For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries. A man who disregards Moses’ law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think he will be judged worthy of who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance belongs to me;” says the Lord, “I will repay.” Again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Parallel Translations
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For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins,
but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries.
A man who disregards Moses’ law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses.
How much worse punishment do you think he will be judged worthy of who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
For we know him who said, “Vengeance belongs to me;” says the Lord, “I will repay.” Again, “The Lord will judge his people.”
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
-
For yf we synne willyngly after that we have receaved the knowledge of the trueth there remayneth no more sacrifice for synnes
but a fearfull lokynge for iudgement and violent fyre which shall devoure the adversaries
He that despiseth Moses lawe dyeth with out mercy vnder two or thre witnesses.
Of how moche sorer punyshment suppose ye shall he be counted worthy which treadeth vnderfote the sonne of god: and counteth the bloude of the testament as an vnholy thynge wherwith he was sanctified and doth dishonoure to the sprete of grace.
For we knowe him that hath sayde vengeaunce belongeth vnto me I will recompence sayth the lorde. And agayne: the lorde shall iudge his people.
It is a fearfull thynge to faule into the hondes of the livynge God.
Show all 3 translations
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For if we sinne willingly after that we haue receiued and acknowledged that trueth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sinnes,
But a fearefull looking for of iudgement, and violent fire, which shall deuoure the aduersaries.
He that despiseth Moses Law, dieth without mercy vnder two, or three witnesses:
Of howe much sorer punishment suppose ye shall hee be worthy, which treadeth vnder foote the Sonne of God, and counteth the blood of the Testament as an vnholy thing, wherewith he was sanctified, and doeth despite the Spirit of grace?
For we know him that hath sayd, Vengeance belongeth vnto mee: I will recompense, saith the Lord. And againe, The Lord shall iudge his people.
It is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the liuing God.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (2)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (124)
- 2 Peter 2:20-22 (v26) For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again…
- Hebrews 6:4-6 (v26) For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the…
- Deuteronomy 32:35-36 (v30) Vengeance is mine, and recompense, at the time when their foot slides; for the day of their calamity is at hand. Their doom rushes at…
- Matthew 10:28 (v31) Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body…
- John 9:41 (v26) Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.
Show all 100 cross-references
- Luke 12:5 (v31) But I will warn you whom you should fear. Fear him who after he has killed, has power to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
- Luke 12:47 (v26) That servant, who knew his lord’s will, and didn’t prepare, nor do what he wanted, will be beaten with many stripes,
- Romans 12:19 (v30) Don’t seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God’s wrath. For it is written, “Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the…
- Hebrews 12:29 (vv27, 31) for our God is a consuming fire.
- Matthew 12:43-45 (v26) When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and doesn’t find it. Then he says, ‘I will…
- Isaiah 33:14 (vv27, 31) The sinners in Zion are afraid. Trembling has seized the godless ones. Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among us can live…
- Nahum 1:2 (vv27, 30) Yahweh is a jealous God and avenges. Yahweh avenges and is full of wrath. Yahweh takes vengeance on his adversaries, and he maintains wrath…
- Psalms 76:7 (v31) You, even you, are to be feared. Who can stand in your sight when you are angry?
- Ephesians 4:30 (v29) Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
- Numbers 15:28-31 (v26) The priest shall make atonement for the soul who errs when he sins unwittingly before Yahweh. He shall make atonement for him; and he shall…
- Psalms 50:4 (v30) He calls to the heavens above, to the earth, that he may judge his people:
- Isaiah 26:11 (v27) Yahweh, your hand is lifted up, yet they don’t see; but they will see your zeal for the people, and be disappointed. Yes, fire will consume…
- Hebrews 6:6 (v29) and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put…
- Matthew 12:31-32 (vv26, 29) Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Whoever…
- Psalms 90:11 (v31) Who knows the power of your anger, your wrath according to the fear that is due to you?
- 2 Corinthians 5:10 (v30) For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has…
- James 4:17 (v26) To him therefore who knows to do good, and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.
- 1 John 5:16 (v26) If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life for those who sin not leading to…
- John 15:22-24 (v26) If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me, hates my…
- 2 Thessalonians 2:10 (v26) and with all deception of wickedness for those who are being lost, because they didn’t receive the love of the truth, that they might be…
- Isaiah 63:10 (v29) But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. Therefore he turned and became their enemy, and he himself fought against them.
- Matthew 16:16 (v31) Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
- John 13:17 (v26) If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
- Psalms 19:12-13 (v26) Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion…
- Psalms 96:13 (v30) before Yahweh; for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, the peoples with his truth.
- Psalms 135:14 (v30) For Yahweh will judge his people and have compassion on his servants.
- 1 Timothy 1:13 (v26) although I used to be a blasphemer, a persecutor, and insolent. However, I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
- Luke 12:10 (v29) Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
- 1 Corinthians 11:27 (v29) Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks the Lord’s cup in a way unworthy of the Lord will be guilty of the body and the blood of the…
- Hebrews 10:27 (v31) but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries.
- Hebrews 2:3 (vv27, 29) how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation—which at the first having been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those…
- Deuteronomy 17:12 (v26) The man who does presumptuously in not listening to the priest who stands to minister there before Yahweh your God, or to the judge, even…
- Psalms 50:22 (v31) “Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you into pieces, and there be no one to deliver.
- Psalms 98:9 (v30) Let them sing before Yahweh, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.
- Isaiah 61:2 (v30) to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,
- Daniel 5:22-23 (v26) “You, his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven;…
- Zephaniah 1:18 (v27) Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them in the day of Yahweh’s wrath, but the whole land will be devoured by the…
- Romans 13:4 (v30) for he is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid, for he doesn’t bear the sword in vain; for he is a…
- Leviticus 4:2 (v26) “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘If anyone sins unintentionally, in any of the things which Yahweh has commanded not to be done,…
- Psalms 94:1 (v30) Yahweh, you God to whom vengeance belongs, you God to whom vengeance belongs, shine out.
- Ezekiel 18:30 (v30) “Therefore I will judge you, house of Israel, everyone according to his ways,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Return, and turn yourselves from all…
- Acts 7:51 (v29) “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.
- Hebrews 2:2 (v28) For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty,
- Hebrews 12:25 (vv27, 29) See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we…
- Deuteronomy 19:15 (v28) One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin that he sins. At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth…
- Isaiah 59:17 (v30) He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad…
- Isaiah 63:4 (v30) For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redeemed has come.
- Ezekiel 34:17 (v30) “As for you, O my flock, the Lord Yahweh says: ‘Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, the rams and the male goats.
- Luke 21:11 (v31) There will be great earthquakes, famines, and plagues in various places. There will be terrors and great signs from heaven.
- Hebrews 9:27 (v27) Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
- Deuteronomy 17:2-13 (v28) If there is found among you, within any of your gates which Yahweh your God gives you, a man or woman who does that which is evil in Yahweh…
- Matthew 13:50 (v27) and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.”
- 1 Corinthians 11:29 (v29) For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy way eats and drinks judgment to himself if he doesn’t discern the Lord’s body.
- Hebrews 9:13 (v29) For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the…
- Leviticus 4:13 (v26) “ ‘If the whole congregation of Israel sins, and the thing is hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they have done any of the things…
- Numbers 15:30-31 (v28) “ ‘But the soul who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native-born or a foreigner, blasphemes Yahweh. That soul shall be cut off…
- Numbers 15:36 (v28) All the congregation brought him outside of the camp, and stoned him to death with stones, as Yahweh commanded Moses.
- Deuteronomy 19:13 (v28) Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the innocent blood from Israel that it may go well with you.
- Jeremiah 4:4 (v27) Circumcise yourselves to Yahweh, and take away the foreskins of your heart, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go…
- Nahum 1:8-10 (v27) But with an overflowing flood, he will make a full end of her place, and will pursue his enemies into darkness. What do you plot against…
- Zephaniah 3:8 (v27) “Therefore wait for me”, says Yahweh, “until the day that I rise up to the prey, for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may…
- Zechariah 12:10 (v29) I will pour on David’s house, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they will look to me whom…
- Malachi 4:1 (v27) “For, behold, the day comes, it burns as a furnace; and all the proud, and all who work wickedness, will be stubble; and the day that comes…
- Matthew 3:12 (v27) His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the barn, but the…
- Matthew 7:6 (v29) “Don’t give that which is holy to the dogs, neither throw your pearls before the pigs, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and…
- Matthew 8:29 (v27) Behold, they cried out, saying, “What do we have to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”
- Matthew 18:16 (v28) But if he doesn’t listen, take one or two more with you, that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
- Luke 19:27 (v27) But bring those enemies of mine who didn’t want me to reign over them here, and kill them before me.’ ”
- John 8:17 (v28) It’s also written in your law that the testimony of two people is valid.
- John 17:19 (v29) For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
- 2 Corinthians 13:1 (v28) This is the third time I am coming to you. “At the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.”
- Hebrews 2:11 (v29) For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brothers,
- Hebrews 6:4 (v29) For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit,
- Revelation 20:15 (v27) If anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.
- Numbers 16:35 (v27) Fire came out from Yahweh, and devoured the two hundred fifty men who offered the incense.
- Deuteronomy 32:43 (v27) Rejoice, you nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will take vengeance on his adversaries, and will…
- 1 Samuel 28:19-20 (v27) Moreover Yahweh will deliver Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines; and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. Yahweh…
- 2 Samuel 12:9 (v28) Why have you despised Yahweh’s word, to do that which is evil in his sight? You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have…
- 2 Samuel 12:13 (v28) David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against Yahweh.” Nathan said to David, “Yahweh also has put away your sin. You will not die.
- 2 Kings 9:33 (v29) He said, “Throw her down!” So they threw her down; and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses. Then he trampled her…
- Psalms 21:9 (v27) You will make them as a fiery furnace in the time of your anger. Yahweh will swallow them up in his wrath. The fire shall devour them.
- Psalms 68:1-2 (v27) Let God arise! Let his enemies be scattered! Let them who hate him also flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. As…
- Isaiah 14:19 (v29) But you are cast away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down…
- Isaiah 27:11 (v28) When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off. The women will come and set them on fire, for they are a people of no understanding.…
- Jeremiah 13:14 (v28) I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,” says Yahweh: “I will not pity, spare, or have compassion,…
- Ezekiel 36:5 (v27) therefore the Lord Yahweh says: “Surely in the fire of my jealousy I have spoken against the residue of the nations, and against all Edom,…
- Ezekiel 38:19 (v27) For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath I have spoken. Surely in that day there will be a great shaking in the land of Israel;
- Daniel 5:6 (v27) Then the king’s face was changed in him, and his thoughts troubled him; and the joints of his thighs were loosened, and his knees struck…
- Joel 2:30 (v27) I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: blood, fire, and pillars of smoke.
- Micah 7:10 (v29) Then my enemy will see it, and shame will cover her who said to me, where is Yahweh your God? Then my enemy will see me and will cover her…
- Nahum 1:5-6 (v27) The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, yes, the world, and all who dwell in it. Who…
- Matthew 3:10 (v27) “Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down, and cast into the fire.
- Matthew 13:42 (v27) and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
- Matthew 25:41 (v27) Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his…
- Mark 9:43-49 (v27) If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having your two hands to go…
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (124 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (26 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv26–30 26. For if we sin willfully, or voluntarily etc.…
26. For if we sin willfully, or voluntarily etc. He shows how severe a vengeance of God awaits all those who fall away from the grace of Christ; for being without that one true salvation, they are now as it were given up to an inevitable destruction. With this testimony Novatus and his sect formerly armed themselves, in order to take away the hope of pardon from all indiscriminately who had fallen after baptism. They who were not able to refute his calumny chose rather to deny the authority of this Epistle than to subscribe to so great an absurdity. But the true meaning of the passage, unaided by any help from any other part, is quite sufficient of itself to expose the effrontery of Novatus
Those who sin, mentioned by the Apostle, are not such as offend in any way, but such as forsake the Church, and wholly alienate themselves from Christ. For he speaks not here of this or of that sin, but he condemns by name those who willfully renounced fellowship with the Church. But there is a vast difference between particular fallings and a complete defection of this kind, by which we entirely fall away from the grace of Christ. And as this cannot be the case with any one except he has been already enlightened, he says, If we sin willfully, after that we have received the knowledge of the truth; as though he had said, “If we knowingly and willingly renounce the grace which we had obtained.” It is now evident how widely apart is this doctrine from the error of Novatus
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And that the Apostle here refers only to apostates, is clear from the whole passage; for what he treats of is this, that those who had been once received into the Church ought not to forsake it, as some were wont to do. He now declares that there remained for such no sacrifice for sin, because they had willfully sinned after having received the knowledge of the truth. But as to sinners who fall in any other way, Christ offers himself daily to them, so that they are to seek no other sacrifice for expiating their sins. He denies, then, that any sacrifice remains for them who renounce the death of Christ, which is not done by any offense except by a total renunciation of the faith.
