The Perils of Apostacy

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the laws of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge His people.’ It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” -- Hebrews 10:26-31

It is commonly thought by those who have only a passing knowledge of Jonathan Edwards that his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was preached with a sadistic glee to his bewildered congregation. The supposition is that Edwards enjoyed afflicting his people and that the sermon was preached with pulpit-pounding vehemence. Such thinking is wide of the mark. Shouting was not Edwards’ style as he typically read his sermons from tiny pieces of paper he held up in front of him. We must understand that it was his passionate love for God and his flock that caused him to employ every tool in his considerable store of logic and metaphor to plead for the souls of his people. He was less concerned with God’s wrath than with His grace, which was freely extended to sinners who repented. Jonathan Edwards gave his people a whiff of the sulfurs of hell that they might deeply inhale the fragrances of grace. It was this intense concern for his people that enjoined him in heart to the preacher who wrote to the Hebrew church some 1,700 years earlier. The stakes were identical – Heaven or Hell. And the symptoms, though not identical, were similar as well – a declining regard for the church’s authority, a willfulness to define one’s relationship to the church in one’s own terms, and, in some cases, quitting the church altogether. To such are addressed the thunderous warnings in vv. 26-31.

The writer begins his plea by graphically outlining the terrors of apostasy. The opening terror is that it obviates Christ’s atoning sacrifice: “ … no sacrifice for sins is left” [v. 26]. This is the terror of no sacrifice! The writer is not describing the grace of Christ running short but rather a graceless, reprobate state characterized by two things – deliberateness and continuance. This is deliberate, intentional sin. In fact, the word “deliberately” stands first in the Greek for emphasis. Moreover, this deliberate sin is continual. This unfortunate person persists in open rebellion to God and His Word. The point is this individual has “received the knowledge of the truth” – the content of Christianity as truth. He knows what God has done in Christ, and he understands it. Yet he intentionally – knowingly – rejects it and willfully continues on in an unremitting state of sin – as an apostate. This is what Jesus called the sin against the Holy Spirit [Matthew 12:32, Mark 3:29]. It is the same thing as was described earlier in Hebrews 6:4-6: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace.” The ignorant cannot commit this sin. It cannot be committed inadvertently. It is a sin that only “church people” can commit. To such, “no sacrifice for sins is left” because they have rejected the one and only valid sacrifice – Christ. This terror is joined by the second great terror, because since there is no sacrifice, judgment follows: “… but only a fearful expectation of judgment and a raging fire that will consume the enemies of God” [v. 27]. This is an echo of Isaiah 26:11 and is a gripping expression for the judgment of God. The point being, that those who have rejected Christ inherit a fearful expectation of judgment whether or not they are aware of it. Interesting thoughts, even amusing to some, when one is in good health. But it has proven far different with hardened apostates at the time of death when there comes “only a fearful expectation of judgment.”

A case in point would be Voltaire, who of Christ said, “Curse the wretch!” He also once boasted “In twenty years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear.” Ironically, shortly after his death, the very house in which he printed his literature became the depot for the Geneva Bible Society. The nurse who attended him said, “For all the wealth in Europe I would not see another infidel die.” And his physician, Trochim, who waited with him at his death, said he cried out most desperately, “I am abandoned by God and man! I will give you half of what I’m worth if you will give me but six months’ life. Then shall I go to hell and you will go with me.”

Or consider Thomas Paine, the renowned American author [who wrote, ironically, Common Sense] and enemy of Christianity who exerted considerable influence against belief in God and the Scriptures. He came to his last hour in 1809, a disillusioned and unhappy man. During his final moments on earth he said: “I would give worlds, if I had them, that Age of Reason had not been published. O Lord, help me! Christ, help me! O God what have I done to suffer so much? But there is no God! But if there should be, what will become of me hereafter? Stay with me, for God’s sake! Send even a child to stay with me, for it is hell to be alone. If ever the devil had an agent, I have been that one.”

“And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” – Matthew 12:31, 32

To reject the gracious work of the Spirit of grace renders one irremediably lost. What frightening terrors lie behind apostasy: rejection of Christ’s person, rejection of Christ’s work, and rejection of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Understanding this, the question of verse 29 explodes: “How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished … ?” One thing is sure – there will be no mercy shown for the hardened apostate, just as there was no mercy shown to those who willfully transgressed the Law. But the greater severity is that breaking the Old Covenant brought physical death, while rejecting Christ brings spiritual death.

Some today reject this idea by employing a one-sided view of Christ. They say that Jesus’ emblem was a lamb, that Jesus took little children in His arms and blessed them, that He sighed over the deaf and dumb and wept over Jerusalem. But they forget that the Lamb of God will come with wrath – in judgment [Revelation 6:16], that He told all who cause any one of His little ones to sin that it would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around their neck, and that the same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem judged it. You cannot have the Jesus of the Scriptures without the doctrines of judgment and Hell. It was Charles Spurgeon who said it best, “Think lightly of hell, and you will think lightly of the cross.” Our lives hang by a mere thread. Eternity gapes before us.