THE PERIL OF FAILING TO ADVANCE IN CHRISTIAN LIFE
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 6:1. Therefore.—διό, since only the τέλειοι, advanced ones, are capable of receiving advanced instruction, you may well seek to become such. Stuart reads, “Quitting the mere initial state of pupilage, advance forward to a maturer state of instruction and knowledge”; or, “make such advances that it shall be unnecessary to repeat elementary instruction in the principles of Christianity.” The writer generously assumes that they are ready for, and would gladly receive, higher teachings. Principles.—Rudiments; first elements. Such simple verities as we can teach children. Unto perfection.—That completeness of Christian manhood which implies power to deal with abstruse and difficult subjects, such as that one which was at the time in the mind of the writer, viz. the Priesthood of Christ as belonging to the order of Melchizedek. “Let us—I, as your teacher, leading you on with me—press on to maturity of Christian knowledge.” Laying again.—Foundations ought to require laying only once; first principles ought to require teaching only in the first stages of the religious life. In failure to grow, mentally and spiritually, is always found the great peril of apostasy. Life of every kind, if it is to be kept in health, must grow. Repentance.—The first lesson of the gospel (Mark 1:15). Dead works.—See Hebrews 9:14. Works in which there is no principle of life. Such as cause defilement, and require purification, because they are sinful (Galatians 5:19-21), and because their wages is death.
Hebrews 6:2. Baptisms.—A plural form; therefore Alford thinks the Jewish washings must be meant. But the writer is clearly referring to the first principles of the distinctive Christian teachings. The Syriac Version has the singular here; and it is evident that no stress is to be laid on the plural form. If importance be attached to the plural, it may be regarded as including John’s baptism and Christian baptism; and we know that some disciples underwent both baptisms. βάπτισμα is the proper word for Christian baptism, but the word here used is βαπτισμῶν. Farrar suggests that the word may imply the teaching which enabled Christian catechumens to discriminate between Jewish washings and Christian baptism. The order of first Christian principles given here may be illustrated from the Acts of the Apostles.
1. The doctrine of repentance, or sense of need; dead works being helpless in saving.
2. The doctrine of faith, or out looking for help.
3. The doctrine of baptisms, or public profession of faith.
4. The doctrine of laying on of hands, or sealing of the Holy Ghost.
5. The doctrines of resurrection and judgment, the inspiration of godly living. These are the two prominent truths taught by the apostle Paul, to whose school the writer belonged. All these doctrines are classed as rudimentary first principles.
Hebrews 6:3. This will we do.—Not, “attend again to these first principles”; but “go on to deal with the higher things.” The word “we” is here used theoretically. “Assuming your anxiety to grow, realising our dependence on Divine help; and remembering to what peril of falling the ignorant are exposed.” Then the writer deals with a case “excepted by God Himself from all efforts of the Christian teacher; in this case, though nothing can avail except the laying of a new foundation of repentance, God has appointed no agencies by which such foundation can be laid” (Moulton).
Hebrews 6:4. Impossible.—Either a strong word for “exceedingly difficult,” or, more probably, “impossible under existing provisions and conditions.” But this must not be thought of as involving “impossible under any provisions and conditions.” What God does must not be thought of as limiting what God may do. Observe the use of the term in Mark 10:23-27. It is a favourite term with this writer: see chap. Mark 5:18, Mark 10:4, Mark 11:6. “The purport of the whole clause is to this effect—that the persons apostatising from the Christian profession, after they have had experience, so far as man can judge, of the power of Christianity, it is impossible by the ordinary means of grace to renew them to repentance, for they renounce the very considerations by which Divine power works on the minds of men” (Barker). Enlightened.—Simply instructed; the word does not imply having illumination. A man can never be the same man again after hearing of Christ the Saviour. He must come under new responsibility, and this may either save or crush him. Tasted.—Begun experimental acquaintance with. Heavenly gift.—The privileges and blessings of the gospel. Some think Christ Himself—the “unspeakable gift”—is meant. Partakers of the Holy Ghost.—See Acts 19:1-6. Perhaps allusion may be to the “gifts” of the early Church, regarded as signs and sealings of the Spirit.
Hebrews 6:5. Good word of God.—Enjoyed the consolations administered and the hopes excited by the Divine promises which the gospel proffers. World to come.—R.V. “age to come”: the Christian, spiritual dispensation. Reference appears to be to the miraculous powers in the early Church. Stuart summarises the points of the paragraph (Hebrews 6:1-5) thus: “There is a regular gradation.
