Over the last two weeks we’ve been looking at the warning passage in Hebrews 10:26-31. It is indeed a frightening warning. We’ve noticed that this is a warning to an apostate, one who (1) willfully and (2) consistently (3) reject Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for sins, although (4) one has been exposed to the truth and convicted by the Spirit (vv. 26, 29).
This comes from Hebrews 10:26-31
26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Our next question is: What is the doom of the apostate?
It is indeed exceedingly bleak.
Back in chapter 6, we were told that it would be “impossible” for this person to be “renewed again to repentance.”
Here in verse 26 is says,
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.
“There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.”
This doesn’t mean that the sacrifice of Christ is ineffective or incapable of removing the guilt of this sin. The preacher is not saying that if believers persist in sinning deliberately, there will come a point where the effect of Christ’s sacrifice runs out, and Christ would say, “I have paid for your sins up to this point, but I’m not prepared to pay for them any further.” It’s not that there is something deficient about Christ’s sacrifice, that it’s not enough to pay for sins. It means that the person who sins in this way willfully turns his back on and repudiates the only sacrifice available to him: the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. There is no other sacrifice that can help him. If he turns his back on Christ, if he willfully cuts himself off from the sole means of forgiveness, he won’t find anywhere else a sacrifice that can atone for his guilt.
Clearly, then, to reject this sacrifice is to be left with no sacrifice at all. (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 419)
The first result of apostasy is that the apostate no longer has a sacrifice that can atone for his sins. He is, therefore, beyond salvation. The only sacrifice that can bring a person into God’s presence is the sacrifice of Christ’s blood in the New Covenant. If Christ’s sacrifice is rejected, then all hope of salvation is forfeited. Opportunity is gone, hope is gone, eternal life is gone. Apart from Christ, everything worth having is gone. (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 276)
Remember that the author’s primary audience would be Jews who had been exposed to the gospel, but who were now considering returning to the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant, depending upon the blood sacrifice of animals to save them.
He has already shown the insufficiency of these sacrifices to make one perfect, or to bring full and final forgiveness.
Back in Hebrews 10:4 he said, “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Did you hear that? Impossible. The blood of bulls and goats cannot possibly “take away sins.”
Then in 10:11 he said, “And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” “Never” doesn’t mean sometimes or most of the time. It means never. The priestly sacrifices “can never take away sins.”
So he is saying, “Look, if you turn your back on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the only sacrifice that had ever fully satisfied the justice of God, then there is nothing else available to you. You have turned you back on the only thing…the only thing…that works. Nothing else remains.
Well, that isn’t exactly right. Something does remain if you turn your back on Jesus and His sacrifice for you—”a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Heb. 10:27).
This reminds us of the fact that both Jesus and Paul affirm that there is only one way of salvation. In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” There is only one way to the Father and that is through Jesus Christ.
Simply put, if Jesus is not the only way to God, then He is not just any way to God or one of many ways to God. If there are many roads to God, then Jesus is not one of them, because He absolutely claimed there was only one road to God, and He Himself was that road.
And in Acts 4:12 Paul says, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
John Piper reminds us that
Peter draws out the implication of this universal lordship of Jesus in verse 12: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Since God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead and since God has made him head over all his house—over all the kingdom and all the redeemed—therefore Jesus is now the only way to heaven, and the confession of his name is the only hope of salvation from sin and judgment.
We need to feel the force of this universal claim in our pluralistic age. “There is salvation in no one else!” Do you really mean no one, Peter? Or are you just speaking in a limited Jewish context—only among the Jews there is no other way to heaven than their true Messiah? No, he says, the reason there is salvation in no one else is that “there is no other name under heaven [not just no other name in Israel, but no other name under heaven, including the heaven over Iraq and the heaven over America] given among men [not just among Jews, but among humans] by which we must be saved” https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/there-is-salvation-in-no-one-else)
The chorus of Graham Kendrick’s song “Above the Clash of Creeds” has Acts 4:12 as its background and sums up the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.
There is no other way
By which we must be saved
His name is Jesus
The only Saviour
No other sinless life
No other sacrifice
In all creation
No other way.
So, when you turn your back on Jesus and His sacrifice for you—”a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Heb. 10:27). In this statement we see a legal picture, an emotional picture and a physical picture of the plight too horrible imagine for those who reject Jesus Christ.
The legal picture is that God’s wrath is “judgment.” It is the legal, just act of a judge pronouncing sentence upon guilty sinners.
The emotional picture is that God’s wrath is a “fury of fire.” Literally, “a zeal of fire,” or a fiery passion. God is not just a little bit miffed, but is passionate with fury. That’s because His holy character demands it.
