is not sure of because they may be immature believers, they might be unbelievers, but if they depart and leave, then they perish because they were never really believers.

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And then in verse nine he says, but I'm convinced of better things concerning you, things that accompany salvation. I think I've demonstrated that kind of that interpretation would fit with the whole flow of this warning passage.

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But then fifth, I have to show you that this interpretation would fit with all of the warning passages in the book of Hebrews, all five of those.

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So that's the mountain that is ahead of us. That's the mountain I have to climb. And I've made it as difficult as I possibly can for myself and for you so that, and I'll be honest with you, so that if I make my case, if I prove my case, if I do my duty and my job over the course of the next however many months this takes us, if I do my duty, then you will come to the conclusion that indeed that is the best explanation of the passage because we have made this as difficult to interpret from our vantage point as we can possibly make it.

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Now if I can pull this off, then I hope to convince you because I said last week, if you're here and you believe that you can lose your salvation,

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I'm here to change your mind. That's my goal. Honestly, I'm laying it out. Those are my cards that are on the table. You can see what they are, right?

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I've got four aces. I win. That's my goal. It's to show you that. I'm putting all my cards on the table.

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I want you to see this because I intend to change your mind. And for those of you who believe you cannot lose your salvation,

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I wanna show you the genuineness and the solidity of our position on Hebrews chapter six.

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Okay, so that's it? Is it quarter to 12 already? My goodness.

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Okay, so do these phrases. Do these phrases definitively describe believers?

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Now it's been suggested that one of the ways of handling this passage is to say that you have to take all of these descriptions together.

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You really can't isolate any one of them. For instance, Grant Osborne again, he says, quote, while some have tried to take the six items one at a time, it is important to feel their cumulative effect, close quote.

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Now what is he saying? He's saying you don't wanna get down into the details of this and just isolate each one of these phrases and examine it because really what you need to do is step back and just let the whole thing kind of roll over.

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You get the cumulative effect of the whole passage. Now I would suggest to you that if there is no individual effect to these phrases, then there can be no cumulative effect to these phrases.

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In other words, if each one of these individual phrases does not definitively describe beyond a shadow of a doubt a

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Christian, then all of these phrases looped together, bundled together cannot describe definitively beyond a shadow of a doubt a

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Christian. That's like somebody who says, you know, I really don't have any strong arguments. I have five really bad, weak ones. But when you put them all together, they make a really strong argument.

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No, they just make a big pile of weak, ineffective, bad arguments. That's what it is. Imagine that you were, to give you an illustration,

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I don't have time for this illustration, but I'm gonna give it anyway. Imagine that you saw somebody fleeing the scene of a crime and you were describing to the officer the perpetrator or the suspect.

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And you said, he's wearing a gray hoodie, he had a beard, he had black hair, he's about six foot tall, 185 pounds, and he walked with a limp and he was wearing blue jeans.

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And the officer said to you, so he walked with a limp and you say to the officer, well, not definitively, but listen, not any one of these things really describes him, but if you put them all together, they do describe him.

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So he had a gray hoodie. Well, not necessarily, for certain a gray hoodie. None of these things really describe him, but you put them all together and they do.

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See how absurd that is? That's why I said last week, the details of this passage are our friends.

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It is in the details that we see, does each one of these phrases, by itself, definitively, positively prove that what is being described here is a

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Christian. And if each one cannot stand, then all of them together cannot stand. So the phrase once enlightened, let's tackle that.

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What does it mean to be enlightened? What is he describing here, genuine and true believers? Graham Cockrell, in his commentary on Hebrews, says, quote, those who have once been enlightened as a reference to conversion.

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It's a reference to conversion. You hear what he's saying there? Enlightened equals conversion. He then cites Ephesians 118, where Paul says,

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I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. He's speaking there to Christians. So that you will know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of glory of his inheritance and the saints.

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Grant Osborne, in his passage, or his treatment of this morning passage, says, quote, once enlightened is most likely a reference to the completeness of their conversion.

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So that's the claim. Not that once enlightened could refer to believers, but they're saying that the term once enlightened, once for all enlightened, refers to and is equal to the act of conversion.

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And here's the case that they would make. I briefly made it last week, and I'll remind you again, so you know what we're up against. Here's the case that they would make.

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When we are unbelievers, we are in darkness. And we are in darkness, our minds operate in darkness. We are children of darkness.

