Heb 6

Fully assured of the promised inheritance

For study leader: Heb 6 explains why the ‘solid food’ of God’s word (Heb 5:14) and our feeding on it are essential to persevere in the Christian faith: Faith depends on spiritual instruction how God sanctifies believers to make them Christ-like. The resulting practical ‘holiness’ is not even mentioned until the final chapter (Heb 13). Since they will not grow on Christ-less moralism or the 10 commandments (Heb 3:16; 7:12), believers need the evangelical instruction of chapters 6 to 12. No less than seven chapters of such ‘solid food’ explain next why lasting faith and its fruit depend on an immortal high priest (Heb 6-12).

Heb 6 begins by addressing whether salvation is eternal, or whether believers can be ‘unsaved’ again and fall away from faith in Jesus: Is salvation entirely the work of God (including all efforts of men), or does God depend on any of our own contributions? If taken out of context to threaten believers that they can lose their salvation, Heb 6 will be fatally misunderstood: According to vv13-20, apostasy and damnation are not an option for genuine believers, because they are those who disavow of self-reliance and instead take God’s unchangeable promise as the anchor of their hope that He is High Priest forever and has made them heirs of his own eternal life, Heb 6:17-20.

Interpreting this and related texts may need more than one session (for more in-depth study, see Apostasy). E.g., you may want to skip questions 4 & 5 or save them for a separate session to compare different interpretations. Q1 may be skipped to save time, or treated separately as a preparation if the group is interested in the ‘elementary doctrines’, including the nowadays controversial laying on of hands.

Warm-up: How flexible were your parents in keeping or changing promises that they had made?

Read: Hebrews 6

1) vv1-3: What does it mean to leave the ‘elementary doctrines’? What made them ‘elementary’ (i.e. part of the ‘catechism’ for new converts)?

  • v2 names three pairs of doctrines:
    1. Repentance => Faith
    2. Baptism => Laying on of hands (=confirmation)
    3. Resurrection => Judgment
    In each pair of doctrines, one depends on the other: How so? [In each pair, A is the prerequisite for B to happen: A=>B]

    • How does the order of these pairs correspond to the chronological sequence of Christian experience: Can resurrection precede baptism? Can confirmation precede baptism? Why not? [Note: Even those who baptize infants may do so only on the basis of preceding faith, in their case the faith of parents who teach their children]
  • Accordingly, the laying on of hands here must have been a sign to confirm admittance to communion of those baptized as infants (Augustin). By comparison, what do you think of the practice of some who indiscriminately lay hands on anyone to impart any spiritual ‘blessing’ (faith, new birth, healing…)? Is that biblical?
    • Hint: If hands would have been laid on for any indiscriminate ‘blessing’, would an ‘elementary’ doctrine about it be necessary at all? Why not?
  • According to the order of Heb 6:2, hands were laid on after baptism. Why not before, say to “impart” to them the Holy Spirit (as some say they do)? =>

2) Taking for granted that the readers of Hebrews had been instructed in these elementary doctrines, Heb 6 does not further explain them. What else did the author state to be his aim, v1?

  • How does one ‘leave behind’ a foundation when one builds a house upon it? How does that differ from forgetting this foundation?
  • Within God’s word, what distinguishes ‘solid food’ from milk? Heb 5:13
  • Why is feeding on it essential? What is at stake if weaning is unduly delayed?*  

3) vv4-6 describe apostasy as ‘falling away’: In what context, and how does this context define what it means to fall away? Away from what exactly?

  • How were the recipients of this letter tempted to ‘fall away’?
    • By a desire to live free from all laws, or by the appeal of Judaism to return to the law of Moses with all its respectability? Heb 3:12-13
    • What made them vulnerable to such temptation, Heb 2:1; 5:11
  • v4 makes Heb 6 and its interpretation controversial: Why could that be?
    • Some believe that v4 states the main thesis of chapter 6: Why can’t this be correct?
      • The word “For…” implies that v4 only serves to justify the preceding: What was that? =>
  • v3: ‘…if God permits’. Permitting what?
    • Why would God not permit the author to advance beyond basic doctrines, v3? i.e. what if the readers were simply ignorant about those basics?
    • By contrast, further discussion of those basics is useless with those who abandoned them to return to the law of Moses as the means to become holy. Why? cf 1Cor 3:10-11.
    • Why did this return to Judaism amount to “crucifying Jesus again”?**
    • Hint: Why was Judaism hostile to Jesus at all, and to what He taught about how we must be saved?
    • v4: Why would it be wrong to limit the gospel to only its basic doctrines for their sake to not offend them?

4) Optional (if you address it, Q5 and/or Q6 may serve as a separate study): Heb 6:4-6 receives conflicting interpretations. What do you think it is saying?

When separated from the context of vv13-20, Heb 6:4-6 is notorious for conflicting interpretations among commentators. To quote one (R Bruce Compton):

“The warning passage in Heb 6:4-6 continues to be a notorious crux in New Testament interpretation. The difficulty comes in harmonizing the description of those who have ‘tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit’ with the statement about their falling away‚ and not being able to be brought back to repentance.”

