The Apostates, Part 1 – Hebrews 6:4-8

And now turn, if you will, to the book of Hebrews, to chapter six. Let's see, we're gonna read together verse one through the end of verse 12 together to catch our context.

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

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

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.

But beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation that we're speaking in this way.

For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward his name and having ministered and is still ministering to the saints and we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end.

So that you will not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Let's pray together before we begin. Father, this very challenging passage that is ahead of us, we know going into it that we need your

Holy Spirit to be our teacher and our guide. We pray that you would guide us in our thinking and our understanding of this passage, help us to observe the context, to understand what is written and to begin to see today the intention of the author, both the human author and the divine author in this passage of scripture.

And so we pray for your assistance. You have given us this word and we believe that it is as clear as you want it to be.

We pray that you would help us to understand it as clearly as we are able. Grant us grace to that end we pray and I pray that I would be clear in what

I am about to say and that all of us together we may exalt the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts and in our minds and how we think about the great salvation that you have bestowed by your grace upon us, undeserving sinners and wretches.

Thank you for your mercy. In the name of Christ our Lord we pray, amen. Well, here we are at this battleground text of the warning passage in Hebrews chapter six.

This is the discussion on the security of the believer. It took us a while to get to this passage.

In fact, 60 sermons to get to this passage. So you know that I have been dragging my feet and taking as much time as I can, avoiding this at all costs.

Actually, that's not the case at all. I've been itching to get to this passage because I like the difficult and challenging passages.

Not only are they fun to study, they're somewhat rewarding when you get to the end of the study and then they're somewhat rewarding even in trying to preach them.

There's a certain satisfaction that comes. So today we're diving into this passage that deals with the security of the believer and just so that you are aware, sometimes the doctrine of the security of the believer is referred to as the doctrine of eternal security.

Sometimes it's referred to rather flippantly and I hate this designation of once saved, always saved. So that's kind of a colloquial way of, a common way of referring to it.

Sometimes it is referred to as the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints or the doctrine of the preservation of the believer depending on if you're describing it from the perspective of God preserving his people or of his people ultimately persevering in their faith until they get to eternal glory.

So eternal security, once saved, always saved, the security of the believer, perseverance of the saints or preservation of the saints.

You can use any of those five designations and I'll flip back and forth between them as we need to throughout the course of our study today and over the course of the next several years as we're working our way through Hebrews chapter six.

So we're jumping into verse four and I haven't been really dawdling on this at all.

I could spend a whole sermon on verse three which I missed last week. I kind of breezed past it, not intentionally.

I kind of intended to do something on it today but we could spend a whole sermon on verse three which is loaded with good theology.

It's the theology that says that basically the author is saying there, I want you to press on to maturity,

I want you to move ahead into these things and grow up in Christ, leave it behind the foundational elements and move on from them, building something else.

But then he has this qualification in verse three, if it is that God should permit it. And so in the mind of the author, there is these two elements that go together.

There is divine sovereignty, if God should permit this, and human responsibility. We are responsible to press on to maturity but it is

God himself who will permit that. So the author is aware that only God can permit the sanctification and the growth of believers although he implores us to be involved in that growing process and to grow as we should and to press on into maturity.

So I could preach a whole sermon on just that and how those two things go together and we've done that before. How it is our responsibility to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling while we acknowledge that it is

God who is at work in us, both to do and to will for his good pleasure. So there you have in all kinds of passages like that, the human side and the divine side, but we're not going to do that.

I'm just gonna mention verse three instead, kind of give you the theology behind it so that we can get to verse four because I know that so many of you have been so anxious and so looking forward to verse four and this passage that deals with the security of the believer because this is the heart of the issue, verses four through six.

And we can move on to this with the understanding that, and I want you to know this, from my perspective

I am assuming that many of you who are regulars here understand and believe in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints or the doctrine of eternal security.

If you did not believe that those who are saved in Jesus Christ are forever safe and secure, if you did not believe this, you would probably find another place to worship because as endearing and good looking as I am, you do not want to sit out here every

Sunday and have your theology assaulted in everything that we do, in the way that we pray, in the way that we preach, in the way that we teach and all of that.

You would not want to do that. So I am assuming that many of you, most of you, if not, well, no, I won't assume all of you, but most of you would agree with my position on the security of the believer.

You're looking forward to this because I think that you, like me, want to get a handle on a very tough passage of scripture. And you want to think through and work through a passage which is really the go -to passage amongst those who believe that you can lose your salvation.

If you have a conversation with somebody who believes that they can lose their salvation, sooner rather than later the conversation will come back around to Hebrews chapter six and they will say, what do you do with Hebrews chapter six?

There you read it in verse four, that he is describing a group of people who have been enlightened, they have tasted of the heavenly gift, they have been made partakers of the

Holy Spirit and they have tasted of the word of God and the powers of the age to come. Certainly that describes believers.

And then you look down at verse six and it says that they have fallen away from these things. And then in verse eight it says that they are fit to be burned and they are near to being cursed.

So certainly this describes somebody who is a believer who has enjoyed these blessings and then fallen away from these blessings and then they are burned and cursed.

And if that doesn't describe a Christian losing their salvation, then there's no passage in scripture that describes a Christian losing their salvation.

And they would argue that not only does Hebrews chapter six describe that, but that all the warning passages in Hebrews describe that.