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We're in the kingdom of darkness. We're owned and enslaved to the prince of darkness. We do not come to the light, lest our deeds be exposed, because men love darkness rather than light.

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That is the description of an unbeliever. But when we come to the Lord, and we are enlightened, and the light of truth shines upon our conscience, and our mind is renewed, and we receive that light, and we see that light, and we understand that light, we become light in the

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Lord, Paul says in Ephesians 5. We come to the light so that our deeds are exposed, and we now are children of the light in the kingdom of light.

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Therefore, to be enlightened means to move from spiritual darkness into spiritual light. It means to move from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

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That's the claim. Enlightenment equals conversion. That's the claim. But does it?

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The word enlightened is the Greek word, photidzo. You can hear the word photo in there. Photidzo, for light, as in photograph, or photographer, or photography, or other words that have photography in them.

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The word translated enlightened is the Greek word, photidzo, and the word means to illuminate, to shine upon, or to make known.

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It can refer to giving or receiving spiritual enlightenment. It was used of teaching and of instructing. That's what the word means.

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To have something shined on you, to receive instruction in something, to be enlightened, to be illuminated, to be given information and understanding of a certain thing.

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The word is used 11 times in the New Testament to show you how simply it can be used, having nothing to do with spiritual realities whatsoever.

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It's used in Luke chapter 11, verse 36. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the light illumines you with its rays.

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That's the word, illumines. As when the light enlightens you with its rays. And Jesus is there just describing a lamp that sheds light, and you have light shine on you.

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You're enlightened, that's how it's used. It's used in the book of Revelation to describe the earth being illumined by the glory of an angel in Revelation 18, one.

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It's used similarly of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22, verse five. And there will no longer be any night, and they will not have need of the light of a lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the

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Lord God will illumine them, or enlighten them, and they will reign forever and ever. So there it just describes

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God illumining or shedding light upon something. Now, what is important for our purposes is how is it used in a spiritual sense, to speak of receiving and understanding spiritual illumination or enlightenment?

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That's the key question. Well, it's used in John chapter one, verse nine. There was the true light, which coming into the world enlightens every man.

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Now, John says that Jesus Christ enlightened every man. So if the word enlightened equals conversion, what does

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John 1, nine teach? That every man has been what? Converted. We know that's not true.

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Because John 1, nine is just simply describing the light coming into the world and shining the light of truth upon all men, and men love darkness rather than light, and they don't come to the light.

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So enlightenment cannot equal conversion in other contexts, nor is it synonymous with conversion when speaking of Christians being enlightened in Ephesians 1, 18, which

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I just read to you earlier, where Paul prays that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know certain things. Is Paul praying that the

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Ephesians would be converted? No, he's already told them. You're chosen in Christ, you're adopted, you're predestined to this, you've been regenerated and sealed with the

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Holy Spirit, and you've come to know truth. These are genuine Christians that he's writing to, and Paul is simply saying, I want you to know something.

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I want you to come to see it and to understand it. So have Christians been enlightened? Yes, we have. All Christians have been enlightened.

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But has everyone who has been enlightened, are they a Christian? No. Now, this last week at a little function that we had here for the school that some of our members work in,

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I presented the gospel to a bunch of people, and they said that there were a bunch of people who are unbelievers here, and I would believe that that's true based upon some of the scowls and frowns that I got.

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But I got up and I presented the gospel, and I can positively say everybody in here was enlightened. They all heard the truth.

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They understood it in terms of I made it very clear to them. They heard that, and the light of truth was shined upon them.

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They were enlightened. Is everybody that was sitting here on Friday or Thursday, whenever that was, was everybody a believer?

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Not necessarily. What can we say? They received the light. They saw the light. They understood it.

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They got it. They were enlightened. It was explained to them. Millions have heard the gospel and studied the gospel, and themselves have preached the gospel and presented the gospel who are, at this very moment, unregenerate, who do not understand the gospel and have not actually embraced the gospel.

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How else would you describe the thousands of quote -unquote pastors who preach in mainline churches, apostate churches, or teach in apostate seminaries where they deny all the cardinal doctrines of the truth, and yet they sit there and they talk about spiritual things and gospel things all day long?

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Have they been enlightened? Wouldn't you not say that they have understood the truth and they have seen the truth, they've heard the truth? Yeah, they have.

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The light has shined upon them, but does that make them believers? No. Is enlightenment the same as or synonymous with conversion?

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It is not. It just simply means that they have heard something, they have been exposed to something, they have some degree of understanding of something.

