Hi, I'm David Bercot. And this is another session of our program of Ask Me Anything About the Early Christians. I'm not going to always know the answer, but often I will be able to find the answer for you if I don't have it off the top of my head. So the question this week concerns Hebrews 10:26. I'm going to read that plus the following verse 27. This is from the New King James Version.
And it says this, " For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. " So this is the question that was submitted. If you were to write a commentary on the book of Hebrews, how would you explain Hebrews 26 or rather Hebrews 10:26? What is the willful sin it speaks about? And what does the phrase, " There remains no more sacrifice " mean?
All right, let me just say this in general. The early Christians took this verse very seriously, but they did not take it as an absolute statement removed from the other statements in the New Testament about repentance and forgiveness. So they always balanced every statement, whether it was a statement of doctrine or a commandment against other commandments that would affect that certain commandment or other doctrinal teachings that would modify another statement said somewhere else.
In other words, you take the entirety of the New Testament, but they did take every verse seriously and fairly literally. Now, there aren't a lot of direct discussions or quotations of Hebrews 10:26 in the pre-Nicene church. There are a few. Now, when you get to John Chrysostom, who is post-Nicene, now he preached a whole series of sermons from the book of Hebrews. So we can go to his sermons, and he gives us a very detailed discussion of this passage.
Of course, this is his opinion, but from what he said, it's I'd say quite in harmony with what the pre-Nicene Christians said on the general subject and the ones who actually quote from Hebrews 10:26 what they said about it. Yet even John Chrysostom couldn't fully explain what is the exact difference between a willful sin and other sins. I think the lesson here from Hebrews 10: 26 is that we need to take a bold stance against sin, and we need to make a firm personal commitment that we are not going to sin.
Yet we should always remember if we fall into sin, we should make certain that we repent of it deeply and thoroughly, fully from the heart, and believe that the throne of mercy is always open to us. Now, obviously from Hebrews 10:26, there is a point in time when it is no longer open. But I would personally feel that as long as someone is truly repentant, it's not just words, that there is a good chance that they do not fall under the description of the person in Hebrews 26. That's my personal take.
Now, from what I can tell, and this is from reading all of the Ante-Nicene Fathers and the Christians of the fourth century, when they talk about sin, I would say they're normally talking about the things that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 6: 9 and 10 and things similar to that. And that's where Paul says this. He says, " Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.
Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. " Okay, so there are sins that Paul sets forth, and he says that people who do these, that they will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, he describes them as people, as fornicators, as adulterers, as thieves.
He doesn't mention a one-time sin, but he talks about people who are that as a person, that they're not going to inherit the kingdom of God. Now, it's these kind of sins that the early Christians say we can live free from that. No one has to be an adulterer. No one has to be an idolater or a sodomite. No one has to be a drunkard or a thief. These are sins that even in our imperfection, through the power of God, we can completely put behind us. All right, so I want to read to you now from the early Christians.
This first quote is from Lactantius. He would have written around the year 300. And what I'm about to read would represent, I would say, the general view of what you see in the pre-Nicene Christians. They say things very similar to this. Lactantius says, I'm quoting from him. He said, " Just because offenses are removed by grace, you should not think that a license is given to you to sin. For sins are done away with if you are thankful to God that He has forgiven your past sins.
" In other words, there has to be thankfulness on our part. But he continues, " But if you continue to sin through reliance on grace, the grace you've received, sins are not done away with. " Okay, so he's saying, " If you are saying, " Well, I'm saved by grace, I was saved by grace, so now I can continue to sin, your sins are not going to be forgiven. " And that seems to be the view of all the early Christians and not just Lactantius.
He continues, " For God especially desires that men shall be cleansed from their sins, and therefore he commands them to repent. But to repent is nothing else than acknowledging and affirming that one will sin no more. " Okay, so again, there needs to be repentance and putting away of sin away from us. Now, we're going to read in just a minute. We'll see what I said that when he's talking about sin, just like the other Christians, he's not talking about the daily imperfections we all fall into.
All right, he continues, and here he is referring to Hebrews 10: 26. He says, " Therefore, those persons are pardoned who unaware and unconsciously glide into sin. However, he who sins willfully has no pardon. " So he's taking Hebrews 10:26 very literally. He says someone might fall into sin unconsciously. They weren't planning to be an adulterer, but they're caught into temptation. They fall into it. He continues now.