This severity of God is indeed dreadful, but it is set forth for the purpose of inspiring terror. He cannot, however, be accused of cruelty; for as the death of Christ is the only remedy by which we can be delivered from eternal death, are not they who destroy as far as they can its virtue and benefit worthy of being left to despair? God invites to daily reconciliation those who abide in Christ; they are daily washed by the blood of Christ, their sins are daily expiated by his perpetual sacrifice. As salvation is not to be sought except in him, there is no need to wonder that all those who willfully forsake him are deprived of every hope of pardon: this is the import of the adverb ἔτι, more. But Christ’s sacrifice is efficacious to the godly even to death, though they often sin; nay, it retains ever its efficacy, for this very reason, because they cannot be free from sin as long as they dwell in the flesh. The Apostle then refers to those alone who wickedly forsake Christ, and thus deprive themselves of the benefit of his death.
The clause, “after having received the knowledge of the truth,” was added for the purpose of aggravating their ingratitude; for he who willingly and with deliberate impiety extinguishes the light of God kindled in his heart has nothing to allege as an excuse before God. Let us then learn not only to receive with reverence and prompt docility of mind the truth offered to us, but also firmly to persevere in the knowledge of it, so that we may not suffer the terrible punishment of those who despise it.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 28, 30 Without any cause or occasion, or show of occasion.
Without any cause or occasion, or show of occasion.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv26–31 26 For if we sin wilfully after that we…
26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
Ver. 26. For if we sin wilfully] Against the grace of the gospel, despising and despiting it, as those that fall into the unpardonable sin. Some good souls by mistakes of this text have been much afflicted, as Master John Glover. Other odious apostates have utterly despaired. Others of the ancients have unworthily cashiered this Epistle out of the canon, because of this passage.
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There remaineth no more sacrifice] For sins against the law, though against knowledge there was an atonement, Lev 6:1, though it were for perjury; but for this sin against the gospel, that repudiates the remedy, there is no sacrifice; abused mercy turns into fury.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv26–31 If we sin wilfully: the severe exaction which God…
If we sin wilfully: the severe exaction which God will take upon such as apostatize from him, is further enforcing the former duty, and is introduced by the particle for, to that end; if we by a free and spontaneous desertion of Christ, and his ordinances, without a coercion by threats and persecutions; and this after we had professedly in our judgments, wills, and affections, with faith and reverence, acknowledged a love and subjection to the true gospel doctrine of the way of bringing sinners to God by Christ our great High Priest, Joh 8:31; 14:6, which was made known to them by Christ and his apostles, and confirmed by miracles and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, so as to profess a full conviction of this truth, so as to assent and consent to it.
After that we have received the knowledge of the truth; after all this, to renounce the profession of it, and to forsake the assemblies where it is held forth; this is the spontaneous and wilful sinning: see Heb 6:6.
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There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins: this is unpardonable by the just constitution of God in the gospel, because no sacrifice can atone God for them, without which they cannot be pardoned; and the sacrifice of Christ, which only could do it, they renounce and desert; and so this, nor any other they can bring, can procure pardon for them, so that their sins remain in guilt and power on them, and between them and God’s wrath are they like irrecoverably to be ground to perdition.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv26, 28, 30, 31 In these verses the apostle gives a vehement enforcement…
In these verses the apostle gives a vehement enforcement of his preceding exhortation, to an unfainting perseverance in the profession of Christianity, and this is drawn from the dreadful consequences of apostasy. We have here the nature of the sin expressed, the impossibility of deliverance from the guilt of it declared, and the punishment that will unavoidable follow upon it asserted.
Observe, 1. Wherein the nature of this sin consists, if we sin wilfully, that is, by renouncing Christianity.
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Where note, How our apostle puts himself in among the number; to show that there is no respect of persons in this matter, but those who have equally sinned, shall be equally punished.
Note farther, That the apostle, by sinning wilfully, does not mean every wilful sin, and that there is no recovery after any voluntary sin committed: But by wilfully, he means obstinately, maliciously, and with despite.
Observe, 2. The season and circumstance of this sin, After we have received the knowledge of the truth, that is, after the gospel has been preached unto us, and we, upon conviction of its truth, and sense of its power, have taken upon us the public profession of Christianity: After we have dedicated our selves to Christ in baptism, and joined ourselves unto the body of his church: After all this, to relinquish and renounce the Christian profession, either for fear of suffering, or love of this present world, exposes us to a unutterable and inevitable condemnation.
Observe, 3. What the apostle charges as an aggravation of this sin, namely, that it cannot be expiated, There remains no more sacrifice for sin: For God has no other Son to offer as a sacrifice for sin, if this be rejected; and no other Spirit to make that sacrifice effectual, if the Holy Spirit be despised, and finally resisted; and therefore no ground of hope can remain for such apostates. The punishments of sins unpardonable is unavoidable: It is an eternal decree of divine justice, that the sacrifice of Christ shall never benefit that man, who finally falls away after he has received the knowledge of the truth.
Observe, 4. The dreadful and tremendous judgment here threatened to apostates, and what they must eternally expect, namely, the fiery indignation, and fearful wrath of the just and holy God.
From the whole learn, 1. That there is an inseparable connection between apostasy and eternal ruin.
2. That the minds of wretched apostates are oft-times filled with dreadful expectations of approaching wrath.
3. That the dread and terror of God’s final judgement against apostates, is, in itself inconceivable, and accordingly shadowed out by things of the greatest dread and terror in the world.
4. That God’s fiery indignation, thogh it shall devour his adversaries, yet shall it never eat them up’ it shall eternally prey upon them, but never consume them, or annihilate their being.
O mysterious fire! Whose strange property it is always to torture, but never to kill; or always to kill, but never to consume. God grant that we may never experimentally know, or feelingly find, either where hell is, or what it is.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv26–31 He that despised Moses' law,.... By breaking it wilfully,…
He that despised Moses' law,.... By breaking it wilfully, and presumptuously, for which there was no sacrifice; meaning the law which Moses was the minister of not the author; and it respects the whole body of laws given by him, from God; and is instanced in for the sake of the comparison between him and Christ, and between the law and the Gospel, and for the illustration of the case in hand. Now one that transgressed that law, either in whole, or in part, by denying it entirely, or by breaking any particular precept of it presumptuously,
died without mercy; a corporeal death; there was no atonement nor sacrifice for him, nor pity to be shown him, Deu 13:8.
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Under two or three witnesses; who "stood by", or were present, as the Arabic version renders it, when the transgression was committed; or that "accused him", as the Ethiopic version; that were witnesses against him, and plainly and fully proved the fact, Deu 17:6.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv26, 28, 29, 30, 31 For when we - Any of us Christians. Sin…
For when we - Any of us Christians. Sin wilfully - By total apostasy from God, termed "drawing back," ver. 38. After having received the experimental knowledge of the gospel truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins - None but that which we obstinately reject.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv26–31 Verse 26. For if we sin wilfully] If we…
Verse 26. For if we sin wilfully] If we deliberately, for fear of persecution or from any other motive, renounce the profession of the Gospel and the Author of that Gospel, after having received the knowledge of the truth so as to be convinced that Jesus is the promised Messiah, and that he had sprinkled our hearts from an evil conscience; for such there remaineth no sacrifice for sins; for as the Jewish sacrifices are abolished, as appears by the declaration of God himself in the fortieth Psalm, and Jesus being now the only sacrifice which God will accept, those who reject him have none other; therefore their case must be utterly without remedy. This is the meaning of the apostle, and the case is that of a deliberate apostate-one who has utterly rejected Jesus Christ and his atonement, and renounced the whole Gospel system. It has nothing to do with backsliders in our common use of that term. A man may be overtaken in a fault, or he may deliberately go into sin, and yet neither renounce the Gospel, nor deny the Lord that bought him. His case is dreary and dangerous, but it is not hopeless; no case is hopeless but that of the deliberate apostate, who rejects the whole Gospel system, after having been saved by grace, or convinced of the truth of the Gospel. To him there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin; for there was but the ONE, Jesus, and this he has utterly rejected.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv26, 28, 30 Heb 10:26-27. For, &c. — As if he had…
Heb 10:26-27. For, &c. — As if he had said, It concerns us to use all means to ensure our perseverance, because apostacy is so dangerous; if we — Any of us Christians; sin wilfully — By total apostacy from God; (see on Heb 6:4;) after we have received the knowledge of the truth — As it is in Jesus, namely, an experimental and practical knowledge thereof, so as to have been made free thereby from the guilt and power of sin; there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins — None but that which we obstinately reject. “As the apostle, in the former part of the epistle, had proved that the sacrifices of the law were all abolished, and that the only sacrifice for sin remaining was the sacrifice of Christ, it followed that apostates, who wilfully renounced the benefit of that sacrifice, had no sacrifice for sin whatever remaining to them.” But a certain fearful looking for — Φοβερα δε τις εκδοχη, a kind of fearful expectation: intimating something inexpressible, such as no heart could conceive or tongue describe. Thus St. Peter, 1 Epist. 1Pe 4:17-18, What shall be the end of them who obey not the gospel? Where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Of judgment and fiery indignation. The apostle refers both to the final judgment of the great day, when apostates from the religion of Jesus, as well as those who obstinately rejected it, shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, &c., 2Th 1:9; and also to the dreadful and fiery indignation which God was about to bring on the unbelieving and obstinate Jews, in the total destruction of their city and temple by sword and fire, devouring them, as adversaries to God and his Christ, of all others the most inexcusable. The reader should observe that the apostle lays it down here as certain, that God will not pardon sinners without some sacrifice or satisfaction. For otherwise it would not follow, from there remaining to apostates no more sacrifice for sin, that there must remain to them a dreadful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation. In these last words, the conflagration of the heaven and the earth at the day of judgment seems especially to be referred to.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv26–31 For if we sin willfully after that we have…
For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth - If after we are converted and become true Christians we should apostatize, it would be impossible to be recovered again, for there would be no other sacrifice for sin; no way by which we could be saved. This passage, however, like Heb 6:4-6, has given rise to much difference of opinion. But that the above is the correct interpretation, seems evident to me from the following considerations:
(1) It is the natural and obvious interpretation, such as would occur probably to ninety-nine readers in a hundred, if there were no theory to support, and no fear that it would conflict with some other doctrine.
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(2) It accords with the scope of the Epistle, which is, to keep those whom the apostle addressed from returning again to the Jewish religion, under the trials to which they were subjected.
(3) It is in accordance with the fair meaning of the language - the words “after that we have received the knowledge of the truth,” referring more naturally to true conversion than to any other state of mind.
(4) The sentiment would not be correct if it referred to any but real Christians. It would not be true that one who had been somewhat enlightened, and who then sinned “wilfully,” must look on fearfully to the judgment without a possibility of being saved. There are multitudes of cases where such persons are saved. They “wilfully” resist the Holy Spirit; they strive against him; they for a long time refuse to yield, but they are brought again to reflection, and are led to give their hearts to God.