To one degree or another, to one level of clarity or another, each of the warning passages warning two Christians of the danger of falling away and losing their salvation.

So the warning passage in chapter two and in chapter three and four might not be that clear, but certainly chapter six is clear.

And the warning passage in chapter 10 and the warning passage in chapter 12, both of those would sort of buttress that view that a

Christian can lose their salvation. So what do you do with that? Well, we're gonna have to walk through that. I would remind you, and I said this back at the beginning of the warning passage, that this passage in Hebrews chapter six is a challenge to everybody no matter what their theological convictions are.

If you think that this passage teaches you can lose your salvation, there are some issues in the text that militate against that.

If you believe that this passage does not teach that you can lose your salvation, there are challenges in here that you need to work through interpretatively.

It's a challenge no matter what your theological perspective is. And I would just remind you that if you believe that you can lose your salvation and you believe that Hebrews 6 teaches that, this passage is not a slam dunk for your theology, not at all.

It's not a slam dunk for anybody's theology, but it's certainly not a slam dunk for the belief that you can lose your salvation.

Another clarification before we jump into the text, and I know you're wanting all of these clarifications right up front, so we'll get them all out of the way.

Sometimes the difference between those who believe you can lose your salvation and those who believe you cannot lose your salvation is sometimes characterized with the labels

Calvinist and Arminian. The Calvinist position is the position that you cannot lose your salvation, that you are safe and secure.

And then the Arminian position is the position that you can lose your salvation. And those labels can be helpful at times, discerning and discussing different areas of doctrine.

But in the case of this doctrine, those labels are not all that helpful. And here's why. You can believe that you are safe and secure in your salvation and still have

Arminian theology in almost every other area of your doctrine. And yet for some inexplicable reason, you believe that the sheep are safe and secure in their salvation.

In other words, everybody who believes that you, sorry, every Calvinist would believe that you cannot lose your salvation.

You will not find somebody who is Reformed or Calvinistic in their theology who would say, but I believe that you can lose your salvation.

Every Calvinist would believe that you cannot lose your salvation. But not everybody who believes you cannot lose your salvation would be called a

Calvinist. Conversely, on the other side of it, everybody who believes you can lose your salvation would be an

Arminian. But not every Arminian believes that you can lose your salvation. There seems to be in between these two camps a group of people who would deny the sovereignty of God in election.

They would deny the irresistibility of divine intention and grace and the decrees of God to save a people for himself.

They would deny the limited and intentional and purposeful and specific scope of God and intention of God in the atonement of Christ.

And they would deny the lostness and the depravity of mankind in his sin, but still affirm that they are safe and secure in their salvation once you are saved.

So there is the group that would not affirm any of what would typically be called Calvinistic doctrines, though they would say,

I believe that once saved, you are always saved. Now, I would venture to say that that would describe most of evangelicalism.

Most of those who believe that you cannot lose your salvation would not share my perspective on those other doctrines.

So for that reason, I'm not going to refer to the Calvinist and Arminian side of this issue. If I were preaching on the doctrine of election, it might be more beneficial to sort of divide it up that way.

If I were preaching on the scope and intention of God in the atonement to the decrees of God in the eternity past to save a people for himself,

I might use those terms to distinguish between those two theological camps. But with this doctrine, I'm not going to because it can be confusing.

If you hear me describe the position that says you cannot lose your salvation as being a Calvinist position, then you would say, well, then I must be a

Calvinist. Not necessarily. You might be instead an inconsistent Arminian.

In other words, you believe that you cannot lose your salvation, but you don't believe any theological point that would give a grounding for that belief that you cannot lose your salvation.

You would deny everything that might give you a theological foundation upon which to put this building block of I cannot lose my salvation,

I am safe and secure. You would deny all of those things. And so I don't want you to think just because you agree with me that you cannot lose your salvation that you are therefore a

Calvinist because you may indeed not be. You're just an inconsistent Arminian with your feet firmly planted in midair.

So I would challenge you if you are such an inconsistent, and here's how I would prove that doctrine, that assertion, by the way.

If you're in that camp and I were to ask you, prove to me that you cannot lose your salvation from Scripture, you know where you're gonna go to?

You're gonna go to John chapter six and John chapter 10 and John chapter 17, Ephesians chapter one and Romans chapter eight, and you're gonna try and prove to me from those passages that a true believer can never lose their salvation.

And you know what I'm gonna say to you? Those passages talk about the sovereignty of God and salvation and the

Father giving a people to the Son and the Son coming to die for those people and the Son saving and securing those people and guaranteeing they're resurrecting them from the dead.

The theological foundation for all of that is laid out in those chapters. So if you're an inconsistent

Arminian, obviously I would want to move to you to be a more consistent Calvinist than an inconsistent

Arminian, but you might be a consistent Arminian and you're here today, and if that is the case, I want you to know that I am intending today to change your mind.

That is my goal. Now like Lieutenant Columbo, I have one more thing. In this, going through this passage,

I intend to be very thorough. Now most of you would describe what we do here and how I preach as being very thorough, which means that if I am telling you up front that I intend to be very thorough, you better buckle up buttercup because we are in for a study as we go through this.

It is my intention that not a single question would be left unanswered, not a single objection would be left unaddressed, that as we work our way through this passage, we would answer those issues and dive into the details, and I am here to tell you, if you understand and believe the

Reformed perspective on salvation, that it is secure, that we are safe and secure in Jesus Christ, there is nothing in the details of Hebrews chapter six that threatens that belief.