He says, " To this, I want to add that no one can be without fault or sin as long as he is burdened with a covering of flesh, the infirmity of which is subject to the rule of sin in a threefold manner. Their sin in deeds, in words, and in thoughts. Therefore, even righteous men who can refrain from every unrighteous deed are sometimes, however, overcome by frailty itself so that they either speak evil in anger, or at the sight of delightful things, they desire them with silent thought.
But even if the condition of our mortality does not allow a man to be pure from every stain, the faults of the flesh ought therefore to be done away with by continual grace. Okay, so if I'm understanding Lactantius correctly, he's saying no one reaches a point in this life where they are free from fault. That is, they are going to be committing sins, sins of imperfection, not sins of overt, willful commissions of various deeds like adultery. But we are frail. And even the godly sometimes get angry unnecessarily.
They're impatient. They speak things that they should not, that they're wrong about, or they speak evil of someone because they've misjudged them or just because they're upset. Or they look at things and they covet something. They wish they had something that they can't afford, or that is somebody else's, or maybe they look at a woman in lust that they shouldn't, something like that.
But he says, so even though we can't be free from all of these things, there is an answer, and that is a continual reliance on God's grace. The grace isn't just a one-time thing at our baptism. It's a continual thing. But of course, to access this grace, there needs to be prayer and there needs to be heartfelt repentance. All right. So that's the general view. I quoted from Lactantius, but you'll see that same kind of thinking throughout all of the early Christian writings.
All right, now what about the word sin willfully? Clement of Alexandria addressed it directly in his work called The Stromata. He said, " A person who has received pardon for sins must refrain from future sin. " And then I'm skipping here a bit.
He says, " So in His great mercy, God gave yet another chance of repentance to those who, despite their faith, fall into some form of disharmony, so that if anyone should, after their initial calling, if they should fall into temptation and be forced or tricked into sin, they may have one more chance of a repentance that brings no regret. Now this is a view you see among a number of the early Christians. They say we have one, we're given one more repentance after baptism.
Again, they're not talking about the everyday imperfections. They're talking about a serious sin like adultery or murder or robbery, something like that. And that should be put behind us forever once we are baptized. But many of them say we can sin one more time like that and we can be forgiven. But beyond that, there's no forgiveness. Now, I can't say that was the general teaching of the church, and I'm not sure I agree with that.
It's something that should be sobering, however, because there are several of them who express that view. And now he quotes from Hebrews. He says, " For if we sin deliberately or willfully, after receiving the knowledge of truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.
" He then goes on to say, " Continual and repeated repentance for sins is no different from those who have once and for all turned away from the faith except alone in the consciousness of sin. " Okay, so he's saying, " If we keep repenting of the same sins over and over, and again, I'm assuming that he is talking about those kind of sins that Paul mentions. He's not talking about daily imperfections. I'm reading that into what he is saying based on the rest of his writings, okay?
And then he closes Clement by saying, I do not know which is worse, deliberate sin or after repentance for sin, offending again, okay? So whether to just willfully sin or to sin, maybe it wasn't willfully, but then we turn right around and do the same sin over again. Okay, so that was Clement's take. Chrysostom says this. He says, if we sin willfully, see or notice how God is disposed to pardon. He says, if we sin willfully. So there is pardon for those who do not sin willfully.
Chrysostom says that, but he doesn't explain what exactly is willfully. Now, Hermas, in this passage, he is not discussing Hebrews 10:26, but I think it sheds light on it. He says, " These men therefore have repentance in their power unless they are found to have denied Christ from the heart. " But if anyone is found to have denied from the heart, I do not know if he may live, okay? So there is a denying from the heart. I'm not sure what that means. I can say this. And maybe I should say this till the end.
Let me just read you one more and then I'll give you my thoughts. OK. All right. So these are the thoughts on Willful, which like I say, none of them really fully explain what that is because few of us sin you know someone has drugged us. We didn't willfully get drugged, but somebody drugged us and we go do something, commit adultery or rob, and we don't know anything about it because somebody drugged us. I mean, that doesn't happen very often, okay? So usually we know what we're doing.
