No “Third” Repentance

A few weeks ago, I wrote an entry from Hebrews 3 in which I claimed that the writer held the possibility that salvation could be rejected after being accepted. I said some things in that entry that one visitor took issue with, and we had a lengthy discussion among the comments. Neither convinced the other, but it was interesting to me because his support he used was unexpected. You can read the entry and the comments on that entry, “Falling Away“

One of the things I said there is that I don’t really fit into either camp on the discussion of apostasy (the technical term for “falling away”). And that may sound weird, but the common term is “loose salvation”, and I very strongly disagree with the term “loose” used with this topic. I loose my keys, my phone, my wallet, and so on. I don’t “loose” my salvation. The problem of apostasy Scripture speaks of is not that simple.

One of the several issues I rarely hear those in the camp of “transitory salvation” is that there is only one chance at it. I said in my entries on Hebrews that the writer seems to support both sides of the issue of salvation loss. Here’s one of the reasons I say that:

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

Hebrews 6:4-6 NASB (emphasis mine)

What this clearly says is that, if someone has a relationship with their Savior, and then rejects it (looses it), there’s no coming back. “It is impossible to renew them again to repentance”. Repentance, the change of mind, heart, and then behavior, which indicates a state of being in relationship with our Savior, is impossible if we “repent” from it back to where we were before.

Said another way, people say (not me, but others) that repentance is a 180-degree turn away from what we were, how we thought, and how we lived, and toward our Savior, His ways, and His thoughts. If so, then the loss of salvation represents a “repentance” away from our Savior, a 180-degree turn away from His ways and His thoughts, and toward what we were, how we thought, and how we lived. And once that “second repentance” happens, there’s no hope of coming back again to our Savior.

Did anyone experience a “chill” reading that? I felt one writing it. It’s frightening, and it’s supposed to be. Salvation, our relationship with our Savior is serious. And it’s so serious, it isn’t something that can be left on the subway by accident. It’s not something buried under your jacket around the house. You can’t leave it in the last place you remember having it. You can’t loose it. It’s life and death, not a ticket to heaven!

It’s like being married, being in the military, or being employed by large company: you don’t forget those things, you consciously choose to break with those things. And for that there are, or can be, serious consequences. “Saved” means you are a disciple of Jesus, and that is an expensive commitment to make. It’s not something you take lightly, nor do you live it out lightly.

In fact, one of the claims of those in the eternal security camp is that anyone who “falls away” was never actually saved in the first place. That, while wrong and missing the point, is closer to the truth than the other side. The danger of that position is that it holds the hope of being saved eventually. Sorry, there’s no pass to get around this inspired claim of the writer of Hebrews. Our Savior, the Spirit of Jesus, inspired this passage to deliver a message to us: DON’T GIVE UP! It comes with the associated warning that, if we do, we’ve made an eternal choice from which it is impossible to come back.

But there’s no reason to fear. The point isn’t to be afraid that you might “fall away” by accident or unknowingly. The point is that we don’t out and out reject the “Way” of Jesus for another path. If you question your commitment, you are probably good to go. You show interest in your relationship with Jesus. You may not be a great disciple, but you’re in the fray. And being in the fray means there’s hope you will be an even more faithful servant of Jesus.

See, it’s not the husbands who wonder if they’re good husbands that are the “looser husbands”. It’s not the wives who wonder if they’re good wives that the “worst wives”. It’s the spouse who doesn’t care about the other, the ones who think only of themselves, what they want, their desires and their feelings. When there’s no regard for the other spouse, then the marriage is basically a paper certificate filed in some county records holding area. But when there is some regard, some thought for the other, spouse, then there’s hope. They may not be a great spouse, but there’s hope for improvement.

In the same way, if there is some regard for our Savior, even misguided, there’s hope. There are exceptions, such deep deceptions that the regard isn’t for anything even close to Jesus, but in general, those are rare. I’m not a perfect disciple of Jesus. Sometimes, I’m not even a good disciple, and at other times, I’m a down right bad disciple. But I have regard for my Savior, I seek to please Him, I’m concerned about how I treat Him, and it wounds my heart to be that bad disciple, and even missing the mark of “good disciple”. I want to be a great disciple. But one thing I don’t fear is forgetting where I put my faith.

Where is your faith, your hope in eternity? If you have never had hope, then I recommend Jesus. If your faith is in Jesus already, live it out, follow His pattern of living. If it used to be Jesus, but you’ve woken up and realized it’s been years since you were living as a disciple, is this a wake up call? See, if you’re looking at Him again, I believe it’s possible you didn’t actually “reject” Him, or it’s possible you never really had faith in the Savior revealed through Scripture (see how close I am to the “eternal security camp”?).

