Fr. Stephen De Young: Chapter six, verse one: “Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God…”

Okay, so he says—now he’s segueing back to his topic: Therefore, let’s leave the discussion of the elementary principles. I don’t have time to go back and review Christianity 101 before we get back into this. [Laughter] And notice again, it is translated “perfection,” but we’re talking about maturity and completion. We’re not going to go back to elementary school; let’s move on to the more advanced things. So we’re not going to go back through the foundation of repentance from dead works.

And this should be “faithfulness,” because—you can tell the bias here when re-translating. “Works” versus “faith.” And all works are “dead.” That’s what some of our Protestant friends want to read into this. But the fact that they’re described as “dead works” means there are other works that are not dead works; otherwise you don’t need an adjective. I don’t have to say, “big skyscraper”; it’s redundant. [laughter] You could just say, “skyscraper.” I have to say, “big building,” because there are also small buildings. So that’s first of all, but also: How is that a contrast? Is that what— When people ask, in the book of Acts, “What must I do to be saved?” do they say to them, “Well, stop trying to do good stuff and just think the right things”? No. Ever.

And is that “repentance”? [Laughter] Is that what repentance is? So you repent from dead works; you repent from a certain type of works; you repent from sin. You don’t repent from doing good. So this is contrasting… Now what does it make sense to contrast, then, dead works or sin with, especially as we’ve just been talking about obedience? Faithfulness. So, step one to become a Christian is what? You repent from your dead works—you repent from your sins—and you return to living a life that’s faithful to God. So that’s step one. So he says: We’re not going to go back through that; you should know that by now, if you’re listening to me talking. [Laughter]

Verse two: “...of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying-on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” So he’s saying: Y’all were baptized, so we’re not going to talk about baptism again. These are the elementary principles he’s listing. These are the things you go out and tell them to do—to do—when they’re going to become a Christian. You repent of your sins, and you commit to living a life faithful to God; you’re baptized, you have the laying-on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit, which is now a function of chrismation. That happened to you; you guys are Christians now. Christ’s resurrection from the dead that we’re looking forward to. Eternal judgment: the judgment when Christ returns. That basic stuff you all should know by now; I’m not going to go back and review and rehearse all of that.

Verse three: “And this we will do if God permits.” So we’re going to do that: we’re going to leave that aside, God willing. [Laughter] May need to come back to it with y’all, but, Lord willing, we can set that basic stuff aside now. Come on, let’s get back into the meat of this.

Verse four: “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame.” Yeah! [Laughter] I told you, he’s going at them! Now, this is evening’s “Sorry, Calvinists.” [Laughter]

So this passage causes a lot of problems for our Calvinist friends, and for other folks who don’t identify as Calvinists but who accept some version of “once saved, always saved from the perseverance of the saints,” or that kind of idea—because this pretty clearly says the opposite. It pretty clearly says the opposite. It says that there are people who have done all of these things—tasted the heavenly… They have been enlightened: they have tasted the heavenly gift, they have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good word of God, the powers of the age to come—and then they fall away. Because what our friends who believe in the other things want to say is that anybody who falls away was never really in to begin with, and that’s the sign; that’s the sign they were never in to begin with: they were faking it; they’re cosplaying. But that’s not what this says. This says that they legitimately did all these things, and then they fell away.

Another problem, less discussed, but which makes this worse for them—because of course they have ways around this that they’ve worked out, generally by trying to make all of those things—been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, all those things—trying to make those sort of just these vague things, like: well, they were in church; they were around Christians. They try to make it very, very vague.

Here’s the problem, and that problem, as it often is, is context. What did we just read? We just read a list of the elementary principles. Remember what some of those were? Repentance and baptism. The laying-on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit. Let’s look at this list again. They were enlightened. That’s the word that’s used for baptism, all over the place in the first century.

Q1: Enlightened?

Fr. Stephen: Yes, illumined. And it’s translated “illumined” now in most of our English liturgical translations. The “newly illumined” is the newly baptized.

Tasted the heavenly gift. What were “gifts” back at the beginning of chapter five? Sacrifices. So tasted the heavenly sacrifice: the Eucharist, yeah.

Have become partakers of the Holy Spirit. Remember the laying-on of hands?

Q1: You can’t just sort of vaguely be a partaker of the Holy Spirit; you are or not.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. They had the Holy Spirit, and they had the Holy Spirit sacramentally, because most of our friends who believe in the “perseverance of saints” and “once saved, always saved” stuff don’t think the sacraments really do things. But Hebrews kind of says they do.

Have tasted the good word of God. Do they taste the Bible? See, they didn’t capitalize it here, because it was our Protestant friends who translated it, but who is the Word of God?

Q1: Christ.

Fr. Stephen: Christ. Might “tasted the word of God” and “tasted the heavenly gift” here be in parallel? Meaning they tasted Christ in the Eucharist.

