Hebrews 6

 

Pastor:

I realize that you don’t need a layperson’s contribution as you prepare to preach Hebrews 6. However, you expressed angst with respect to your presentation, and I wanted to share a synthesis - largely cobbled together from John MacArthur et al. that I’ve found especially helpful when discussing eternal security with friends from more confessional traditions.

Hebrews 6:4-6 raises serious questions, often driven by the assumption that although Christ will never drive believers away, they themselves may forfeit salvation through moral or spiritual failure - and that such a loss is final. Yet this reading creates an immediate and unresolved tension with the text itself, particularly the assertion that “it is impossible…to renew them again to repentance.” If this passage describes a true believer losing salvation, then Scripture would be teaching not only conditional security, but irreversible loss - something nowhere else affirmed in the New Testament.

Context is decisive. Hebrews was written to Jewish professing believers who were under pressure to retreat from the New Covenant back into the Mosaic system. The central issue throughout the epistle is not how salvation is lost, but whether Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice is truly sufficient, or whether the old sacrificial system must be retained as a remedy for ongoing sin.

For that reason, Hebrews 6 is not addressing union with Christ (salvation), but matters that accompany salvation, namely fellowship, maturity, and perseverance in faith. This distinction is made explicit just a few verses later, when the author reassures his readers: “We are convinced of better things concerning you - things that accompany salvation” (Heb. 6:9). The writer deliberately separates the warning from the reality of salvation itself.

To suggest that a true believer could commit an act that irretrievably nullifies salvation stands in direct contradiction to the consistent testimony of Scripture: believers are sealed by the Holy Spirit “for the day of redemption” from the moment of faith (Eph. 4:30). Salvation rests not on human perseverance, but on divine preservation.

What then, constitutes “falling away” in this context? These Jewish hearers had genuinely experienced the blessings of proximity to the gospel: they had tasted the goodness of God’s Word, witnessed the powers of the age to come, and participated in the life of the early church. Yet they were being tempted to seek relief from sin not through confession and faith in Christ’s finished work, but by returning to daily sacrifices under the Old Covenant.

Such a regression would not undo salvation, but it would render repentance - understood as a turning fully to Christ alone - functionally impossible. By treating Christ’s death as insufficient and placing it alongside the repeated sacrifices of the Law, they would, in effect, be “crucifying once again the Son of God and holding Him up to contempt.” The issue is not losing Christ, but dishonoring Him by denying the finality of His work.

Thus, Hebrews 6 warns against a rupture in fellowship, not a dissolution of union. To abandon reliance on Christ alone is to forfeit spiritual growth, assurance, and joy - not eternal life itself.

Claims that salvation is a gift God will not revoke, but one we may personally abandon, require more than theological nuance; they require rewriting Scripture. When Jesus says, “No one will snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:28), the text does not permit the unspoken exception, “no one - except themselves.”

Paul’s conclusion in Romans is equally decisive:

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers…nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).

If “anything else in all creation” includes angels and demons, time and eternity, height and depth, it must also include the believer himself.

Five Truths from Hebrews 6 That Militate Against Loss of Salvation

• The warning is followed by reassurance: Hebrews 6:9 explicitly distinguishes the warning from “things that accompany salvation,” implying the prior verses do not describe salvation itself.

• The impossibility of renewed repentance would imply permanent loss - an outcome contradicted everywhere else in Scripture if applied to genuine believers.

• The audience is covenantally-Jewish, facing pressure to return to the Mosaic system, making the warning about abandoning Christ’s sufficiency, not forfeiting justification.

• The metaphor of fruit-bearing land (6:7–8) contrasts usefulness and judgment, not saved versus unsaved status, aligning with fellowship and reward rather than eternal destiny.

• The passage culminates in God’s preserving promise (6:17–20), anchoring the believer’s hope not in personal endurance, but in God’s unchangeable purpose and oath.