How can we say that Hebrews is exhorting some to get converted? It says nothing of the kind. I says of all those who have become disciples that they must not abandon Christ, lest they fall into condemnation.
The message is never, “Some of you were falsely converted and need to do it for real,” but “All of you need to continue, to not shrink back, to show faith and patience, to add endurance, in order to inherit the promises and not come into severe judgment.”
Is this even debatable?
I am finishing up M.F. Sadler’s book, The Second Adam and the New Birth, and he makes this point over and over. In all the NT, Christians are never exhorted to be born again (even the really sinful Corinthians); rather, they are always exhorted to persevere in the grace they have received. I am not sure what the implications are, but this much seems undeniable.
Well, what about these?
Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ … It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience.
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.
Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case—things that accompany salvation.
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
It seems like there’s enough here to at least debate the question “Did the author to the Hebrews see them as genuine believers in danger of falling away, or as professing believers who were on the cusp between belief and unbelief?”
If the latter, then the call to be converted (or better: the call to possess the faith that is professed) makes sense.
Jeff
P.S. I thought Vern’s attack on you was unfair. Your response was sufficient.
Jeff, thanks for taking the bull by the horns! I don’t think in context there is any way to sustain the reading I’m opposing with these passages.
If I have time I’ll write more at some point to engage with this. I do appreciate your interaction.
Hebrews is about apostasy from the faith. Apostasy is a desciple becoming an ex-desciple. Any theological grid that forces one to deny the clear purpose of one of our New Testament epistles needs to be abandoned. This isn’t complicated.
Well, OK. I like simplicity. And I agree that Hebrews is a warning against apostasy. But now a couple of questions:
“Apostasy is a disciple becoming an ex-disciple”
(1) In the book of Hebrews, do these disciples possess saving faith at any point? Or, do they possess something that looks like saving faith, but isn’t? Or something else?
(2) How do you know that your answer is correct?
In other words, I’m asking you to give more precise definition to the word “disciple.”
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
1. Not saving faith.
2. Didn’t reach salvation.
That’s my take, too.
Could that not be compatible with “some of you were falsely converted”?
It’s funny. The more I read from the Federal Vision, the more I think about God, and the more I think about my brothers and sisters in Christ. In other reads, my reading of their work has actually caused me to think less about myself! Until this point, having been “Reformed” for ~3 years, I had merely read a lot of polemic literature against the me-centered theology of my former days, while at the same time ingesting positive constructions that seemed to focus on nothing but me – my faith, my relationship with God, my election.
So when I come to a discussion like this and find detractors (or those who are unsure, or perhaps playing the devil’s advocate?) asking the big question about the apostasy passages – Did these individuals have saving faith? – it makes me wonder whether this kind of terminology is the only thing they’re looking for in the New Testament, and, if they don’t find it, whether they will disregard the force of a passage merely on account of the lack of such language.
It is BECAUSE of the apostasy passages, particularly those in Hebrews, that I began to actually investigate the FV controversy myself. As the passages concerning God’s sovereignty confused me to no end as a Calvinist, causing me to frequently skip over them and find some way to explain them away, so have the apostasy passages made absolutely no sense to me until I found some men who want to allow the Bible to speak for itself, regardless of the conclusions, rather than forcing a system on texts which does nothing less than neuter them of their plain meaning.
Now, in Hebrews 10 I don’t see anything about “personal faith,” but I do see this: “How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?” There are three terms that immediately jump out at me, “blood of the covenant,” “sanctified,” and “Spirit of grace.” I asked a friend of mine about this passage the other day and he responded by saying that “sanctified” means “set apart” in some external, ultimately meaningless (my interpretation) way. Being “sanctified by the blood of the covenant” does not mean that one actually participates in Christ. Well how can I argue with that? This sounded to me like what I’d hear from most of my Reformed pals. Why? Because the text CAN’T mean anything more than that. If so, we would have to conclude something we dare NOT conclude.
Here are some other uses of the word “sanctified” in Hebrews:
“For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,”
“And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
These passages speak of the sanctified individual being united to Christ, being his brother, and being made holy through the offering of his body. What I don’t understand is: what is it that causes to look for particular language and seemingly reject the plain meaning of any given passage if it does not fit our system, or if it doesn’t use the particular language we’re looking for?
Sorry, I should’ve proofread the above comment better.
In the first paragraph, “in other reads” should be “in other words.”
In the third paragraph, “As the passages concerning God’s sovereignty confused me to no end as a Calvinist” should read “Arminian” at the end.
In the last paragraph, there should be an “us” after “causes.” I apologize for any others I missed.