1. They had been taught the principles or doctrines of Christianity.
2. They had enjoyed the privileges, or means of grace, which the new religion afforded.
3. They had experienced, in general, various gifts and graces bestowed by the Spirit.
4. They had cherished the hopes which the promises of the gospel inspire.
5. They had witnessed, some of them may even have experienced, those special miraculous powers by which the gospel was fully shown to be a religion from God. They had the fullest evidence, internal and external, of the Divine origin and nature of the Christian religion. Consequently, if they apostatised from it, there remained no hope of their recovery.”
Hebrews 6:6. Fall away.—R.V. “and then fell away.” The defection meant is a practical renunciation of Christianity, and return to Judaism. Many did thus fall back to formal Judaism, in that time of persecution and danger. Crucify to themselves.—Acting as those did who actually crucified the Lord. His crucifixion was but the seal of their rejection of Him as Messiah. The case used is the “dative of disadvantage,” to their own destruction. Open shame.—Expose Him to scorn, as one proved to be unworthy of trust or service. “By renouncing their adherence to Christianity, they would openly declare their belief that Christ was only an impostor, and, of course, that He suffered justly as a malefactor. By returning again to Judaism, they would approve of what the Jews had done, and thus they would, as it were, crucify Christ, and expose Him to be treated by unbelievers with scorn and contumely” (Stuart).
Hebrews 6:7. Herbs.—βοτάνην. Hebraistic use, “any kind of vegetation”; classic use, “herbage,” or “vegetation,” not including bread-corn.
Hebrews 6:8. Burned.—Not the land, but the worthless and mischievous produce. But see Isaiah 44:15, and recall the fate of the Vale of Siddim. Point of illustration is: the earth is recipient of Divine favours; much depends on its response. What can be done more for that which yields a response of barrenness, or only bad growths, to the rains of God? It is a rhetorical illustration. In case of land it is a matter of inability; in case of man it is a matter of will.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 6:1-8
The Peril and Prevention of Apostasy.—The teaching of this passage is enforced, and in part explained, by an illustration taken from nature. Fixing attention on that illustration, we may be able to present the point of the teaching. The writer’s mind is evidently full of the cases of apostasy from the faith in Christ which had occurred, and of the temptations to apostasy which seriously imperilled many who had professed the faith in Christ. What could be done? It seemed hopeless to try and recover the apostates. The case of such a man as Julian was beyond the reach of all human influences. But how could the wavering ones be steadied? and how could all the members of the Church be guarded?
1. The writer urges that safety lies in vigorous growing—growing in spiritual life, one chief agency of such growth being advance in knowledge of Christian truth. Full occupation of mind and heart with heavenly and Divine things is the best and healthiest defence against any—even the most subtle—attractions of error. This our Lord taught in His illustration of the evil spirit which went out of a man, and left him “empty, swept, and garnished.” The man did not fill the empty spaces with good, so the evil spirit returned to the vacancy, and filled it full with others worse than himself.
2. And the writer warns, with extreme severity, of the hopeless condition into which wilful apostasy brings a man. It is the highest moral force that can act upon a man which persuades a man to be a Christian. If a man has felt that influence, and after experience of it resolutely and wilfully puts it away from him, what can be done for such a man? You cannot expect any lower influences to act upon the man who has rejected the highest; and there is no other and superior influence that can act upon him. The apostate makes his own condition an altogether hopeless one. While a man is undecided, the Christian persuasions are working on him. When a man resists the Christian persuasions, there is yet hope that they may gain convincing power upon him. But when a man has yielded to the Christian persuasions, and made professions of faith in Christ, and come into a share of the Christian experiences, and then deliberately thrown it all up, and taken a stand of opposition to Christ, the persuasions have become wholly ineffective, and there are no other that can possibly influence him. The man must be left to himself. It is impossible to “renew him again to repentance.” Take Julian, the apostate emperor of later days, as an example. To illustrate this the writer shows that there are conditions which make the husbandry of the earth hopeless and useless. His illustration is especially effective for Eastern lands, where, in ancient times, the natural characteristics of the surface soil were not changed by deep ploughing or chemically adapted manures. The ploughing was but surface scratching; and the land was left untilled that failed to reward the tiller, or that only brought forth “caltrops,” thorns, and briars. The earth, or the land, or the fields are represented as receiving all needful blessing from God and from man. From God, in the frost that breaks up the clods, the snow that keeps the soil warm and supplies it with chemical elements, the rains that make all life in it to break forth; from man, in the work of the plough, the spade, and the harrow, and in the scattering of various seed. What could have been done to the fields more than God and man have done for them? Now what may be the response of the fields? And what will be a fitting estimate and treatment of the fields in view of their varying response? The Christian professor is as a field.
