Sunday Hebrews: Preaching Notes on Hebrews 5:11-6:20

This small segment of Hebrews could give rise to several sermons and sermon illustrations. Here are just three for starters:

1. 5:11-6:2 are appropriate for countless congregations that have been Christian forever but so little depth of either understanding or action. In short, these verses beg for discipleship. How many people--especially in larger congregations--manage to come to church year after year with no involvement in the movement of the kingdom? They can slip in and out with no accountability either by themselves or by the church that is meant to form them into a holy people?

Of course some churches go too far in the opposite direction and become cultlike. Unless the people in the congregation conform to the most idiosyncratic whim of the church leaders or social network of the church, they are ostracised. This latter observation reminds us that many teachers and leaders in the church are actually babies who have digested neither the strong meat of the gospel nor the milk.

2. 6:3-8 are of course the strongest verses to argue that a person can indeed be "justified" (to use Paul's language) and "filled with the Spirit (to use Acts' language) and yet still fall away to destruction. The author of Hebrews knows no Calvinist doctrine of predestination or Lutheran doctrine of simul iustus et peccator (at the same time righteous and sinner). At the same time, Hebrews also knows no Methodist idea of coming back to Christ after falling away. The application of these verses is thus very difficult, except perhaps for the Catholic tradition.

We should at least point out that Hebrews is not exactly talking about sin in general. True, the author of Hebrews might also think that continual sinning of any kind will eventually lead one to "lose salvation." But the author is speaking to an audience that is on a trajectory to reject Christ as Messiah, either in order to return to Gentile paganism or to forms of Judaism that rejected Jesus as Messiah. This is the falling away to which the author refers.

There are different ways to address the verse. If you believe in the continued unfolding of revelation, you might consider the matter of "second repentance" as yet unresolved at the end of the New Testament. The church of the 200's would come to believe that a person could repent even after cursing Christ to save your life.

From a more pragmatic standpoint, we might counsel others who are doubting their own destiny by reference to the theology of John 16:8. If indeed it is the Spirit that leads a person to seek Christ, which would seem to be orthodox theology, then a person who is seeking Christ has not fallen away in the manner of Hebrews. The bottom line is that those who are truly seeking Christ are able to find him, regardless of their past.

This statement of course does not completely fit with Hebrews' world of imagery, particularly that in relation to Esau. But it does fit with Christian theology has God has worked it out over the years in the church.

We can find even in Esau a parable of the truth that many people who claim to be seeking repentance often are only trying to get out of punishment. Many people claim to be sorry after they are caught in a misdeed. But they are only sorry for getting caught. The test for true repentance is whether you truly recognize that you should be punished for your wrongdoing.

3. 6:13-20 reminds us of God's faithfulness to His promises. Christians have many core beliefs that involve promises, and Hebrews' words here would apply to all of them. Of course beyond the core beliefs of all Christians we find much disagreement on what God's will is and great caution is called for once we leave the common ground of Christianity. It is an even greater trick in our everyday lives to figure out when God is truly promising us something.

Some hotly debated theological issues issue from the statement that God's will is unchangeable. The hyper-Calvinist takes this as an absolute statement. The normal Calvinist would allow that God permitted Satan and Adam to make a free choice on which His subsequent will depended. Orthodox Christianity in general allows for God's ultimate will--that does not change--and His will that will vary depending on human response.

All of these traditions would of course assume that God knows what His choice will turn out to be, but in time His will does appear to change depending on human choice. The Open Theist, on the other hand, supposes that God has also limited His knowledge so that He knows what choice He will make given our actions (orthodox) but that He does not know what choice we will make (unorthodox).