THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF APOSTASY – Part 1
By John Fast
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. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)
The danger of comparing our own times with those of the past is a real one. Wise King Solomon warned of this hazard when under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he wrote, “Do not say, ‘Why is it that the former days were better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this” (Eccl 7:10). The Exodus generation romanticized their past life of slavery in Egypt, even imagining that it was preferable to being led and cared for by God in the wilderness (Ex 16:3; Num 11:5). The prophet Jeremiah’s countrymen imagined that their former life of rebellion and idolatry was more conducive to promoting their own self-interests than was repentance and obedience to God and His Word (Jer 44:16-19). There is a tendency to romanticize ‘the good old days’ when contrasting our own times with those of a past era, and then to judge our own times based on nostalgic notions of the past that never existed. Wise people will certainly learn from the past, but they live in the present. Dwelling on the past can hinder us from overcoming this present world. Having said this, the fact remains that there are key elements of true Christianity which in the past had a much greater influence on the moral and spiritual life of people in general, but that today are noticeably absent not just from society, but from the bulk of professed Christianity, three of the most obvious being the fear of God, the sinfulness and evil of sin, and the authority of Scripture. If “the fear of the Lord is to hate evil” (Pv 8:13), and if “by the fear of the Lord one keeps away from evil” (Pv 16:6), with “evil” defined as sin and defection from the authority of Scripture (1 Jn 3:4), and if Christians are to “cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1), with “holiness” defined as separation from the world, obedience to the Word of God, and conformity to the image of God (1 Pt 1:15; 2:9-12), then the mass of modern Christianity exhibits every indication that any fear of God it might have once possessed in the past is today virtually extinct. As the great Puritan Steven Charnock once wrote,
“Actions are a greater discovery of a principle than words. The testimony of works is louder and clearer than that of words; and the frame of men’s hearts must be measured rather by what they do than by what they say…. Men’s practices are the best indexes of their principles; the current of a man’s life is the counterpart of the frame of his heart…. A sense of God in the heart would burst out in the life; where there is no reverence of God in the life, it is easily concluded there is less in the heart…. Where the honor of God is not practically owned in the lives of men, the being of God is not sensibly acknowledged in the hearts of men. The principle must be of the same kind with the actions; if the actions be atheistical, the principle of them can be no better.”[1]
Not only has the experience of these key elements virtually disappeared from contemporary Christianity, but the words themselves have all but vanished. Yet their place in Scripture and in true Christianity is unmistakable. The state of Christianity in most parts of the world today has become so deplorable that even those, who in no small part have contributed to its degeneracy, are complaining of its corruptions. We live in an age when to judge a person’s profession of Christianity by their lifestyle, beliefs, knowledge (or lack thereof), and actions, that is, to judge the tree by its fruit, is taboo and ‘unChristian’. It is a time when not only are the bulk of Protestant pastors, teachers, and leaders spiritually, biblically, theologically, and morally unqualified, but one in which many have turned their disqualification into a virtue, and are the more popular for it. Despite the objections and denials of some who continue to believe that nothing is amiss in their own personal and particular beliefs and practices, the fact remains that among the generality of professed Christians, the glory and power of Christianity are faded and almost utterly extinct. While people may differ as to the reasons, causes, and extent of this degeneracy, the whole world is so obviously filled with the sins, evils, worldliness, rebellion, self-centeredness, and immoralities of men and women, and with the unhappy evidences of God’s anger, and of His having given much of the world over to a depraved mind, that all things proclaim the degeneracy of modern Christianity, both in its profession and its practice. Christianity remains the same as it ever was, only today it suffers at the hands of those who make a profession of it, yet contradict and deny their profession by their practice, and who, in following after their own lusts, not only make the doctrines, commands, and prohibitions of Scripture the target of their scorn and ridicule, but scoff at the manifestations of God’s judgements and providences in the world, as if they had no relation to the present defection from and corruption of the true nature of God, of His Word, and of His Gospel (2 Pet 3:3, 4).
Profiting from the Past
One advantage which a study of the past provides is that it reveals the conditions and circumstances that always accompany and reappear in times when the gospel has been seen in its power, as well as those that always accompany periods of great spiritual and moral decline and apostasy from true Christianity. For instance, due to the fear and uncertainty generated by the current Covid-19 pandemic there has been an increase in the number of people turning to religion, similar to that which occurred after the tragic event we now refer to as 9/11. For a few weeks after 9/11 churches were full of people seeking answers to and alleviation from their fears. But where are these people today? Most went right back to their sinful lifestyles once their fears subsided. Turning to God and religion in a time of crisis out of fear, panic, and uncertainty is not the same as fleeing to Christ from the wrath to come. The first is motivated by the threat, whether real or imagined, to themselves and to their temporal self-interests, and lasts only as long as their fear. The latter is motivated by a deep conviction of sin and the sense of being under the wrath of a holy, just, righteous, all-knowing, all-seeing, sovereign, and offended God, which results in fleeing to Christ in faith and repentance and living a life which is pleasing to God, a life of faith, holiness, and obedience that perseveres until death. It is this and the other key elements already mentioned which are noticeably absent from modern Christianity. Before The Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, Samuel Blair, a minister of that era wrote,
“It was thought that if there was any need of a heart-distressing sight of the soul’s danger, and fear of Divine wrath, it was only needful for the grosser sort of sinners…Instances of conviction of sin had come to be regarded merely as mental depression and as something to be avoided. People were very generally through the land careless at heart and stupidly indifferent about the great concerns of eternity.”[2]
