Clough Hebrews Lesson 33

Further Analysis of the Third Warning Passage – 6:4-6

Turn to Hebrews 6:4 again. Can anyone tell us the issue in the participles of verses 4-6. Remember these verses are a series of participles; these participles describe the people that are losing whatever it is in verse 6. And you remember we went over four views of Hebrews 6, four views that men have held down through the ages. We eliminated two of those views leaving the classic Arminian and the classic Calvinist interpretation. Both of these interpretations demand something from the text. And whichever way you go has to be decided on the basis of the text. What in the text is going to decide it? [someone answers] Okay, all the participles that are in these verses, if the Arminian view is correct the only way the Arminian view is correct, by the way, what is the Arminian view? The Arminian view is that these refer to believes who lose their salvation. The Calvinist view that we are setting up as the alternate is that these are not believers. Now obviously between the two views the way you decide is to decide is to decide whether or not these participles must refer to believers. Remember the Arminian has to show that these participles must refer to believers.

What is a way of logically disproving that assertion? Their interpretation stands or falls by the validity of that statement. If you undermine that statement it topples the whole building right into the basement. Now how are you going to topple the building into the basement? All you have to do is show that each one of these participles can refer to an unbeliever. That’s all you have to show, you’re not required to do anything more because once you’ve shown that each one of these participles can refer to an unbeliever you’ve destroyed the central assumption of their whole argument. It can’t stand any longer, it just topples because that’s the only plank it’s founded on.

We have worked, then, with the first participle, “enlightened,” and the second one, “have tasted the heavenly gift,” both of those participles are united very closely in the text by te in the Greek. Both of those participles refer to something, what was it? These first two participles generally refer to the same thing; what is that same thing? [someone answers] All right, it refers to illumination of certain truths; the certain truths being truths of the new dispensation, the fact that Messiah has come, the fact that Messiah is here and now we’re in the new age. So we’ve showed that the illumination, the word “enlighten” here does not necessarily have to refer to believers because in John 1:9 it refers to all men. So that by itself doesn’t prove a thing, and somebody that comes up to you and says that has to be a believer just hasn’t considered all the texts of the New Testament, because in John 1:9 it’s used for both believers and unbelievers.

The second phrase, “tasting the heavenly gift,” what was the special technical title we had for that phrase, the title that you use to refer to the biggest problem in Bible interpretation; what is it? Hapax legomenon. Add this to your growing Christian vocabulary. A hapax legomenon, that means a thing once and for all. In other words, the problem is that this phrase only occurs once, in all the Bible it only occurs once. Got it! It’s a hapax legomenon. Why is this a baddie when you’re trying to interpret the Bible and you run across something like this, a hapax legomenon? Why does this give you more problems than anything you’ll ever encounter in the Bible. You have no control on what it means. If it would be used some other place we could go to the some other place and find out how it’s used. But a hapax legomenon is only used in one place and if it’s only used in one place we have no other place to go to find out how it’s used.

Now it turns out that every one of the remaining participles, there’s five participles here, four or them are hapax legomenon. So next time somebody comes up to you in the Arminian camp and says that believers can lose their salvation because, to quote the professor friend of mine, these “must refer to saved people,” (end quote) we simply ask them prove it; prove it by the lexical data of the New Testament that these must refer to believers, when four out of the five participles never occur at any other place. Four out of these five expressions are never used by any other author of the entire Bible. You’d have a hard time proving that they must only to believers. And the one that is not a hapax legomenon, which is the word “enlighten,” occurs in John 1:9 for both believer and unbeliever. So it should be obvious by now that the dogmatic interpretation that this must be believer may be said very dogmatically but it doesn’t rest on much data.

Now how when you deal with a hapax legomenon, what’s the method of procedure, since I’m trying to on the Wednesday night class which we can’t do any other time, I’m trying to show you more of the methodology of arriving at answers and not just give the answer, what do you do when you come across a hapax legomenon; what’s our methodology. Here we’ve got “tasted the heavenly gift,” let’s see if you remember. We had this: “tasted the heavenly gift,” now that whole thing, that phrase is a hapax legomenon. We can’t find out what that phrase means by direct methods, like we usually can in Scripture. So we’re shot down that way, so we’ve got to go to another methodology. Now what’s the methodology we have to use now, now that we can’t use the simple one? [someone answers] You can go to the immediate context, that’s one way.