(5) It is true, and always will be true, that if a sincere Christian should apostatize he could never be converted again; see the notes on Heb 6:4-6. The reasons are obvious. He would have tried the only plan of salvation, and it would have failed. He would have embraced the Saviour, and there would not have been efficacy enough in his blood to keep him, and there would be no more powerful Saviour and no more efficacious blood of atonement. He would have renounced the Holy Spirit, and would have shown that his influences were not effectual to keep him, and there would be no other agent of greater power to renew and save him after he had apostatized. For these reasons it seems clear to me that this passage refers to true Christians, and that the doctrine here taught is, that if such an one should apostatize, he must look forward only to the terrors of the judgment, and to final condemnation.
Whether this in fact ever occurs, is quite another question. In regard to that inquiry, see the notes on Heb 6:4-6. If this view be correct, we may add, that the passage should not be regarded as applying to what is commonly known as the “sin against the Holy Spirit,” or “the unpardonable sin.” The word rendered “wilfully” - ἑκουσίως hekousiōs - occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, except in 1Pe 5:2, where it is rendered “willingly” - “taking the oversight thereof (of the church) not by constraint, but willingly.” It properly means, “willingly, voluntarily, of our own accord,” and applies to cases where no constraint is used. It is not to be construed here strictly, or metaphysically, for all sin is voluntary, or is committed willingly, but must refer to a deliberate act, where a man means to abandon his religion, and to turn away from God. If it were to be taken with metaphysical exactness, it would demonstrate that every Christian who ever does anything wrong, no matter how small, would be lost.
But this cannot, from the nature of the case, be the meaning. The apostle well knew that Christians do commit such sins (see the notes on Rom. 7), and his object here is not to set forth the danger of such sins, but to guard Christians against apostasy from their religion. In the Jewish Law, as is indeed the case everywhere, a distinction is made between sins of oversight, inadvertence, or ignorance, (Lev 4:2, Lev 4:13, Lev 4:22, Lev 4:27; Lev 5:15; Num 15:24, Num 15:27-29; compare Act 3:17; Act 17:30), and sins of presumption; sins that are deliberately and intentionally committed; see Exo 21:14; Num 15:30; Deu 17:12; Psa 19:13. The apostle here has reference, evidently, to such a distinction, and means to speak of a decided and deliberate purpose to break away from the restraints and obligations of the Christian religion.
There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins - Should a man do this, there is no sacrifice for sins which could save him. He would have rejected deliberately the only atonement made for sin, and there will be no other made. It is as if a man should reject the only medicine that could heal him, or push away the only boat that could save him when shipwrecked; see notes, Heb 6:6. The sacrifice made for sin by the Redeemer is never to be repeated, and if that is deliberately rejected, the soul must be lost.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 28, 31 If we sin wilfully. He speaks of the sin…
If we sin wilfully. He speaks of the sin of wilful apostacy from the known truth; after which, as we cannot be baptized again, we cannot expect to have that abundant remission of sins, which Christ purchased by his death, applied to our souls in that ample manner as it is in baptism; but we have rather all manner of reason to look for a dreadful judgment; the more, because apostates from the know truth seldom or never have the grace to return to it. (Challoner)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v26 The heaviest and inevitable judgment of God falls upon…
II
The heaviest and inevitable judgment of God falls upon apostasy from acknowledged Christian truth
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Heb_10:26-31
26For if we, sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more [a] sacrifice for sins, 27But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and [a] fiery indignation, which shall [the glowing fervor of a fire that is about to] devour the adversaries. 28He that despised [set at naught] Moses’ law died [dieth] without mercy under two or three witnesses: 29Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing [common, unhallowed, κοινόν], and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? 30For we know him that hath [om. hath] said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord.14 And again, The Lord shall [will] Judges 15 his people. 31It is a, fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
[Heb_10:26.—ἑκουσίως γάρ, for voluntarily, ἑκουσ, emphatically standing before the Part.—ἁμαρτανόντων ἡμῶν, we sinning, in case of our sinning—the present Part. denoting an habitual and abiding state; but nothing seems to require us to transfer it, with Alf., to the actual day of judgment. It seems much more forcible, as well as more natural, to refer it to the condition, in the present life, of one who has completely apostatized from God.—μετὰ τὸ λαβεῖν, after receiving.—τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν, the recognition—more than the mere γνῶσις—the knowledge to which the mind has been consciously directed, and borne, as it were, its attestation.—ἀπολείπεται, there remaineth as a logical result: καταλείπεται, there is left behind as a historical fact, see Heb_4:1; Heb_4:4.
Heb_10:27.—Πυρὸς ζῆλος ἐσθίειν μέλλοντος, an indignation, or, fervor of fire that is about to devour.
Heb_10:28.—ἀθετήσας τις, any one, after setting at naught.
Heb_10:29.—ὁ καταπατήσας, who trampled on—κοινόν, common, that of a common man (De W., Del., Alf., etc.), or (as Thol., Lün., Moll, etc.),=ἀκάθαρτον, unclean, impure.—K.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Heb_10:26. For if we sin wilfully, etc.—That the reference here is not to deliberate and heinous sins in general, but to apostasy from Christianity after regeneration, is clear from the entire phraseology. Ἑκουσίως stands in contrast with ἀγνοοῦντες and πλανώμενοι, Heb_5:2 : the pres. ἁμαρτανόντων marks habitual in contrast with transient denial: the apostasy is preceded by the ἐπίγνωσις τῆς ἀληθείας, at once a theoretical and practical recognition of the truth, and deliberate and conscious embracing of it, and is followed by a failure of any further expiatory sacrifice, and instead of it (ἀπολείπεται, as Heb_4:6) an ἐκδοχή, whose fearfulness is heightened by the rhetorical τὶς. Πυρὸς ζῆλος is not to be taken as a single conception=fiery zeal or jealousy (Luth., etc.), since the following Part, takes the case of πυρός, which is treated as a person, as at Heb_12:29 God Himself is called πῦρ καταναλίσκον. Ἐσθίειν points not to a destroying=annihilating, but to the sensible conscious suffering of the fiery infliction. The expressions remind us forcibly of Isa_26:11 in the Sept. The words in Heb_10:28 refer evidently to Deu_17:6, which refer in like manner not to the transgression of individual commandments, but to a breaking of the covenant, and abandonment of God for idol-worship. Hence the ground for the following parallel.
Heb_10:29. Of how much sorer punishment think ye, etc.—Δοκεῖτε lays the decision regarding the case, about which there can be no doubt, on the judgment of the readers: ἀξιωθήσεται represents God as Him who weighs the greatness of guilt, and hence awards the τιμωρία according to the facts of the preceding (Aor. Part.) sins. The words ἐν ᾧ ἡγιάσθη (as read uniformly except by A. and Chrys.) designate the blood of the covenant as that whose sanctifying influence—i.e., an influence which, in virtue of the atonement and purification, consecrates to a true covenant fellowship with God and His people—had been already experienced. Hence κοινόν here, doubtless, denotes impurity (Vulg., Luth., Grot., Thol., Ebr., Lün., Riehm, etc.), not commonness (Pesh., It., Œcum., Theophyl., Bez., Schlicht., Beng., Bl., De W., Bisp., Del., etc.). By πνεῦμα τῆς χάριτος Bl., De W., Lün. understand the Holy Spirit as the gift of grace; but more correctly acc. to Heb_13:9; Heb_13:25 (comp. Zec_12:10). Böhm., Del., Riehm, etc., understand it as the efficient principle of grace. The first citation is from Deu_32:35; the second from Deu_32:36 (repeated Psa_135:14). In both passages the sentiment is, that Jehovah, by His judicial sway, will vindicate the rights of His people against His enemies. This meaning of the original is also here to be maintained, since τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ denotes in the conception of the writer the church of God of the New Covenant (Del.), which is overlooked by Bl., De W., Lün., who understand the words of a judgment upon the people, instead of for them. The first citation deviates from the Heb. text, and still more from that of the Sept.; but accords with Rom_12:19, which contains also the λέγει κύριος that is wanting in the original. Hence Bl., De W., Del., Reiche infer that the citation was taken at second hand from Romans; while Meyer (Rom_12:19; Rom_12:3 d ed.) regards the paraphrase of Onkelos, Lün., on the contrary, a current proverbial form of the expression, as the common source of the citation both here and in Romans.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The most immediate inducement to follow the injunctions that in their rightful claim have just been laid down, is the great danger of apostasy from Christ, and the fearfulness of its consequences.
2. The penitent sinner may indeed, with resigned spirit, choose rather to fall into the hands of God than of men, 2Sa_24:14; Sir_2:18. But the covenant-breaker and apostate, who has come into a hostile and radical gainsaying of the truth which he had before acknowledged, cannot be again renewed to repentance, Heb_6:4-8, and cannot possibly henceforth obtain forgiveness of sins. The offerings of the law bring no true propitiation; self-originated offerings have not even the character of type and of promise. If the only true atoning sacrifice, the Son of God and His blood, have in view of the earlier experience of its sanctifying power, been rejected as useless, and the Spirit of grace spurned and scorned, not only is there nothing to replace the sacrifice thus rejected and dishonored, but this itself can no longer exercise a saving influence upon him who has made wilful and wanton wreck of all the previous influences of grace.
3. The distinction of peccatum deliberatum and ignorantiæ is a less fixed and rigid one than is commonly supposed: there is in sinning a knowledge of the right, which the sinner refuses to allow to assert itself. The veil of the lying excuse which is drawn over the conscience would fain lift itself, but is held fast with convulsive power. Such a character of the inward struggle and gainsaying of truth must we particularly insist on when Christian truth, once attested by the Holy Spirit, is, in an apostasy which has grown out of lesser acts of infidelity, not only denied, but blasphemed. The conflict regarding objective truth becomes all the more fierce in proportion as there is, at the same time, a conflict against the truth which still in a measure asserts itself within the bosom of the apostate (Thol. comp. Stud. und Krit., 1836, Heft. 2).
4. Rightfully and justly after such an apostasy, nothing remains to be expected but judgment, which will be executed by God with the full living energy of His holy nature, just as inevitably as His undeceiving word has infallibly declared it; and its fearfulness will stand proportionate to the richness of the grace, and the fulness of the revelation, of the New Covenant.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
To the greatness of the grace which has been received we find standing in direct relation the guilt of apostasy, and the fearfulness of the punishment.—The hands of God reach through time and eternity, and to apostates bring no less of terror and destruction, than comfort and assistance to believers.—The judgments of God come slowly but surely; yet they are preceded by the proffer of grace and the announcement of punishment upon the despisers.—He who turns the grace of God into wantonness has nothing further to hope from His compassion.—The looking for of the Divine judgment, without faith in the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ, is a foretaste of damnation.—The wrath of God burns as hotly as His love, and strikes no less surely than justly.
Starke:—Were there to be another sacrifice, there must also be another Messiah; and God must lay through Him an entirely new foundation for salvation; must institute an entirely different economy for attaining it; and must consequently, at the same time, Himself take away the way which has been disclosed, and the foundation which has been laid, through Christ. Inasmuch, therefore, as this is absolutely impossible, it is also equally impossible that any one should be saved out of Christ; and that any other propitiatory sacrifice should be made on his behalf.—Not only is the judgment of God terrible in itself, but terrible is also the tormenting fear and foretaste of it which the ungodly feel in themselves as a hell even upon earth.—Great sins deserve great punishments; he therefore who allows himself in their commission must not be surprised that he receive his reward (Jer_2:19).—Against the apostate there are three witnesses: the Father, who hath given to him His Son; the Son, whose blood he tramples under foot; and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of grace, to whom he does despite.—Seest thou the apostate and ungodly walking secure, believe that he will not remain unpunished; God does all precisely at the right time; he will thus speedily remember him (Nah_1:2).
Hahn:—According to the greatness of His grace, is the severity with which God visits His wrath upon the contempt of it.
Rieger:—To the Lord Jesus is ascribed a long-suffering patience (Heb_10:13), but to believers a hopeful waiting (Heb_9:28): unbelievers, on the contrary, fall into a fearful apprehension, wherein many a word of God that had been heard without fear, returns with terrible power.—The unfruitful vine before every other tree is given as food to the fire (Eze_15:6-7); and thus abused love and neglected grace awaken all the greater wrath.—It is a great deception of our hardened and insensible heart that the death-punishments threatened in the law, stoning, etc., affect us more than the sorer punishment which takes effect only in the realm of the future and invisible.—“He who eats my bread, tramples me with his heel,” is the just complaint of Jesus in regard to His betrayer.