Today, the conviction of sin and fear of Divine wrath are not only regarded as something to be avoided, but that which is psychologically and spiritually harmful, antithetical to Christianity, ignorant superstition, and even a scheme of the devil intended to discourage and depress us, thereby blasphemously attributing the convicting work of the Holy Spirit to Satan. At the same time as Samuel Blair, Jonathan Edwards in New England wrote that among professing Christians,
“There are few sinners who despair, who give up the cause, and conclude with themselves, that they shall go to hell; yet there are but few who do not go to hell. It is to be feared that many go to hell every day out of this country; yet very few of them suffer themselves to believe, that they are in any great danger of that punishment. They go on sinning and thus traveling in the direct road to the pit; yet they persuade themselves that they shall never fall into it…. It would be impossible for men allowedly to do those very things, which they know are threatened with everlasting destruction, if they did not some way encourage themselves they should nevertheless escape that destruction.”[3]
The nineteenth century pastor and author J.C. Ryle described the spiritual and moral conditions of England prior to The Great Awakening,
“England seemed barren of all that is really good. How such a state of things can have arisen in a land of free Bibles and professing Protestantism is almost beyond comprehension. Christianity seemed to lie as one dead, insomuch that you might have said “she is dead.” Morality, however much exalted in the pulpits, was thoroughly trampled under foot in the streets…. What were the parochial clergy of those days? The vast majority of them were sunk in worldliness, and neither knew nor cared about their profession. They neither did good themselves, nor liked any one else to do it for them. They hunted, they shot, they farmed, they swore, they drank, they gambled. They seemed determined to know everything except Jesus Christ and him crucified…. To swear extempore, it was remarked by some, brought an Oxford student into no trouble; but to pray extempore was an offence not to be borne! What were the morals of a hundred years ago? It may suffice to say that dueling, adultery, fornication, gambling, swearing, Sabbath-breaking and drunkenness were hardly regarded as vices at all. They were the fashionable practices of people in the highest ranks of society, and no one was thought the worse for indulging in them.”[4]
In the twentieth-century Arnold Dallimore in his excellent biography of George Whitefield, the preeminent preacher of The Great Awakening, described the consequences which the rejection of Puritanism (the austerity of which has been grossly and ludicrously exaggerated) had on the spiritual and moral life of England. After the ejection of two-thousand Puritan pastors in 1662, they were replaced by whatever men were available regardless of their spiritual and moral qualifications. After nearly a century of this practice, one member of the clergy, Archdeacon Blackburne, complained,
“The collective body of the clergy, excepting a very inconsiderable number, consists of men whose lives and occupations are most foreign to their profession…. who are, accordingly, in religious matters, the most ignorant common people who are in any Protestant, not to say in any Christian society upon the face of the earth.”[5]
As a result, England suffered from a spiritual and moral decay of such an extent that, as Dallimore pointed out,
“In 1732 The Weekly Miscellany, London’s foremost religious paper, published an article deploring the prevailing conditions – an article later summarized as follows: It broadly asserts that the people were engulfed in voluptuousness and business, and that a zeal for godliness looked as odd upon a man as would the antiquated dress of his great-grandfather…. It affirms that it was publicly avowed that vice was profitable to the state… and that polygamy, concubinage, and even sodomy were not sinful.”[6]
This dismal spiritual and moral condition changed with the eighteenth-century revival known as The Great Awakening. When Dr. Isaac Watts and Dr. John Guyse wrote a Preface to the first edition of Jonathan Edwards’ A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in 1737, they emphasized the nature of the change which had taken place in Northampton,
“But wheresoever God works with power for salvation upon the minds of men, there will be some discoveries of a sense of sin, of the danger of the wrath of God, and the all-sufficiency of his Son Jesus, to relieve us under all our spiritual wants and distresses, and a hearty consent of soul to receive him in the various offices of grace, wherein he is set forth in the Holy Scriptures.”[7]
In other words, there is produced in every true revival a profound and deep sense of the fear of God, the sinfulness and evil of sin, and the authority of Holy Scripture, and it is these same elements that in a time of spiritual and moral decay and apostasy are scoffed at, forsaken, redefined, and rarely found, and are often considered highly offensive by the mass of professing evangelicalism. Instead, people increasingly turn to forms of godliness, therapists, psychology, and mood and behavior altering drugs to cope with the guilt of sin and with the uncertainties and trials of life. Modern Christianity has all but abandoned the truth that “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Pt 1:3). It is “the true knowledge of Him” that has been virtually eradicated from the consciousness of modern evangelicalism, and where there is no true sense of God in the heart there can be no fear of God in the life, and all sin and licentiousness is treated superficially and casually. Anyone who today exhibits these vital elements in their practice of Christianity can expect to find themselves considered something of a ‘fanatic’, if not downright dangerous and a threat to the emotional and psychological well-being of those who are unfortunate enough to be assaulted by these archaic and ‘unchristian’ beliefs.
When the sense of the true nature of God and His hatred of sin is removed from the minds of men, then the fear of God ceases to exist, and sin becomes normative. If “by the fear of the Lord one keeps away from evil” (Pv 16:6), then by an absence of the fear of God men and women rush into, justify, legalize, institutuionalize, protect, and rabidly defend evil. The reason Job kept away from evil was because he feared God (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3), and it is the characteristic trait of the ungodly that they have no fear of God, “Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes” (Ps 36:1). The perverting and adulterating of God’s Word and the corruption of the ways, practices, and lifestyles of men and women are due to their increasing forgetfulness of and apostasy from the true nature and knowledge of God, “Because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten the Lord their God” (Jer 3:21); “This is your lot, the portion measured to you from Me,” declares the Lord, “because you have forgotten Me and trusted in falsehood” (Jer 13:25); “For My people have forgotten Me, they burn incense to worthless gods and they have stumbled from their ways, from the ancient paths, to walk in bypaths, not on a highway,” (Jer 18:15).
