Daily Archives: March 5, 2015

An Impossible Impossibility

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AN IMPOSSIBLE IMPOSSIBILITY

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace (Heb. 6:4-6).

A much misunderstood and a much feared passage of Scripture! With God there are very few impossibilities. Only that which is contrary to His nature is impossible with Him.

But what the writer is talking about here is not something God cannot do. It is something we cannot do. When a human being renounces the truths God has laid down as the foundation of his walk with Him, he cannot return to the path of God’s grace and mercy. Jesus is, categorically, the only way to the Father and, to repudiate Him is to remain lost, forever, in the wilderness of sin and death.

The writer clearly enumerates the blessings and benefits of believing in Jesus and in His atoning sacrifice as the foundation of our response to God. There is no other way to return to the Father but by the way of the cross. It is the Holy Spirit who opens the eyes of our understanding that Jesus is the only way back to God. Though faith in Jesus we are fused to Him, we are in Him and He is in us. We are given our status as God’s sons and daughters, spiritual brothers and sisters of God’s Son (Heb. 2: 10, 11).

The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple (Psa. 119: 130).

God’s word becomes our daily bread – the manna from heaven which feeds and nourishes our souls as we journey from this life to the next.

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psa. 119:103).

We have tasted of the powers of the coming age, the victory that Jesus won over the devil and the hope of the resurrection. The benevolent rule of God is here. We are no longer subject to the devil; his deception has been exposed. He is not God and he no longer has the power to hold us in slavery to his will.

For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1: 13-14).

To fall away means to apostatize – to renounce and turn ones back on the truths one once believed. This is not about wandering off the path through sin and getting lost in the wilderness. This is about a deliberate choice to repudiate the work of Jesus and all the benefits and blessings of His salvation. Once someone has done that, there is no way back because that person has effectively put Jesus back on the cross.

For those who have wandered away, there is always a way back but for those who have deliberately chosen to take a wrong turn, knowing that the deviation will lead to another destination, there is no way back to God; as I heard an evangelist say, ‘There are many gods, but only one Jesus.’ Jesus is the only way to the Father. He said:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ (John 8:12).

Can you see how impossible it is to return? Faith is what pleases God. It matters in whom you place your faith. Like the Bedouins in the desert who need to anchor their tents lest the wind blows them away, you need to fasten your “tent” to the “peg” that will not be moved when the winds of false teaching and the howling gales of life threaten to blow you away. God and His word are the only reliable and immovable anchor.

The writer of this letter urges us to make sure that we are anchored to the only “tent peg” that will never shift or come loose in the winds of life. To change metaphor, God has given us a solid foundation upon which to build the superstructure of our lives. Without that foundation, like Jesus’s foolish builder in Matt 7: 26-27, our house will crash when the storms of life blow against it.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

 

Foundation Truths

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FOUNDATION TRUTHS

Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so (Heb, 6: 1-3).

Is it possible that there are teachings about our faith from which we must move on? Apparently there are!

What are these teachings? This writers calls them “foundations” – the fundamentals of our faith. What are they and why must we move on beyond these things?

When someone lays a foundation for a new building, he doesn’t remove the foundation – he builds on it because it is there to secure the building. When this writer says, ‘Move on’, he is not saying, ‘Abandon the foundation,’ he is saying, ‘Build on it.’ It forms the basis of what you believe.

The foundation of what he writes here is made up of three pairs of complementary truths.

1. The first is repentance from acts that lead to death and faith in God.

Of course this is a part of our foundation. To “repent” means to return to the path. God has shown us the path that leads us to our desired destination in life. Our destination is to be like God Himself – mirrored for us in His Son, Jesus. He created us in Him image, but that image was shattered at the fall. He did everything to remove the barrier between us and Him so that we can return to the way that leads us into oneness with Him again, becoming like Jesus who is our older brother (Heb. 10, 11).

Faith in God, very simply means, according to Hebrew thought, anchoring ourselves to God so that we do not blow away in the wind. On their migration from Egypt to the Promised Land, God’s people had to face the howling winds in the wilderness. The only way to secure their tents was to drive pegs into the ground to which they tied their tents.

This vivid picture enables us to understand what it meant for them, and for us spiritually, to make it through the desert and arrive where they were supposed to go. This is foundational, as you can see. Our lives are a journey. We must keep on the path if we are to arrive at our destination, and we must ensure that we are anchored to God so that we are not blown away by ‘every wind of teaching’ (Eph. 4:13, 14).

This is a once-off experience and does not have to be repeated – a part of our foundation.

2. The second pair is ‘instruction about cleansing rites’ and ‘the laying on of hands’. This has to do with initiation into, and identification with Jesus, the leader of “The Way”, (which is what His movement was originally called Acts 9: 2).

This is the second step after returning to God’s way from the path of sin. Cleansing rituals or “baptisms” were a regular feature of Jewish life. Ritual purification by being immersed in running or “living” water was practised many times as a person came back to, or entered a new phase of life.

Baptism into Jesus is a sign of death to the old way, initiation into “the Way” and identification with Jesus as the rabbi we have chosen to follow. This also a once-off part of our foundation.

3. ‘Resurrection of the dead’ and ‘eternal judgment’ are the third part of our foundation. This is not talking about our physical resurrection but our spiritual resurrection – out of our death to sin and into our new life in Christ.

But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions . . . (Eph. 2: 4-5a).

God has forever judged sin at the cross. Our sins, past, present and future, and the sins of the whole world have been judged and punished once and for all. ‘It is finished.’ God has made us alive, raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms, fully accepted once and for all.

These are foundation truths, always there and never to be repeated. It is now up to us to build upon what has been laid down, relying on the truth that Jesus completed everything on the cross. ‘It is finished,’ were some of His last words. Now we can rest on His finished work and live in the reality of what He has done for us.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.