Heubner:—There is a more subtle and a more open apostasy.—The abandonment of the only Saviour and Propitiator takes us out of the reach of propitiation.—The apostate suffers a twofold punishment; first, in awaiting it, and then in the actual experience.—We hear in this case an earnest testimony to the guilt of careless and unprincipled changes in religion.
Menken:—In that the Lord judges His people He will avenge and deliver them.—Vengeance is a prerogative of the Divine majesty. This we are not to assume, but rather to refrain from all private vengeance, and, feeling the love of Jesus Christ, are to commend to the Divine compassion those who in thought and act oppose themselves to Christianity, and who are our enemies for the Gospel’s sake; and this all the more from the fact that they who from this cause, hate, calumniate and abuse us, unless they cease from their unrighteousness, will not escape the Divine retribution.
Footnotes:
[14]Heb_10:30.—The words λέγει κύριος are wanting, indeed, in Sin. D*. 17,23*, 67**, and most ancient translations, but have the authority of A. D. E. K. L. Philox., and are added by a later hand in Sin. Comp. Expos, of Heb_10:29, conclusion.
[15]Heb_10:30.—Instead of the lect. rec. κύριος κρινεῖ, we are to read κρινεῖ κύριος after Sin. A. D. E. K. 31, 73, which MSS., except Sin. and A., have also ὅτι preceding, as Sept., Deu_32:36; Psa_135:14. In the Sin., the change has been introduced by the corrector.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv26–31 Compare on this and following verses, Heb 6:4, &c.…
Compare on this and following verses, Heb 6:4, &c. There the warning was that if there be not diligence in progressing, a falling off will take place, and apostasy may ensue: here it is, that if there be lukewarmness in Christian communion, apostasy may ensue.
if we sin--Greek present participle: if we be found sinning, that is, not isolated acts, but a state of sin [ALFORD]. A violation not only of the law, but of the whole economy of the New Testament (Heb 10:28-29).
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wilfully--presumptuously, Greek "willingly." After receiving "full knowledge (so the Greek, compare Ti1 2:4) of the truth," by having been "enlightened," and by having "tasted" a certain measure even of grace of "the Holy Ghost" (the Spirit of truth, Joh 14:17; and "the Spirit of grace," Heb 10:29): to fall away (as "sin" here means, Heb 3:12, Heb 3:17; compare Heb 6:6) and apostatize (Heb 3:12) to Judaism or infidelity, is not a sin of ignorance, or error ("out of the way," the result) of infirmity, but a deliberate sinning against the Spirit (Heb 10:29; Heb 5:2): such sinning, where a consciousness of Gospel obligations not only was, but is present: a sinning presumptuously and preseveringly against Christ's redemption for us, and the Spirit of grace in us. "He only who stands high can fall low. A lively reference in the soul to what is good is necessary in order to be thoroughly wicked; hence, man can be more reprobate than the beasts, and the apostate angels than apostate man" [THOLUCK].
remaineth no more sacrifice--For there is but ONE Sacrifice that can atone for sin; they, after having fully known that sacrifice, deliberately reject it.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv26–31 26. If we sin—The word sin here is to…
26. If we sin—The word sin here is to be taken as in a continuous or general present tense. The meaning is, If from saints we become sinners; that is, by total apostasy. See note on 1Jn_3:10.
Wilfully—Against clear light and knowledge, usually preceded by forsaking the assembly. How flagrant and conscious the return to sin is here supposed, is indicated by the fearful language of Heb_10:29.
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Knowledge—Says Lunemann, “This επιγνωσις of the absolute truth embraces, in addition to an acquaintance with it through the understanding, also its internal power through experience and life.” It was not necessarily a one atrocious sin for which the Hebrews are so terribly condemned, for they may have apostatized by slow degrees and continuous small sins; but the special facts are, the clearness of their knowledge and the reality of their Christian experience. Our author here utters no denial that there may be Hebrews in excusable ignorance of Christ, who are perfected and saved in their own dispensation by the very Redeemer they know not. It is the man who renounces and denounces the very Christ whose redeeming love he had experienced, whose damnation is thus irrevocable and final.
Remaineth no more sacrifice—Rejecting this one Christ, there is no other Christ for him. There is but one atonement, and no salvation but by that one. If the apostate revert to the Levitical sacrifices, the blood of bulls and of goats avails nothing. All this is not quite saying that the apostate cannot return from his apostasy, and still avail himself of the one sacrifice: but for the persistent apostate there remains no more sacrifice for sins.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv26–31 26–31. A solemn Warning of the Peril of Wilful…
26–31. A solemn Warning of the Peril of Wilful Apostasy
26. For if we sin wilfully) The word “wilfully” stands in contrast with sins of weakness, ignorance and error in Heb_5:2. If the writer meant to say that, after the commission of wilful and heinous sins, “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,” this would not only be the most terrible passage in Scripture, but would do away with the very object of Redemption, and the possibility of any Forgiveness of Sins. It would, as Kurz says, “be in its consequences truly subversive and destructive of the whole Christian soteriology.” But the meaning rather is “If we are willing sinners,” “if we are in a state of deliberate and voluntary defiance to the will of God.” He is alluding not only to those sins which the Jews described as being committed presumptuously “with uplifted hand” (Num_15:30; Psa_19:13; see. Heb_6:4-8, Heb_12:16-17), but to the deliberate continuity of such sins as a self-chosen law of life; as for instance when a man has closed against himself the door of repentance and said “Evil be thou my good.” Such a state is glanced at in 2Pe_2:20-21; Mat_12:43-45.
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after that we have received the knowledge of the truth] Rather, “the full knowledge of the truth.” Something more is meant than mere historical knowledge. He is contemplating Christians who have made some real advance, and then have relapsed into “desperation or the wretchlessness of unclean living.”
there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins] Lit., “no sacrifice for sins is any longer left for them.” They have rejected the work of Christ, and it cannot be done for them over again. There is one atoning sacrifice and that they have repudiated. He does not say that they have exhausted the infinite mercy of God, nor can we justly assert that he held such a conclusion; he only says that they have, so long as they continue in such a state, put themselves out of God’s covenant, and that there are no other covenanted means of grace. For they have trampled under foot the offer of mercy in Christ and there is no salvation in any other (Act_4:12).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv26–31 (26) For.—The connecting links are the thought of the…
(26) For.—The connecting links are the thought of the consequences to which such sinful neglect (Heb_10:25) may lead, and the awful revelation of judgment which the final day will bring. Even more clearly than in Heb_6:4-6 the state described is one of wilful and continued sin, which is the result and the expression of apostasy from Christ. It is not, “If we fall under temptation and commit sin;” but, “If we are sinning wilfully.” The descriptive words are few as compared with those of the former passage, but they teach the same lesson. Not merely the “knowledge” but the “full knowledge” (Rom_1:28) of the truth has been received by those to whom the writer here makes reference; they have been “sanctified in the blood of the covenant” (Heb_10:29). For such “there remaineth no longer a sacrifice for sins:” that offering of Jesus which they deliberately reject has abolished all the earlier sacrifices. The observances and ceremonies of Judaism, which had been full of meaning whilst they pointed to Him that was to come, have lost all their virtue through His coming. Nay more: for such sin as this, the sin of knowing and wilful rejection of the only Sin offering, God has provided no other sacrifice. In its general significance this passage does not differ from Heb_6:4-6. (See the Notes.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv26, 28, 29, 31 Vers. 26-32. Solemn warning as to the fearful consequences…
Vers. 26-32. Solemn warning as to the fearful consequences of apostasy.
Vers. 26, 27. For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for (ekdoch , used here only; but ekdecomai is frequent in the New Testament in sense of "expect;" e.g. supra, ver. 13. Hence there seems no good ground for disputing, with Afford, the usual rendering, "expectation") of judgment, and fiery indignation (purov zhlov), which shall devour the adversaries. The warning passage thus begun closely resembles the former interposed one, Heb_6:4-9. Both have been similarly misapplied; (see notes on Heb_6:4-9) but both have the same real meaning, which is further confirmed by comparing them together. The purport of both is the hopelessness of a state of apostasy from the faith after full knowledge and full enjoyment of privilege; both are led up to by cautions against remissness, of which the final issue might be such apostasy; both are followed by the expression of a confident hope, founded on past faithfulness, that no such apostasy will really follow. The state contemplated is here expressed by ekousiwv amartanontwn , a phrase which in itself might at first sight seem to support one of the erroneous views of the drift of the passage, viz. that all willful sin after baptism or grace received is unpardonable. But it is first to be observed that the participle amartanontwn is not aorist, but present, expressing a persistent habit; also that the whole context is sufficient to denote the kind of sin intended. For
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(1) the preceding verses have pointed to laxity of allegiance to Christ, which might have further consequences;
(2) the illustration of what is meant, adduced in ver. 28 from the Mosaic Law, is (as will appear under that verse) a case of entire apostasy a sin not to be atoned for by any sacrifice, but visited by "cutting off;
(3) the description in ver. 29 of the sin intended implies total repudiation of Christ. Observe, on akousiwv siwv , the contrast to amartanein , (Lev_4:2, 27 5:15, al. ) expressive of sins of ignorance or infirmity. Not such sins, but deliberate sin with a high hand, is here intended; and further, for the reasons above given, one of this nature so heinous as to be beyond the reach of sacrifice. From all such considerations it appears that ekousiwv amartanontwn here expresses the same idea as parapesontav (Heb_6:6) and aposthnai apo Yeou zwntov , (Heb_3:12) viz. final obdurate defection from the faith. Further, the previous conditions for the possibility of arriving at such a hopeless state, set forth more at length in vers. 4, 5 of Hebrews 6, are here shortly expressed by meta to mabein thgnwsin thv alhyeiav , which is to be interpreted in the light of the other passage (see note thereon). The consequences of such falling away are differently stated in the two passages. In Heb 6, it was the impossibility of renewal unto repentance; here it is the absence of any further atoning sacrifice; and this in keeping with what has been now proved of the sacrifice of Christ having superseded all others and been "once for all." The drift is that, if this is deliberately rejected after full knowledge of it, no ether is left to have recourse to. Then the immediate mention of "judgment" is in keeping also with the conclusion of Heb 9, (see note on Heb_9:27) and is immediately suggested here by thran of ver. 25. The fire in which that day is to be revealed is a prominent figure both in the Old Testament and the New; regarded as both an assaying and a consuming fire. (cf. especially 1Co_3:13-16) The expression, puro ("zeal, or indignation, of fire"), not only expresses the vehemence of the flame, but also implies the idea of the fire itself being instinct with the Divine wrath or jealousy (as zhlov , equivalent to hagqi, is usually translated when attributed to God), of which it is the symbol. (cf. Psa_79:5, Ekkauyhsetai wv pur o zhlov mou : Eze_38:19, O zhlov mou en puri thv orghv mou : Zep_1:18, En puri zhlou autou : and infrA,Heb_12:29, "Our God is a consuming fire") (For esyiein mellontov tououv , cf. Isa_26:11, Zhlov lhqetai laodeuton kai nun pur tououv edetai))
Vers. 26-31. The guilt and doom of apostasy.
This is a terrible passage even to read. It is fitted to fill with alarm the hearts of those who refuse to "draw near" to God, or confess his Name, or hold communion with his people. It is introduced here, like the similar warning in Heb_6:4-8, as a motive to Christian steadfastness.
I THE GUILT OF APOSTASY. This tremendous sin is described:
1. Generally. (Ver. 26.) The context shows that to sin willfully" refers neither to any isolated act of apostasy, nor to any other peculiarly heinous transgression, but to the specific sin of finally abandoning Christianity. The question here is not about the destiny of the millions of heathendom, who have never heard the gospel. The Bible does not encourage curiosity regarding them. The sin spoken of is that of the man who had- received the knowledge of the truth," and who has rejected the gospel after having perceived its beauty, realized its suitableness, and in some degree experienced its power.