And the powers of the age to come. It’s a way of referring to the Holy Spirit.

So these are actual Christians, and according to St. Paul, here in Acts 6, what makes them actual Christians is their participation in those sacraments St. Paul was talking about—and then they fall away.

“It’s impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify for themselves again the Son of God and put him to an open shame.” Well, what does that mean? Well, what happens when you’re baptized? You die with Christ and rise again. So if we were going to baptize you again, what would that do?

So what function is this, very—this is even stronger— I mentioned, when we had the other warnings before that there were going to be even more dire ones. This is one of the really dire ones. What function is this dire warning serving, getting dropped in here?

Q1: Don’t fall away! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Right, but in the sense that it’s not just a question of “quit being babies.” Quit being babies: you’ve received all of this; by now you should be further along than you are. It’s not just me being mean to you and picking on you and calling you a baby, or saying you’re not very bright or you’re foolish. There’s an actual danger for them. There’s a danger for them, having received all that they’ve received. Having received all that they’ve received, they’re now accountable for what they’ve received, and there’s not something else coming along now from outside. There’s not something beyond Christ that’s going to come and take care of the situation for them.

So folks living in the old covenant—remember, we’re still in the context of this contrast between the old and the new covenant. Folks in the old covenant, some of them were observant and some of them weren’t. A lot of them weren’t, if you read the Old Testament. But even the ones who weren’t, the people who were miserable sinners go to the gospels—the tax-collectors, the prostitutes, the people who were living lives enmeshed in sin under the old covenant—weren’t taking advantage of the potential blessings of going and repenting and offering sacrifices and doing the things they should have been doing. Something wonderful still happened for them: Christ came, and he came to them, to offer them repentance and forgiveness, and to offer his own life to restore them to communion with God.

Now we’re in the new covenant. If you’re one of those lax, sloppy people in the new covenant, if you’re a Christian who becomes enmired in sin, there’s not another Christ who’s going to come to save you from it and offer his life again.

Q1: But don’t we repent and get forgiveness?

Fr. Stephen: If we repent. That’s what he’s encouraging them to do.

Q1: Okay, so if you fall away…

Fr. Stephen: Right, but that’s why I said there’s nothing coming from outside. There’s not another thing coming.

Q1: Okay, so when we repent, we’re still in…

Fr. Stephen: Right. Zacchaeus should have, some time before he met Jesus, repented of being a tax-collector and left being a tax-collector and gone and offered sacrifices and gone and repaid what he stole. The Torah told him he was supposed to do that, and he didn’t do it. And even though he didn’t do it, even though he was faithless under the old covenant, Jesus came to him and gave him this opportunity for repentance and forgiveness.

So what this is saying is: The new covenant, this is our chance for repentance and forgiveness. There’s not anything else coming. So if we don’t take advantage of it now, if we decide to stay babies and not press on toward maturity and be faithful and repent and make progress in the Christian life, there’s nothing else coming that’s going to rescue us from what happens, because now we’ve received all of it.

Zacchaeus, before he met Jesus, had not tasted the heavenly gift, he had not received the Holy Spirit, he had not been baptized. He hadn’t received any of those things yet. These people have. That’s what God has given them. He’s not giving them something else; he’s not giving them something more than that. They have what they’re going to receive from God: they have Christ; they have everything. Now it’s up to them to do it.

Q1: So the phrase, “to renew them again to repentance,” it always leaves me without any sense.

Fr. Stephen: Right, that “renew” is the rebirth language, of baptism.

Q1: Okay.

Fr. Stephen: There’s not another baptism.

Q1: It’s not truly I repent and come and confess my sins… [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: No, right.

Q1: But I’ll just read it…

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, because he’s talked about that already in the letter, coming up to this. But it’s talking about not taking advantage of that. There’s not something later in life.

So if you want evidence that this is what this means, you can look at the bad way people chose to interpret it, because we’re all sinful, and so we look at things—and I’m especially prone to this and have been so I was a child—“Okay, that’s the system. How can I make the system work for me?” What started happening in the third and fourth and fifth centuries that the Fathers started railing at? People started waiting to get baptized until right before they died. Why? Because they read this and said, “Oh! That’s how it works! Once I get baptized and I’m received into the Church and I start receiving the Eucharist, I’m responsible, and I have to turn from sin and live a different kind… Hmm. Well, maybe I’ll just wait!” [Laughter] “Then, like, the last week of my life, I could probably live that way, because I’ll be in bed anyway, right?” [Laughter] So that’s what it’s talking about.

Q1: Did Constantine do this?

Fr. Stephen: No. That’s an urban legend.

Q1: Oh, is it? Okay.

