6:4 For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, (5) and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, (6) and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame.
Many within the Christian church believe the doctrine of “once saved, always saved”, but clearly the writer to the Hebrews was not among them! He piles expression upon expression to make it clear that these people were saved, but have now turned away from that salvation.
Firstly, he says they “were once enlightened.” The Bible frequently refers to those who are in sin as being in darkness, while those who have come to Christ are in the light. (e.g. John 3:19-21; Ephesians 5:8; 2 Corinthians 4:6) Paul also prays for the Christians to be enlightened to know more of their relationship with Christ (Ephesians 1:18.) Clearly, to be enlightened is to be brought out of the darkness of sin and lack of understanding of God’s ways, and into the light of Christ.
These ones have also “tasted of the heavenly gift.” What is that gift? We could say that it is the Holy Spirit, but since He is mentioned in the next breath it is unlikely that the writer was repeating himself. We could say the gift is Christ Himself, God’s greatest gift to mankind. However, I am more inclined to think he is referring to the gift spoken of by Paul in Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If one has tasted of the gift that is Christ, or the gift that is salvation, then that one is saved.
They were “made partakers of the Holy Ghost.” The writer doesn’t say that they had merely experienced the Holy Spirit, or been touched by Him – they are “partakers”: they have actually received Him. The only way someone can receive the Holy Spirit is by being born again.
That they “have tasted of the good word of God” does not, in itself, necessarily mean that they were believers, but piled here with the previous expressions it adds to their weight. Further, they have also tasted “of the powers of the world to come.” This suggests that they have not just experienced the effects of those powers, but have actually had them operating in their own lives.
Putting all these expressions together, it is extremely difficult to imagine that the writer is talking about people who were never truly saved. The question then arises, if salvation is only by grace, how is it possible to lose it? If nothing I could ever do could earn my salvation, and it was given to me purely as a gift of God’s grace based on the finished work of Christ, how can anything I do cause me to lose that salvation? This, of course, is the argument put forward by those who believe Once Saved Always Saved.
However, there was something we had to do: not as a work, but as an act of faith. We had to stop relying on our own works and accept God’s gift of grace. If we stop holding to that grace and return to relying on our own works, then surely we lose what we could only receive by grace. There are two ways in which this can happen, and both involve getting our eyes off the Lord and on to ourselves. Firstly, we can start to believe we are “good enough.” We begin to see the person we have become in Christ, and start to credit that growth to our own efforts rather than the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. We become puffed up, and begin to think that we did God a favor by coming to Him.
At the opposite extreme, we can begin to think that we are “too bad.” Maybe we have struggled with some issues and failed, and the devil begins to beat us up and tell us what a terrible Christian we are. We join the chorus of condemnation, and soon we are thinking that we are just too bad for God’s grace, that He could never forgive one such as us.
Both of these put us on the slippery slope to losing hold of God’s grace. It is not easy to let go of our salvation, but it is possible. If satan could fall from perfection, and if Adam and Eve could fall from perfection, then it is possible for us also.
God’s grace will hold us through many falls. It will even allow us to seemingly go away from God for a time and come back, if somewhere down in our heart we are still clinging to that grace. But that is a dangerous path to take, for the further we go away the more our heart becomes hardened. We need to guard our hearts and remind ourselves constantly that we stand only by grace, but by grace we do stand (even if we have some temporary stumbles.)