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That's all the word enlightenment means. The word futizo is not a technical term that refers to hearing and believing the gospel.

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It has nothing to do with repentance. It has nothing to do with saving faith. It has nothing to do with belief. In fact, it has nothing to do with the response of the object being enlightened.

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You can use that word to describe the act of truth or light shining on something, but it says nothing about the response of the individual who has seen and received that light.

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They've just been enlightened. It does not describe at all their conversion, and it is in no way synonymous with conversion.

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In fact, the BAGD Greek English lexicon says that there are no examples from the

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New Testament period where futizo signifies conversion. The word is never in New Testament usage, never used as synonymous with saving faith, not once.

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So it is a steep climb to say that the word enlightened equals the totality of their conversion experience.

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You see, that's putting a meaning onto that word that that word can never bear. It can't bear the meaning of that word because all that enlightened means is simply that they received some light.

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Do you know that that necessarily, definitively, unequivocally, without any shadow of a doubt means that these people were converted just because they received some light?

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You can't say that. I don't think the author can say that, which is why he doesn't say anything about this people's saving faith.

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He simply describes them as enlightened. There is another passage where this word enlightened is used, and we've got to zip forward a little bit here.

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In Hebrews 10, verse 32, and I mentioned this last week, and I want you to flip over there because that's where we read from for our scripture reading.

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In Hebrews 10, verse 32, the author says, "'But remember the former days when, "'after being enlightened, you endured "'a great conflict of sufferings.'"

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You see there in that very passage, he describes these Christians as enlightened. So would we take issue with that?

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Have Christians been enlightened? No, we don't take issue with that. I have no problem saying that a Christian has been enlightened. Remember, the key question is, is everybody who has been enlightened genuinely saved?

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No, not necessarily. So if we back up to verse 19 of the warning passage, you'll see that he is speaking here, again, in the context of the high priestly ministry of Jesus, just as he breaks in chapter five for the third warning passage.

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When we get to this fourth warning passage, he's sort of taking a break, or at least giving the warning passage in the context of a discussion of the high priestly ministry of Jesus.

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And you see in verse 23, that confession or that encouragement that we have seen in the second warning passage, "'Let us hold fast the confession of our hope "'without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.'"

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He's talking to believers there. Let us hold fast our confession. That was from, that's the same language used in the second warning passage about the children of Israel in the wilderness who didn't go into the land that we looked at in chapter three and chapter four.

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Then you get down to verse 26, and look what he says, "'For if we go on sinning willfully "'after receiving the knowledge of the truth.'"

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Well, that sounds a lot like a word we've been discussing, isn't it? What would that just sound like? Enlightened, receiving the knowledge of the truth.

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But in verse 26, these people who have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins if you go on sinning, if you continue in sin, you heard and understood that knowledge, you received that knowledge, but you didn't do anything about it, you just stopped sinning, repent, and believe.

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There remains for you a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of the fire which will consume the adversaries.

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So here we have in verse 26, people who have received the knowledge of the truth, and yet they are punished in eternal flames.

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Now look over, and by the way, the rest of that paragraph down through the end of verse 31 describes the justness of God in doing that and why

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God is just in punishing people that way, who respond that way. Look at verse 32, but remember the former days when after being enlightened.

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Now see, that seems to describe the same thing as verse 26, receiving the knowledge of the truth. Those two things, those two ideas are parallel, and I'll show you how they're parallel.

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In verses 19 through 25, those who have received the knowledge of the truth, they perish in eternal flames.

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In verses 30, sorry, verse 26 through verse 30, no, sorry, verse 26 through verse 31, they have received the knowledge of the truth and they perish.

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Verse 32 through verse 39, those people have been enlightened, in other words, they have received the knowledge of the truth as well, but what is true of those in verses 32 through verse 39?

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Look at verse 34. They receive a better possession and a lasting one. What is true of them, verse 39, they do not shrink back to destruction, but they have faith to the preserving of the soul.

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So why is it that some are enlightened and perish and others are enlightened and they receive a better reward? Why is that?

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What is the difference between those two groups? Both have been enlightened. What's the difference?

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One responded with faith. That's what all of chapter 11 is about.

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It's a faith chapter. That's his point. There are people who have been enlightened and they perish.

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There are people who have been enlightened and they get a reward. What distinguishes those two groups? It's not the enlightenment.

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Both of them have received and understood and heard the same truth, but one group responds with faith, that's chapter 11.