I. The field may nourish a growth of plant life unto satisfactory fruitage.—Compare the “good soil” of our Lord’s parable of the “sower.” It brings forth fruit, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred-fold. In the passage before us attention is fixed upon the fact that what comes forth out of good soil keeps on growing, until it has reached its perfection. Its health and its safety depend on and are declared by its continuous growth. That is the immediate point of the writer. Christians must grow, or they will not be safe. Nothing resists evil influences like healthy and vigorous growing. St. Peter is as clear on this point, for he gives this pressing advice to Christian disciples: “Beware lest, being carried away with the error of the wicked, ye fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:17-18).
II. The field may fail to nourish anything worth harvesting.—It may be able to put no energy into anything that comes out of it. It can only grow leaves, or poor flowers that are not worth picking: only green stalks, on which stand small shrivelled ears, which even the insects have not cared to fructify. It is such poor, weak growth as this that is exposed to all kinds of peril. Frosts nip such blades. Fungus gets on such branches. Rains beat down such stalks. Rust gathers in such ears. And the like peril comes to men, when their response to the grace of God in Christ Jesus is of the same kind. They do not thrive; they do not grow; there is no vigour in their growing. The soil of their souls evidently needs nourishing, lest they should find their poor fruitage only fit for burning in the Day of God.
III. The field may grow nothing but weeds.—The farmer’s labour is expended upon it, the gracious agencies of nature act upon it, and yet the farmer is wholly disappointed. It seems as if both God’s work and his, which had been so freely received by the field, had all been rejected. He walks over the field, watching for signs of plant life from his seeding; and there is nothing save thistle, and ragwort, and dock, and nettle, and tare. It bears nothing but thorns and briars. The farmer turns away in despair. The field is rejected; it is nigh unto cursing. Nothing can be done for it. By-and-by the thorns and briars must be cut down and burned. There is a point in God’s husbandry of souls when it seems useless to do anything more. The utmost has been done, and resisted, and rejected, or turned to wrong uses, and made to nourish thorns and briars, not good plants. What can be done to the well-tended vineyard that only yields sour grapes? Thus righteously saith our God: “I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned nor digged. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” What can be done for a wilful apostate? He “is nigh unto cursing.” In the realm of motives there are none left which can persuade that man to repentance.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 6:1. The Peril of Keeping to Religious Simplicities.—The peril lies in this—we cannot help growing
(1) in body,
(2) in mind,
(3) in experience,
(4) in moral power; and if we do not also grow in religion, we get our nature out of its harmonies; manliness and childishness vainly strive to dwell amicably together; and the result, sooner or later, is that the manliness cannot do with the childishness, but suggests all manner of doubts and difficulties, which are only too likely to upset the religious faith altogether. Picture-books are best for children, and picture-teaching for child-souls. But it is a pitiable thing to see a man clinging passionately to the picture-books of his infancy. Yet that is done by the men who, having reached Christian manhood, will hear of nothing, and think they can profit by nothing, save the first principles, the child-simplicities, of the Christian faith. We need to see that the simplicities are fully preserved in the advanced teachings. The flower and the seed contain those cotyledon lobes that first burst the soil; but how foolish the man would be who persisted in caring nothing for the flower or the seed, but everything for the cotyledon lobe. The peril is threefold.
1. The man puts his own nature out of harmony.
2. The simple things will not stand the application to them of his enlarged and cultivated power and experience. He is a man trying to get himself into a boy’s jacket.
3. The lack of harmony between the man’s mind and religion makes his example to others not only ineffective, but injurious; for he suggests that a man must degrade his mental manhood if he is to be religious. Only the man who grows on, body and mind and soul, towards perfection, can realise the Divine idea for him, or worthily bear the name of disciple of the “Man Christ Jesus.”
