Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews VI. 4-6. 437
Why such a one is irrecoverably lost, we learn from the words
in apposition to those we have considered ;
dvaoravpovvrag, etc.
Such a one commits, in a more aggravated degree, the sin which the
unbelieving Jews committed against Christ. The Israelites crucified
in their madness a pseudo-Messiah, or at the worst a prophet. But
he v^ho has hioivn and exioerienced Jesus as his Saviour and Eeone
means of preventing their apostacy. .God in dealing with his children, addresses
them not from the absolute truth which is hidden with himself, but according to their obvious
and conscious relations to him. He has ordained the means as well as the end ; and while
it is certain that the end cannot fail, it is equally certain that it cannot be attained except
in connexion with those means with which God has indissolubly connected it. Thus
while on the one hand, the Lord had promised unconditionally to Paul that none of the
companions of his voyage to Rome should lose their lives, Paul on the other hand, was
warranted in saying that their safety was absolutely dependent on their abiding in the
ship. So Christians, while assured abstractly of the absolute salvation of all believers,
are yet in their o-wn personal character and relations properly warned against apostacy;
for they can appropriate the comfort of the absolute truth only in proportion as they vindicate
the genuineness of their profession by actual perseverance. Even Paul who could
entertain no doubt of his spiritual calling and ultimate salvation, yet keeps his body
under, lest after having preached to others, he himself prove a castaway.
But here, it is replied, the case is otherwise. Not merely are professed believers warned
against apostacy, but real believers are informed of the consequences of actually apostatising.
Grant that such is the meaning of the passage. It by no means thence follows
that such a case ever did or will actually happen.
It is not necessarily more than a
strong statement of the utterly disastrous nature of such an event, conceiving it possible.
The Bible by no means always confines its reasonings to real cases. It often assumes
supposable cases for the sake of strongly illustrating a principle. Thus there is joy in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons that
need no repentance. The case here supposed has no existence on earth, yet this fact
no way detracts from the pertinency of the passage as illustrating a principle. Again
Paul says "
: If we or an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel to you, let him be
accursed." None supposes that Paul contemplates such an event as morally possible.
Yet it was physically conceivable, and Paul makes the supposition for the sake of a
cogent illustration. Again in Romans, Paul, in order to illustrate a principle of the
Divine proceedings, contrasts Jews who violate the revealed law with the Gentiles who
do by nature the things contained in the law. There are, properly speaking, no such
Gentiles. All have sinned, and the case is merely a hypothetical one.
Of this nature, I apprehend, is the passage before us. It does not assert that Christians
may or do fall away. It only affirms that if persons who have attained a certain
spiritual status which it describes (grant them to be Christians), fell away, their ruin is irremediable
; their case is hopeless. They have crucified afresh the Son of God, and under
aggravating circumstances. They have exhausted and proved vain all the appointed
provisions of salvation. The sacrifice on Calvary having been tried and rejected, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. They cannot, therefore, be restored to repentance.
The case here, as in the instances above, is abstractly supposable, and the principle it involves
brought to bear as one of the predestined and efficacious means against the
catastrophe of which it states the terrible consequences. I cannot myself forbear the
conviction that the writer purposely left the language such as to cover two classes of
cases—that of the really regenerate who cannot fall away, and that of those who reach
such a state of spiritual enlightenment, that though they may fall away, they cannot be
reclaimed. In either case the passage is decisive against that superficial Arminianism
which in asserting \ts favorite doctrine of free-will, enables a man to oscillate backwards
and forwards between the remote extremes of sin and holiness ;
yesterday a saint, today
destitute of holiness, and to-morrow re-estabUahed in his spiritual calling.— [K.