2. More particularly. (Ver. 29.) Saving knowledge centers in the revelation of the three Persons of the Godhead, who are seen in the gospel working together to accomplish our redemption. So the apostate is described by his conduct towards each.
(1) Towards the Father. He "hath trodden underfoot the Son of God." We can know and approach the Father only through the Son; and, therefore, "whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father". (1Jn_2:23)
(2) Towards the Savior. The apostate tramples upon him, and "counts his blood an unholy thing." The blood of Jesus must be either on the heart or under the heel. But the apostate persistently despises the new covenant. He treats its Divine Mediator as if he were a malefactor. He treads underfoot the precious cleansing blood, as if it were worthless and unclean.
(3) Towards the Spirit. He "hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace." To act thus is to deny to the Holy Ghost the reverence and adoration which are his due. It is obstinately and maliciously to reject him. It is to treat him with contempt, and thereby "grieve" him away for ever from the soul. Persistently to despise the Spirit of God is to commit the unpardonable sin.
II THE DOOM OF APOSTASY. An awful punishment shall descend upon those who sin away their souls, after rejoicing for a season in the light and love of Christ. The fearful penalty of their guilt is represented here in different aspects.
1. Negatively. (Ver. 26.) "There remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins." Those Hebrews, in professing Christianity, had renounced the Levitical sacrifices. But, should they now reject the propitiation of Christ the only possible means by which God"s justice can be satisfied and man"s guilt cancelled what would such rejection entail? It would follow, first of all, that the guilt of their ordinary sins against the Divine Law would remain unpardoned, and that even on that ground they must certainly perish.
2. Positively. (Ver. 27.) It would also follow that the guilt of their special sin of apostasy would bring upon them a heavier penalty than that which shall overtake the other "adversaries" of God. This tremendous sin may fill the soul even here with a horror of great darkness. It may destroy happiness by causing scorpion stings of con science. It may cover the horizon of life with vague anticipations of a terrible eternity. And, whether such anticipations be present or not, there remains the devouring "fierceness of fire" itself. Not elemental fire, indeed; but spiritual loss, final reprobation, eternal despair. The apostate shall be shut out forever from the presence of God, and such exclusion is itself the hell of hell.
3. Comparatively. (Vers. 28, 29.) Under the Mosaic Law any Jew who lapsed into idolatry was to be stoned to death, for "transgressing God"s covenant;" and this stern doom was admitted to be just. (Deu_17:2-7) But, asks the apostle, are not apostates from Christianity guilty of a vastly greater sin? and shall they not receive a much more dreadful punishment. He rears the matter to the judgment and conscience of his readers. To reject the gospel is a more heinous crime than to set at naught the Law. To tread underfoot, the eternal Son of God involves more aggravated guilt than to turn away from Moses, who was a merely human messenger. So if the sentence of death for rejecting the old covenant was a righteous arrangement, it is evident that the Divine justice must demand a retribution still more awful for the more terrible sin of apostasy from the new covenant.
III AN ASSERTION OF THE MAJESTY OF GOD"S JUSTICE. (Vers. 30, 31.) "We know him." The gospel itself has revealed to us his infinite power, his inflexible justice, his spotless holiness, his absolute faithfulness. We know that he has said, "Vengeance belongeth unto me," and "The Lord shall judge his people". (Deu_32:35, Deu_32:36) We know his prerogative as the Governor of the universe. We know that the principle of retribution belongs to his moral nature. And we know that he defends and. saves his people by punishing their enemies. Our nineteenth century, no less than the first century, stands greatly in need of faithful teaching on the subject of retribution, both as a principle of moral law and as a doctrine of Christianity. For:
1. The spirit of the time tempts everywhere to a life of self-indulgence, rather than to the Christian life of self-denial. And habits of self-pleasing tend to bring a man to the edge of the inclined plane which slopes towards the abyss of apostasy. "He that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.
2. The spirit of the time tempts even true believers to misconceive the nature of the Christian life. Many speak as if after their conversion they should have no experience whatever of spiritual unrest. They forget that it is not "the primrose way" that leads to glory; and that, while the new life begins with an Eden and ends with heaven, "the great tribulation" comes between. The passage before us, in warning of the apostate"s sin and doom, reminds us of the difficulties of the Christian life.
3. The spirit of the time labors to thrust into the background the doctrine of retributive justice. But this great principle is found everywhere: in nature, in providence, in history, in systems of civil government, in the human mind and conscience, in the spiritual experience of believers, and in the inspired Word of God. The justice of the Almighty is asserted here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, with peculiar emphasis. Those religious teachers, therefore, incur a terrible responsibility who try to persuade their fellow-sinners that it is by no means such "a fearful thing" after all "to fall into the hands of the living God." The Lord Jesus Christ has not sent any such message. Rather, he has solemnly warned us to "fear him". (Luk_12:5) And, if men do not fear the living God, whom will they fear?
Vers. 26-29. The darkest sin and the most dreadful doom. "For if we sin willfully after that we have received," etc. These solemn words set before us
I A SIN OF THE GREATEST ENORMITY. TO obtain a correct view of the dark sin which is here depicted, let us notice:
1. The spiritual experience which preceded the sin. Two clauses of our text set forth a personal experience of genuine religion. "After that we have received the knowledge of the truth." The word which is translated "knowledge epignwsiv as Delitzsch points out, cannot mean an unreal or false knowledge, but a genuine and intelligent apprehension of the truth. "The sacred writer, therefore, clearly intimates by the very choice of the word that it is not a mere outward and historical knowledge of which he is here speaking, but an inward, quickening, believing apprehension of revealed truth." (Heb_6:4-8) "The blood... wherewith he was sanctified." In the case supposed the man "had advanced so far in the reality of the spiritual life, that this blood had been really applied to his heart by faith, and its hallowing and purifying, effects were visible in his life (Alford).
2. The character of the sin itself. The sin is apostasy from Christianity, after having personally experienced its power and preciousness. But see how it is here sketched.
(1) Contemptuous rejection of the Divine Redeemer. "Hath trodden underfoot the Son of God." The expression does not simply mean to cast a thing away as useless, which is afterwards carelessly trampled on by men; (Mat_5:13) but a deliberate, scornful, bitter treading down of a thing. So terribly wicked is the rejection of the Son of God which our text sets forth.
(2) Profanation of the sacrificial blood of the Savior. "Hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing." The blood of sacrifices offered under the Law was regarded as sacred, and as having cleansing power. (Lev_16:19) How much more really and more intensely holy must the blood of Christ be! (Heb_9:13, Heb_9:14) To regard this blood as common, or as the blood of an ordinary man, was not only a degradation of the most sacred thing, but also an admission that Jesus was deservedly put to death; for if his was the common blood of a mere man, he was a blasphemer, and according to the Jewish Law deserved death.
(3) Insultation of the Holy Spirit. "And hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace;" or, "insulted the Spirit of grace." The expression designates the Holy Spirit as the Source of grace, and leads us to think of him as a living and loving Person. "To contemn or do despite to this Holy Spirit is to blaspheme the whole work of grace of which one has once been the subject, and to exhibit it as a deception and a lie. It is profanely to contradict the very truth of God, and draw down a vengeance which cannot fail" (Delitzsch).
3. The aggravations of the sire. The preceding experience of the blessings of Christianity sorely aggravates so bitter an apostasy from it. But the sin is further aggravated by the willfulness, deliberateness, and continuousness with which it is committed. "The sin here spoken of is not a momentary or short-lived aberration, from which the infirm but sincere believer is speedily recalled by the convictions of the Spirit, but one willfully persisted in." "If we sin willfully." Moreover, it is not an act or acts of willful sin committed once, or more than once, and then repented of, which is here set forth; but a continuous condition of sin. The use of the present participle amartanontwn perseverance and continuance in apostasy." It is not a case of ordinary religious backsliding or declension from Christ; for then there would be some hope of repentance and encouragement to repent. (Jer_3:14 Hos_14:4) It is a case of willful, deliberate, contemptuous, persistent rejection of Christ and of Christianity, after having known his truth and experienced his grace.
II A PUNISHMENT OF THE MOST TERRIBLE SEVERITY.
1. The utter loss of the hope of spiritual reformation. "There remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins." The sacrifices of Judaism to which, in the case supposed, the apostate returns have no power to take away sins. The efficacy of the sacrifice of the Savior has not been exhausted by him, but he has deliberately and scornfully rejected it, so that for him it has no longer any atoning or saving power. And no other exists for him, or will be provided for him. When a man willfully, contemptuously, and persistently rejects the only sacrifice through which salvation may be attained, what hope can there be for him of forgiveness and spiritual renewal?
2. The dreadful anticipation of an awful judgment. "There remaineth a certain fearful expectation of judgment." The apostate looks forward with dismay, and even with terror at times, to the approaching judgment and the righteous retributions which will follow. His punishment is already begun in his alarming anticipations of the dread penalties awaiting him hereafter.
3. The infliction of a punishment worse than death. "A fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. A man that hath set at naught Moses" Law dieth without compassion," etc. If an Israelite apostatized from Jehovah to idolatry, when "two witnesses or three witnesses" testified against him, he was to be stoned to death. (Deu_17:2-7) If one sought to seduce another to idolatry, the person so tempted was to take the lead in stoning the tempter to death, even though the tempter was the nearest and dearest relative, or a friend beloved as his own soul. (Deu_13:1-11) But for the apostate from Christ there is a "much sorer punishment" than the death of the body by stoning. The severity of the punishment will be in proportion to the clearness of the light and the richness of the grace and the preciousness of the privileges rejected by the apostate. "The wrath of God burns as hotly as his love, and strikes no less surely than justly." Yet it seems to us that nothing in the punishment of the apostate can be darker or more terrible than this, that for him "there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins." "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. W.J.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv26, 28, 30, 31 If we sin wilfully
Heb_10:26-27
If we sin wilfully
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Apostasy
I.
THE PREVIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES ESSENTIAL TO THE COMMISSION OF APOSTASY.
1. An accurate and extended acquaintance with the disclosures of the gospel.
2. A decided conviction of the truth and authority of the gospel.
3. A partial experience of the power and excellence of the gospel.
4. A distinct and open profession of the gospel.
II. THE PECULIAR FEELING INVOLVED IN THE COMMISSION OF APOSTASY. It must be done wilfully.
1. From sin committed through want of due information and conviction.
2. From sin committed through hasty inconsideration.
3. From sin committed through powerful and unexpected temptation.
4. From the occasional falls of the true believer, which are subsequently followed by deep, and perhaps speedy repentance. Apostasy is not one act of sin, but a continued state of mind and conduct. It is a falling away, persevered in to the close of life, and issuing in a state of hopeless wretchedness.
III. THE AWFUL CONSEQUENCES RESULTING FROM THE COMMISSION OF APOSTASY.
1. It occasions a necessary exclusion from the attainment of mercy.
2. It induces a terrifying apprehension of coming wrath. (Essex Remembrancer.)
Left without a sin-offering:
For those that abandon their Christian profession--sin wilfully after that they have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. They could not return to the temple, and plead with God for mercy over the offerings which their fathers had presented to Him. The old covenant had passed away. Its priests had lost their consecration. Its altars had lost their sanctity. Its sacrifices had lost their power with God. There was now only one atonement for sin which God would regard; and if they turned away from that, there was nothing for them but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. For a Jew to be left with all his sins upon him, and no sin-offering by which to invoke the Divine pardon, was for him to be condemned to intolerable despair. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
The danger of apostasy
1. The apostle is net here speaking of the common infirmities which may attend the godly, but of wilful transgressions; or, as David calls them, presumptuous sins, from which he prayed to be delivered (Psa_19:13).
2. Neither are sins of ignorance intended, but such as are against light and strong conviction. To sin against knowledge is one of the greatest aggravations, and that which leads on to perdition.
3. The text speaks not of sins in general, though knowingly or presumptuously committed, but of some sin in particular, and such as excludes from the hope of salvation. Now this appears to be no other than an absolute and entire rejection of the truth which had been professedly received. Those who cast the Son of God from His throne must expect that He will cast them into hell. They divest Him of His glory, and He will cover them with disgrace.