Modern evangelicalism has, for all practical purposes, smothered the true knowledge of God and in its place invented worthless gods that provoke no fear and that do not hate sin, or at least gods who do not hate sin with the utmost hatred and who hate it less than God actually does. When immorality pervades not only every level of society, but also the lives of the mass of professing Christians, this always has its roots in the rejection of the true knowledge of God in favor of gods of their own imaginations (Rm 1:22-27). When people do not retain and respond to the knowledge of God which He has given not only in creation, but especially in His inspired Word, then God gives them over to a depraved mind (Rm 1:28). This is God’s response to those who willfully suppress and spurn the true knowledge of Him, namely, He “gives them over”, first to acts of immorality, then to a “depraved” (lit. a “worthless”) mind (Rm 1:24, 26, 28). Their minds are spiritually and morally worthless when it comes to understanding the true nature and will of God; they have no capacity to think and live correctly about God and His will; they have no ability to comprehend, much less practice, gospel truths, commands, and principles. Only the sovereign and powerful work of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God can overcome this darkness by “the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rm 12:2). There is nothing that the fallen mind and affections of human nature is more opposed to than the true knowledge of God and His will. Our minds and hearts are as unwilling to know and love Him as our wills are opposed to obeying Him, “because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so” (Rm 8:7). So, rather than give up the sin, lusts, errors, and pleasures they love, people will invent gods that do not hate their sin, and a ‘Christianity’ that produces no inward and outward subjection to the law of God, that provokes no fear of God, and that accommodates their sin and error.
Such a god and ‘Christianity’ are not the God and Christianity of the Bible, but one of human invention. An infinitely holy God must have an infinite hatred of sin. Anything less than infinite is finite. If God’s hatred of sin were less than it actually is, it would be finite and not infinite, and God could not be infinitely holy. To wish God to be less holy, and to hate sin less than He does, and that He was less just and severe against sin, is to wish that God were not God; it is to love some sin, lust, and error more than God, so much more that people would rather God cease to be than leave their sin, lusts, and errors. There is so much darkness and evil in the heart of fallen men and women that they would rather God were not God than part with their lusts and errors, and they prove this by inventing a god who not only does not hate their sin, but sympathizes with and approves of it. One does not need to deny the being and existence of God to be an atheist, but only to deny some essential attribute of God, such as His sovereignty or holiness or omniscience or omnipotence, and the exercise of that attribute in the world. For instance, many pastors and leaders today are denying that God had anything to do with the current Covid-19 pandemic, and that He is not sovereign over it and the devastating and often self-contradictory, arbitrary, and irrational responses to it, and that He is using it to sovereignly accomplish His all-wise purposes. Another example (and I could cite many more, for there is no shortage of them), is the relatively recent and widespread acceptance and proliferation of women pastors and preachers, an acceptance and proliferation that is a direct and willful rejection of and apostasy from the clear teaching and authority of Scripture, a defection and corruption that is only possible where there is no fear of God, no sense of the sinfulness of sin, and an unwillingness to submit to the authority of Scripture. As a result, these women, and the men, women, churches, organizations, and denominations which condone and defend them, must hold to a form of godliness that denies its power, and believe in, teach, and preach a different Jesus and a different gospel. It is a god of one’s own imagination, not the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture that condones and defends the idea of women pastors and preachers. No one can desire or know Christ until they come to see, feel, and know the evil of sin and of their own heart. Then and only then will Christ be precious.
Sin accuses God of being insufficient; it says that there is insufficient good in God and His Word to satisfy the soul, calm our fears, and to cheer, strengthen, and encourage the heart, when the Bible clearly teaches that it is by “the encouragement of Scriptures we might have hope” (Rm 15:4). Sin looks to the world, to man, to self, and to false religion for what can only be found in the one and only true and living God. In looking to the creature rather than to the Creator, we declare to all that God is insufficient. When people turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths it is because they believe there is more good to be had from myths than from truth. Eve was deceived into thinking there was more good to be gained from sin than from God, and so does everyone who lives in and practices sin. Though they may not say it, yet they declare by their lives and practices that they expect more good from sin than from God; they expect to derive more benefit from their false conceptions of God than from the true knowledge of Him. It is impossible to know the evil and sinfulness of sin unless we know how holy, just, and righteous God is. Sin has caused such a separation between God and man that this breech can only be healed and reconciled by One who is both God and man, Jesus Christ our Lord.
