Transcript

ANNOUNCER: On this episode, we are finishing up our tough texts series with a look at Hebrews. Hebrews has a number of warning passages. So we’re going to talk about what these warning passages are about. Thank you for joining us friend today. Grace in Focus is the ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. Lots can be learned about us there, including about our seminary, free, online, seminary, Grace Evangelical Seminary, where you can earn an MDiv degree, for free, if you keep your grade point average above 3.0. Find out, go through the application process, come study with us, Grace Evangelical Seminary. All the information you need at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s discussion about Hebrews, here’s Bob Wilkin along with Ken Yates. 

KEN: Bob, we’ve done a number of passages on tough texts where many people within Christendom look at these passages and believe that they are teaching salvation by works, or that you could lose your salvation if you don’t do good works. 

BOB: And that you should doubt your salvation if you don’t have a life that’s just overflowing with so many good works, that it’s just obvious that you’re near perfect.

KEN: Right, and we have a class in our seminary that deal with about 12 or 13 of these tough texts, and we’re on our last one here. We kind—

BOB: And you picked a tough one for the last one. How can we do this in the short period of time, but anyway? 

KEN: We won’t be able to, but we’re going to give it a good college try. We’re talking about the book of Hebrews in general and specifically warning passages in the book of Hebrews. 

BOB: All right, so there’s five warning passages in the book of Hebrews. I remember when I was at Dallas Seminary, Kem Oberholtzer wrote his dissertation in the Bible department on the five warning passages in the book of Hebrews, and he took what we would call the free grace position. But there’s two different views on what the readers are being warned about. 

One option, the one that Kem Oberholtzer took, is they’re being warned that if they fall back into animal sacrifices and turn their back on Christ and go back into Judaism, they’re going to experience a terrible judgment in this life. 

And the other view, which is much more common in Christianity, is if they were to fall back into Judaism and do that, they would either lose their salvation and go to hell, or they would prove they were never saved in the first place and go to hell, or they would fail to win final salvation if you took the new Calvinist position. 

But in any case, the predominant view is what the warning passages are warning about is the lake of fire. 

KEN: I don’t know if you’ve run into this, but one of the things that I have found with the warning passages, and it’s a very strange thing to me anyway, is what you just mentioned about people who think, well, these all the warning passages, and I think it’s the most common view is talking about people going to hell. 

But what’s fascinating to me is that you will have people who say, I believe that one saved always say, except for apostasy. You’ll have people who will say, you can’t lose eternal life, but you can give it away. You know, if you apostatize, then you give it back. 

BOB: I remember my master’s thesis on the perseverance of the saints. I had a quote from Luther, and he said, salvation is being in Christ, and it’s like a big ocean liner. If you’re on that ocean liner, you’re saved. And no matter what you do on that ocean liner, no matter how your morality fails, you’re saved. 

KEN: You can get drunk every night at the bar on the most of the liner, and you’re okay.

BOB: But if you jump off the ocean liner and you’re not in it anymore, then you’re not saved anymore. And so Luther, at least, and of course, Luther had different theology. There was an early Luther and the later Luther in terms of his theology. 

KEN: Same with Calvin, right? 

BOB: And so I think early Luther would have said, no, no, if if you believe you’re secure forever, even if you committed apostasy, 

KEN: Even if you jump off the boat.

BOB: Even if you jump off the boat, but later, Luther, and Luther, and today, at least my understanding, there’s different flavors of Lutheran, but my understanding is most Lutherans would say, okay, you’re saved once and for all, eternal security is true, unless you stop coming to church. If you stop partaking of communion, and you stop being a part of our local assembly, well, then you’re going to go to hell because you jumped off the ship. 

KEN: I just find that a strange view, you know, but in these five warning passages, the view that Bob and I have, and it’s the biblical view, by the way, is that this is not talking about the lake of fire. The warning passages are not threatening people, or like a better word with going to hell. 

BOB: They are threatening people, but it’s about fire here and now. If you look at 10:26-31, he talks about a fiery judgment, but it says the Lord will judge His people, and he talks about the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified. Clearly, the author of Hebrews is warning believers. Maybe we should look briefly at Hebrews 6:4-8, because I think this passage crystallizes the issues real clearly in just these five verses.

KEN: And as we look at these warning passages, and specifically here in chapter 6, we need to remember in chapter 3, what he calls his readers. “Therefore, holy brethren”, yes, he calls him holy brethren and as Bob already just mentioned, they have been sanctified by the blood of Christ once and for all. So these are believers that he’s talking to. And in chapter 3, he goes, you have a heavenly calling. What is the heavenly calling? 

BOB: Yeah, to rule and reign with Christ in life, to be his metachoi, partners in the life to come. You have a commentary on it, right? 

KEN: He’s writing to believers, and he knows you can’t lose eternal life, but they have this heavenly calling, as you said, to reign with Christ. Well, if you deny him and fall away, you’re going to lose that plus, in chapter 10 that you quoted, you’re going to come under the fiery judgment or discipline of God. 

BOB: In this life. 

KEN: In this life. So both those things are true.