I. THE DEATH OF CHRIST WAS A REAL AND PROPER SACRIFICE FOR SIN. The sacrifices under the law were figurative: this was real and effectual. They were shadows: this was the substance.
II. THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THE ONLY SACRIFICE FOR SIN.
III. THOSE WHO REJECT THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST ARE LEFT WITHOUT HOPE.
1. If Christ became a sacrifice, this will account for the treatment He met with both from the hands of God and man.
2. If the death of Christ be the only sacrifice for sins, let us not only hold fast this doctrine, but actually build upon it as the foundation of all our hopes and comfort.
3. As the passage which we have now considered speaks terror to these who either never embraced the doctrine of Christs atoning sacrifice, or who have shamefully apostatised from it, so it speaks terror to them only. Such indeed are running a dreadful risk of unpardoned guilt and Divine displeasure, and it behoves them to take warning. But let those who put their trust in Christ crucified, and who know no other hope, rejoice and be exceeding glad; for He is able to keep that which they commit unto Him until that day. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
The knowledge of the truth
Receiving the truth
1. By the truth is meant the true, pure and most certain doctrine of the gospel concerning Christ already come, faith and salvation. This is called truth because it is true, and most eminently and infallibly true, which is noways in anything false and erroneous, as being at first immediately revealed from God, the God of truth. It is called also the truth by way of eminency, as the most excellent truth revealed for mans eternal happiness.
2. Truth may be truth, and yet not known to any man or angel, and the truth was first known only unto God; yet it pleased Him, out of His great mercy, to reveal His mind to man, and in particular this truth of the gospel by Christ and His apostles, who made it known unto others, who by that means came to know it. This knowledge was not mathematical, physical, political, or metaphysical, as some use to speak, but theological and Divine, and a light above the light of nature. The word may signify not only knowledge, but acknowledgment of this truth, by a full assent upon conviction. And this might be caused, not only by outward revelation, information, and miracles, but also by the illumination o! the Spirit, and supernatural gifts for God goes far with man, and doth much to save him: He many times penetrates his inward parts, and by His Divine light and power enters into his very heart, and all this to convert him.
3. They received this knowledge. God did not only offer it, but give it, which He might be properly said to do when they received it. They had it not by nature; for it is far above the natural man. They acquired it, but not by their own power and industry; neither did they merit it. Yet in this receiving they were not merely passive, yet passive because they could be active. God must do something without man, before he can actively receive, He must prevent him by revelation and information without, and by illumination and operation within, and this done, man may be active. For, to receive it is certainly an act not only of the understanding which assents, but of the will which approves. So that he both wittingly and willingly receives, and that with some delight, and proceeds to profession, and continues for a while to believe, approve, profess. Though this receiving of knowledge may seem only to be acknowledgment, yet it is something more. Truth is opposed to error, knowledge to ignorance, acknowledgment to dissent, approbation to rejection of this truth. (G. Lawson.)
Fearful looking for of judgment
Fiery judgment
I. The word judgment may inform us that this justice is not legislative, but judicial; and, as judicial, not remunerative, but vindictive, which presupposeth crime and guilt in the party to be judged. This judgment is the decree of condemnation which determines the penalty: and to signify how dreadful it is, it is said, metaphorically, to be fiery indignation. The words may be translated, the heat, or boiling, or burning of fire; that is fiery heat. By these terms the Spirit informs us of Gods high displeasure against apostasy, and the severity of His justice, whereby He is resolved most fearfully to punish that sin, which is not barely a disobedience of some particular law, but a plain revolt.
II. The parties that must suffer are adversaries: adversaries are apostates, who are not merely disobedient subjects, but revolters.
III. There remains a certain fearful looking for of this judgment.
1. Though they never fear it, nor think of it, yet they are obnoxious to it.
2. This will certainly be their doom; and as they are obnoxious by law, they shall certainly suffer that which they have deserved.
3. If they ever seriously reflect upon themselves, and remember what they have done; as conscience will now and then lash them, and mind them of their crime, they must needs expect it, and their fear will be very great. For as they apprehend the peril, so will their fear be; and they cannot apprehend the judgment, but as very grievous, pressing hard upon them, and unavoidable, and so it will torment them before the time of execution. (G. Lawson.)
Foreboding of the judgment day:
Traverse the earth--enter the gorgeous cities of idolatry, or accept the hospitality of its wandering tribes--go where will-worship is most fantastic, and superstition most gross--and you will find in man a fearful looking for of judgment. The mythology of their Nemesis may vary--their Elysium and the Tartarus may be differently depicted--the Metempsychosis may be the passage of bliss and woe--still the fact is only confirmed by the diversity of the forms in which it is presented. (R. W. Hamilton.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv26–31 26–31. For if we sin wilfully. Deliberately trample under…
26–31. For if we sin wilfully. Deliberately trample under foot Christ's will; apostasize from the faith in life. Remaineth no more sacrifice. We have, in that case, rejected Christ, the only sacrifice for sin.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v26 Heb_10:26. Sin wilfully.—Such sins contrast with sins of ignorance,…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Heb_10:26. Sin wilfully.—Such sins contrast with sins of ignorance, frailty, and error. Involving the will, they put men outside the influence of remedial or recovering agencies. No more sacrifice for sins.—Lit. “no sacrifice for sins is any longer left to them.” They wilfully reject that, and there is no other for them. It is distinctly assumed that the man keeps in this wilful mind. If he comes to a better mind, he comes within the range of the sacrifice that has been provided. “The writer does not say that they have exhausted the infinite mercy of God, nor can we justly assert that he held such a conclusion; he only says that they have, so long as they continue in such a state, put themselves out of God’s covenant, and that there are no other covenanted means of grace.”
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Heb_10:27. Fiery indignation.—R.V. “a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire.” Lit. “a jealousy of fire.” The Hebrew suggests “vehement displeasure.” Compare Heb_12:29; Psa_79:5. Devour the adversaries.—Not sinners generally, but specifically the impenitent Jews and the wilful apostates from the Christian faith, “All who oppose themselves to the character, claims, and kingdom of Christ.” Farrar’s hint concerning the limitation of this threatening deserves careful consideration: “It is at least doubtful whether the writer meant to imply anything beyond that prophecy of doom to the heirs of the old covenant which was fulfilled a few years later, when the fire of God’s wrath consumed the whole system of a Judaism which had rejected its own Messiah.”
Heb_10:29. Punishment.—Here the word used (τιμωρίας) means “vengeance,” or “retribution.” “Vindictive punishment can only be attributed to God by the figure of speech known as anthropopathy, i.e. the representation of God by metaphors drawn from human passions.” Trodden underfoot.—A strong figure taken from our way of treating a thing that we despise. Blood of the covenant.—See Heb_13:20. Done despite unto.—Openly insulted; ἐνυβρίσας, only here in New Testament; treating with spite, malignity, or contempt. Spirit of grace.—The Spirit who bestows grace, i.e. gospel favours and privileges. It is not, however, quite clear that the Holy Ghost is referred to.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_10:26-31
The Judgment of the Wilful.—If others remind the Jewish Christians of the authority, inspiration, and value of the Mosaic ceremonial system, this writer will remind them of the solemn sanctions of that system. If he has proved to them that the dispensation of which Christ is the head is in every way superior, it follows that the sanctions will be found altogether more searching and severe.
I. The sanctions of the Jewish dispensation (Heb_10:28).—Moses’ law was most considerate and merciful in dealing with sins of frailty, lapses through inadvertence, weakness, and ignorance. Its rites and ceremonies provided for all kinds of sin arising out of human infirmities. Its severity is often dwelt on; its mercifulness is far more remarkable than its severity. But for wilful sin based on knowledge that what was done was sin it had no sacrifice. Let it be fully proved by witnesses that a man has wilfully done what he knew to be sin, and then he is recognised as a man who has set at nought Moses’ law, and he must die without compassion. Every care must, however, be taken to ensure that the man’s wrong was persistently wilful, and that it was intelligently wilful, being based on knowledge. It is necessary to press this point very closely, because upon it the comparison of this paragraph depends.
II. The sanctions of the spiritual dispensation.—Merciful in all matters of frailty, it also is severe, with a yet intenser severity, in all matters of wilfulness upon and after knowledge and experience. Lapses or slidings from the faith in Christ are not dealt with here, but wilful departures from the faith after having confessed it. Apostasy which implies resolute wilfulness is here indicated. “If we sin wilfully, after that we have received the knowledge of the truth.” In the passage four things are presented for our consideration:
1. The true significance of such wilful apostasy. It might seem only giving up one particular phase of religion, and falling back upon an older. It might be represented as a loosening of hold on the uncertain, and gripping tight that which had been the confidence of men through long ages. But all such representations only obscured the solemn truth, and confirmed men in their wrong-doing. See the wilful departure from Christ aright, and it has a most terrible threefold significance, which the writer does indeed present in the line of Old Testament figures and associations, but which readily impress their solemnity on every heart. It really is such an insult to Christ, as
(1) would be involved in treading underfoot the Son of God. It is such an awful meanness as
(2) counting the blood of the covenant, by which the man was sealed over to Christ for ever, a thing to be lightly trifled with—an unholy thing. It is even
(3) doing despite unto the Spirit of grace. In the common associations of men it is thought an insulting thing for a man to throw up his membership. What must it be to apostatise from Christ, after a man has professed to have obtained through Him eternal salvation?
2. The hoplessness of such apostasy regarded as a moral condition. For it should be clearly seen that no merely intellectual doubting is here dealt with. The apostasy is a settled feeling of the heart, and a resolute determination of the will. It is a hopeless moral state, which may find expression in a specific act. It is hopeless because it is immoral. The bringing of further proofs may persuade the intellect; but if the sacrifice of Christ has made its persuasions of the heart and the will, and then that persuasion is put away, refused, and resisted, it is plain that that sacrifice can no longer be used as persuasion; and there is no other, no higher moral force that can be exerted upon the man; and so his case has become necessarily a hopeless one—unshielded the man stands exposed to the full blasts of the Divine indignation. “There remaineth no more a sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries.”
3. The punishment of such apostasy which is inevitable. He who ventures outside the shelter stands exposed to the storm. Figures alone, such as that of fire, can convey to human minds fitting ideas of Divine indignation and wrath. All punishment is necessarily relative to the being punished; and we have to realise what punishment of a spiritual being, such as man is, may possibly be. Scripture uses two words, both of which are of awful significance—“eternal punishment,” and “eternal death.”
4. The warning which the possibility of such apostasy should prove to those who are exposed to malign influences and subtle temptations. Take heed lest you yield even a step; it may be putting your foot upon a slide, and before you are aware you may have drifted away. See how “fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God,” as you must if you are found outside that shelter and resting-place which you have in Christ. Hold fast your profession. Help one another to hold fast. For Christ’s sake, for your own sake, for each other’s sake, hold fast.
Note on “sinning wilfully.”—The word “wilfully” stands in contrast with sins of weakness, ignorance, and error. If the writer meant to say that, after the commission of heinous and wilful sins, “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,” this would not only be the most terrible passage in Scripture, but would do away with the very object of redemption, and the possibility of any forgiveness of sins. It would, as Kurtz says, “be in its consequences truly subversive and destructive of the whole Christian soteriology.” But the meaning rather is, “if we are willing sinners,” “if we are in a state of deliberate and voluntary defiance to the will of God.” He is alluding not only to those sins which the Jews described as being committed presumptuously “with uplifted hand” (Num_15:30; Psa_19:13—see Heb_6:4-8, Heb_12:16-17), but to the deliberate continuity of such sins as a self-chosen law of life; as, for instance, when a man has closed against himself the door of repentance, and said, “Evil, be thou my good.” Such a state is glanced at in 2Pe_2:20; Mat_12:43-45.—Farrar.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Heb_10:26. No other Sacrifice.—There remaineth no longer a sacrifice for sins, so far as they are concerned, because that offering of Jesus which they deliberately reject has abolished all the earlier sacrifices. The observances and ceremonies of Judaism, which had been full of meaning while they pointed to Him that was to come, have lost all their virtue through His coming. Nay more, for such sin as this, the sin of knowing and wilful rejection of the only Sin-offering, God has provided no other sacrifice.—Dr. Moulton.