If people truly understood the sinfulness and evil of sin, and the holiness, justice, and righteousness of God, they could not object to or be offended by or scoff at or revile the revelation and manifestation of God’s hatred, wrath, and judgement against sin; rather they would admit that God would be justified in condemning them to eternal torment in hell. They would say with the psalmist, “My flesh trembles for fear of You, and I am afraid of Your judgments” (Ps 119:120). People whose conception of God is all love, mercy, and grace, and has no room for God’s holiness, justice, and judgement against sin, but reject them as unbecoming of a loving God, believe in a god of their own invention, not the one true God who has revealed Himself in Scripture. They have no true sense or knowledge of God. If there is one thing that should make us see the evil of sin and God’s hatred against it, it should be the cross of Christ where God did not spare even His own Son. Grace, mercy, and love are not the foundation of God’s throne, but righteousness and justice, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne” (Ps 97:2). Take away the true knowledge and fear of God, and you take away the evil of sin and the preciousness of Christ. What the great Puritan Steven Charnock wrote almost four-hundred years ago is still true today,
“If you take away God,” [that is, the true sense, nature, and knowledge of God] “you take away conscience, and thereby all measures and rules of good and evil. And how could any laws be made when the measure and standard of them were removed? All good laws are founded upon the dictates of conscience and reason, upon common sentiments in human nature, which spring from a sense of God; so that if the foundation be demolished, the whole superstructure must tumble down…. The worst of actions could not be evil, if man were a god to himself, a law to himself…. Sin would be only a false opinion of a violated law, and an offended deity. If such apprehensions prevail, what a wide door is opened to the worst of villainies! If there be no God, no respect is due to him; all the religion in the world is a trifle, and error; and thus the pillars of all human society, and that which hath made commonwealths to flourish, are blown away.”[8]
This describes the present state of not only society in general, but of the greater part of evangelicalism in the world today, until we have reached a point where it is very hard to find a true Christian among the mass of professing Christianity. A people’s conception of God is reflected in the laws they enact, the beliefs they hold, and in the way they live. Practical atheism denies the existence of God just as effectively as actual atheism, “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him,” (Tit 1:16). The author just quoted also noted,
“No nature can subsist without the perfections essential to that nature, nor God be conceived of without his. The apostle tells us (Eph 2:12) that the Gentiles were “without God in the world.” So, in some sense, all unbelievers may be termed atheists; for rejecting the Mediator appointed by God, they reject that God who appointed him. ….That the title of [atheist] doth not only belong to those who deny the existence of God, or to those who contemn all sense of a Deity, and would root the conscience and reverence of God out of their souls; but it belongs to those who give not that worship to God which is due to him, who worship many gods, or who worship one God in a false and superstitious manner, when they have not right conceptions of God, nor intend an adoration of him according to the excellency of his nature. All those that are unconcerned for any particular religion fall under this character: though they own a God in general, yet are willing to acknowledge any God that shall be coined by the powers under whom they live. The Gentiles were without God in the world; without the true notion of God, not without a God of their own framing. This general or practical atheism is natural to man.”[9]
The greatest theologian which England ever produced, the seventeenth century Puritan genius John Owen, in assessing the apostasy of his own day, wrote,
“The way, paths, and footsteps of gospel faith, love, meekness, temperance, self-denial, benignity, humility, zeal, and contempt of the world, in the honours, profits, and pleasures of it, with readiness for the cross, are all [so] overgrown, and almost worn out amongst men, that they can hardly be discerned where they have been. But in their stead the “works of the flesh” have made a broad and open road, that the multitude travel in, which, though it may be right for a season in their own eyes, yet is the way to hell, and go down to the chambers of death; for these “works of the flesh are manifest” in the world, not only in their nature, what they are, but in their open perpetration and dismal effects: such are “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred … wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like,” as they are reckoned up by the apostle. How these things have spread themselves over the face of the Christian world, among all sorts of persons, is manifest beyond all contradiction or pretense to the contrary.”[10]
The same description is at least if not more true of contemporary Christianity. Modern evangelicalism finds itself mired in the corruption of its own general apostasy from the gospel of Jesus Christ and the doctrine conforming to godliness. It has sown to the flesh, and is now reaping the corruption not only of society in general, but of Christianity in particular (Gal 6:8). This is a painful, but indisputable fact, the nature and causes of which it will be the purpose of these series of studies to unfold, expose, and by God’s grace convict all who may read them and take them to heart, and bring us all to a greater understanding of the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and of what it truly means to be a genuine Christian.
Hebrews 6:4-6
There is perhaps no clearer description in Scripture of the nature of apostasy than that found in Hebrews 6:4-6, and it is upon this passage that I will lay the entire foundation for this series of studies into the nature, causes, and occasions of the present defection from the truth, holiness, and worship of the Gospel. This will require a somewhat detailed and an as unprejudiced as is humanly possible examination of these verses, the words of which are as follows:
“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.”
In this passage the author of Hebrews gives a description of both the nature of apostasy and the punishment which apostates incur. It is part of the second of five warnings issued by the author to his readers (2:1-4; 3:7-4:13; 5:11-6:20; 10:26-39; 12:25-29), Jewish converts to Christianity who were in danger of lapsing back into Judaism in order to avoid the persecution directed toward Christians, and in so doing, apostatizing from Christianity. These converts from Judaism needed to realize that there was more to be lost by apostasy than gained by a return to Judaism. They faced a subtle danger which Gentile converts from paganism did not. If a pagan convert reverted back to paganism, there was a clear difference between the faith he abandoned and the paganism to which he returned. It would be similar to a Muslim convert today returning to Islam, or a convert from Hinduism reverting back to the idols of Hinduism. But given Judaism’s close association with Christianity, it was possible to yield to increasing pressure to compromise, and to give up those key aspects unique to Christianity without appearing, at least to the casual observer, to have abandoned the basic teachings and beliefs of Christianity. In the early church there were many Jewish converts who were still zealous for the Law of Moses, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;” (Ac 21:20, 21). We might liken it to a convert from Roman Catholicism returning to Catholicism, or a convert from a false form of Christianity returning to it or another erstwhile Christian denomination. There is enough outward similarity to make their apostasy appear not so obvious.
The popular view that in these verses the author of Hebrews is merely giving a hypothetical situation, one that cannot possibly happen, does not harmonize with the severity of the warning. The severity of the warning is commensurate with the reality of the danger which some of the readers were already experiencing. By issuing this warning the author hoped to prevent this apostasy from happening to at least some of his readers, and thereby avoid its horrible consequences; otherwise the warning would be meaningless. Why issue a stern warning against something that is only hypothetical and improbable? The very structure of these three verses is intended to emphasize the severity of the warning and thus the reality of the danger.