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KEN: Bob mentioned there’s five warning passages, one in chapter 2, one in chapter 3 and 4, and we see one of these warning passages in chapter 6, starting in verse 4.

BOB: Yeah, and by the way, I. Howard Marshall, who was Arminian, so he believed you could lose salvation, but he said verses 4 and 5 of Hebrews 6 are the strongest way you could describe a born-again person. He said the five participles used here clearly indicate we’re talking about born-again people. 

KEN: I. Howard Marshall was absolutely right on this point. He was wrong about losing your salvation, but he was right that this is describing believers. In Hebrews chapter 6 verse 4, For it is impossible for those who were one: enlightened, once enlightened. Two: have tasted the heavenly gift. Three: made partakers of the Holy Spirit. Number four: tasted the good word of God, and the powers of age to come, and have fallen away, and that word is apostatized. 

BOB: But those five descriptors, I remember I heard Stan Toussaint on this and he said, tasted here refers to nibbling. They didn’t really fully, what does it taste of the powers of the world to come and what’s the other tasting the heavenly gift? Well, the heavenly gift is everlasting life, right? And he said they nibbled and I said, you know, it’s funny, Dr. Toussaint, but geuomai is only used one other time in Hebrews in his chapter two verse nine, and it said, Jesus tasted death. Did He just nibble at death? And he said, no, no, in 2:9, He actually fully partook, but he said here, it’s different. 

KEN: Oh, so the same author uses the same word, but he means different things.

BOB: Which does happen sometimes. I get that. But what he basically went on to say is we know it’s different in 6:4-8, because these people are ending up being sent to hell and we know born again people can’t be sent to hell. So these five descriptors can’t be about born again people. 

KEN: See what he’s done though is he has concluded that these warning passages are talking about hell. That’s where he starts. 

BOB: And once he starts there, it forces him to come to an illogical conclusion regarding these five participles. 

KEN: Yeah. And so if you start that these warning passages are talking about hell and you believe, as he said, a believer can’t go to hell, then you have to say, okay, he’s not talking about believers. I mean, that’s your force to do that. 

BOB: That’s what he did. And by the way, Dr. Toussaint was, I would say at least free grace friendly, some of my friends felt he was free grace, but he was certainly inconsistent on this. Now, what about the person if he falls away, what’s going to happen? 

KEN: It says “If he falls away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves, the Son of God and put Him to an open shame.”

BOB: Okay. So people make the mistake here, and this came up in my dissertation on repentance, because they make the mistake of saying, you can’t renew them to salvation. Well, repentance isn’t salvation, right? Basically, what it’s saying is it’s humanly impossible to turn them back to Christ. Now, Hodges argues in his commentary on Hebrews that God could do this, but notice the illustration, James is like a good preacher and he illustrates in verses seven and eight his point. So how about reading seven and eight? 

KEN: “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 blessings from God. But if it bears thorns and briars–” By the way, notice there’s only one field here. There’s not like a believing field and unbelievable field. There’s only one field and there’s two options. “It is rejected and near to being cursed whose end is to be burned.” 

BOB: Okay. So the believer is represented by what? 

KEN: By a field here. 

BOB: Right. And there’s two options for the believer. 

KEN: It can produce good fruit or it can produce thorns and thistles. 

BOB: And if and thorns and thistles by the way, it goes back to Genesis, chapter three and the curse on the ground. Lots of commentators point that out. So if we yield cursed fruit, what do we get? We get cursed. What if we have blessed fruit? What do we get?

KEN: Well, we got blessings. 

BOB: Notice he says blessings in verse seven and he says cursing when it says near to being cursed, it doesn’t mean near to being sent to hell. Judgment right now is about to fall. 

KEN: Just like in Deuteronomy 28:29-30, when there’s curses that fall upon the nation of Israel, if they rebel against God. 

BOB: Yeah, that’s the blessing and cursing motif in Deuteronomy. It’s several chapters dealing with blessing and cursing. 

KEN: These are your blessings. These are your cursings. 

BOB: And the same thing is New Testament. Right. If we follow him, he blesses us.

KEN: Well, I mean, the Beatitudes, we talk about that. Blessed are you, you know, here’s the blessings. Well, we just want to challenge ourselves, everybody, when you read these passages, the author of Hebrews, he’s not saying if you don’t stay firm to the end or if you deny the faith, you’re going to burn in hell. What he says is, you’re going to fall under the curse that sin brings into your life now and the loss of rewards in the world to come. 

BOB: Right. But he does say in Hebrews 10:10 and 10:14, that the one who has believed in Christ has been perfected and set apart forever into the family of God. So the author of Hebrews calls them holy brethren. He knows that they’ve been set apart forever, but he warns them if they turn back to Judaism, then they’re going to reap a fiery judgment here and now. 

KEN: And if you jump off the boat, you’re going to get eaten by a shark. But you’re still a child of God. 

BOB: You’re still a child of God. 

KEN: All right. Remember, until we meet again, keep grace in focus. 

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Well, thank you so much, friend, for joining us all this week. We are wishing you a very pleasant weekend. Some fellowship with other believers at a Bible teaching church. Let’s keep grace and focus and we’ll see you again on Monday.