Jerry Bridges reminds us…
God’s justice is inflexible. Justice may be defined as rendering to everyone according to one’s due. Justice means we get exactly what we deserve – nothing more, nothing less. In our human system of justice a tension often exists between justice and mercy. Sometimes one prevails at the expense of the other. But there is no tension with God. Justice always prevails. God’s justice must be satisfied; otherwise His moral government would be undermined. (Jerry Bridges, The Gospel for Real Life, p. 43).
It is almost impossible to translate from Greek to English this idea of “zeal of fire” because it combines a personal disposition (“zeal”) with an inanimate object (“fire”). He speaks of fire as if it were a person zealously burning everything in its path.
This is how Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, as well as the sons of Korah. All throughout Scripture fire is connected with judgment and it will all end with the “lake of fire.” In two chapters God is defined as a “consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28). This fire will “consume the enemies of God.”
Third, this is a physical or material picture of a fire that “consumes the adversaries.” It will swallow up the sinner in the flames of legal and passionate judgment. “Consume” does not mean annihilation. It doesn’t mean one ceases to exist. “Consume” means to swallow up into suffering forever. Justice will be exercised and God’s holy anger will be satisfied.
In other words, there are only two possibilities for sinners. Either terrifying judgment or a sacrifice for sins. There is no middle ground here, no neutrality. If you turn your back on God’s only offer of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you become God’s enemy.
You remember the old line from The Godfather movie, when he got rid of a mobster from another family, he would say, “It’s not personal, it’s business.” Well, here the reverse is true: It’s not business, it’s personal. You have become an enemy of God.
Our third question from this text is: Why is this doom so severe?
We’ve seen that it is severe in vv. 26 and 27. Here we see that the severity of the doom is directly related to the value of the revelation given. In verses 28 and 29 our author argues from the lesser to the greater, a common rhetorical device. Verse 28 reads…
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
This is from Deuteronomy 17 and it’s not just talking about any sin against the law of Moses, any normal breaking of the law, but specifically about Jewish (covenant) person who has rejected this revelation from God and his relationship with Yahweh and has begun to involve himself in worshipping an idol or idols.
What happened to such a person who committed this apostasy? There was no room for negotiation, no defense. That person was punished with death.
Now certainly due justice was followed. You couldn’t be condemned for idolatry on the basis of just one witness. If two or three had testimony that agreed, there was no appeal and no mercy. The consequence of apostasy under the Old Covenant law was death.
So what happens when we come to the New Covenant?
There general feeling most people have is that God was a God of wrath in the Old Testament, punishing sins right and left, but now in the New Covenant age He is a God of mercy and grace, going light on punishment.
Actually, that’s not so. Look at verse 29.
How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
The punishment for apostasy under the Old Covenant was death, and here we see that the punishment for apostasy now under the New Covenant is “much worse.” What could be “much worse” that death? Eternal condemnation, that’s what.
In reality, there is the same amount of justice and the same amount of mercy in both Testaments. That is because God does not change.
Nothing in the Old Testament compares to the severity of judgment one reads about in the book of Revelation. That is truly terrifying!
In fact, did you know that the strongest words of condemnation found in the Bible are intentionally placed on the lips of Jesus Christ?
Let me quote Him:
49 So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:49-50)
Thus says Jesus. A few verses earlier he said:
41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:41-42)
And in the Gospel of Mark we read
43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
Since the New Covenant is a much better covenant, to apostatize from it now is much more serious and incurs more terrifying judgment. What was once physically fatal is now eternally catastrophic.
Again, we return to Judas, the New Testament poster boy for apostasy. Remember what Jesus said to Pilate?
“he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:11)
Yes, Pilate would be severely judged for his part in Jesus’ death, but Judas much more. Why? Because Judas had experienced greater exposure to Jesus Christ and the gospel. Yet, in the end he turned his back on Jesus.
We’ve already seen how our writer exposes this apostasy in verse 29 in three phrases, the first dealing with the person of Christ, the second dealing with the work of Christ and the third dealing with the person and work of the Holy Spirit. This apostate is one who “has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace.”
How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot. It is as if this person has taken the precious Son of God and with his heel ground him into the dirt like he would an insignificant bug.
He also treats the work of Christ as common, showing that his sanctification is fruitless. What does he mean here by a sanctification that does not result in eternal glory? It means that they’ve come under the influence of gospel preaching, have experienced the love of the saints, have partaken of the ordinances, have felt the moving of the Holy Spirit, have changed their moral behavior…yet concluded that there was no worth to Jesus Christ
I hope that you have not treated Jesus Christ this way, but rather that He is precious to you and the cross is valued by you and the Holy Spirit is working in you.
Grace Still Amazes 