What’s another way? [someone else] We can try an analytical approach which means to divide it up, disassemble it into it’s part and check out each part. The parts are not hapax legomenon; the word “taste,” that occurred many, many times in the New Testament, usually it occurs to taste death, it means to experience something. “Heavenly,” we looked that up and “gift” we looked up. So those by themselves as individual parts are not hapax legomenon. It would be just like, as I used the illustration last week, of a car, you may have a custom built car but it’ll have Goodyear or Firestone tires on it of a certain size and radius, it’ll have a certain engine, it’ll have a certain set of carburetors, fuel injection, this kind of thing and even though the car is unique, the parts aren’t. Well, it’s the same thing here, even though the phrase is unique the parts of the phrase aren’t. So we go and we show, like we did last week, that the “tasted the heavenly gift” is nothing more than becoming acquainted with the God-given wisdom of revelation. So both “enlighten” and “tasted the heavenly gift,” we could have guessed it by the word te linking the two, both mean pretty much the same thing, basic wisdom of verses 1-2. Remember, they had all learned the basic of verses 1 and 2.

Now we come to the third participle, “who were made partakers of the Holy Spirit.” Now at this point the Arminian, if he has failed on the first two is certain that he must win on the third one. Certainly he says to us you can’t be so blind that you don’t see that partaking of the Holy Spirit can only be a believer; certainly if you haven’t been convinced yet that a believer is involved, surely this phrase must convince you a believer is involved. And so our reply to Mr. Arminian is just simply show us where else in the New Testament the phrase “partakers of the Holy Spirit is used” and I will gladly believe with you that a believer is involved. And so Mr. Arminian looks through the New Testament desperately, from Matthew to Revelation and he can’t find any other place where the phrase “partakers of the Holy Spirit” is used, believer, unbeliever or anybody else; it’s never used; it’s a hapax legomenon.

So you can’t just beat the drums and say that this must be a believer. We’re back to our old method again and the method is going to have to be take it apart, so let’s take it apart. Here we have “partakers” or literally, let’s just write it just the way it is, “having had a part with the Holy Spirit.” Now we, so far have talked about two participles and they were connected by a te, that’s a close connection. We are now on our third participle, that’s connected by kai and so we’re opening up now into a list and this is going to not… the way the syntax is, these two were close, those two we said, “enlightened” and “tasted the heavenly gift” both referred to revelation or illumination of wisdom in the person, that is God has spoken into history, these people have become aware of the content of what God has said.

Now when we come to the third participle we are working… we will guess, just on the basis of syntax, this is going to be something slightly different; it’s not going to be exactly the same thing. So what are we going to do? We’re going to try the methodology of taking it apart, so the first thing we’re going to do is see if “having a part with” is used elsewhere in the New Testament. What is the rule when you go to your concordance, Strong’s or Young’s if you have an English Bible. Where, reviewing again, do you look up first? In the immediate writing, so we go to our concordance and we look up this word, “partaker” and we’ll look up all the Hebrews references; all the references of that word in this epistle. When we get through with that, since we don’t know who wrote Hebrews, we don’t know any other literature in the New Testament written by the author so we’ll just skip to all the other New Testament literature, and then we may go to what we’ll call the extra New Testament literature, that is literature written during the time of the New Testament but not the New Testament. Remember that procedure.

Let’s see if we can find other places in the epistle to the Hebrews. Now the Arminian is still feeling quite triumphant, not being dissuaded by our first ploy that this is a hapax legomenon, he still feel encouraged because when we split it apart he says aha, the word “to have a part with” does occur in the epistle to the Hebrews, and it does occur only for believers. Turn to Hebrews 3:14, he’s quite sure that he has us cornered because he can point to 3:14 and say here it occurs, and here it can only refer to a believer. But before he gets too haughty we must point out something, that Hebrews 3:14 has two parts, and if you look at it carefully it says, “We have become partakers,” perfect tense, “with Christ, IF we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.” Therefore does verse 14 teach that you can become a partaker of Christ and lose your partaking?

I’ll run that by again because it’s a very critical point and you’re going to lose the context right here. The issue is in Hebrews 3:14 the word “partaker” is used, obviously for a believer, with that we agree, it is a “partaker of Christ,” but what the Arminian must show us, and he can’t, is that a person has partaken of Christ then he can lose it. Is that taught in 3:14? Is it possible to have become a partaker of Christ and then lose out, according to verse 14. Why is that not, precisely not, the teaching of 3:14. [someone answers] All right, let’s look at it again. The verse, “you have become,” perfect tense, “partakers with Christ, if you” endure. [someone else] Exactly, do you see the logic of 3:14, if you don’t endure, that is, if you’ve been with Christ for a while and then drop away, 3:14 says you have never become partakers with Him, doesn’t it. Isn’t this the perfect tense? You have become partakers IF you endure. So that one who doesn’t endure, one who loses out, has never become partakers. So is this what the Arminian wants to prove. Now by a long shot. So merely going to Hebrews 3:14 doesn’t prove a thing for him but it proves everything for us, because he hasn’t shown what he wants so desperately to show, that the word “partake” can only be a temporary partaking. He needs to show that. And this verse teaches precisely the contrast, that is a partaking here, in Christ, forever.