These three verses are held together by the main assertion that, “it is impossible… to renew them again to repentance”. The words “For it is impossible” (Adunaton gar) appear first in the Greek text, and introduce the reason (gar– “for”) why there is no point in laying again the foundation of first principles delineated in 6:1, 2, namely, because apostasy is irreversible. It is impossible to reclaim the apostate. The word translated “impossible” (adunaton) is here emphatic and forceful, and should not be weakened to describe something that is merely very difficult; nor is the ‘impossibility’ to be made subjective and relative, relating to what is merely humanly and psychologically impossible, that is, the difficulty involved in renewing an apostate to repentance. The author of Hebrews uses the same word three other times in his epistle, stating that “it is impossible for God to lie” (6:18); “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin” (10:4); “And without faith it is impossible to please Him” (11:6). In this context the word clearly means something that cannot possibly happen. It is as impossible to renew the apostate to repentance as it is for God to lie, for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin, and to please God without faith, since all true obedience is the “obedience of faith” (Rm 16:26).
The author is simply stating a practical truth, one that is taught by other New Testament writers and that has proven itself time and again in the history of the church. Those who have shared in the privileges of God’s children and experienced something of God’s grace, and then deliberately abandoned them, cannot be renewed to repentance. It is impossible by any means whatsoever to reclaim them. Just as people can become immune to a disease by being exposed to it or a related disease, in the same way history and experience have shown that in the spiritual realm people can be inoculated against true Christianity with something that looks and seems like the real thing. There is a false faith that may look like real faith for a time and have some signs of spiritual life, like that of the stony ground ‘believer’, but it does not persevere to the end (Mk 4:16, 17), or like that of “a sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire” (2 Pt 2:22). There may be a temporary outward change in response to the truths of the gospel that looks like true faith, but their nature remains unchanged. This is why Peter declared, “For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them” (2 Pt 2:21). There is no possibility of recovering the apostate.
Our author does not give any indication that he thought any of his readers had actually as yet apostatized, because he later states “we are convinced of better things concerning you,” (6:9). Yet their danger was such that he found it necessary to issue this severe warning. He had just rebuked his readers for their dullness of hearing and lack of spiritual growth and maturity (5:11-14), so he warns them of the danger inherent in continuing in their negligent, slothful, and spiritually lazy condition. A lack of growth and maturity in the ways and knowledge of gospel truth, and in the obedience it requires is a sure prelude to the total abandonment of both. It is still from a lack of knowledge that people perish (Pv 5:23; Hos 4:6; cf. Is 5:13). The mind which is ignorant of spiritual truth is easily led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Therefore, to emphasize their danger, he gives his readers an account of the miserable condition of those who, after a profession of the gospel, remain biblically and theologically ignorant under it, thereby ending in apostasy from it.
The Apostate Described
Next, the author describes in five clauses of increasing length and complexity the spiritual privileges of which these apostates had been made partakers. But before examining these five descriptive clauses individually, we can first make some general observations concern them. First, the author, to impress upon his readers the awful condition and judgement of these apostates, describes them in a way that fully evidences their judgement as being just, righteous, and fully deserved. They had been made partakers of eminent privileges and advantages by their exposure to the gospel. These privileges, being despised in their apostasy, declare the heinousness of their sin and that their condemnation by God is justly deserved. Second, all their privileges were made possible by various special operations of the Holy Spirit, privileges which they neither were, nor could be made partakers of under the Old Covenant and in their Judaism. Under the New Covenant the Spirit is not received by the works of the law, but by hearing with faith (Gal 3:2). Their privileges were a testimony to them that they were delivered from the bondage of the law and that they had been freed from all things that they could not be freed from by the law of Moses (Ac 13:39) by a participation of the Spirit which is the great privilege of the gospel and the New Covenant (cf. Jer 31:31-34). Third, there is no mention of or allusion to any work of regeneration, nor of any of its fruits of faith and obedience which they had manifested. No justification, sanctification, holiness, or adoption is attributed to them. Later, when the author declares his persuasion of better things concerning his readers, that they were not like those he had just described, he bases his persuasion on three ways in which his readers were different from those apostates:
First, that they bore evidence of those “things that accompany salvation” (6:9), that is, things that are inseparable from true salvation. These things the author did not attribute to those apostates he had just described, otherwise they would be no evidence of the difference between them and his readers and provide no assurance that these would not fall away as did those.
Second, he describes his readers by their lives of obedience, service, and fruits of faith (6:10) by which he distinguishes them from those he describes in our text.
Third, the preservation of his readers is tied to the faithfulness of God, “For God is not unjust so as to forget…” (6:10). The author supposes no such thing of those in our text, that God was in any way engaged for their preservation, but rather just the opposite. It is a spiritual impossibility to restore those who are described by these five clauses. God has provided no means or methods for restoring the apostate. Let us now begin examining these five descriptive clauses individually. I anticipate this will occupy the rest of this study and at least one more.
Once Enlightened
The first privilege which is ascribed to this group is that they had “once been enlightened”. The single definite article in the Greek text (tous – “those who”) governs all five descriptions, and so refers to the same group of people. The adverb “once” (hapax) refers to all five of these unique privileges and indicates that this group had truly at one time experienced and been made partakers of them. “Enlightened” (photisthentas) has been understood by some throughout church history as a mystical reference to baptism. The words photidzw (“enlighten”) and photismos (“enlightenment”) appear in The First Apology of Justin Martyr (c.150 AD) to signify baptism, and they had this sense among some Christians in Rome in the second century, but whether they had acquired that meaning at the time of the writing of this epistle (c. 64-68 AD) is doubtful. In the whole of Scripture, it refers to an inward work of the Holy Spirit. The word is in the passive voice, indicating that it is God who enlightens. God “is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). All mankind is born into a state of spiritual darkness and ignorance, which is why “the world through its wisdom did not come to know God” (1 Cor 1:21). God, however, delivers people from ignorance and darkness by granting them a knowledge of the truth so that they no longer walk in darkness but are light in the Lord, and live as children of light (Eph 5:8-9). The means by which God enlightens is the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God. The Spirit was sent to guide us into all truth (Jn 16:13). Therefore, to be “enlightened” is to be given light and knowledge by teaching and instruction, particularly instruction in the doctrines of the gospel of Jesus Christ, so as to have a spiritual understanding of its truths. This enlightening has a double reference.
