Hebrews6chapter 6

Hebrews 6:1-3

The remedy for the dullness of 5:11-14 is not review but advance: leaving the principles, let us go on unto perfection, teleiotes, the maturity the whole letter presses toward. The foundation list is six items in three pairs, repentance and faith, baptisms and laying on of hands, resurrection and eternal judgment, a catechism the readers had already laid, much of it shared ground with the synagogue. If God permit is not a flourish; the warning about to come explains what makes advance a matter of divine permission.

Hebrews 6:4-6

The crux is stated without softening: impossible, for those once enlightened, who tasted the heavenly gift, were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, tasted the good word and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, because they crucify the Son of God afresh. The church's readings each have their holders and their argument: Wesley and the Arminian line read true believers who make shipwreck; Owen and the Reformed line read professors carried far by common operations of the Spirit who were never truly Christ's, since verse 9 sets things that accompany salvation apart from everything just listed; others read the warning as hypothetical, showing the absurdity of a second beginning; and an old historical reading takes the fall as returning to the temple sacrifices specifically, re-crucifying Christ by re-embracing the system that condemned him. What is impossible in every reading is renewal while the apostate holds Christ crucified afresh, and the warning is itself one of God's means of keeping his people from the cliff it describes.

Hebrews 6:7-8

The parable interprets the warning: one field and one rain, two harvests. Earth that drinks the oft-coming rain and bears herbs receives blessing; earth that bears thorns and briers is rejected, adokimos, and nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned, the language of Genesis 3:17-18 close behind. The rain stands for the privileges of verses 4 and 5, which fall alike on both grounds; the harvest, not the rainfall, tells what the ground is.

Hebrews 6:9-10

The severity turns on one word: but, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak, the letter's better thread bent to comfort. The warning was aimed and the writer says so, yet his judgment of the readers stands on evidence, your work and labour of love toward his name, ministry to the saints past and present, and on God's own character, for God is not unrighteous to forget. Each of the letter's warnings ends this way, and the exposition keeps the proportion the text keeps.

Hebrews 6:11-12

The desire is for every one of you, no tier of the church exempted, the same diligence unto the full assurance of hope unto the end, plerophoria, the full sail of settled confidence. Its opposite is named with the letter's own word for the danger, slothful, nothros, the very dullness diagnosed at 5:11. The cure is imitation, followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises, and Abraham is about to be produced as the exhibit.

Hebrews 6:13-15

The exhibit is Genesis 22:16-17, the oath after the altar: because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee, the Hebrew doubling kept in the Greek. Abraham's part is stated in one participle, after he had patiently endured, makrothumesas, the long wait from promise to Isaac. He obtained the promise in its firstfruits and died still looking for the city, as chapter 11 will say; the oath, not the timetable, carried him.

Hebrews 6:16-18

Among men an oath ends all strife, and God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, stooping to the courtroom's own instrument. The two immutable things are his word and his oath, in which it was impossible for God to lie, the letter's second impossible answering the first: renewal of the wilful apostate is impossible, and so is the failure of God's sworn promise. The consolation is for those who have fled for refuge, the manslayer's run to the refuge city behind the phrase, to lay hold upon the hope set before us.

Hebrews 6:19-20

The hope is an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and the anchor is cast upward, entering into that within the veil, holding fast in the holiest where storms do not reach. There the forerunner is for us entered, prodromos, the scout and herald whose entry pledges the company's, a title no Aaronic high priest could wear, since none entered the holiest as anyone's forerunner. Even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec: the name the warning interrupted at 5:10 returns, and chapter 7 will unfold it.