The Christian First Principles.—For convenience and symmetry these may be arranged in three great pairs of truths.
I. Revelation of God through the written word; incarnation of God in the living Word.
II. Expiation of sin by blood of Christ; justification of the sinner by faith in Christ.
III. Regeneration of heart by the Holy Spirit; resurrection of body by the same Spirit.
Now observe the first pair concern God the Father; the second pair, God the Son; the third pair, God the Holy Ghost. Observe also that there is a threefold mediation:
1. The mediation of the word of God between God and human ignorance.
2. The mediation of the Christ between God and human guilt.
3. The mediation of the Spirit between God and human inability.—Homiletic Review.
Leaving First Principles.—We are to leave them as the scholar leaves the letters of the alphabet,—leaving them only to use them; leaving them that he may bring out all their powers, and employ them in startling combinations, as the instrument for acquiring or diffusing thought. We are to leave them as the plant leaves the root, when it towers into a majestic tree, leaving it only that it may the more depend upon it; and day by day drawing from it those fresh supplies of vital sap which it pours into the fresh leaves, fresh boughs, ever fresh and ever beautiful formations of that life which refreshes the hungry with its clusters, or the weary with its shade. We are to leave them as the builder leaves his foundation, that he may carry up the building, stone above stone, story above story, tower above tower, from the dusky basement to the sunlit pinnacle; always leaving the foundation, yet always on it, and on it with the most massive pressure and the most complete dependence when most he leaves it.—Charles Stanford.
The Double Meaning of “Repentance.”—The word μετάνοια, which occurs in this verse, has here and in other places a wider meaning than “repentance,” as we now understand it. In its full significance it serves equally to denote the turning away from what is opposed to God (Acts 8:22), and also the turning to God (Acts 20:20). In either instance the process is identical in result, though contemplated from different points of view. Its beginning is in the conscious individual spirit life, and the result is a distinct and powerful effect produced upon the will by means of Divine grace.
Hebrews 6:1-2. The Jewish Christian Catechism.—A catechism is supposed to confine itself to the primary truths and principles of the subject it treats, and to set them forth clearly and succinctly. What then, according to this writer, are the first principles of the doctrine of Christ? At first we are surprised at the list that he gives—as much surprised by what he includes as by what he omits. But the list must be examined as prepared for the Jewish Christian Churches of that particular time; and they were likely to have practices and ideas which have long since passed away. Some of their “simplicities” then have no application to us, and it is a mistake to force meanings, suitable to us, into “first principles,” which had special meaning for them. The list contains six items. Repentance, faith, resurrection, and final judgment we can recognise as still “first principles” of the Christian faith. But what were the teachings in the Jewish Church concerning “laying on of hands,” and “baptisms,” or “washings,” we can only guess. There was some particular Jewish feature about these, some retention of Jewish custom, which has quite faded out of our knowledge. The Christian associations of baptism and laying on of hands cannot with any certainty be identified with those of the early Jewish Christian Church. The “first principles” may therefore be thus divided:
1. Two spiritual qualities, absolutely essential to the entrance into and maintenance of Christian life at all—repentance and faith. Observe the sphere of the repentance—“from dead works”; and the sphere of the faith—“toward God.” There is no specific mention made of faith in Christ.
2. Two eschatological truths—the Resurrection and the Judgment. These are, singularly enough, the only truths stated as being first principles; and these we reckon to be advanced truths, not simplicities. Probably they were prominent in the Jewish faith, and so became prominent, and took too exclusive attention, in the Jewish Christian Churches.
3. Two symbolical acts—washings and laying on of hands. These seem to have taught two things:
(1) the absolute necessity for putting away all evil;
(2) the certainty of the communications of Divine grace to those thus cleansed.