In fact, the details are our friends. The details of Hebrews chapter six are our friends.

So the more we slow down and really give some thought to what the author is saying here, the more we'll see that it is consistent with the other warning passages in Hebrews, it is consistent with the larger context of the book of Hebrews, and it is consistent with the rest of what

Scripture says. So if you do not agree with this, then I want you to know it is still my intention to change your mind, but it is the intention of everybody who teaches or preaches, or at least should be, to change the mind of everybody in their audience to believe what the

Scripture is saying and what they're teaching from the Scriptures. That's the goal. So if you were up here preaching and you believe that you can lose your salvation, if you were up here preaching,

I would hope that you would be trying to change other people's minds, because that's exactly what I am intending to do. If I don't change your mind about that doctrine,

I at least want to change your mind about the nature of Hebrews six and show you that it is not a slam dunk for your position.

Not at all. But that's not what I'm doing today. Instead, today, I have three things that we're gonna be doing.

First, I'm gonna give you an overview of the entire passage, look a little bit at some observations that will come into play in the weeks ahead.

The whole passage, I did this at the beginning when we kind of did an overview of the warning passage. I'm gonna do that again and remind you of some of those things, some of those things which are significant and important.

So we're gonna get an overview of the passage. Then second, I'm gonna give to you three popular and common explanations of the passage or interpretations of the passage, and I will highlight why it is that I would disagree with each one of those three.

And then I'm gonna focus in, the third thing I'm gonna do is focus in on one of those positions, and that is the position that you can lose your salvation.

And I'm going to present their argument from their side, walk through the passage so that you know what we are up against if you believe that you cannot lose your salvation, okay?

General overview, quickly three positions, and then I'm gonna zero in on one of those and spend a lot of time explaining why it is that people believe from this passage that you can lose your salvation.

Do you remember back when we started the warning passage, I kind of got to the end of the sermon, I said, I'm not sure which one of these two positions I believe. Do you remember that?

I said there were two positions on the warning passage and what it might believe, and I said, either one of these are very good. One of these,

I'm not sure which one, which day you asked me which position I would take. I'm rather settled now on one of these positions, and you'll see that as we work our way through it today and in the weeks ahead.

All right, first up, let's describe, let's just look at some of the general observations of the passage of the text itself.

First thing I want you to notice is the change in pronouns, and this I think is significant, and everybody, no matter what your theological position, would agree that the change of pronouns in the use of the passage is significant.

So you'll notice that as he starts in chapter five, verse 11, that he is describing his audience in terms of first person plural pronouns, me and I and you and our and us, and that works all the way through the end of chapter five.

You see it in chapter six, verse one, let us press on to maturity, chapter six, verse three, and this we will do if God permits, but then you get to verse four, which is really the crux passage of the warning passage, the crux verses of the warning passage.

You get to verse four, and all of a sudden, he changes. He changes from talking about us and we and I and you to talking about some other group, those and they.

Look in verse four, for in the case of those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted and have been made, and have tasted and have fallen away, verse six, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they crucify to themselves again the

Son of God. So there is a pronoun change, and then he picks it up. He changes it again back in verse nine when he begins to address his audience one more time in verse nine, and he says, but beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation.

So as he's working through this warning, he's addressing, in the first part, his concern for their spiritual immaturity, verses 11 through chapter six, verse three, and in discussing the spiritual maturity of his audience, it's us and we and you and I and us.

And then when he gets to the warning passage of verse four, the crux of the issue, he changes pronouns.

It's they and those and themselves. It is another group that he has in view. And then back in verse nine, but I'm convinced of better things concerning you, and again, he switches back.

So there is an intentional change of audience as he works his way through the passage. He has in mind a certain group in verses four through six, a certain group that may or may not be part of his audience, a certain group of people that these things describe who

I don't think he really has in mind, necessarily, strictly his audience, though the author, and I'll try and show this in the weeks ahead, the author has in mind, generally speaking, an audience in which, generally described, he is not concerned about their salvation.

Generally described, he is concerned about their spiritual immaturity, though he is aware there may be people within his audience who are potential apostates, who are on the verge of apostatizing, and who are on the verge of falling away.

And then he switches back to describing, but I'm convinced of better things concerning you. Generally speaking, the people to whom he is talking, he is concerned about their maturity, not their falling away.

But there is this group of people, and there may be some of them in his audience, that he is addressing in verses four through six.

So he's addressing all kinds of people who are in these different camps in his audience. And this is common for people to do this when you're giving an address, or you're writing to people.

In fact, I've done it just today in the introduction to the sermon. Did you catch it? I was addressing you, and I was saying you believe, and we believe that you cannot lose your salvation, but I'm speaking as if every person in this room believes you cannot lose your salvation, but I am aware that not every person in this room believes that you cannot lose your salvation.

And so then I specifically stepped out and addressed those of you who believe you can lose your salvation, right? I'm here to change your mind.

I'm addressing you. And then I'm back now to discussing us, and we, and you, and us, even though I know that there is a mixed audience here.

And that's what the author is doing here. He is describing the spiritual immaturity. He is concerned about that. Then he focuses in on those who have left, who have departed, who have walked away.

There might be some of those in the audience even that day as he is addressing them. And then he switches back to generally speaking you.

I'm convinced, generally speaking, of better things concerning you, things that accompany salvation. That's the first observation.

