Hebrews 6
6:1-2. If one considers the goal of our instruction, the words of Solomon are certainly true, “The end of a matter is better than its beginning” (Ecc.7:8). But to finish the course, one must press on. Repentance and faith, instructions about washings, the blessings and duties that come by the laying on of hands, and knowing about the resurrection, and the eternal judgment to come, are foundational. One should lay a foundation only once, and then build on it.
6:2. There are many views about the word washings, or baptisms (see KJV or NIV). My view is that he is speaking of baptism. But that raises the question of its plural form, since baptism is not to be repeated. The simplest answer may be that the writer has the baptism of many people in mind (just as he has many in mind in 1, 3, and 4).
6:3-4. Our nurturing and growth to maturity is as much a work of God’s sovereign grace as is our conversion (3).
To seal this upon our hearts, God has not only given us the sacrament of baptism (a sign of regeneration), but of the Lord’s Supper, which is the sign and seal of his continuing gift of sustaining nourishment. The heavenly gift (Christ) is not to be only once tasted (4), but we are to feed on him by faith always, and thus be growing up into him (Eph. 4:15).
6:4-8. See also 2:1-4; 3:7-41; 10:26-31, 38, 39; 12:15-17, 25. These warning passages, and the many like them throughout the Bible, raise dilemmas for man’s finite reason and limited knowledge. Is God sovereign (as v.3 assumes)? If God has predestined all things according to the council of his own will (Eph. 1:11), how can things like chance and freewill exist? If God’s sovereignty is absolute, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” (Ro. 9:19). Can assurance rest on something as seemingly uncertain as human choice, and we still “realize the full assurance of hope” (11)? And if the Lord of all has indeed given us freewill, which our moral responsibility proves, why is it impossible for those who have partaken of the good word of God, such as Esau and Judas, to be renewed again to repentance (6; cf. 12:17; Luke 22:22)? Why was it impossible for them to repent again after their apostasy?
God’s total sovereignty (Jehovah reigns; Jesus is Lord) is a fact, and the first article of Biblical faith. To doubt it casts God down from heaven and installs chance upon his throne. This not only destroys God, but the free choices of responsible beings also are shown to be mere illusions. Accident rules. Our minds are the end products of time plus chance, and moral values become a construct of the strong.
The fallacy in all this is to maintain that in order to be free, the will must not be determined by anything. In fact, the opposite is true. The more determined I am to have an ice-cream cone, the more freely I decide to buy one. In moral choices, Jonathan Edwards calls this moral necessity. Arminians argue that any necessity that the will is under destroys its freedom, and therefore any virtue or blame attached to our acts. But to Edwards, Calvinism shows both God and man acting freely but under moral necessity. This gives all glory to God for his goodness, and leaves sinful man without excuse. Freedom is doing as one pleases. No one is freer than God, who has the power always to do as he pleases. This means that God is under no necessity except moral necessity. Because he is good, for example, it is impossible for God to lie (18; Titus 1:2). In the same way, those considered in the verses before us who willfully and knowingly reject the only way of salvation commit the sin against the Holy Spirit (cf. Mark 3:29, etc.). It is impossible to renew them again to repentance, because they freely again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and they do so because it most pleases them, i.e., they act from an evil moral necessity. Therefore, they suffer the consequences of their inability to repent, having proven themselves worthy of condemnation by a just, righteous, and holy God. They have freely and finally rejected his grace, and called his Spirit a liar.
For a much better discussion of the issues we have touched on here, see my review of Jonathan Edward’s treatise titled The Freedom of the Will (in my booklet, Certainty in a Random World).
6:9-12. But in spite of their backsliding and dangerous wavering, the writer is convinced that these Hebrew Christians have not utterly fallen away. They are beloved brethren, still bringing forth some of the fruits that accompany salvation. Such admonitions and warnings, speaking the truth in love, are some of the ordinary means God uses to assure the perseverance of his saints. Those who were never truly his will go from bad to worse (cf. 2 Tim. 3:13; 1 John 2:19), but it is through faith and patience that his true children inherit the promises (12).
6:13-20. We have here the example of Abraham, and the foundation on which his faith and hope rested. He settled in the land God promised, a land that was in his lifetime full of dangerous people and prone to drought. His promised son and heir was not born to him until he was one hundred years old. Yet he found good reason to believe God, even though the fullness of what he was promised never came until after his death (cf. 11:39-40). Yet God is not a God of the dead, but of the living (Mark 12:26-27). Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Abraham, by faith, obtained the promise (15). If we know the resurrection and the power of God, our hope is assured (11).
The foundation of Abraham’s hope was the sure word of God; his unchangeable purpose (17) ratified by an unchangeable oath. Here is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Salvation does not depend on man’s freewill, but on the unchangeable purpose of the God of truth. This is the anchor of the soul (19; cf. John 6:39; 1 Peter 1:4-5).
6:19-20. The writer thus returns to his main theme. Jesus, the Word of God, is our anchor of the soul, who as our forerunner has entered within the heavenly Most Holy Place as our eternal high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.