Apostasy is Perdition.—If you make defection from Christianity, and renounce your hope and trust in the atoning sacrifice of Christ, no other is provided, or can be provided, for you—no other makes real atonement for sin; this being renounced, therefore, your case is desperate. The sacrifice under the new covenant is never, like the Jewish offerings, to be repeated. Apostasy from your present religion, then, is final perdition.—Moses Stuart.
No Sacrifice for Some Sins.—There were some sins under the law for which no sacrifices were provided; but yet if those who committed them did truly repent, though they might not escape temporal death, they might escape eternal destruction; for Christ would come, and make atonement.—Matthew Henry.
Only One Atoning Sacrifice.—They have rejected the work of Christ, and it cannot be done for them over again. There is one atoning sacrifice, and that they have repudiated. He does not say that they have exhausted the infinite mercy of God, nor can we justly assert that he held such a conclusion; he only says that they have, so long as they continue in such a state, put themselves out of God’s covenant, and that there are no other covenanted means of grace. For they have trampled underfoot the offer of mercy in Christ, and there is nosalvation in any other (Act_4:12).—Farrar.
Falling from Grace.—He only who stands high can fall low. A lively reference in the soul to what is good is necessary, in order to be thoroughly wicked; hence man can be more reprobate than the beasts, and the apostate angels than apostate man.—Tholuck.
Heb_10:30. God the Hater of Sin.—God stands between the right and the wrong, not looking pleasant on the one and equally pleasant on the other; not looking as the sun looks, with a benignant face on the evil and on the good; and not as man looks, with only a less benignant face upon the evil. He stands with all the fervour of His infinite love and all the majesty of His unlimited power,—approving good, and legislating for it on the one side; and disapproving evil, and abhorring it, and legislating it down to the dust, and beneath the dust, into infamy and eternal penalty on the other side. And if there be one truth that speaks throughout the Bible like the voice of God, and resounds with all the grandeur of Divine intonation, it is the truth that God does not look with an equal eye upon the evil and the good, that He is a discriminator of character, a lover of that which is right, and a hater of that which is wrong.—H. Ward Beecher.
Vengeance.—To our minds this word conveys a meaning which makes it unsuitable for application to God. It is hardly possible for us to separate personal feeling, and unrestrained passion, from it. The Bible idea of the term is best understood by thinking of the family goël, avenger, or as it is in Numbers 35, revenger of blood. That family revenger took vengeance; he was bound to take vengeance; but he imported no personal feeling into his vindication of outraged family sanctities. Vengeance was the solemn duty of his position, office, and relation. With such an association we may rightly conceive of vengeance as applied to God.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 10
Heb_10:27. Fear of the Judgment.—Jerome used to say, that it seemed to him as if the trumpet of the last day was always sounding in his ear, saying, “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.” The generality, however, think but little of this awful and important period. A Christian king of Hungary being very sad and pensive, his brother, who was a gay courtier, was desirous of knowing the cause of his sadness. “Oh, brother,” said the king, “I have been a great sinner against God, and know not how to die, or how to appear before God in judgment.” His brother, making a jest of it, said, “These are but melancholy thoughts.” The king made no reply; but it was the custom of the country, that if the executioner came and sounded a trumpet before any man’s door, he was presently led to execution. The king, in the dead of the night, sent the executioner to sound the trumpet before his brother’s door; who, hearing it, and seeing the messenger of death, sprang into the king’s presence, beseeching to know in what he had offended. “Alas! brother,” said the king, “you have never offended me. And is the sight of my executioner so dreadful? and shall not I, who have greatly offended, fear to be brought before the judgment-seat of Christ?”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v26 26... “Perfect knowledge of the truth.” The Greek here…
ARGUMENT 12
ADMONITORY OF HOPELESS COLLAPSE.
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26... “Perfect knowledge of the truth.” The Greek here is epignoosi, which means sanctification, whereas gnoosis is regeneration.
27. This verse is alarming in the extreme, setting forth the hopeless doom of the apostate.
28, 29. Here the doom of the apostate far transcends that of the malefactor under the law of Moses whose penalty was death, “having trodden under foot the Son of God and counted the blood of the covenant with which He was sanctified common, and insulted the Spirit of grace.”
30, 31. These verses set forth the appalling doom of the hopeless apostate having fallen into the hands of an infinitely just and holy God, with no Christ to intercede for him. This paragraph, and Heb 10:26-31, vividly describes the hopeless doom of the Palestinian Christian who repudiates Christ and apostatizes to Judaism. The rank and file of the Jewish church, with their pastors and official members, unfortunately rejected Christ, endorsed His crucifixion as a malefactor, plunged into idolatry and hastened to their awful doom of destruction and slavery under the invasion of the Roman armies which followed the writing of this letter in a few years. A most powerful combination of social, ecclesiastical and consanguineous influences were brought to bear on the Palestinian Christians to lead them into this awful apostasy with their Jewish brethren. Where your English says, “counted the blood of Christ an unholy thing,” the Greek says “common.” Whereas, the Palestinian Christians had trusted the blood of Jesus to sanctify them, their brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, influential friends and relatives, church-members and pastors, ridiculed them, certifying that Jesus was nothing but a sinner like other men, and that instead of His blood possessing saving virtue, it was nothing but common blood, like that which dropped down from the wounds of the two thieves on either side of Him, and that it was the silliest chimera to think that the blood of Jesus could wash away their sins. Now see the meaning of this paragraph. Here are the sanctified Palestinian Christians, trusting the blood of Jesus to cleanse them from all unrighteousness and keep them clean. Now suppose they yielded to the clamorous criticisms and terrible persecutions of their Jewish brethren, and gave up the Christhood of Jesus, acquiescing in the popular verdict of the Jewish Church, that He was nothing but a wicked impostor, utterly powerless to save, and that His blood was simply crimson blood like that of any other man. You see how in the very nature of the case there is no possibility of their salvation, since they have rejected the only Savior of the world. In their attitude there is nothing for them but hopeless damnation, since there is “no other sacrifice for sin.” Doubtless you see the application of this awful paragraph to the Hebrew Christians who utterly reject Christ and conclude, with their Jewish comrades, that He is an impostor. But how does it apply to the Apostolic Christians of the present day? Precisely as it applied to the fallen Hebrews. If we repudiate the Christhood of Jesus, recognizing Him as an impostor, and His blood nothing but “common” human blood, utterly destitute of all saving efficacy, we are certainly at the end of our row, hopelessly doomed to damnation, “since there is no longer a sacrifice for sins,” as we have rejected the only one God ever made. You see from this Scripture how utterly inconsistent it is to conclude that an ordinary backslider out of the sanctified experience can never be reclaimed and sanctified. If such au one repudiate the Christhood of Jesus, and then turn infidel, of course there is no reclamation. But did you ever know a case of the kind? I never did. Backsliders, as a rule, believe in the Christhood of Jesus as much as they ever did. They have simply inadvertently fallen away through unwatchfulness. In an evil hour Satan has dropped his lasso around head, hand or foot, or perhaps the whole body, and dragged them away into sin. Since they have not rejected the Christhood of Jesus, nor counted His blood “common,” they still have access to the mercy-seat, through the intercession of the blessed atoning Savior, who pleads for them at God’s right hand. The conclusion that an apostate from the sanctified experience who still believes in the Christhood of Jesus can not be restored to sanctification and eternally saved in heaven, is in no way deducible from this paragraph. If you will let it alone where the Holy Ghost has put it you will have no trouble with it.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v30
Hebrews
HOW TO OWN OURSELVES
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Heb 10:30
THE writer uses a somewhat uncommon word in this clause, which is not altogether adequately represented by the translation ‘saving.’ Its true force will be apparent by comparing one or two of the few instances in which it occurs in the New Testament. For example, it is twice employed in the Epistles to the Thessalonians; in one case being rendered, ‘God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain’ {or, more correctly, to the obtaining of} ‘salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ’; and in another, ‘called to the obtaining of glory through Jesus Christ.’ It is employed twice besides in two other places of Scripture, and in both of these it means ‘possession.’ So that, though practically equivalent to the idea of salvation, there is a very beautiful shade of difference which is well worth noticing.
The thought of the text is substantially this - those who believe win their souls; they acquire them for their possession. We talk colloquially about ‘people that cannot call their souls their own.’ That is a very true description of all men who are not lords of themselves through faith in Jesus Christ. ‘They who believe to the gaining of their own souls’ is the meaning of the writer here.
And I almost think that we may trace in this peculiar expression an allusion, somewhat veiled but real, to similar words of our Lord’s. For He said, when, like the writer in the present context, He was encouraging His disciples to steadfastness in the face of difficulties and persecutions, ‘In your patience’ - in your persistent adherence to Me, whatever might draw you away, - ‘ye shall win’ - not merely possess, as our Bible has it, and not a commandment, but a promise - ‘in your patience ye shall win your souls.’ Whether that allusion be sustainable or no matters comparatively little; it is the significant and beautiful thought which underlies the word to which I wish to turn, and to present you with some illustrations of it.
I. First, then, if we lose ourselves we win ourselves.
All men admit in theory that a self-centred life is a blunder. Jesus Christ has all moralists and all thoughtful men wholly with Him when He says, ‘He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life shall find it.’ There is no such way of filling a soul with enlargement and blessedness and of evolving new powers and capacities as self-oblivion for some great cause, for some great love, for some great enthusiasm. Many a woman has found herself when she held her child in her arms, and in the self-oblivion which comes from maternal affections and cares has sprung into a loftier new life. Many a heart, of husband and wife, can set its seal to this truth, that the blessedness of love is that it decentralises the soul, and substitutes another aim for the wretched and narrow one that is involved in self-seeking. And even if we do not refer to these sacred heights of maternal or of wedded love, there are many other noble counterpoises to the do-grading influence of self- absorption, which all men recognise and some men practise. Whoever has once tasted the joy and rapture of flinging himself into some great enthusiasm, and has known how much fuller life is when so inspired than in its ordinary forms, needs no words to convince him that the secret of blessedness, elevation, and power, if it is to be put into one great word, must be put into this one, ‘self-oblivion.’
But whilst all these counterpoises to the love of self are, in their measure and degree, great and noble and blessed, not one of them, nor all of them put together, will so break the fetters from off a prisoned soul and let it out into the large place of utter and glad self-oblivion as the course which our text enjoins upon us when it says: If you wish to forget yourselves, to abandon and lose yourselves, fling yourselves into Christ’s arms, and by faith yield your whole being, will, trust, purposes, aims, everything - yield them all to Him; and when you can say, ‘We are not our own,’ then first will you belong to yourselves and have won your own souls.
There is nothing except that absolute departure from all reliance upon our own poor powers, and from all making of ourselves our centre and aim in life, which gives us true possession of ourselves. Nothing else is comparable to the talismanic power of trust in Jesus Christ. When thus we lose ourselves in Him we find ourselves, and find Him in ourselves.
I believe that, at bottom, a life must either spin round on its own axis, self- centred and self-moved, or else it must be drawn by the mass and weight and mystical attractiveness of the great central sun, and swept clean out of its own little path to become a satellite round Him. Then only will it move in music and beauty, and flash back the lustre of an unfading light. Self or God, one or other will be the centre of every human life.
It is well to be touched with lofty enthusiasms; it is well to conquer self in the eager pursuit of some great thought or large subject of study; it is well to conquer self in the sweetness of domestic love; but through all these there may run a perverting and polluting reference to myself. Affection may become but a subtle prolongation of myself, and study and thought may likewise be tainted, and even in the enthusiasm for a great cause there may mingle much of self-regard; and on the whole there is nothing that will sweep out, and keep out, the seven devils of selfishness except to yield yourselves to God, drawn by His mercies, and say, ‘I am not my own; I am bought with a price.’ Then, and only then, will you belong to yourselves.