Second, I want you to notice that all five of these statements go together. There are five descriptions of this group of people. And all five of them go together, and all five of them need to be taken in the same sense, that is, as describing these people specifically.

Number one, they are people who have once been enlightened. Number two, they have tasted the heavenly gift.

Number three, they have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit. Number four, they have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.

And number five, they have fallen away. You'll notice that four of those are positive. One of them is negative. The four positive described people sounds as if he's describing

Christians. That's what is assumed by many people. It sounds as if he's describing genuine Christians there. Those four statements, the first four, are all positive.

But this other thing describes them as well. They have fallen away. So four positive things and one negative things. And we have to understand that this is like a bullet point list of things that describe these people.

Some people say, well, the fifth one is really conditional. The fifth one is saying, if they fell away.

In fact, that's how the King James, the New King James, and the NIV translate that phrase. If they fall away. They sort of insert that conditional statement there.

They are these four things positive and if they fall away. No, it is they have fallen away.

There's nothing in the text, there's nothing in the grammar that suggests that the fifth thing should be taken conditionally.

And they take it conditionally in order to escape the uncomfortableness of this. Because you do have these four positive things which seem to describe

Christians. And then that fifth one that undoubtedly describes somebody who has fallen away from these things.

If you take it conditionally, then it's easier, right? But if they fall away. But it's not gonna happen, if it happens.

Does it really happen? Well, there's no if there. These five things describe these people.

They have been enlightened, they've tasted, they've partaken and then they have fallen away, they've left. And they have left and fallen away from those four things that they have enjoyed, those four benefits.

The third thing I want you to notice is the flow of the passage. Chapter five, verse 11 to chapter six, verse three, he is describing their maturity.

He is dealing with the immaturity and addressing that concern. Verses four to six, he describes apostates, those who have fallen away.

In verses seven and eight, he illustrates the apostates with the analogy of the soil that brings forth good fruit and the soil that brings forth bad fruit.

And then in verse nine through verse 12 and following, he returns again to his audience to describe them and how sure he is of their salvation because the fruit that is in their lives.

So the first part of the warning passage deals with the immaturity issue and the maturity issue. The next part deals with the apostates, a description of them, verses four through six, an illustration of them in verses seven and eight and then back to his audience in verses nine and following, dealing with their maturity and the evidences of their salvation.

And the key question in all of this is who is being described in verses four to six? Who is it?

Are these genuine Christians? Are these true believers? Are these almost believers? That is the key question.

Who are these apostates? What did they believe? What did they know and what were they trusting and were they actually saved?

That's the key question in verses four to six and there are other ones. What is the repentance mentioned in verse six?

What is it that the judgment that they face in verse eight? Are these true believers? Who are these people and who is the author describing?

That's the key question. So that's an overview of the passage, kind of a few general observations and now let me give you three ways that this passage,

I could give you eight possible interpretations of the passage but let me give you three of them that you're most likely to run across that are more common than any of the other ones.

Number one, here's the first one, that this passage describes backslidden believers. Backslidden believers.

It describes those who are true and genuine believers and they would fit all of the description here.

They have been enlightened, they have tasted, they have been partakers, they've tasted again and then they have fallen away.

And so these are genuine Christians who have backslidden. And so in this position, it is not salvation that is in view, it is something else that is lost.

And their backsliding is to be understood in light of the immediate context. The author tells them, I want you to press on to maturity and leave the elementary teachings of the

Christ. He says to them, you have come to need milk and not solid food. You have somehow regressed in your ability to comprehend and discern and appropriate truth.

And so this view would say that these people then have regressed and continued to regress and they are backsliding and falling away.

That they're not pressing on to maturity. That they're not moving forward and advancing in their Christian faith.

And so what is it that is lost? According to this first view, that this is backslidden Christians, they are falling away in the sense of backsliding away from the truth and in continuing to regress to spiritual immaturity and infancy.

And that what is lost is not salvation, but it is the blessing of God. Likened to the rain in verse seven.

The rain that falls on the ground brings forth all these blessings, right? Verse seven, the ground that drinks the rain, which often falls on it, brings forth vegetation useful to those whose sake is being tilled receives a blessing from God.

So when you are a true believer and you backslide into carnality or unfaithfulness or disobedience in some way, you lose that blessing.

Or they would say, some would say that what is lost here is not salvation, but millennial glory. And since there is a millennial kingdom coming and we shall share in that glory, that really what the author has in mind is a decrease or a loss of your own millennial glory.

Now listen, I believe in the millennium of the Lord Jesus Christ. I just don't think you should read it into every passage where you need it to work.

I don't think that that's what the author is describing here in Hebrews chapter six. What he's describing the millennium or the glory. Some would say that it is not salvation that is being lost, but instead, that these people are losing rewards and eternal rewards, either in the kingdom that is to come or in the eternal state.

It is rewards that are being lost and that it is the rewards that are being burnt up. So they would connect this passage with Hebrews chapter 12, which describes the discipline of God that falls upon his people who are disobedient in the hopes that those people who are disciplined by their father who loves them, that they would produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness.

And they would connect the fruits with the analogy that's in verse seven. So this is backslidden believers, it's not salvation that's lost, it's blessing, it's rewards, or it is closeness and nearness with God and that God disciplines those whom he loves and will bring them back to a state and renew them again.

Now I think that one of the problems with this passage understood in that way is that I don't think it takes into account the seriousness of verse eight, the warning that they shall be burned.

