I want to stand back and see the structure of Hebrews as we continue our study. The author wraps up the first section with, No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account (4:13). Starting with verse 14, he begins expounding the wonders of Jesus as our High Priest.

From 4:14 to 5:10 he illustrates the qualifications of Jesus in light of the enigmatic character, Melchizedek. After a characteristic interlude of exhortation and warning, he picks up the High Priest motif in 6:13 and continues all the way to 10:25.

Jesus the Son, appointed by God the Father as High Priest, is a major theme for the author of Hebrews.

Interestingly, the author splices 5:11 through 6:12 between these two sections. Let’s take a closer look at what is going on here.

• First, this interlude is an exhortation and warning about perseverance.
• Second, this is typical of his alternating between exposition and exhortation approach. He will introduce an important truth, explain it, and then make urgent appeals in light of it.
• Third, it shows good rhetorical skills. He is speaking to an audience, as I am to you, and the variety helps hold their attention.
• Fourth, it has the added benefit of effectively emphasizing key points through repetition.

It is not the first or the last time he talks about our need to perseve. We also find perseverance exhortations in chapters 2, 4, 6, 10, and 12. Significant, don’t you think? It is not so much a theme; it is a need he wants them to identify and act on.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil (Heb 5:11-14).

They have become lethargic—dull of hearing—and, as a result, remain immature. Here is a prime example of the author drawing upon Greek culture. As an ideal, the Greco-Roman education model emphasized growth in maturity and moral discernment. The goal is for a student to progress to being a teacher and to be an example to the young and ignorant. This congregation is not doing that. They are not progressing in maturity.

This idea of being a babe and not maturing is a common rhetorical theme in Greco-Roman literature.

As he says in verse 14, discernment is developed and trained by constant practice. Maturity, according to the Hebraic way of the author, is being conformed to the image of Jesus, while immaturity is resisting God’s call to faithful endurance. So, he says in 6:1-2, let us move on toward maturity, leaving behind—not abandoning—but moving on from the elementary doctrines of the faith.

We then come face-to-face with one of the most challenging and controversial passages in the entire Bible.

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned (Heb 6:4-8).

In verse six, we again encounter the terminology fallen away. This is language from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint. It is used in the context of faithlessness to the covenant. To fall away is to be unfaithful to God.

It is more than simply making a mistake. It is more than missing the mark, having faults, or making errors. In the wilderness paradigm, to fall away speaks of a demonstrable pattern of disobedience, unbelief, and faithlessness after being saved.

This idea of sinning willfully, deliberately, consciously, and repeatedly is dealt with again in 10:26. The results are equally severe. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Remember, he is speaking to believers. This is not a sermon to the lost.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? (10:28-29)

The issue in view in both passages is apostasy, rejecting the relationship with God secured by the Messiah’s deliverance and refusing to participate further in the divine life. We can say this much with confidence—for the author of Hebrews, falling away is a real possibility.

Paul also uses wilderness and apostasy language in 1 Corinthians 10: For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did (1-6).

Paul continues with a representative list illustrating the idea of desiring evil: being idolaters, existing only to eat, drink, and play, sexual immorality, testing God, etc. These things, he says about the Israelites in the wilderness, serve as examples to us. They were written down to instruct us. So if you think you are standing, watch out, lest you fall.

We need to be able to hear in order to heed these warnings.

After all, they are for our good. The heart of the author is the heart of our Father; He wants to bless us and, through us, bless others. And the apostles want us to remember who God is and what He has done and is doing through Jesus.

So keep in mind everything we have discussed up to this point, and you will benefit rather than be overcome by these words. Be cautious about making absolute truths from conditional, contextual statements. This is a practical sermon, not an abstract theological treatise, and the rhetorical severity of the author here is fueled by his eschatological urgency.

He takes sin seriously. So should we. Yet apostasy is the condition of continual, deliberate, and willful sin. It is a conscious refusal and a rejection of both the Gift and the Giver. It is an unrepentant, faithless heart that does not take falling away seriously. To that one, he says, hear the Word of the Lord! For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.