First, it has reference to the doctrines themselves and the truths known or understood, because Christ “brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:10). For this reason, the gospel is called ‘light’, and believers are “the saints in light” (Col 1:12). They are brought into a state and condition that is in direct opposition to the darkness that characterizes the ways, thinking, and reasoning that is in the world. God has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pt 2:9), which is why we should not be surprised if the world hates true Christians (1 Jn 3:13). Light can have no fellowship with darkness (2 Cor 6:14). The world without the truths of the gospel is the kingdom of darkness, but God has transferred the believer from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son (Col 1:13). The entire world, all of mankind, all that belongs to it, all its wisdom, reasoning, institutions, and man-made forms of religion are under the power of the evil one (1 Jn 5:19), and so is full of darkness, in contrast and opposition to the truths, reasoning, values, ways, practices, and wisdom of the kingdom of light. Thus, the world is called “a dark place” (2 Pt 1:19); a place where vanity, ignorance, errors, and superstition live and reign, and into which the truths of Scripture shine as a lamp in a dark place (2 Pt 1:19). This is why fallen men and women love the darkness rather than the light and hate the light, because darkness, not light, is compatible with their darkened understanding concerning sin and the will and nature of God, whereas light is opposed to and exposes them and their deeds for what they truly are, namely, evil (Jn 3:19, 20). By the power of this darkness men and women are kept in chains of darkness and alienated from God so that they do not know over what they stumble, “The way of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know over what they stumble” (Pv 4:19). They have no light, no truth by which they can discern their errors and defections. They see no connection between their sin and error and its consequences or between their evil deeds and the evil consequences of those deeds. For example, many see no connection between STD’s and immorality; they see no connection between their evil, unbiblical, and godless beliefs and ideologies and their destructive consequences, just as modern evangelicalism sees no connection between its defection from the fear of God, the authority of Scripture, its new, novel, and entrepreneurial innovations, false theologies of regeneration, carnal and worldly worship, and its apostasy from the gospel and the obedience it requires. They do not realize that their “own iniquities will capture the wicked, and he will be held with the cords of his sin. He will die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he will go astray” (Pv 5:22, 23). This the Bible calls “walking in darkness” (1 Jn 1:6), the opposite of which is called “walking in the light” (1 Jn 1:7), namely, the true knowledge of God in Christ as revealed in the gospel. It is this knowledge which our instruction in the truths of the gospel is termed “illumination”, because these truths are themselves light, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path”; “The unfolding of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple” (Ps 119:105, 130).
Secondly, this enlightenment has reference to the mind itself by which the truths and doctrines of the gospel are known, understood, and received. The mind of the unbeliever is “darkened in their understanding” (Eph 4:18) when it comes to spiritual truth. Therefore, the “natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). Those doctrines which he cannot understand by means of, or harmonize with, his own natural human wisdom, education, religious traditions, observation, experience, and reasoning, or that run contrary to them, he dismisses as “foolishness” (moria). Jesus first had to open the minds of His disciples before they could truly understand what the Scriptures taught concerning Him (Lk 24:45), and this same enlightening is still required today, specifically in regard to the truths and doctrines of the gospel concerning the person of Jesus Christ, of God’s being in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, of His judging the world in righteousness (Ac 17:31), of His offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, of His work and mediation, and similar truths revealed by divine revelation. By this enlightening God enables us to discern what before was utterly hid from and was therefore foolishness to us when we were alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that was in us (Eph 4:18). Without this divine illumination our understanding of gospel truths would be a mere natural not a spiritual understanding, and any truth that must be accepted purely by faith and that is above human reason would be regarded as foolishness. Such is the doctrine of a literal six-day creation, because it is “by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible” (Hb 11:3). Such are the doctrines of eternal predestination, of the total depravity of man by the fall, of the inability of man to cooperate with, initiate, or contribute to their salvation, of the sovereignty of God in the conviction, conversion, and salvation of sinners, of justification by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, of the nature and necessity of regeneration, of union with Christ, of the nature of sanctification and evangelical holiness, of the necessity of continual supplies of divine power from the Holy Spirit to persevere in all the duties of obedience which the gospel commands, of the power of the Holy Spirit evidencing in our hearts and minds the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, along with many others. This light and knowledge has several degrees according to the means, quality, and accuracy of instruction to which people are exposed, the capacity they have to receive it, and the diligence they exert in acquiring and increasing in it, but a basic knowledge of the fundamental and essential doctrines of the gospel is required by all of whom it may be said that they are enlightened, that is, freed from the spiritual darkness and ignorance they once live in (Eph 5:8; 1 Pt 1:14; 2:9).
This is the first privilege by which the author of Hebrews describes these apostates. They were people who had once been enlightened by the instruction they had received in the doctrines of the gospel, and had had the truths of those doctrines impressed on their minds by the Holy Spirit, which is one of His common works of grace. From this fact we can draw several conclusions. First, that it is a great mercy and privilege to have our minds enlightened by the Holy Spirit with the glorious truths of the gospel – But, it is a privilege that can be lost and end in the condemnation of those who were once enlightened – And, where there is a habitual neglect of growth in the true knowledge of the doctrines of the gospel and the obedience they require, the condition of such people is dangerous, vulnerable to deception, and inclining towards apostasy. This is clear and obvious from the text. But we need to go a little deeper and discover the nature of this enlightenment and knowledge that is here ascribed to these people.