I don't think that it can describe accurately or adequately what it means to crucify to themselves afresh the son of God.

That's serious language in verse six. It's impossible to renew them again to salvation. Are you telling me that those who are backslidden away for this period of time, that when the

Lord disciplines them in order to bring them back, that it is impossible for them to return? I don't think it deals adequately with a lot of the details of the text.

So I reject that one, that this is describing backslidden believers. A second way of understanding it is not backslidden believers, but that this is a hypothetical scenario.

What we would call a reductio ad absurdum. Remember that? Several weeks ago I kind of dumped that one out on you, reductio ad absurdum.

It makes it sound like I really know what I'm talking about, that I can pronounce Latin words and I'm smart like everybody else is smart and it makes me feel good and you feel inadequate and all that.

It's just great that way. A reductio ad absurdum. A reductio ad absurdum is when you take an argument or a premise or an argument that somebody has made and you reduce it, reductio it, to the absurd.

You reduce it to the absurd. You show how absurd it is by sort of taking the viewpoint seriously for a point and then sort of arguing its way through to its conclusion.

And when you get to the conclusion, you say, that's absurd. So if you can reduce this to the absurd, if the logical conclusion of the position is absurd, then the premise itself is absurd.

That's a reductio ad absurdum. And some have suggested that that's what's going on here, that the author's really not saying you can lose your salvation.

He's just throwing this out there, saying if it were possible for these people to fall away, they have enjoyed all of these benefits and then they fall away, it would be impossible to renew them again to repentance because they would need to crucify to themselves afresh the

Son of God. And since Jesus can't be crucified again, therefore, they cannot fall away. So he's taking their premise, running it out to show how absurd it is.

Jesus can't be crucified a second time. And since that can't happen and that's absurd, therefore, the premise that you can lose your salvation is absurd.

After I got done with that several weeks ago, somebody asked me, are there other examples in scripture of a reductio ad absurdum? Which is not something

I had considered ever in my mind before, I never asked that question, but it was a really good question. And it took me a couple of seconds, but I did think of another example of a reductio ad absurdum in scripture.

Do you remember in Matthew chapter 12, where Jesus was casting out demons and the Pharisees came up to him and they said, you cast out demons, he cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub.

Remember Jesus' response? You're saying, I cast out demons by the power of Satan. If I'm doing this by the power of Satan, then

Satan's casting out himself. And if Satan's casting out himself, then how does the kingdom stand? See, all

Jesus did was take their argument, as stupid as it was and foolish as it was, just reduce it to the absurd and left them all sitting there with their jaws on the ground.

We don't even know what to do with that. There's a couple other examples I can think of off the top of my head, thought he's later,

Psalm 110, when Jesus said, the Messiah, whose son is he? Oh, he's David's son. The implication being, he's inferior to David.

Oh, so if he's inferior to David, then why does David call him Lord? Right, just reducing it to the absurd.

There's another example in the prophets that I can think, I think there's more than this, I really need to think about it, but there's an example in the prophets where the prophet says, you take a piece of wood and you cut off the end of the log and you carve it into an island, and you set it up and you worship it, and you bow down and you thank it for its food, for the food you're about to eat, and you take the other piece of the wood that you just carved to make an island, take the other piece of wood, you start a fire and you cook your food with it.

What he's doing is taking idolatry and making it look absurd by the very practice of it. So there are ways in which

Scripture uses this reductio ad absurdum, but is that what's going on here? Well, this position would say that these are true believers that are being described here, but that it is impossible to lose their salvation because what the author's describing is only a hypothetical situation.

Now Charles Spurgeon, whom you know I love, takes this position, though I would disagree with Spurgeon on this. So Spurgeon says this.

In describing them as true believers, Spurgeon then asks this question, but someone says, then what is the falling away?

So Spurgeon would say this. Well, there never has been a case of it yet, and therefore I cannot describe it from observation.

So he's simply saying that these are true believers, and you say, then what then is the falling away?

And Spurgeon said, I can't tell you what that looks like because it has never actually happened. Instead, the author is using here a hypothetical.

If salvation were to fail the first time, then here is what would happen. It couldn't be renewed again because they have to crucify

Jesus again, and that's absurd, and so therefore they cannot lose it to begin with. That would be Spurgeon's argument.

So he writes this. Spurgeon says this. It says it is impossible, and we say that it would be utterly impossible if such a case as is supposed were to happen, impossible for man and also impossible for God, for God has purposed that he never will grant a second salvation to those whom the first salvation has failed to deliver, close quote.

So Spurgeon is just simply saying the first salvation is so certain to deliver, and to do what

God has intended it to do, it cannot fail, and therefore any supposition that it can fail would leave one saying, well, then

I need to have another sacrifice, another crucifixion, another dead, buried, and risen again,

Lord, and I can't have that. So it would be akin to saying this. Your salvation that you have is so safe, so secure, so permanent that it cannot be lost.

If God has already given to you Christ, what else can he give you? If he's already sent the Son to die in your stead, and that fails to save you, what will save you?

If he's already given the Holy Spirit to regenerate you and to indwell you and to seal you, if that should fail, what else is he gonna do?

The Son already died, the Father already chose, he has adopted and regenerated, and the Spirit has sealed you.