Hebrews 6:4. The Morally Impossible.—There is the physically impossible and the mentally impossible, and these help us to understand the morally impossible. The word “impossible” is constantly used as if it were some definite and absolute thing. We say, “It is an impossibility.” But the impossible is always strictly relative to the being of whom it is spoken. Our Lord corrected the mistake when He spoke of two impossibilities, the impossible to man being possible with God; but God having his own impossibilities, relative to Himself. The physically impossible is simply that which is out of the range of powers that belong to a physical being. It is impossible for a hen to swin, or for an arm to do the work of an eye. It is possible for a duck to swim, and for an eye to do the work of an eye. In the same way the mentally impossible is simply that which is out of the range of the mental conditions, faculties, and laws. Given this as the condition of human thinking, two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and it is impossible for two lines ever to enclose a space—impossible so long as the mind attaches a particular meaning to the terms “straight line” and “space.” Or let the condition of human thinking be that what it names “two” added to “two” shall make “four”; then it is impossible for two and two ever to make five. And the morally impossible is as relative to the moral being of whom it is spoken. A moral being is a limited being, he cannot act beyond his range. There is that which is consistent with its own nature, and it is impossible for it to be something other than it is. St. John helps us to understand this when he says that the man who is “born of God” cannot sin. It is morally impossible because it is contrary to his renewed nature. Apply this to God. Through His revelations to us, and relations with us, we have distinct conceptions of God. He is “righteous in all His works, and holy in all His ways.” He is light and He is love; He is true; He is faithful. The morally impossible to God is anything and everything inconsistent with Himself. He cannot do the absurd; He cannot do the untrue; He cannot do the unkind, and so on. The impossible, to the infinitely good Being, is simply anything and everything that is inconsistent with Himself, with what He is, with what we know Him to be.
Hebrews 6:4-5. First Tastings of Divine Things.—“Tasted of the heavenly gift.” “Tasted the good word of God.” The word “taste” seems to have been carefully chosen, and with a view to a precise persuasion. The writer was anxious about those whom he addressed because they were satisfying themselves with the rudiments of Christian truth and the beginnings of Christian experience. They kept, as it were, just tasting; they did not eat, so as to get really nourished in the Christian truth and life. He points out the peril of that merely casual and partial relation. Those who only “taste” have no soul-strength to resist temptation and trial. Here another point is in his mind. That mere tasting brings with it solemn and awful responsibilities. If a man only begins the Christian life, if a man only accepts the rudiments of the Christian faith, if a man has only felt the first movings of the Divine Spirit, he has passed over a line, and can never go back to what he was. He has become a new man; he can never be the same man again. If he does not advance to the full possession and enjoyment of the new life, he will find himself one of the most miserable of men. He has broken away from the old relations, which did satisfy him, and he can never get really satisfied with them again. And his mere rudimentary relations to Christianity cannot satisfy him either.
Hebrews 6:6. Exhaustion of the Power of Renewal.—To “taste the good word of God and the powers of the world to come” is to be renewed; and the man must have been susceptible to influences of renewal, if he has that experience. Those influences of renewal are the very highest that can act on a man. But if the man who has felt the power and persuasion of them falls back into the world, and the low life unto self and sin, those powers of renewal have become powerless on him. He has turned against them; he is no longer susceptible to their influence; there is nothing in him now on which they can work. He cannot be renewed again unto repentance, for there is nothing in him to respond to persuasion. It is a most solemn consideration that unless the early religious experiences are followed up by a healthy growth, there is the gravest peril of the exhaustion of the religious sensibility; and this is more especially the peril when the first tastings and the early experiences are connected with seasons and scenes of religious excitement and emotion. The over-strain of religious feeling is followed by the exhaustion of religious capacity.