Compton summarized 4 prevailing views in commentaries as follows:
  1. True believer falling away (apostasy), who therefore loses salvation;
  2. True believer falling away (apostasy), who therefore loses reward (but is saved);
  3. True believer falling away hypothetically, who therefore would lose salvation (only if this were possible); and
  4. False believer who no longer deceives himself to be a believer, and who therefore remains condemned

=> What difficulties do you find are associated with any of these views, or with your own?
If they see none, let others challenge them with objections, e.g. (in the order of views 1 to 4):

  1. 1Jn 2:19 defines apostates as people who ‘went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us….’. In other words, they cannot lose a salvation that they never had.
  2. Since apostasy brings to light that there was no regenerating saving faith in the first place (1Jn 2:19, see above), apostates also cannot lose a reward that they never had.
  3. e.g. Jesus’ parables of the vine (Jn 15:1-17) or of the sower (Mt 13:1-9) warn of branches without fruit or of a soil where the seed sprang up but without a root. What is the point of such warnings if believers can only fall away hypothetically? [Note: Jesus warned of a counterfeit faith that cannot save anyone because it is unable to withstand the trials of life, see Jn 15 and Jesus’ teaching on apostasy for further study]
  4. is consistent with 1Jn 2:19 and illustrated by the tragic example of Judas (Jn 13:18). Objections against this view are related to those against the biblical doctrine of predestination. In particular, the fifth article of the Remonstrants questioned the certainty with which Protestant catechisms assert that genuine saving faith is indestructible. The difficulty is this:
    • If counterfeit Christian faith can look so deceptively like genuine faith for a time, how can anyone ever enjoy the genuine assurance of salvation that Hebrews is talking about (Heb 6:19; 10:23)?
    • And if apostates were never genuine believers in the first place, why does Heb 6 describe them as beyond hope of redemption?

5) Read the parable of the sower (Mt 13; Mk 4), Jesus mentioned 3 types of infertile ground. Which one resembles most the group that Heb 6 is talking about? Why?

6) To rightly interpret vv4-6, it is critical to see that the context describes two impossibilities, not just one: What are they?

  • v4: Impossible to restore apostates again to…?
  • v18: It is impossible for God to…?
    • Impossible to lie about what exactly (considering the context)?
    • What were the two “unchangeable things”? [God’s promise + oath]
  • Unchangeable for whom? [Anyone, incl. God himself]
    • What would have been the outcome if e.g. Abraham could have changed it? cf Gen 17:18-19
    • v15: Was there a possibility that he would not be sufficiently patient (lit. long-suffering) and instead lose faith in God and his salvation?
    • What did God do when Abraham was about to give up, first in Egypt (Gen 12), then with Hagar (Gen 16:2), and then in Gerar (Gen 20:2) to mess up God’s plan of salvation?
  • v18-19: Is the promise equally unchangeable for all believers?
    • How are believers characterized for whom God’s promise is equally unchangeable?
    • How does one ‘flee for refuge’? Refuge from what? =>
    • Read Num 35:25-28. Why was a manslayer safe from the avenger of blood as long as he remained in a city of refuge? How was his safety linked to the high priest?
    • What does that say about the safety of those whose high priest is Jesus who lives forever? What is their city of refuge, metaphorically speaking? cf Heb 12:22-24
  • According to vv18-19, why is apostasy not an option for believers?
    • Why will those who found such faith not leave their ‘city of refuge’? [Hint: What did God do to make sure? v17]
    • Do you find the gospel valuable enough to convince you that no price is too high to own it (Mt 13:44)?

7) Personal and application

  • Do you think Heb 6 is a warning for believers, or rather for unbelievers? Why?
  • Can we ever know of anyone whether they have fallen from the faith to a point where they are beyond redemption?
    • Why or why not?
    • Novatian, a bishop of Rome in the 3rd century taught that someone who renounced faith under persecution must never be readmitted into the church because “…it is impossible to renew apostates to repentance” (Heb 6:4). Do you think the church was right to excommunicate this bishop? Why or why not?
  • Do you ever worry whether you yourself really are a Christian?
    • If so, is Heb 6 for you a threat or rather an encouragement? Why?
    • What do you consider as trustworthy evidence that you have reasons for sound assurance of salvation? Heb 6:12+15; cf Heb 3:6; 4:14
  • Why is it alarming if people who profess faith in Jesus refuse to move on from milk to the ‘solid food’ of his teaching?
  • * ‘Solid food’ is the means by which God keeps the saints in the faith: Christ and His virtue to which we are called in chapter 13 (including perseverance) do not grow in us from milk alone. To persevere, faith at some point requires the spiritual instruction of the following chapters as its guiding light; cf leader’s note.
  • ** He does not say that they would be crucifying Christ hypothetically when repenting again. Rather, by returning to Judaism and its animal sacrifices and denial of Christ, they are actually crucifying Christ again, holding him up for contempt again. So the reason why they cannot repent again is not that their repentance would crucify Christ again, but that they have come to despise such repentance.

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