First, there is a knowledge of spiritual things that is purely natural, and that can be acquired without any special assistance and illumination from the Holy Spirit. This is so common, and is self-evident among many today who apply themselves to the study of theology, and even take it up as a profession, yet are utter strangers to the spiritual truths of the doctrines they study. This was the case with the Sadducees who, having a natural knowledge of the Scriptures, did not understand the Scriptures, or the power of God (Mt 22:29). This is why we have theologians today who deny the sovereignty, the omniscience, and the holiness of God, along with a host of His other attributes, and who deny the virgin birth, the deity, and the bodily resurrection of Christ, who reject the necessity of repentance for salvation, who deny the necessity and nature of regeneration, who attempt to harmonize evolutionary dogma with the doctrines of the Bible, and who teach that only parts of the Bible are to be believed. A natural knowledge of the Bible and its doctrines can be acquired by the same means and effort that are expended to acquire knowledge in any other field of study such as science, medicine, engineering, or literature.
Second, the enlightenment attributed to these people, being a work of the Holy Spirit, differs from and is superior to this knowledge that is purely natural, because it comes closer to accepting the things of the Spirit of God than does a mere natural knowledge. The truths and commands of the gospel, in their spiritual nature, are not only incompatible with the will, mind, reason, and affections of those with a purely natural knowledge, but they are in fact foolishness to them. This natural knowledge discovers so little of the glory, goodness, and holiness that gives these spiritual truths their desirability that most people hate the spiritual truths they profess to believe. But this enlightenment by the Holy Spirit gives these truths some delight, joy, and satisfaction to the mind so that when they are first heard, they “immediately receive it with joy” (Mt 13:20). Their mind is enlightened enough to perceive the doctrines of the gospel as “the way of righteousness” (2 Pt 2:21). Furthermore, this purely natural knowledge has virtually no influence or power on the heart to keep it from sin or to motivate to obedience. There is not a more secure, worldly, licentious, and shameless generation of sinners in the world than those who are under the sole influence of a purely natural knowledge of spiritual truths, but the enlightenment that is here intended does produce some outward transformation, abstinence from sin, and obedience to all known commands. The knowledge that is acquired by natural means is by itself and devoid of any fruit of the Spirit.
Third, there is a saving, sanctifying light and knowledge of which this enlightenment falls short. Despite its effect on the mind by giving it some faint view of the glory, joy, and excellence of the gospel and spiritual truths, it does not provide that intuitive insight into them that is obtained only by saving grace. It does not “give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). It enlightens the mind but it does not renew, change, or transform their nature and bring their mind, will, affections, and life into conformity with the truths known by instilling a love for them in both the will and affections, and by working in them both the will and work as does a true saving light and knowledge of Christ (Rm 6:17, 18; 12:2; Phil 2:13). It does not write the Law of God on their hearts so that it becomes an inward principle of life, it does not make them delight in and love God’s commandments (Ps 119:47), nor does it make His commandments unburdensome (1 Jn 5:3), nor does it make them slaves of righteousness and obedient from the heart (Rm 6:17, 18), as does a true saving light and knowledge of Christ.
Tasted of the Heavenly Gift
The second privilege by which our author describes them is, they “have tasted of the heavenly gift” (geusamenous te tes doreas tes hepouraviou – lit. “have tasted of the gift the heavenly”). The doubling of the definite article (tes) is meant to give emphasis to the nature and quality of the gift which they have tasted. This gift is “heavenly”, just like their calling (3:1; cf. 11:16; 12:22), because its source and objective concern the things of the kingdom of God, the heavenly realm. This provokes two questions, (1) what is this “heavenly gift”, and (2) what is meant by “tasting”?
First, the word translated “gift” (dorea) is always used of the gift of God to men and women. It is so used by Jesus in His discourse with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:10, “If you knew the gift of God…”, that is, the gift given by God. Some have supposed that Jesus was referring to Himself, but our Lord makes it clear that it is the gift of the Holy Spirit who is the “living water” that Christ promises to give (Jn 4:14). This is its obvious meaning in Acts 2:38, “you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”, and in Acts 8:20 where Peter rebuked the magician Simon, “because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money”, that is, the power of the Holy Spirit to work “signs and great miracles” (8:13). This is its obvious meaning in Acts 10:45, when after Peter preached to the household of Cornelius, the Jewish believers who had come with Peter “were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles also”. See also Acts 11:17. This gift of God is the Holy Spirit and/or the gifts which are bestowed by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit and the gifts of His grace are the gift of God under the New Testament era.[11]
This gift is said to be “heavenly”, that is, from heaven. The Spirit’s source, work, gifts, and objectives are heavenly, as opposed to earthly, natural, carnal, and worldly. What Jesus said of Himself is equally true of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world (Jn 8:23). This is why the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, “because it does not behold Him or know Him” (Jn 14:17). After His ascension and exaltation to the right hand of the Father, Christ received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit (Ac 2:33), whom He sent from the Father, and who proceeds from the Father (Jn 15:26). When the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at His baptism, “the heavens were opened’ and John the Baptist “saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove,” (Mt 3:16). When the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, “there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind,” (Ac 2:2); therefore, Peter could tell his readers that the gospel had been “announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven” (1 Pt 1:12).