Fr. Stephen: Yes. St. Constantine did not deliberately postpone his baptism until his deathbed. He had a very elaborate baptism planned. He was about to depart on an eastern campaign and had set up, with several archbishops, etc., to be baptized in the Jordan River on his way east, and he fell ill. And the doctors said, “This is grave,” and so he was baptized on what became his deathbed, because he never got to the Jordan River. So, yeah, it’s an urban legend that he deliberately waited until he was about to die. It’s that he had it planned, and then he was about to die, so they did it anyway.

But, yeah, that’s what this is getting at. You can’t do it again. You don’t get another—you’re responsible now. You’re responsible now. You’ve received everything; you’re responsible for what you do with it. And, no, that did not mean: so wait as long as you can and get your sinnin’ in! [Laughter] That’s not where this was going at all.

Verse seven: “For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burnt.” This is sort of a parable, an analogy. And what is this analogy about? This analogy is about what you do with what you receive. So there’s some earth, some ground, some dirt, some soil…

Q1: Oh, it’s like the parable of the sower.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. The rain comes upon it, it bears herbs to be cultivated: bears fruit. And that fruit is taken and blessed. And there’s other that bears thorns and briars, and that’s basically cursed. You’ve got a bunch of ground with thorns and briars, nobody’s happy to see it; nobody’s like: “Yay! Thorns and briars!” [Laughter] And what do you do with that? Well, you end up just clearing it out and burning it.

So that analogy there at the end—again, context: what comes before, what comes after? It’s what you do with what you have. And so St. Paul is saying you’ve received all of this grace, all of this working of God in your life through the sacraments; now you’re going to be accountable for what you do with it. And if you squander it, you’re not going to get more; you’re not going to get something different; you’re not going to get another clean slate. You need to now make it count, because the blessings and cursings—remember, we’re still talking about the covenant: blessings and cursings, Deuteronomy 28-30 of the old covenant; they’re more severe in the new covenant—this is what the blessings and cursings are based on: what you do with what you’ve been given.

And that’s connected to what came before because they’re all sitting there, looking around, not paying attention while he’s talking. He’s saying, “This is serious, guys! What you do with this… Whatever you’re thinking about as your thoughts wander around, it’s less important than this.”

Verse nine: “But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner.” So that’s “though we speak in this manner”: “I know I’m being rough on you guys”—but he calls them “beloved.” “I know I’m being rough on you guys, but I love you, and I’m confident that you can do better. That you can do better: that’s why I’m saying this to you.”

Verse ten: “For God is not unjust, to forget your work and labor of love”—oh, wait a minute, I thought they were supposed to leave off works… Maybe not. [Laughter] “God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward his name, and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister.” So he’s saying God’s not unjust. If you put forth this effort to be faithful and to do good and to minister to each other and care for each other and love one another, and you do these things, God’s not just going to forget that or ignore that. God is just. God will acknowledge that. So I’m not saying these things to say God’s going to smite you; you’re going to get thrown in the fire. He’s saying: I know you can do better, and God will acknowledge the hard work that you’ve put in in love.

Verse eleven: “And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence, to the full assurance of hope until the end.” So where does assurance come from according to St. Paul in Hebrews? Does it come from the fact that “once saved, always saved”?

Q1: No!

Fr. Stephen: Does it come from the fact that once you’ve got it you’re—no, it comes from showing the same diligence until the end, and then you have the full assurance of your salvation. So: sorry, Calvinists. You don’t have a problem with me; you have a problem with St. Paul, book of Hebrews, or whoever you think wrote Hebrews.

Verse twelve: “That you do not become sluggish, but imitate those, who through faith and patience, inherit the promises.” Notice how they’ve tried to skew it back again. Not deliberately: notice how that skews it back again. Faith and patience. “Oh, you just have to believe real hard, think real hard, that this is true and be patient, and you’re good.” No, it’s faithfulness, because what’s it contrasted with? Sluggishness! What’s it paralleled with? Diligence! The work of love.

So there’s not a way around this being: God gives us grace through the sacraments. We receive Christ; we receive the Holy Spirit through the sacraments, and then we have to be diligent in love, to work and to be faithful to God until the end of our lives to receive, and then we can be assured of our salvation. And if we receive all that and then we’re sluggish, we end up getting burnt in the fire, right? So I don’t see how you can read this and get around—if you read it in toto. If you pull pieces out, you can do all kinds of things, if you pull out little sections. But in context, the arch and shape of St. Paul’s content is really clear. Really clear.

Verse 13: “For when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely, blessing, I will bless you, and, multiplying, I will multiply you.’ ” That’s a way in Greek of rendering a Hebrew structure. There’s a Hebrew language structure called the infinitive absolute, where you take the same verb, and you put the verb in another form, and then you put the infinitive right before it. One of the most famous places this occurs is in Genesis 2, when God says about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; he says to them—literally in Hebrew, he says, “The day when you eat from this tree, dying, you will die.” [Laughter] “You’ll die, dying.” It’s the same verb twice. The idea is it’s intense: you’ll surely die. You’re going to really die, like, for sure.

