Chapter Six
1. What is the first “elementary” doctrine mentioned?
Repentance from dead works and faith toward God.
2. The second doctrine?
The doctrine of baptisms.
3. The third doctrine?
Laying on of hands.
4. The fourth doctrine?
The resurrection of the dead.
5. The fifth doctrine?
Eternal judgment.
6. What does the writer of Hebrews term these five doctrines?
The first principles, the beginning, of the doctrine of Christ.
7. What does the writer of Hebrews exhort us to do, with reference to the five elementary doctrines?
To leave them and go on to perfection, to maturity.
The writer means that we are to leave them and proceed further with our discussion of the Christian salvation. However, in the light of the statements in Chapter Two through Five, it also is true that we should press past them in actual practice and seek to enter the rest of God.
8. Beginning at verse four, what aspects of salvation had the Hebrew saints experienced already?
They had been enlightened.
They had tasted the heavenly gift.
They had been made partakers of the Holy Spirit.
They had tasted the good Word of God; they had tasted the works of power of the world age to come.
9. What is impossible if people of such spiritual experience should fall away?
To renew them again to repentance.
10. What two things do such backsliders do to Christ?
They crucify Him again and they expose Him to public shame.
Numerous Christian teachers have attempted to prove that once a person has made a genuine of belief in Jesus he can never be removed from the grace of God. Their position is based on a concept of grace as a sovereign action of God unrelated to man’s response.
The premise that redemption is an abstract Divine act that does not depend on human response is one of the deadliest, most subtle of all the errors that have corrupted Christian thinking. The Divine redemption, from beginning to completion, is an opportunity. The believer can choose to pursue the continuing revelation of God’s grace or can, after having begun, ignore and neglect the further challenges and demands.
The Christian walk is a way of faith, a way of righteousness. Whenever a believer ceases to press forward in faith he stands in danger of falling back into spiritual death. Satan never ceases his attempts to deceive the Christian away from the path of light.
The believer who, after repeated admonitions of the Lord, does not begin to bear the fruit of righteousness, will be cut out of the Vine, out of Christ.
Thesis of the Book of Hebrews is that we will be made a partaker of Christ on the condition that we press forward to the land of promise, to the rest of God, to the fullness of our inheritance in Christ. Hebrews was written to experienced disciples who now were losing their fervency.
The expression “If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance” must be interpreted in the light of the whole Book of Hebrews. It appears that these seasoned Christians were beginning to neglect their salvation and were not pressing into the rest of God, the perfection of salvation that is the mark of maturity.
The spiritual forces that govern the earth are so powerful, the currents so strong and swift, that is not press forward is to be swept backward. The experienced saint who loses the white heat of fervency slowly but surely loses ground. Satan works slowly and unremittingly. Before many years have past the believer who once had been a prophet of God is now living in the flesh. His spiritual life is dying.
Whether he would be able in this condition to rekindle his love for Jesus is questionable. We have known of a man in this condition. What at one time had been a vibrant Christian was now a shell of a man, sick, terrified that he had sinned away his day of grace. Our counsel to him was to sit in church every time the doors opened and hope that God would have mercy on him and give him the grace to repent and pray.
Our relationship to the Lamb of God is that of Bride to Bridegroom. We may stumble a few times, in which instances the Lord will pick us up so we may continue our journey toward His palace. But if we fall away, spurning His love, there may come a day when He loses interest in us.
We know of the parable of the prodigal son and the blessing this has been to countless sinners who have come to themselves and returned to Father’s house.
We know also of a faithless Israel who sinned until there no longer was a remedy and they lost the Glory that had been theirs. Twenty-five hundred years later they still are trying to retain control of their land and their holy city.
If we neglect our salvation we will not escape punishment and severe loss of inheritance–if not something worse!
11. What kind of ground does God bless?
That which drinks the rain that comes on it and brings forth crops fit for those for whom it has been tilled.
12. What is true of ground that brings forth thorns and thistles?
It is rejected. It is near a curse. It will be burned in the end.
13. What are some of the things that “accompany salvation”?
Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, and a pressing forward in the Spirit each day toward the fullness of the inheritance that is in Christ.
If these “things” are not accompanying our Christian experience, then salvation is not occurring. Faith apart from such works of righteousness is dead.
14. What was God remembering concerning the Hebrew Christians?
Their work and labor of love in serving the saints.
Evidently these Jewish saints were hospitable toward the traveling ministries, and were doing all that they could to assist Christians who were in need.
15. How can we make ourselves sure of our hope of salvation?
By being diligent in the work of the Kingdom of God, by following and imitating the believers who through faith and patience are becoming heirs of the promises of God that are in Christ.
Notice that our hope must be made sure. We inherit the rest of God, the land of promise, only as we respond to God’s salvation with faith and patience. Salvation is not an arbitrary Divine action; rather, it is an opportunity to regain what was lost in Eden. God has given Jesus to us to help us drive Satan from our inheritance. Jesus helps us and guides us in every detail. But we must obey Him at each moment or the process ceases.
Prayer is not merely asking God to give us what we desire. Prayer is the way in which we enter the program of redemption, seeking the Lord’s will, and receiving strength and guidance so His will may be done in our life.
16. By whom did God swear, when He made His promise to Abraham concerning Abraham’s descendants?
By Himself because there is no one greater to swear by.
17. What trait of character was Abraham required to exercise in order to inherit the promises that God had made to him?
Patience.
18. Why did God confirm His promise with an oath?
So the heirs of the promise would be convinced of the unchanging nature of God’s intention.
19. What two “immutable” (unchangeable) things give us strong “consolation” (encouragement)?
God’s promise plus the oath that confirms the promise.
20. What is the “hope ” of the Christian pilgrim?
That his soul will be saved (Hebrews 10:39) and that he will inherit the fullness of the blessing promised to the descendants of Abraham.
21. Where is our soul anchored?
In the Most Holy place behind the veil, being fastened there by our hope.
22. Who made a place for us behind the holy veil?
The Lord Jesus, our eternal High Priest of the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews through out, assures us that since the Jews who were rescued from Egypt and still complained and moaned and railed against God and even after seeing the miracles the Lord performed over the forty year wilderness experience,lost their inheritance,that we surely can too. Also I want to point out something that is often over looked.
The angels who fell with satan can never be returned to the Lord,or gain eternity in heaven ever again. If the angels who are above us, we being just a bit lower than they are in our being, can never regain their standing with God,then how does one expect that it would be any different for us? If we turn away from God after tasting being in and walking in the Holy Spirit,how and why would He give us another chance?
I have to say I do not care about being right for myself,no I care about you all getting this right so that when the multitude of tribulation comes to you,you will not turn away thinking you are forever safe. What a terrible thing it would be for you who has been running the race thus far to give up just before the finish line,and lose all the gain you made. To stand before Christ and have Him say depart from me you who are iniquity I never knew you.
I will finish with this from Hebrews 10:26-31, 26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay, and again, “The Lord will judge his people”. 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Hebrews in it’s entirety explains as well that the old covenant laws of Moses have been done away with that the new covenant with Christ as that covenant obliterates the law from having to be observed outside of ourselves. Meaning He wrote those laws on our heart and the Holy Spirit as long as we keep in fellowship and growing,helps us in every way to not transgress.There is no more need for sacrificing for sins just repentance. If you sin and you do it one willingly and two without feeling the need for forgiveness then you are in danger of hell fire.
To this writer and reader,these verses these chapters in Hebrews explains thoroughly we can give up our salvation.
Love in Christ Jesus Tammy