So it would seem that there's an element of will in any time we sin. So that's why I don't feel that any of them have fully explained that or that any of them thought they fully explained it. It's something, like I say, to keep us sober that we better be careful if we sin knowing it's wrong and we go ahead and do it anyway. What about there's no more sacrifice left? Now, there's several comments on that that I think are very helpful.
Chrysostom says, " What shall we say then that God does not take away repentance nor the reconciliation that comes through repentance, nor does he thrust us away and cast us down with despair if we have fallen. " God is not an enemy of our salvation. But what does he say? He takes away any second washing. Now here he means baptism. In other words, we don't get to get baptized over again. We can't sin and then say, oh, wow, my sins were washed away when I first came to Christ, when I first was baptized.
But I've gone back into sin, so I'm going to get baptized over again. No, that is not an option. There's no sacrifice for sin left. That initial entrance is closed. We can't go back and do that again. And I would say that applies equally to churches that say baptism is just a symbol. It's responding to an altar call, inviting Jesus in our heart, saying the sinner's prayer. It's the same thing. Whatever you believe about baptism, we all believe in the forgiveness of sin.
We all believe in the initial salvation of turning our life over to Christ. We don't get to do that a second time, whether by getting rebaptized or by responding to another altar call and say, " Oh, well, that one wasn't real. I'm going to do it real this time. " And many people do that. And they either get baptized over and over again or they keep responding to altar calls. That doesn't work. There isn't a second sacrifice, a second door.
Chrysostom continues, " For he did not say there is no more repentance or there is no more forgiveness, but there is no more sacrifice. " That is, there is no more a second cross. For this is what he means by sacrifice. For by one sacrifice, he says, " He has perfected forever those who are sanctified. " So Christ died one time. We get access to that one time at our initial conversion and baptism. We don't get to keep coming back and doing that.
But it doesn't say there's no more repentance, no more forgiveness, but there's no more sacrifice. We've already accessed that one time. We don't get to keep coming back through that door again, whether we think nowadays that the door is an altar call or as they believe that the door is baptism. Okay, Irenaeus says this, " Truly the death of the Lord became the means of healing and remission of sins to the men of Old. " He was talking about what about the ancient patriarchs and the people in the Old Testament?
Irenaeus continues, " But Christ shall not die again on behalf of those who now commit sin, for death shall no more have dominion over him. " So he said, " Okay, those persons were forgiven through his sacrifice, but he's not going to get sacrificed again for us. That sacrifice was already done. It was a one time dying on the cross. It will not be repeated. But of course, we do have channels of repentance even after baptism. He doesn't say that there, but he does in other places. Okay, the last one is Theodoret.
He's not as well known because he wrote in the early 400s, he was a very good exegete. I quote from him a lot in my commentary on Romans, and this is from his commentary in Hebrews. He says this, " Now it was not that he was ruling out repentance in these statements. " He's talking about Hebrews 10. Rather, he was claiming there is no second sacrifice. Our Lord was crucified for us once and for all. He used the term willfully to emphasize that what is done against our will enjoys a degree of pardon.
Okay, so just here are just some of my thoughts. Because again, I don't think any of us know what willfully what the writer of Hebrews, who most of them believe to be Paul, what he has in mind versus other times that we sin. I will say this. I think if somebody comes to heartfelt repentance, my own view is, and I think I mentioned this earlier, that I don't think they fall under what Paul is talking about in Hebrews 10:26.
However, I think there are a lot of Christians who fall under that, and that is the reason they never repent. I have known of a lot of people who were Christians. They turn away from Christ. They fall into sin. Sometimes they live in adultery. And they never repent. I don't know that they have the power to repent. You can go and talk to them and plead with them. And it's like talking to a brick wall. I think those are the people he's describing. There's no sacrifice left for them.
They can't avail themselves of that one sacrifice because they've reached the point where they are beyond repentance. Their sin is willful in that they are willfully crucifying Christ over again. They have turned their back on him and you can't reach him. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to reach him. I never came across a passage in the early Christian writings that I can recollect anyway where the church had said, " All right, this person is beyond repentance. That's it. They fit Hebrews 10:26.
We will no longer extend forgiveness to them. " Every place I saw, the church extended forgiveness to people who sinned. Now, the terms that they put on were often very onerous by our terms today. I mean, sometimes it was 10 years that you were going to be put out of communion before you would be allowed into communion again. So they took the teaching against sin very seriously, and I think we need to do the same today.
No materials available for this lesson.