That’s the same idea here, the Greek rendering; it’s not as obvious if you don’t know the Hebrew structure. So it’s intensifying. It’s like: “I’m going to really bless you; you’re going to get super-blessed. And you’ll be super-multiplied, exponentially.”

Verse 15: “And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.” That’s Abraham, and Abraham got what was promised to him. “For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation for them is an end for all dispute.” So that would be how you would normally—if there’s a dispute, you’d swear; you’d take an oath. And most oaths in the ancient world included imprecations.

So the closest English saying to this is probably like: “As God is my witness… I didn’t do it.” And when you say that, “God is my witness,” that means if you’re lying, God’s going to—yes! And that’s why it’s: “Well, okay, if you’re going to…” [Laughter] And we see this also, when the third time St. Peter denies Christ, and it says, “He invoked a curse on himself” or “He took an oath on it”—the language is different depending on your translation—it’s the same kind of idea. He literally swore in that way that he didn’t know Jesus. That’s why that’s such a major, major moment.

Q1: Yeah, that makes it so much worse.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah! [Laughter] But so he’s saying, “Look, normally you swear by”—and if you’re a human, you swear by something greater or someone greater, more powerful, more all-knowing, who can enforce whatever it is. Well, God doesn’t have anything greater than him that he can swear by. That’s his point. He swore by himself. And what does it mean to swear by yourself? Well, for him to be lying, he would have to not be God—God would have to not be God, for him to go back on his word, which isn’t possible.

Verse 17: “Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath.” So that “heir, inheritance” language is what’s always used with Abraham. So he confirmed it by an oath, “that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge, to lay hold of the hope set before us.”

So what are the two immutable things?

Q1: I was wondering.

Fr. Stephen: Context! Now, what, back at the beginning of chapter six… Let’s look at chapter six, verses four and five. They’ve tasted what? The word of God. They’ve tasted Christ.

Q1: And that’s the Eucharist.

Fr. Stephen: The Son. And they’ve received the Holy Spirit. No, no, no. Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Q1: Okay.

Fr. Stephen: God swore by…

Q1: Himself, okay.

Fr. Stephen: Himself, and then he swore by… two immutable things: the Son and the Holy Spirit. It’s subtle. [Laughter] But there’s this move from swearing by himself…

Q1: It makes a lot more sense in Trinitarian terms.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. And why would it be important that there’s two immutable things?

Q1: Two witnesses?

Fr. Stephen: Two witnesses. Because we’re shifting: we’re doing old covenant, new covenant. Abraham, he swore by himself; new covenant, he also swears by himself because there’s nothing greater than him, but remember: he says, “Thus God, determining to show more abundantly the immutability of his counsel”—more abundantly than what? Than the promise to Abraham. So he shows it by two immutable things, two witnesses: the Son and the Holy Spirit, whom they’ve received.

“It’s impossible for God to lie.” We’re going to “have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge, to lay hold of the hope set before us.” What does that mean? Well, he was just talking about how we need to do our part. And then, remember, he mentioned God is not unjust to forget what we do. He’s now saying: God’s done and will do his part. Because he made this promise to Abraham, and when Abraham was faithful and patiently endured, all the way to the end—like he’s saying we need to do—Abraham received the promise. So he’s made even a greater oath towards us, in terms of the Son and the Holy Spirit. So how much more is he now going to be faithful if we do our part and remain diligent and faithful and patient to the end? Is he going to absolutely, without a doubt, give us the promise that we’ve put our hope in? So that’s the argument there.

And this is—I hope you’re seeing this, because this is going to be for the rest of Hebrews, too, and over and over again. He goes to the old covenant, and he says: It’s not that we throw that in the trash can now, but now it’s intensified, it’s bigger, it’s more. It’s the fullness. That was a part, an image; now we have the fullness, the whole thing, the reality that comes in Christ.

Verse 19: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence (added, but it’s not wrong), enters behind the veil.” What veil? The veil to the holy of holies in the Temple, where only the high priest could go, only on the Day of Atonement.

Q1: This is where the anchor as a symbol of hope comes from.

Fr. Stephen: Yes. “Where the forerunner has entered for us, Jesus, having become High Priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” And now he’s worked back to what he was talking about before! [Laughter] So this is sort of a digression, because they weren’t paying attention. But St. Paul, being a master orator, has now brought—gotten us back to where we were, to the high priest, to Melchizedek, and to the Day of Atonement, which is where we’re going to go further now.

But that is probably enough for this evening. I don’t think we want to try and go into chapter seven, so we’ll save that for next week. Thank you, everybody.