Is it possible for that to fail? That cannot fail. If that fails, there is nothing else. You cannot crucify afresh the

Son of God and put him to open shame all over again just so you can have salvation again. So Spurgeon is using it as a hypothetical situation.

Now, in principle, I would agree with the argument. I would agree with the way that it is argued. I would agree, actually, with some of the premises. I would agree with the conclusion, that you can't lose your salvation.

But I do not think, even though I've used reductio ad absurdum oftentimes in some of my sermons, I do not believe that it is a reductio ad absurdum that is being addressed here.

It doesn't adequately explain what it means to put Christ openly to shame again. This doesn't seem as if it is something that these apostates hypothetically do.

It seems as if this is something that the apostates actually do in their apostasy.

And so I think that there are other details of the position which I think don't fit the text. So the agreement with these first two, that it's a backsliding believer in a hypothetical situation, both of these would agree that what we're talking about is real

Christians. And both of them would agree that it is not true salvation that's being lost. In the case of it being a backslider, it's other things.

Rewards, glory, blessings, et cetera. And in the case of a hypothetical situation that it's not actually salvation that's being lost since it cannot happen.

There is a third position and that is that this passage is describing genuine believers who genuinely lose their salvation and genuinely go to hell as a result of it.

So here's what I wanna do for the remainder of this. This is the third point. We're gonna walk through that position and here's my intention.

I want to show you the case from the details of the passage that they, those on the other side of the theological aisle from me would argue.

And I'm not gonna straw man this, meaning I'm not gonna sort of cast their position as something ludicrous and goofy and try and mock it and make it look like it's easy to knock over.

I really do genuinely wanna present as persuasively as I can their position and how they would view this text and show you their arguments as we work through the text on their perspective and look at it from their vantage point.

I want you to see the interpretation that we are up against if we believe that you cannot lose your salvation.

Okay, so here is how those who believe you can lose your salvation would walk through the passage. The first description is that these have been once enlightened and the word once there describes a once for all permanent at a specific time activity.

So they have been enlightened at one point, a decisive definitive once for all event and that this enlightenment speaks of conversion.

In Ephesians chapter one verse 18, Paul says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of the calling and the riches the glory of his inheritance and the saints.

In Ephesians one, it is Christians who are described as being enlightened. Likewise, they would argue in Hebrews chapter 10 where the same author says, but remember the former days when after being enlightened, you endured great conflict of sufferings partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations and partly becoming shares of those who were so treated.

And there he describes apparently believers who are also enlightened. So this enlightenment there has to deal with people whose eyes of their heart and understanding have been enlightened.

Their once blinded eyes have been opened, their once darkened hearts have received the light of truth. They have now been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light.

As Paul says in Ephesians chapter five, we are not of darkness, we are of those who are of the children of the light.

We are children of the light so we have been enlightened. It is believers in scripture who are described as enlightened.

Second, they have tasted of the heavenly gift. Graham Cockerell in his commentary and I'm quoting here from somebody who believes this position.

In his commentary, he says all of these participles describe nothing less than the blessings that are experienced by the converted.

So those who have been enlightened, aka converted, they have then these three things. They have tasted the heavenly gift that may partakers of the

Holy Spirit and tasted of the word of God and the good powers of the age to come. Those are the three things that describe them and Graham Cockerell would say these describe nothing less than the genuine blessings experienced by those who are converted.

Because they would say tasted does not mean that you just sample something. It's not like several weeks ago when I had the water from the

Dead Sea up here and I took a little toothpick and you dipped it in the water from the Dead Sea and put it on your tongue, you felt how bitter that was.

You sensed how bitter that was. You didn't take that bottle and drink it down to the dregs, did you? None of you would be able to do that and survive.

But you could take a little toothpick and you could put it on your tongue and taste it. Well, those on the other side would say this is not that kind of tasting where you just sort of dip your finger in or your toe in and take a little bit and sample it a little bit.

This word tasted has the idea of experiencing something to the fullness, to the fullest possible extent.

And they would quote Hebrews chapter two, the same author. Hebrews chapter two, verse nine. But we do see him who is made for a little while lower than the angels, namely

Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.

Did Jesus just sample death or did he experience it all the way to its fullest? All the way to its fullest. So they would say that tasting, tasting of the heavenly gift involves experiencing at its deepest and most profound level.

And that's not something that can be said only of an unbeliever who is sampling these things. They would say that the heavenly gift is either the

Holy Spirit, which is described as a heavenly gift in Acts chapter two, verse 38, eight, verse 20, 10, verse 45, and 11, verse 17.

Or they'd say that it is describing justification itself, being declared righteous, which is described as a gift in Romans chapter five, verses 15 and 17.

Or they would say that this heavenly gift is obviously Christ, that he is the gift and he has come down from heaven.

Or they would say that this heavenly gift is salvation and all it contains. It is Christ, it is justification, it is the

Holy Spirit, it is the entire package of salvation, which has come down out of heaven that these people have genuinely experienced in all of its fullness.

How could you conclude that anybody who has tasted this heavenly gift can be anything less than a true believer? I'm arguing from their perspective.

Just have to remind you of that. Because in case you don't know or I haven't mentioned it yet, I do not believe that you can lose your salvation.

So I'm presenting their side of the argument. They've been made third partakers of the

Holy Spirit. Now word partaker describes somebody who has been in partnership with somebody, who has experienced somebody or something.

They have a real and saving participation in the Holy Spirit. And the author uses that word partakers in that same fashion in Hebrews chapter three, verse 14, where he says, for we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.

