Some years ago, a woman wrote me with an agonized question. Despite having grown up in the church, she had left it for a life of sin and now regretted her wayward paths. Yet she was unsure if she could ever return to the Lord and receive his forgiveness. The main reason for her uncertainty was Hebrews 6:4–6:
For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
Clearly the people described in this passage have experienced many blessings from God and then turned away. Clearly too the author makes a categorical statement about repentance being “impossible” for them. What does this mean precisely?
Unfortunately, some common interpretations of the passage water down its meaning. For example, some scholars suggest that the word “impossible” simply means “difficult.” Hebrews is referring to an especially heinous kind of apostasy, even though the passage’s description of the apostasy involved is very simple: “have fallen away.” Others suggest that Hebrews is just exaggerating for rhetorical effect. Such explanations do not give the passage its due weight.
At the same time, arguing that those who deny Christ cannot ever return and be forgiven goes against other parts of Scripture, such as the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15), the restoration of Peter after he denied Christ three times (John 21:15–19), and Paul’s instruction about the ultimately saving purpose of excommunication (1 Cor. 5:4–5).
So how can a warning like Hebrews 6:4–6 be faithfully understood and applied today? While my recent book addresses this at length, here we will summarize some key details.
Two Meanings of Repentance
A helpful starting point comes with recognizing that “repentance” has multiple meanings in Scripture. Sometimes it has the general meaning of turning sorrowfully from sin and looking to Christ for forgiveness (e.g., Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38). When we talk about repentance, this is the category we often refer to.
But, on other occasions, repentance carries a more specific meaning, describing how people came into right standing within the old covenant. This old-covenant-specific meaning can be seen in Acts 19:1–7. There Paul encountered some disciples who had been baptized by John the Baptist under the old covenant but did not yet know that Christ had come and sent his Spirit on Pentecost.
Paul explained how John’s baptism of repentance was only preparatory, bringing people into right standing in the old covenant as they awaited the arrival of the new (see Jer. 4:1; Ezek. 18:30). Understood in this way, “repentance” is particular to life in the old covenant era; it is the gateway into a right standing in the old covenant.
But which of these meanings occurs in Hebrews 6?
Repentance in Hebrews
The first statement about repentance in Hebrews comes in 6:1–2. The author urges his audience to press forward toward maturity rather than “re-laying a foundation of repentance from dead works, faith in God, instruction about washings, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.”
To understand what is meant here, two characteristics of ancient foundations should be noted.
First, ancient foundations, like modern ones, were intended to be permanent. A building’s walls or doors might need to be repaired during its life. But if its foundation was faulty then the whole building was ruined, and the only solution was to start over again from the ground up. By implication, when the author of Hebrews urges his audience not to re-lay a foundation, he means that they were tempted to abandon their current profession of faith in Christ and start over entirely with something else.
Second, ancient foundations, unlike modern ones, were comprised of many stones, which together defined the essence of a whole building. This is why new covenant foundations are always described elsewhere in clearly and strongly Christ-centered terms. For example, Christ’s teaching (Matt. 7:24–26), confession of Jesus as Christ (Matt. 16:17–18), or just Christ himself (1 Cor. 3:10–12) is described as the new covenant church’s foundation.
Contrast this with the foundation in Hebrews 6:1–2. Not only is Christ not mentioned in it, but all its ingredients are strongly, and in some cases, exclusively associated with the old covenant in Hebrews. To be sure, some ingredients in this foundation were important to both the old and new covenants, such as faith, resurrection, and eternal judgment. These common ingredients affirm some aspects of continuity between the old and new covenants.
Yet the faith in Hebrews 6:1 is described only as “faith in God” rather than in Christ. And some key items in this foundation are exclusive to the old covenant in contrast to the new. For example, “washings” (6:2; 9:10) refers to the priestly ceremonies of the old covenant, such as those performed on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:4, 20, 24, 26, 28), which had become obsolete in the New Testament. And the “laying on of hands” (6:2; 9:9–14) describes an outward act of old covenant priests (Lev. 16:21) that Hebrews places in contrast to the inward nature and efficacy of the new.
The old covenant was only preparatory to Christ and the blessings of the new age.
The foundation in Hebrews 6:1–2 therefore has a distinctly old covenant character to it, and this shows that the “repentance” mentioned there does too. In its own time and place, this repentance was a great blessing, forming the gateway into a right standing in the old covenant before the coming of Christ.
Hebrews’s Warning, Then and Now
Against this background, the nature of the warning in Hebrews 6:4–6 becomes clear. Though the old covenant was a gracious provision of God in its time, once a person has experienced the greater blessings of Christ in the new covenant, it is impossible to be restored to the repentance mentioned in 6:1. The old covenant was only preparatory to Christ and the blessings of the new age.
Hebrews 6:4–6 is not saying it is impossible for those who fall away to return again to Christ and be forgiven. It insists that it is impossible to leave the new covenant, repent, and return to the life of the Mosaic administration. By God’s design, the path between the old and new covenants is “one way only.”
By God’s design, the path between the old and new covenants is ‘one way only.’
In conclusion, Hebrews’s message to fallen sinners is not that their sin is so bad that it bars their way back to Christ. The point is that fallen sinners should cling to Christ, since there is no hope of cleansing, even in the old covenant, apart from him.
Rather than turning remorseful sinners away from Christ and the church, then, Hebrews urges us to look to Christ alone for hope and forgiveness.