II. Secondly it we will take Christ for our Lord we shall be lords of our own souls.
I have said that self-surrender is self-possession. It is equally true that self- control is self-possession; and it is as true about this application of my text as it was about the former, that Christianity only says more emphatically what moralists say, and suggests and supplies a more efficient means of accomplishing the end which they all recognise as good. For everybody knows that the man who is a slave to his own passions, lusts, or desire is not his own master. And everybody knows that the man who is the sport of circumstance, and yields to every temptation that comes sweeping round him, as bamboos bend before every blast; or the man who is guided by fashion, conventionality, custom, and the influence of the men amongst whom he lives, and whom he calls ‘the world,’ is not his own master. He ‘dare not call his soul his own.’
What do we mean by being self-possessed, except this, that we can so rule our more fluctuating and sensitive parts as that, notwithstanding appeals made to them By external circumstances, they do not necessarily yield to these? He possesses himself who, in the face of antagonism, can do what is right; who, in the face of temptation, will not do what is wrong; who can dare to be in the right with one or two; and who is not moulded By circumstances, howsoever they may influence him, but reacts upon them as a hammer, and is not as an anvil. And this superiority over the parts of my nature which are meant to be kept down, and this assertion of independent power in the face of circumstances, and this freedom from the dominion of cliques and parties and organs of opinion and loud voices round us, this is best secured in its fulness and completeness by the path which my text suggests.
Trust in Jesus Christ, and let Him be your Commander-in-chief, and you have won your souls. Let Him dominate them, and you can dominate them. If you will give your wills into His hands, He will give them back to you and make you able to subdue your passions and desires. Put the reins into Christ’s hands and say, ‘Here, O Lord, guide Thou the horses and the chariot, for I cannot coerce them, but Thou canst.’ Then He will come and bring a new ally in the field, and cast a new weight into the scale, and you will no longer be the slave of the servile and inferior parts of your nature; nor be kicked about, the football of circumstances; nor be the echo of some other body’s views, but you will have a voice of your own, and a will of your own, and a soul of your own, because you have given them to Christ, and He will help you to control them. Such a man - and I verily believe, from the bottom of my heart, such a man only - in the fullest sense, is
‘Free from slavish bands,
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, yet hath all.’
What does some little rajah, on the edge of our great Indian Empire, do when troubled with rebels whom he cannot subdue? He goes and makes himself a feudatory of the great central power at Calcutta, and then down comes a regiment or two, and makes very short work of the rebellion that the little kinglet could do nothing with. If you go to Christ and say to Him, ‘Dear Lord, I take my crown from my head and lay it at Thy feet. Come Thou to help me to rule this anarchic realm of my own soul,’ you will win yourself.
III. Thirdly, if we have faith in Christ we acquire a better self.
The thing that most thoughtful men and women feel, after they have gone a little way into life, is not so much that they want to possess themselves, as that they want to get rid of themselves - of all the failures and shame and disappointment and futility of their lives. That desire may be accomplished. We cannot strip ourselves of ourselves by any effort. The bitter old past keeps living on, and leaves with us seeds of weakness and memories that sometimes corrupt, and always enfeeble: memories that seem to limit the possibilities of the future in a tragic fashion. Ah, brethren! we can get rid of ourselves; and, instead of continuing the poor, sin-laden, feeble creatures that we are, we can have pouring into our souls the gift most real -though people nowadays, in their shallow religion, call it mystical - of a new impulse and a new life. The old individuality will remain, but new tastes, new aspirations, aversions, hopes, and capacities to realise them may all be ours, so that ‘if any man be in Christ he is a new creature’; and in barter for the old garment he receives the robe of righteousness. You can lose yourselves, in a very deep and earnest sense, if, trusting in Jesus Christ, you open the door of the heart to the influx of that new life which is His best gift. Faith wins a better self, and we may each experience, in all its fulness and Blessedness, the paradox of the apostle when he said, ‘I live’ now, at last, in triumphant possession of this better life: ‘I live’ now - I only existed before - ‘yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ And with Christ in me I first find myself.
IV. Lastly, if by faith we win our souls here, we save them from destruction hereafter.
I have said that the word of my text is substantially equivalent to the more frequent and common expression ‘salvation’; though with a shade of difference, which I have been trying to bring Out. And this substantial equivalence is more obvious if you will note that the text is the second member of an antithesis of which the first is, ‘we are not of them which draw back into perdition.’
So, then, the writer sets up, as exact opposites of one another, these two ideas - perdition or destruction on the one hand, and the saving or winning of the soul on the other. Therefore, whilst we must give due eight to the considerations which I have already been suggesting, we shall not grasp the whole of the writer’s meaning unless we admit also the thought of the future. And that the same blending of the two ideas, of possession and salvation in the more usual sense of the word, was implied in the Lord’s saying, of which I have suggested there may be an echo here, is plain if you observe that the version in St. Luke gives the text which I have already quoted: ‘In your patience ye shall win your souls’; and that of St. Matthew, in the same connection, gives, instead, the saying, ‘he that endureth’ - which corresponds with patience - ‘he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.’
So, then, brethren, you cannot be said to have won your souls if you are only keeping them for destruction, and such destruction is clearly laid down here as the fate of those who turn away from Jesus Christ.
Now, it seems to me that no fair interpretation can eject from that word ‘perdition,’ or ‘destruction,’ an element of awe and terror. However you may interpret the ruin, it is ruin utter of which it speaks. And I am very much afraid that in this generation eager discussions about the duration of punishment, and the final condition of those who die impenitent, have had a disastrous influence on a great many minds and consciences in reference to this whole subject, by making it rather a subject of controversy than a solemn truth to be pondered. However the controversies be settled, there is terror enough left in that word to make us all bethink ourselves.
I lay it on your hearts, dear friends - it is no business of mine to say much about it, but I lay it on your hearts and on my own; and I beseech you to ponder it. Do not mix it up with wholly independent questions as to what is to become of people who never heard about Jesus Christ. ‘The Judge of all the earth will do right.’ What this verse says applies to people that have heard about Him - that is, to you and me - and to people that do not accept Him - and that is some of us; and about them it says that they ‘draw back unto perdition.’
Now, remember, the alternative applies to each of us. It is a case of ‘either- or’ in regard to us all. If we have taken Christ for our Saviour, and, as I said, put the reins into His hands and given ourselves to Him by love and submission and confidence, then we own our souls, because we have given them to Him to keep, ‘and He is able to keep that which is committed to Him against that day.’
But I am bound to tell you, in the plainest words I can command, that if you have not thus surrendered yourself to Jesus Christ, His sacrifice, His intercession, His quickening Spirit, then I know not where you are to find one foothold of hope that upon you there will not come down the overwhelming fate that is darkly portrayed in that one solemn word.
Oh, brethren! let us all ponder the question, ‘ What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv26, 29 Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
sin
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v26 The sacred writer now supports his admonition by a…
The sacred writer now supports his admonition by a very solemn warning:
v. 26. For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
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v. 27. but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
v. 28. He that despised Moses’ Law died without mercy under two or three witnesses;
v. 29. of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace?
v. 30. For we know Him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge His people.
v. 31. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Here the dreadful result and the final consequence of falling from faith is portrayed with terrible realism: For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge’ of the truth, there no more remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expecting of judgment and of a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. The writer is not speaking of some ordinary transgression of the Ten Commandments, such as even Christians become guilty of every day. He emphasizes that he refers to a willful sin, which consists chiefly in neglecting that to which he has just admonished, namely, that people that have come to the faith do not hold fast the confession of hope without wavering, that they neglect the means of grace, no longer attend church services, or at best very irregularly, and neither apply nor receive brotherly admonition. The denial of Christ is the sin, and the contempt of the means of grace is the road leading thereto. People that become guilty of this sin do so purposely, with deliberate intent, and they go on sinning, they persist in their transgression. Having received the knowledge of the truth, having accepted Jesus Christ and His salvation, such people maliciously and blasphemously deny the accepted facts, the truths of the Gospel. And in their case it holds true that the sacrifice for sins no longer exists for them. The very nature of their sin has this result; for, having denied the expiatory offering of Christ which they had once received in faith, they have discarded the only means of salvation. What they have to expect, therefore, is the terror of the Last Judgment, of the final doom; what they must look forward to is the fury of the fire of hell, which will consume and destroy forever, throughout eternity, the adversaries of the Lord. The intensity of this punishment is such as to make it impossible adequately to portray its fierceness.
The writer makes an attempt to do this by means of an example taken from the story of Moses: Any one that has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses; of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be considered worthy that has trampled on the Son of God and has reckoned the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified a common thing, and has insulted the Spirit of Grace? The readers of the letter were familiar with that provision of the Mosaic code which placed the penalty of death upon the sin of idolatry, Deu 17:2-7. If any person belonging to the children of Israel was found guilty of that sin, as substantiated by the testimony of two or three witnesses, capital punishment was the only punishment which was deemed adequate. For idolatry is essentially denial, a malicious breaking of the covenant existing between God and His people. In such a case, therefore, no distinction was made, there was no respect of persons: death was he penalty. Now the author lets his readers judge for themselves as to an adequate punishment for him that denies the faith in Jesus Christ in the manner here described. In order to show the heinousness of the offense, the blasphemous apostasy is characterized. It consists in trampling the Son of God under foot as a contemptible thing, not worthy of a better treatment. It includes a despising of the blood of the covenant, of the holy, innocent blood of Christ, as something common, of no more value than the blood of any ’human being. It finally goes to the extent of insulting the Spirit of Grace, the same Spirit who, in the means of grace, has given the redemption of Christ, has wrought sanctification in the heart. Such a person deliberately blasphemes. Such is the description of a man’s condition who, after having received the grace of God in conversion, now sins in such a terrible manner, and not only once and under particular provocation, but again and again, with a certain fiendish delight in shocking others by his utter recklessness. Note: There can be no doubt that the author is here describing the sin against the Holy Ghost, which, on account of its peculiar character, is outside of the pale of God’s forgiveness. But mark that he does not accuse any of his readers of having committed the sin, his only object being to warn them lest they do become guilty and be lost forever.
To bring home his warning properly, the sacred writer refers to two passages of the Old Testament: For we know who said, Vengeance is Mine, I will repay; and again, The Lord will judge His people. Terrible it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Deu 32:35-36; Psa 135:14. When God, who is faithful also in keeping His threats, will sit in judgment and execute vengeance, then it will be too late to flee from the wrath to come. Then the knowledge that it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God will no longer be able to turn the condemned person to repentance. If we believers, who are condemned by the Law, but have become partakers of the grace of God through the gift of the Holy Ghost, willfully and maliciously deny the saving truth and grace and blasphemously spurn all offers of salvation, we have no one but ourselves to blame if the terrible vengeance of God strikes us on the last day.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv26, 28, 30 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
The writer now gives his fourth warning.
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we deliberately go on sinning
"we know we are sinning but we do it again and again"
after we have received the knowledge of the truth
Knowledge of the truth is spoken of as if it were an object that could be given by one person to another. AT: "after we have learned the truth" (See: Metaphor)
the truth
The truth about God. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
a sacrifice for sins no longer exists
No one is able to give a new sacrifice because Christ's sacrifice is the only one that works. AT: "no one can offer a sacrifice for which God will forgive our sins" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
a sacrifice for sins
Here "sacrifice for sins" stands for "an effective way to sacrifice animals to take away sins"
of judgment
Of God's judgment, that is, that God will judge. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
a fury of fire that will consume God's enemies
God's fury is spoken of as if it were fire that would burn up his enemies. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
sin
know
true
sacrifice
judge
fire
consume
adversary
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv26, 28, 30 10:26-31 The author interjects a strong warning concerning the…
10:26-31 The author interjects a strong warning concerning the danger of rejecting God’s Son and his authoritative word. The warning challenges hearers to respond with a commitment to follow Christ.
10:26-27 deliberately: Open rebellion against God’s laws was described as “sinning with a high hand” (see study note on Num 15:30-31). Here the author has in mind specifically a rejection of Christ and his work. Christ’s sacrifice for sins has done away with the sacrificial system of the old covenant (Heb 9:11–10:18). If a person rejects the Son’s sacrifice, there is no other sacrifice—nowhere else to go—for forgiveness. A person who rejects Christ can only expect judgment as one of God’s enemies (cp. Isa 26:10-11).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.