If being a partaker of Jesus Christ has described somebody who is genuinely a Christian, how can being a partaker of the

Holy Spirit describe anything less than that? Somebody who has genuinely experienced this, genuinely had a participation in the work and in the ministry and the person of the

Holy Spirit. And fourth, they have tasted the word and the powers of the age to come. Same word tasted used in the same way has to describe somebody who has experienced this to the fullness, not somebody who has merely sampled it, but somebody who has experienced it to the fullness.

So this can mean only somebody who has had a real experience with the word of God. Their lives have been changed by it, they have been sanctified by it, they have understood it, they have appropriated it, they have read it, they've memorized it, they have not just sampled it, but they have tasted it and experienced the good word of God.

And not only that, but the powers of the age to come, the powers of the coming kingdom. These are people who have participated and tasted and experienced in the fullness.

The powers of the kingdom age through the apostles, he describes in chapter two, those who saw signs and wonders done in their midst at the hands of those whom

God authenticated his message at the hands of the apostles. And so these are people who have experienced those prophetic powers of the age to come in and through the dynamic demonstrations of power that they saw all around them.

So this is not just a sampling, or just a seeing, or just a hearing. These things have to describe a real personal experience of experiencing all the way to the nth degree.

These people were as saved as you and I are. They have experienced these things and they have partaken and been made a participant in the

Holy Spirit. These have to be believers. So I will quote three men, one who holds each of the positions that I'm critiquing so far.

First, Zane Hodges, who would believe that this describes backslidden believers. He writes this, in every way the language fits true

Christians with remarkable ease. The effort to see here mere professors of faith as over against true converts is somewhat forced.

Close quote. Genuine believers, Hodges would say. Spurgeon. Spurgeon said, if the

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

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?

And then Graham Cockrell in his commentary, he believes you can lose your salvation. Cockrell says, it affirms that those described here have truly experienced a salvation that consists of all the blessings

God has generously made available to his people in Christ. So this position would say, if God wanted to describe true and genuine believers, he could not use any more specific, any more clear, direct, or ironclad language than that which he is using in verses four to six.

It has to describe genuine Christians. And yet that fifth description says they've fallen away.

Not if they fall away, but that they actually have fallen away. So these four positive experiences and blessings are followed by a stark contrast that having enjoyed these things, they have fallen away from them.

And this falling away, again, is not a conditional. It is actually a description of this group of people. And then they cannot return, because you'll notice he says, in fact, verse four begins with the word impossible in the

Greek. It is impossible in the case of those who have once enjoyed these things for them to be renewed again to repentance.

So their return, having fallen away from these things, their return to them is described here impossible. Not just in terms of, well, impossible with men, but not with God.

This is an impossibility. These people cannot come back to what they have fallen away from. So it shows that this is a complete repudiation of Christ, a scorning him and a mocking him and openly putting him to shame.

This they do, turning away in full knowledge of what they have believed and understood and experienced and participated in.

They turn away with full knowledge of that. So this is not somebody who's just dipped their toe in Christianity. This is not somebody who's just sampled

Christianity. This is somebody who has experienced and participated in these things. And yet they have abandoned and walked away from those things and genuinely fallen away.

And now it is impossible to renew them again to a place where they can enjoy and experience these benefits.

And then we get to the illustration in verses seven and eight which describes them being burned up.

Verse seven, for the ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it's tilled receives a blessing from God.

But if it yields thorns and thistles, it's worthless and close to being cursed and it ends up being burned. Now verses seven and eight are an illustration of these people described in verses four to six.

And in verse eight it speaks of them being worthless, close to being cursed and they end up being burned.

Now somebody says it's only the rewards that are burned. It's only their glory that is burned. It's only the blessings that are burned up but not the people themselves.

What is it in the passage that gets burned? It's the ground. The ground laps up the rain, it produces fruit.

The ground gets a blessing. The other ground which also laps up rain produces thorns and thistles.

It's cursed and it is burned. It's not the thorns and the thistles in the illustration that are burned. It's the ground that is burned.

It's the person himself, not the rewards, the blessings, the glory that is burned in verse eight. So this position would say that this illustration betokens nothing less than certain and eternal judgment upon those true

Christians who have now fallen away. So the passage describes true believers, genuine believers, the language that's used here can only describe a believer.

The passage describes a true and genuine falling away from that grace and that status of being a Christian. And the passage describes a true and genuine eternal judgment upon those who thus fall away.

So the conclusion is that a true Christian can leave the faith, shame Christ, fall from grace, never to enjoy the blessings of salvation again and be burned up into eternal destruction.

That's the Arminian position, the consistent Arminian position. Those of you in consistent

Arminian positions have to use my theology to argue for your conclusion that you cannot lose your salvation. Just return to that.

This is the consistent Arminian position. Now that conclusion about salvation is consistent with all the rest of Arminian theology, by the way, it has to be.

You have to say that those who hold to that conclusion that who begin with a strictly

Arminian theology that's logically conclusive. If you believe that your salvation is your choice, ultimately it's your choice,

God's done everything He can do, He's hands off. He's left it entirely up to you. He's not gonna do anything to affect your will, influence you, either way.

It's just, hey, I've done what I can. It's up to you now to do the best you can. You actuate the death of Christ by your decision, by some decision you make, whether Jesus is successful in saving you or not depends on what you do with it.