Crucifying the Son of God afresh.—Various as have been God’s dealings with the world, there is a terrible impartiality in His dispensations to His rational creatures. He can hear us all in the same court, and judge us out of the same books. He can see through the intricacies of His own diversified government. The whole world is under a moral government, though we alone are in a written covenant; all live to God, though we alone have professed “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” As a sort of equity is preserved in God’s arrangements of the relation between His Church and the world, so doubtless there is something not unlike it in His arrangements of the ages and provinces of the Church itself. While the human nature of the Church is uniform, its trials must be nearly so. The probation God enforces is distributed pretty evenly through all ages and classes. If we are not asked to perish at the stake in one terrific trial of faith and fortitude, we are summoned to a life of hourly self-denial. Temptations may vary outwardly; but while the human nature on which they operate remains unchanged, they must be found in substance much the same. Of all the repetitions of trial from generation to generation, that expressed in this text is the most startling and fearful. The crucifixion of Christ, in its literal reality, stands alone in the history of man. It was the last and darkest depth of human criminality. Never surely is man, in all the possibilities of futurity, destined again to consummate a wickedness like this! But heaven has not spared us this trial. There is in man a continued capacity of “crucifying afresh the Son of God”—a power to act over again all the scene of His torture, to league with the malignant priests and the scoffing soldiers, to buffet the unresisting cheek, to bind on the crown of thorns. No doubt the crime is a peculiar one, not ordinarily exemplified. The writer speaks of deliberate apostasy from the faith of Jesus. But there is no one characteristic of direct and utter apostasy which does not, in its own degree, belong to those daily desertions of the cause of Jesus which ally the miserable votaries of the god of this world with the avowed enemies of Christ in every age. There are the apostasies of the social table, of the fireside and the market-place, the refined apostasies of our own modern and daily life, as real as the imperial treachery of a Julian, or the cold-blooded abandonment of a Demas. There is a test we can apply. Pass from what you might do if you but were as you never can be, to what you are doing in the position where God has placed you. Reflect on the frame and temper of mind, on the weakness and the wickedness, that made the chosen people of God the murderers of His Son, and try if you cannot catch some faint image of that treachery in your own hearts. Doubtless the accuracy of the image will vary in degree: here, through progressive sanctification, all but obliterated; here, through remaining worldliness, vivid and undeniable; here, through total rejection of Christ, all but complete. Christ was a favourite with the mass of the people; and yet His people were the fierce invokers of His blood on them and their children. Is no parallel to this found in the Christian world around us? How many flock round Christ with enthusiasm, so long as He is made the standard-bearer of a party, professing boundless admiration, devotion, and love, who, when the true hour of trial comes, relinquish their short-lived discipleship, turn with the tide, and swell the torrent of the persecutors of the body of Christ! Or look at the wretched, wavering, timorous Pilate—willing to save, but afraid to resist, anxious to do right as long as virtue costs no trouble: has this crucifier of Christ no image among us? Are there no compounders between earth and heaven, who would have the best of this life and the life to come? Not far removed from this is the case of those rulers who struggled against their very faith, lest it should hazard their popularity. These poor dependants on human fame stand not alone in the world. Among the higher orders of society, especially, the verdict of society becomes of such tremendous consideration; it is vague and vast enough to hide God and His judgment altogether from our view. And what is peculiarly dangerous about this influence is the insidiousness of its advances. Religion is not proved to be absurd, but assumed to be so. There is deeper guilt than this. There is a Judas-like selling of the Master for paltry gain; there is the blasphemy that denies to Christ His Divine rights; there is the shame of preferring some Barabbas to Him; there is the hypocrisy of acknowledging Him only with the lip. When we are told that wilful rejection of Christ can still, in some sense, perpetuate His shame, who shall dare to set accurate limits to these awful revelations? Were it possible to renew in all its literal horrors the degradation and insult of Calvary, were each deliberate sin to disgrace Him as He was disgraced before, who among us could endure to risk such atrocious guilt? Yet, if there be truth in Scripture, such guilt, or guilt like this, is in effect yours, when, taught to approach a covenanted God in Christ, you turn with contempt from Him who loved and bought you.—W. Archer Butler, M.A.
Crucifying Christ Nowadays.—More people crucified Christ in the old days than the soldiers who fastened Him to the cross. Indeed, they were not His real crucifiers. They must bear the guilt of our Lord’s death who planned to secure it. And they were the recognised religious people of the day. Their inspiration to their wicked deed was the self-seeking character of their so-called religion. Our Lord, with His spiritual teachings, opposed their self-interests, and disturbed their self-satisfactions, and therefore they resolved to be rid of Him, and with shameless schemes they accomplished their end. That conduct, with that inspiration, has been repeated in every age. The crucifiers of Christ to-day are not His open enemies, but His professed friends, whose self-interest and self-satisfaction are affected by His claims as a spiritual Saviour, who is to be served by submission, self-surrender, righteousness, and charity.
Putting Christ to Shame.—The shame of being rejected after being accepted and tried. Only a certain measure of shame can be regarded as attaching to a thing which has been carefully examined and then rejected. This measure of shame; the man who examines it decides that, in his judgment, it is not what it professes to be, and it cannot do what it professes to do. Submit the claims of Christ as Saviour from sin to the judgment of any man, and only a certain measure of shame attaches to Him, if the man rejects the claim. So far as the man is concerned Christ is not what He professes to be. But if a man, after consideration, accepts a thing, gives it fair trial, and has full experience and knowledge of it, and then rejects it, the thing is utterly disgraced. It is put to shame before others; the man makes public declaration of its worthlessness. And when Christ’s claims are accepted, and His service tried, and then He is rejected, and His service abandoned, He is put before all men to an open shame, He is declared to be one who has been “weighed in the balances” of actual experience and “found wanting.”
