Home Topics Index Download
Transcript 338E
Can One Lose His Salvation? [Heb 6:4-6]
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hi. Would you explain the verses in Hebrews 6:4-6?
HC: Hebrews 6:4-6 is a passage that troubles many many people, because when you read it, it looks like someone could lose his salvation. It speaks of those who have been enlightened, those who have tasted of the heavenly bread, those who have been partakers of the Holy Spirit, those who have repented, and yet they fall away. And if we would build theology just on these few verses, we could conclude that we could lose our salvation.
The Biblical rule, however, is that the Bible is its own interpreter. And no verse, either in the Old Testament or the New Testament, ought to be understood until we have carefully searched the whole Bible, to discover if there is anything that might impinge upon that verse.
Now we know absolutely that if we are born again we cannot lose our salvation. This can be proven from many many vantage points, both in the language of the Bible as well as in the nature of our salvation, the fact that Christ became sin for us and paid for all of our sins. Therefore there is no sin left that could cause us to come under the penalty of sin, causing us to go to hell.
The Bible teaches that we have eternal life. The Bible teaches that nothing can snatch us away from the hand of God. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. So we know that Hebrews 6:4-6 under no circumstance is talking about someone who is saved.
The way to understand Hebrews 6 is to first of all read Hebrews 3 and Hebrews 4. That's really setting the context. In these 2 chapters God is pointing to the nation of Israel, which was in the wilderness in the days of Moses. Now they were eating of the heavenly bread, the manna. They had repented in the sense that they had left Egypt. They had turned away from Egypt and had followed Moses on the wilderness journey on the way to the Promised Land.
They were partakers of the Holy Spirit in the sense that God the Holy Spirit overshadowed them in the day in the clouds and at nighttime in the pillar of fire. They were enlightened, in the sense that Moses was there teaching them about the way of salvation. He was teaching them about the Promised Land, and all that went with it, and about obedience to God. All of these expressions you find in Hebrews 6 would apply to the nation of Israel.
But you read in Hebrews 3, in the closing verses, that most of them perished in the wilderness because of unbelief. Their knowledge, their enlightenment, the fact that they were in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and all of these other things, availed nothing because it did not meet with faith in the lives of those who experienced these things.
And so today, if someone grows up under the hearing of the Word, if he grows up in the presence of the true believers, and in the presence of God as He operates in the corporate church, he may know all kinds of verses from the Bible. He may know the outline of salvation right down to a tee. None of these things avail anything if it does not meet with faith in the life of the hearer.
Now what is faith in this sense? Faith is an abandonment to Christ as Lord and Savior. We have hung our whole life on Him. He is the only one that we ultimately want to be obedient to. He is the one that we have committed our life to. He is the one we trust altogether as the one who has forgiven all of our sins.
To put it in other language, it means that we read the Bible trusting altogether that it is the divine Word, and we read it with a view to being obedient to it, both in its doctrinal teachings as well as in the practices that it calls for, because the Bible is the voice of God. The Bible is the revelation of the will of God.
Only those who have done this are truly saved. A knowledge of the things the Bible teaches, a knowledge of the way of salvation will not save us. If we are not born again, if we have not abandoned ourselves to Him altogether, we're still going to end up in hell as sure as anything.