It all comes down to you now. If that's what you believe, that your decision got you into this, that it was your choice that ultimately was the decisive factor in salvation, then logically it follows that you would believe that your choice could get you right out of it again.

Right, if God has done nothing to get you into it other than die and make it possible, it's all up to you, and you get in because it's all up to you to get in.

So now having gotten in, why is it not all the way up to you to get out? You can get out just as easily, right?

That's the logical conclusion of that theology. It has to be, so that at least is consistent. And I think that I have been fair in presenting the

Arminian position. In fact, I think I've been so fair in presenting it that I'm wondering if some of you might be borrowing the language of Scripture and saying to yourselves,

Jim, that almost persuaded me to become an Arminian, and I don't wanna do that. Obviously, I don't wanna do that.

So I do not believe that that is the conclusion of the passage, and I'm gonna describe to you next week why it is.

Now, notice that these three positions that I just went through, all of them have something in common. All of them believe that the passage is describing true and genuine

Christians. Right, that's what all of those positions have in common. Now, somebody would say it describes genuine true

Christians, but it's not salvation that's being lost, it's something else. Someone else would say it is describing genuine and true

Christians, but he is actually arguing that you cannot lose your salvation because it's a reductive ad absurdum.

And someone else would say it is describing genuine and true Christians, and what is being described here is a genuine loss of salvation and perishing in eternal flames.

Those are the three positions. Something that all three of them have in common is that these are actually genuine and true Christians that are being described here.

Now, is there an alternative to all of those interpretations of the passage? Yes, there is.

There is an alternative, but we're out of time for today, and we will get to that next Sunday. Lord willing,

I will live another week, because I do not want the last sermon that I ever preached to be a presentation and a defense of a theology that I reject with every fiber of my being.

So I hope and pray that I'm usually ready to go home at any time the Lord might call me, this week, not this week.

I want one more week to present what I think is the true interpretation of the passage. And so we'll do that next time.

Let's pray together. Father, we are so thankful for a salvation that does not rest upon our choices, upon our activities, upon our doing, but that it rests in Jesus Christ and Christ alone.

We thank you for the mercy that you have shown us in giving us so great a salvation. You truly are the one who has brought light to our eyes and to our understanding that we may behold the mysteries of the glory of Christ.

You are the one who has changed our heart. You are the one who has granted us repentance and faith. You are the one who has called us out of darkness and into light.

You are the one who has transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of your son. You are the one who has given us the righteousness that we need to stand before you, faultless on that final day with exceeding joy, faultless and blameless before you as the bride of Christ, who will forever glorify and honor and sing your praises and honor you.

We thank you for these mercies. And we thank you again that your word is clear. We pray that our time that we've spent here today would be profitable to the end of helping us to understand and discern the truth of scripture and to rightly appropriate it.

We love you and we thank you as a grateful people that have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. We thank you in his name, amen.

In order to transition our thoughts and minds to the Lord's Supper today before we partake, I just wanna reaffirm something that we hold to be true.

And that is that the death of Christ in his giving of his body and shedding of his blood has not made salvation just possible.

He has secured a salvation for all who will believe upon him. And if you are here today and you do not know

Jesus Christ as Savior, there's only one place that you can look and that is to the crucified one who died on a

Roman cross 2 ,000 years ago, shed his blood that he might pay the price for sinners to provide a sacrifice and a payment for sin that is adequate to cover the cost and the charge against you, the wrath of God that abides upon you for every sin you have ever committed.

And you can stand this day forgiven, and not just forgiven, but righteous in the sight of God, not because of anything that you have done, but because of what somebody else has done on your behalf.

If you're not a believer, God commands you this day to repent and to believe upon Jesus Christ or you will perish on the day of judgment.

That is his promise to you. But it is equally glorious that his promise to you is that if you will believe and repent, you may have eternal life.

You can know that your sins are forgiven and you can know that you stand righteous because of what Christ has done. So as believers, as we partake today, we're going to reflect upon our own sin, confess that to the

Lord, and I will lead us in prayer after a time of quiet, and then I will ask the ushers to come forward and help me serve the elements here.

And if you are a believer who is living in unrepentant sin and you're not dealing with sin, don't partake of the cup.

Let it pass from before you. If you're an unbeliever, this is not for you. You need to become a believer before you partake of the bread and of the juice, otherwise you eat and drink judgment to yourself.

Scripture warns about that. So let's bow our heads, we'll examine ourselves and pray together, and then we'll participate.

Our Father, we do confess to you our iniquity, our transgressions, and our sin. We struggle and battle the remnants of this unredeemed flesh that we still live in and dwell in, and we need your grace day by day and moment by moment to mortify that sin, to put it to death, and to bring every thought and action in obedience to the

Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank you that in the death of your Son there is redemption, that there is forgiveness, that there is grace available, infinitely beyond the wrath that we deserve so rightly for our violations against your law.

And we thank you that our salvation rests upon Christ and what he has done, and that we can be righteous because of his obedience to your word and to your law.

He obeyed on our behalf, and then he died on our behalf, and then he rose again on our behalf so that we may have credited to our account his righteousness and his obedience and have our sins taken away, so we thank you for that.

We rejoice in it, and we pray that you would strengthen and encourage our hearts together as we partake of these elements which remind us of the sacrifice of Christ.

May you be glorified and sanctify us, we pray, in the truth and through this means, we ask in Christ's name, amen.