A Moral State beyond Persuasion.—“It is impossible to renew them again to repentance.” But the impossibility is not here treated from God’s side, but from the apostate man’s side. It is not a question what God can do, but what the man will allow to be done. The man has, by his own action, put himself into such a moral state that the Christian influences can no longer affect him. He has hardened his heart by wilful resistance until it has become like a trodden field-path, and the seeds will not sink in. So long as that wilful apostasy continues, there is no visible hope for the man. There is no getting through self-inflicted hardness. It may be shown that there is—
1. A moral state which turns all old persuasions aside. It is the state of the man who, after having felt the persuasions of Christ, finally decides to resist them. It is of no use whatever to try those persuasions on the man any more.
2. It is the moral state which is unprepared to consider any new persuasions. Perfectly satisfied with his decision against, the man will not open the question again under any consideration.
3. It is the moral state of the man for whom there can really be no other persuasion, because he has come under and has felt the power of, the very highest that can move the heart and will of man.
Sin beyond Remedy.—The possibility of sinning beyond remedy is illustrated in the cases of nations and cities, and it is shown in cases of individuals.
I. Nations that have sinned beyond hope of remedy.—A group of small nations, of which Sodom and Gomorrah were the chief, was settled in the luxurious district of the Lower Jordan. But riches and idleness corrupted them quickly, the characteristic sins of the Canaanites flourished among them triumphantly, and the awful moral degradation into which they sunk is indicated in the story of wild night-rioting that is preserved for us in the book of Genesis, and in the fact that the most demoralising of human sins is permanently called after the name of Sodom. The cry of the cruelly wronged ones, the victims of lust and violence, rose up again and again into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth; yet He bore with these sinners, inquired concerning them, and held back the judgments which their sins demanded. But it was at last made quite plain that they were sinners beyond remedy. “The men of Sodom were wicked, and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” “The guilt of Sodom stands confessed—guilt which fire only can purge. Her own mouth has proclaimed it. The awful sentence—the justice of which no one can question now—is forthwith written upon the dust of her city, announcing that she has been ‘weighed in the balances, and found wanting,’ and that her hours have been numbered and finished.” For such sin there could be no remedy, and the fire of God fell. The Canaanite nations inhabiting Canaan at the time of the Israelite invasion are made the illustrations for the world of this fact, that sin may grow to be beyond remedy. Four hundred years later than the destruction of Sodom, those nations had become, in daring and utterly abominable iniquity, what Sodom had been. The utter destruction of them, as nations, was the inevitable judgment of God. Jericho, the first city utterly destroyed, was the local seat of the worship of Ashtoreth, the consort of Baal; and it represented all that was foulest and most revolting in the heathenism of the Canaanites. “The heathenism of Palestine and Syria was so foul and degrading in every sense, that there is no state, even at this time, which would not put it down, if necessary, by the severest penalties.” Here again the Divine forbearance tarried long, even until the sin had grown to be beyond remedy. The prophets of Israel and of Judah are called to present the examples of the Divine dealings with the neighbouring nations for the warning of Israel. Again and again they show the Divine judgments hanging over a people, restrained in the Divine long-suffering until the sin has plainly grown beyond remedy, and then descending and overwhelming them. But Israel failed to receive the warning or to learn the lesson, and so it must pass through similar experiences. Despising God’s messengers, resisting God’s prophets, going on in sin, at last it comes to this—there is no more hope of remedy, and ruin is at their gates.
II. Cities that have sinned beyond hope of remedy.—We are reminded at once of Nineveh, that great city to which the warning of coming doom was spoken by the prophet Jonah. Its “cup of iniquity” was full. But the doom was averted by a great act of national repentance. In Jonah’s time the sin of Nineveh had not gone quite beyond remedy. But its goodness proved to be evanescent as the morning cloud. They fell back upon their sins, and at last sin grew beyond remedy, and Nineveh fell, and great was the fall of it. Capernaum, that city by the Lake of Galilee, was exalted unto heaven in privilege, for it was the abode of the Son of man, and the sphere of the great Teacher. But unbelief and indifference were its sins. They grew until they reached beyond remedy, and then even favoured Capernaum must be cast down to hell. There are city sins, in which we may share, which call down the righteous judgments of God. Let us most seriously concern ourselves with them, for they also may grow to be beyond remedy.