In any case, where are you now, and what will you choose today? I’m choosing to be a disciple, and I am going to work on being a great one, even though the prospect terrifies me. I may only end up being a good one. Okay, as long as I’m a disciple, I can’t let go of that.

Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation

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Falling Away

I confess to being inordinately entertained by discussions about eternal security and loss of salvation. The spectrum spans the ridiculous extremes of “even God can’t reject you” to “you forgot where you left it”. To be fair, those extremes won’t make sense to most people, and even those I consider to hold one of them would disagree with my assessment of their position.

I fall into the odd “middle ground” of believing we can reject our Savior after having experienced Him, but that it’s not simple or easy. On the other hand, my position on salvation is that it’s not quick or even linear. I find that I’m alone in these positions, I can articulate them, but I can rarely inspire acceptance in others.

Hebrews seems to wrestle with the view of apostasy in several places, and this passage below is one of them:

Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later; but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.

Hebrews 3:5,6 NASB

Verse 6 has a condition, “…if we hold fast…” that leaves open the possibility that we won’t hold fast. In other words, we might not hold fast, we might…whatever the alternative might be, instead. The example the writer of Hebrews uses is the people of Israel as they wandered in the desert. He quotes Psalm 95 (in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, it’s Psalm 94), where the psalmist calls on the people to avoid the rebellion of their fathers. This psalm, and its use here, introduces a very interesting, and an intriguing element to the discussion of loss of salvation, or what it means to be “saved” in the first place.

For instance, were the rebellious people in the wilderness, those who had seen the work of Yahweh to deliver them from Egypt, those who had heard and ratified the covenant of Yahweh before His mountain, were these, at any time, no longer the people of Yahweh? They were denied entrance into the land of Canaan, and they died in the wilderness along the way. By not entering, were they rejected by God as His people? I don’t think so. You will need to process that for yourself, but my belief is that they remained His people, even in the midst of their rebellion.

So, is the writer of Hebrews referring to the loss of salvation? Actually he seems to be, even though he uses these people to make his point. The way he uses them to make his point is to refer to “entering My rest”, a reference from Psalm 95:11 (or Psalm 94:11 in the LXX). This reference is unpacked further in chapter 4, but the writer here points to the sin of unbelief as what kept them from entering the rest of Yahweh, their Redeemer. The quote he uses is, once again, from the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures:

“Today if you hear His voice,
DO not harden your hearts as when they provoked ME,
AS in the day of trial in the wilderness,
Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me,
And saw MY works for forty years.
“Therefore I was angry with this generation,
And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart,
And they did not know MY ways’;
AS I swore in MY wrath,
‘They shall not enter MY rest.’”

Hebrews 3:7b-11 (NASB) – See also Psalm 95:7b-11

Keep in mind that the psalmist could be pointing out that his audience has entered this rest, but that it’s not likely. The context of the psalm makes more sense as a warning to his audience implying that they have yet to enter this rest, and that rebellious disobedience will keep them from it (see the entirety of Psalm 95). Psalm 95 is a call to worship Yahweh, but ends with this warning not to repeat the mistakes in the wilderness, and one element cannot be truly separated from the other in understanding it.

So, for us, there remains a rest as well. The writer of Hebrews will unpack this more in chapter 4, but he leaves the warning hanging as a possibility as he calls his audience not to repeat the rebellious sin of their fathers in the wilderness. So, does this mean that we, once having started on the path of our Savior and Master, Jesus, can wander off the path, and fail to reach the promise in which we hope?

The writer points out that those who fell were those who followed Moses out of Egypt. The implication is that leaving Egypt didn’t guarantee reaching the rest. The psalmist could be implying that just being in the temple, singing this psalm, didn’t guarantee reaching the rest as well. The implication for us could then be understood to mean that just being a disciple of Jesus doesn’t guarantee that we will enter the rest. The sin of rebellion could keep us from it.

Hopefully, as it was supposed to do for the initial audience of Hebrews, it will “sober us up” so that we take this life with our Master very seriously. We are disciples of Jesus, not just “Christians” in an association of those who go to a worship service regularly. We are to pattern our lives after His pattern. We are, as Paul puts it in several letters, to die that He might live in us. Jesus claims that those who wish to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will gain them (Matthew 10:39, 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:34, 17:33). Jesus wants our lives, not our attention. He doesn’t want us to do enough to warrant His favor, He grants us the favor of losing all of ourselves to Him.

Let us all heed the warning of the psalmist and the writer of Hebrews, and not succumb to danger of the sin of rebellion.