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That is why they do not shrink back to destruction. They continue on and persevere all the way to the end.

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So what can we say about being enlightened in Hebrews chapter 10? Let's turn back to Hebrews chapter six.

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What can we say about being enlightened in Hebrews chapter six and verse 10? All it refers to is receiving a knowledge of the truth, hearing the gospel, that's it.

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Now, we're back in Hebrews chapter six. It refers there to being taught in Hebrews chapter six.

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It refers to being taught in Hebrews chapter 10. Being enlightened is not salvation. It is not synonymous with conversion.

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Being enlightened and responding by faith, that is salvation. Being enlightened is not salvation.

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Being enlightened and believing is salvation. And the author in this passage, this warning passage, and in Hebrews chapter 10 is distinguishing between those two responses.

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Being enlightened is just being enlightened. He says nothing about the saving faith of them in chapter six.

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In chapter 10, he describes a group who has been enlightened and believed by faith. They receive the blessing.

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They don't perish. They persevere to the end. But there is a group who has been enlightened and they do not respond by faith.

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Peter does the same thing in describing false teachers when he talks about false teachers in 2 Peter chapter two verses 20 and 21.

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He describes false teachers as those who have received a knowledge of the truth. They've come to a knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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And by that knowledge, they've escaped the corruption that is in the world. But then like a dog returning to its vomit, like a pig having washed to its wallowing in the mire, those false teachers return right back because what did they lack?

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They lacked saving faith and regeneration and the change of nature. But they had received a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ that for a brief period of time delivered them from their worldliness and their sinful desires.

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But that deliverance did not last. So enlightenment is necessary for salvation, but it is not synonymous with salvation.

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It is possible to hear about and to understand and to see the path of righteousness and never to enter onto that path of righteousness.

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And the author is not saying that they having been once enlightened are therefore definitively positively beyond any shadow of a doubt saved.

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Enlightenment has nothing to do with whether or not one is saved. So remember the case that I need to make. I need to show you that enlightenment doesn't necessarily mean salvation or conversion.

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But keep in mind that those who believe that this passage teaches that you can lose your salvation, they have a case to make as well.

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And here's the case that they have to make. They have to make the case that enlightenment equals conversion and that in this context,

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Hebrews chapter six, it most definitely equals conversion and that these people in Hebrews chapter six are genuinely saved and have lost their salvation.

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But what can we say about the term once enlightened as it's used in scripture, as it's even used in the book of Hebrews?

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What is the most we can say about it? The most we can say is that these people heard the truth.

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That's it. That's the most that that phrase will tell us. You cannot take all of salvation and conversion and all that that entails and cram it into the word enlightenment and say therefore enlightenment equals conversion.

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No. Enlightenment just means that they have heard the truth. It means to receive the knowledge of something.

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It does not indicate any response to that knowledge on behalf of the person who was so enlightened and it is not synonymous with conversion.

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So here's my question. Are you justified in saying on the basis of this phrase once enlightened that this group of people is definitively, unequivocally, certainly beyond a shadow of a doubt, genuine and true believers based upon that phrase and that phrase alone.

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Would you be justified in saying that? I hope I've proven to you that you cannot be justified in saying that.

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I know what the other side would argue. They would say again, you can't take just one phrase and base the whole case on that.

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I know. They would say there's three other phrases and those three other phrases make my case. We will see, won't we?

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Not today, obviously, but we will see. We'll take the next one and we'll see. Does the next one definitively prove that what is being described here is genuine and true

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Christians? The phrase once enlightened doesn't. Just means that they heard the truth.

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Millions hear the truth and never respond to saving faith and consequently they are lost. That's all enlightened means.

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Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for this time of study and reflection and meditation that we have had.

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We're grateful that you give us the mental abilities to understand these things and you call us to do so and it is our desire that in all that we do, in all of our thinking, in our theology, we may reflect not our presuppositions but that we may reflect what your word clearly teaches.

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Grant us, we pray, understanding as we reflect upon these things and then also reflect upon the security that we have in Jesus Christ because of all that he has done for us.

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We thank you for the enlightenment that you have given to us, but we thank you that by your grace that enlightenment was accompanied with saving faith and the gift of repentance and the power of your

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Holy Spirit to impact our hearts with the gospel and to turn us from unbelief to belief and from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

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We thank you that our enlightenment has resulted in our being children of the light in the kingdom of the light, belonging to the one who is the way, the truth and the light and who is the light of the world.