III. Individuals that have sinned beyond remedy.—Two figures rise at once into view—Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and Saul, king of Israel. Pharaoh resisted persuasion and appeal. He would not be humbled, so the pride of Egypt must be broken by the death of the first-born, and by the disaster in the Red Sea. Saul would put his will against God’s will. He was reproved, but he kept on in his self-willed ways, until there was no remedy, and the calamity of Gilboa must sweep away both him and his dynasty. The truth may come with some direct applications to ourselves. We have sins that easily beset us: sensual indulgences, self-pleasing luxuries—it may even be that some of us are knowingly and determinedly living in sin, and resisting all the gracious pleadings and warnings and persuadings of God’s servants. Then let us look fairly at this most searching fact to-day. Our sin—yes, our sin—may get to be beyond remedy, beyond the reach of Divine correction, and then the judgments of God that overwhelm must fall—even upon us.
Hebrews 6:7. The Reward of Responsiveness.—The case before the mind of the writer is that of the man who has made profession of Christian faith, and has come into the Church, and been subject to those gracious influences which should nourish Christly character, Christly service, and the Christly life. A man may respond to those influences, and thrive and grow into Christian perfection; and the perfection into which he grows will be the blessed reward of his responsiveness. Or a man may fail to respond to those influences. They may waste themselves upon him. He may remain in the rudimentary conditions, and fail to grow. He may grow nothing but the weeds and thorns that are characteristic of barren and worthless soils. And this will be the curse of his lack of responsiveness. The illustration is taken from the land. Some land is hungry; it will eat up everything that is put into it, but it will yield back nothing of value, only thorns and weeds, thistles and ragwort, and docks and sorrel, that can give pleasure or food to nobody. It is unresponsive land; it is “nigh unto cursing”; its “end is to be burned.” There is other land that is both receptive and responsive. It drinks in the rain and keeps it; it turns all good influences to living uses; it makes a fructifying seed-bed for the seeds and plants; it brings forth herbs to the abundant satisfaction of those who own it and toil in it; and that responsive land abundantly receives the blessing of God. Receptiveness to Christian influences is valuable and important. It may well be earnestly urged; it may well be wisely cultivated. But it is not enough; it is even perilous if it remain alone. There are some learned men who are simply receptive of knowledge. It goes in, any quantity goes in, and stays; it is there—that is all you can say about it. And so there are persons greedily receptive of Christian influences, who simply receive them, and make no response to them either in more gracious living, or in nobler and more devoted service. Responsiveness to Christian influences is the desirable thing, and upon it alone the reward and acceptance of God rests,—response in growth, in activity, in fruitage, in seeding; and in these responses the soul finds its ever-enlarging joy and satisfaction.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Hebrews 6:8. Burning over the Ground.—This lad who is setting fire to these briars and thorns is doing the very act which typified the awful state of those apostates whom it was impossible to renew again unto repentance. He finds it difficult to set the thorns on fire, for it is too late in the season. Before the rains came this whole mountainside was in a blaze. Thorns and briars grow so luxuriantly that they must be burned off always before the plough can operate. The peasants watch for a high wind, and then the fire catches easily, and spreads with great rapidity. It is really a beautiful sort of fireworks, especially seen at night.—Thomson.
Virgil on burning the Ground.—This practice of burning over the ground is very ancient in other lands besides this, and as there are neither fences nor habitations in the open country to be injured by fire, there is no danger in it. Virgil says,—
“Long practice has a sure improvement found,
With kindled fires to burn the barren ground,
When the light stubble, to the flames resigned,
Is driven along, and crackles in the wind.”
1 Georgic
The Uses of burning the Ground—The poet speculates about the possible ways in which the burning is beneficial; as, whether “the hollow womb of the earth is warmed by it,” or some “latent vice is cured,” or redundant humours “driven off, or that new breathings” are opened in the chapped earth, or the very reverse. But the Arab peasant would say that two very good reasons not mentioned by the poet were all-sufficient: that it destroyed and removed out of the way of the plough weeds, grass, stubble, and thorn-bushes; and that the ashes of this consumed rubbish was a valuable manure to the land.—Thomson, “Land and Book.”