The primary objection made against identifying the “heavenly gift” with the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is specifically mentioned in the next clause, “and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit”. Therefore, it is asserted, it is doubtful that the Spirit would be immediately referred to again in the next clause if already mentioned in this one. Such an objection, however, is not convincing. The Jewish mind was very familiar with synonymous parallelism, that is, saying essentially the same thing twice but in a different way to emphasis the sense of its importance, the Psalms being full of such literary devises (ex. Ps 2:9; 6:1, 9; 8:6; 17:5; 27:1). But more in keeping with the context of Hebrews, the Holy Spirit is declared to be the gift of God sent from heaven with special reference to the Jew, namely, to nullify and change their entire Old Covenant system of worship and replace it with the New Covenant. The epistle of Hebrews is basically an explanation of the New Covenant and its superiority over the Old Covenant to which these believers were being pressured to return. After quoting the New Covenant recorded in Jeremiah 31:31-34, the author of Hebrews declares, “When He said, ‘A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear” (Hb 8:13). When Jesus ascended into heaven He left Judaism in the same condition He had found it, and continuing in the same forms of worship they had been practicing since the days of Moses. He commanded His disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, namely, for when “you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;” (Ac 1:8), and by their preaching nullified the Jews old worship under the law of Moses and announced the new, spiritual worship of the gospel. The apostles were made “servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6). The Holy Spirit sent from heaven for the institution of this new worship in spirit and in truth is the “heavenly gift” here intended. This is why the author of Hebrews repeatedly warned his readers of the danger of shrinking back, and to “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking”, namely Jesus, “who warns from heaven” (Hb 12:25), through the ministry of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. To apostatize and return to a system of religion that sought righteousness by the works of the Law would be to “trample under foot the Son of God” and to insult the Spirit of grace (Hb 10:29).
Having determined the identity of the “heavenly gift”, we can now ask what it is to “taste” of this “heavenly gift”. Some have taken this to mean that they had partaken of the Lord’s Supper, and by this ‘means of grace’ had “tasted” of the grace imparted through this ‘sacrament’. This, however, is based on a wrong view of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrament and ‘means of grace’, instead of an ordinance which is commemorative of our Lord’s sacrifice. It is a view that comes from imposing on the text a theological position concerning the Lord’s Supper developed long after the writing of this epistle, not one derived from the text itself or the common usage of the word.
To “taste” is a common metaphor for making a trial or experiment, thereby experiencing something. This we do naturally by tasting some food or beverage that is unfamiliar to us, and based on our experience of that taste, we either receive or refuse them. Jesus, after tasting the wine mixed with gall, was unwilling to drink it (Mt 27:34). Tasting is not the same as eating and turning what we have eaten into nutrition for our bodies. We taste things to determine if we want to eat them or not, and even if we like what we tasted, we might still refuse to eat it based on some other grounds, such as its being too fattening or unhealthy or empty calories or unfamiliar or some mental aversion. I have seen people enjoying a piece of meat until they were told it was venison, then they could no longer eat it based on some mental aversion. They imagined they were eating Bambi. By “tasting of the heavenly gift”, these people had had an experience of the power of the Holy Spirit and the new spiritual worship instituted by Him. They had made some trial and experiment and had some experience of them, a privilege which not all had experienced. By this taste they were convinced that what they had experienced was far superior to what they had experienced and been accustomed to under the Law of Moses, only now they were ready to shrink back to avoid being persecuted as a Christian. They had merely tasted, not spiritually eaten and digested the truths and doctrines of the gospel. They had experienced the superiority of the gospel, its doctrines, and its worship as administered by the Holy Spirit, but, like some in Galatia, having begun by the Spirit, they had reverted back to being perfected by the flesh (Gal 3:3). Therefore, the meaning of this metaphor is, these apostates had had some experience of the power and efficacy of the Holy Spirit in gospel life and worship that was superior to what they had experienced under the Law of Moses. From this we can draw some principles with which I will conclude this first study into the nature and causes of apostasy from the gospel.
First, we can conclude that all the gifts of God under the gospel are heavenly gifts, “Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (Jm 1:17). It is God “who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph 1:3). These gifts are opposed to temporal things and the things of this earth which, in a time of apostasy, are more highly regarded than the things above (Col 3:1, 2). They are also opposed to all carnal, worldly, man-centered, self-righteous, and man-made worship, counterfeit spiritual gifts, and forms of godliness that deny the power of the gospel and the authority of Scripture.
Second, the Holy Spirit is the heavenly gift of God given to His true church under the New Covenant for the revelation and illumination of the mysteries of the gospel, the institution of His worship in spirit and truth, and by whom God writes His law on the hearts of all true believers as an inward and governing principle for their lives.
Third, there is a goodness and superiority in this heavenly gift that might be tasted and experienced by those who never come to know and receive them in their life-transforming power, in the love of them, and in their spiritual and moral efficacy. They may taste of the Word in its truth, but not in its power. They may taste of His worship in its outward manifestations, but not of its inward awe, reverence, fear, and devotion. They may taste of the gifts and privileges bestowed on the church by the Spirit, but not of its fruits.
Fourth, a falling away from the gospel, its truths, doctrines, commands, principles, and worship after having had some experience of their value and excellency, is a high and provoking sin and a certain indication of an irrecoverable apostasy and a prelude to a certain terrifying expectation of the judgment of God (Hb 10:26, 27).
In our next study I will conclude our examination of these five privileges which these apostates are said to have enjoyed and experienced, as well as the punishment which they incur for themselves by their apostasy.
[1] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, Reprint 2000), 92-93.
[2] Quoted in Iain Murray, The Old Evangelicalism: Old Truths for a New Awakening (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2005), 3, 4.
[3] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Reprint of 1834 edition, 2005), 218.
[4] J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, Reprint of 1885 edition, 1978), 13-18.
[5] Quoted in Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The life and times of the great evangelist of the 18th century revival (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970), 22.
[6] Ibid, 28, 29.
[7] The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005), 345.
[8] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, Reprint 2000), 78-79.
[9] Ibid, 89-90.
[10] John Owen, The Works of John Owen Vol. 7 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, Reprint 1965), 3.
[11] The subject of spiritual gifts not being the purpose of this study, I would refer the reader to ‘Position Papers’ under the ‘About Us’ tab of this web site.