Now how do we relate, since we won’t bother to do any more study on the word “partake,” we’re going to attempt to finish the 5^th and 6^th verse of Hebrews 6. Let’s go to “partake” and draw two circles, one inside the other. Here’s the problem we’ve got on the verb. Let’s put the word “Christ” in the inner circle, and the outer circle that encloses the inner circle we’ll put the Holy Spirit. In Hebrews 3:14 it is talking about partaking of Jesus Christ and does refer only to believers. But the kind of partaking is an eternal partaking that can never be reversed. So the “partaking of Christ” in Hebrews 3:14 is a permanent once and for all partaking. And if someone falls away they obviously haven’t partook. So the partaking is once for all. God that; that’s partaking with Christ.

Now the partaking of the Holy Spirit taught in Hebrews 6:4 is something else: it is a partaking of the Holy Spirit that can be reversed. So between Hebrews 3:14 and Hebrews 6:4 we have the same verb, “partake,” but when it is used of the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, it means one thing; when it refers to the Third Person of the Trinity it refers to something entirely different. It is possible to partake of the Holy Spirit and then lose; it is not possible to partake of Christ Himself and lose.

[someone asks a question] No because by his own admission chapter 6 is talking about… he pointed out a good question here, Couldn’t the Arminian come back and say yes, but I just showed you 3:14 where “partake” is used only of believers. But what I’ve argued to counter that is that in 3:14, granted it only refers to believers but after you’ve read the whole thing it neutralizes the application back into 6:4 now because here it’s taught that once you partake you always partake and the Arminian is desperately trying to prove exactly the opposite, once you partake you might not always partake. So he’s in trouble.

[someone else asks question] That’s what ultimately we’re moving towards and I’ll show you as we start to pin this phrase down more clearly what it’s referring to but at this point I just want you to know the mechanics of how to carry one of these arguments. And by the way, when you come to this idiotic thing, well that’s your interpretation, the best way I’ve found for that is to say it’s also my interpretation that the sun is up today too. That’s the obvious reply to that idiotic thing, it’s your interpretation. Of course it’s my interpretation, who else is it, so what have we proved. That doesn’t prove anything, obvious, there’s got to be an interpretation. When you say something to me and I respond to what you said that’s my interpretation of what you said. I’m breathing too, but what’s that got to do with the argument? You see, that’s an irrelevant remark to say it’s just your interpretation; well of course, that’s right, it is just my interpretation. But to show the ridiculousness of that kind of a reply just say it’s my interpretation that it’s not yet night outside.

[someone else] Yes, that’s what we’re struggling with, the verb is the same but it’s being used two different ways by the same author here. [someone says how can you say that one word is used in two places with exactly the same definition and have two different results] Okay, let’s go by the argument again; that’s all right, if you don’t get it, that’s fine. Thank you, you asked the question that twenty other people were wanting to ask. Let’s go back through step by step the argument.

The argument is that we have got to show that the phrases… the ultimate argument is that the phrases of verses 4, 5 and 6 can refer to unbelievers, that’s our objective. So we want to show that verses 4-6 refer or can refer to unbelievers. Once we have shown that we have totally cancelled all possibilities of the Arminian interpretation, it’s just gone right down the drain. There’s no way they can respond after that has been done because that has shot the…they may build their theology up from another passage but they’re not going to use that passage any more.

So that’s our objective; now how have we shown it? We’ve shown it by showing that these overall phrases, remember, we’ll put this, overall phrases can refer to unbelievers. Right now, probably you’re confused now, we are working with one particular overall phrase, what was that overall phrase to go back where we started the class? “Partakers of the Holy Spirit” right. “Partakers of the Holy Spirit,” what is our objective? To show that the whole phrase, the whole phrase, not a word inside the phrase, the whole phrase can refer to unbelievers. Got it, not pieces of it, the whole phrase. Maybe that’s where some of you got off, because so far we haven’t dealt with the whole phrase, we’ve just dealt with one piece of it. It’s like you have a custom built car, we’ve just taken one of the tires off and shown that it could be a Goodyear, say. That’s all we’ve done.

[someone asks question] That question would be irrelevant to the argument. Her question is a good one, they’ll probably come back to and say well, how is it possible to even become a partaker of the Holy Spirit and not become a partaker of Christ, you’re making an artificial distinction between the two. Okay this will go to the point that maybe we’ve missed and I’ll go over it again slowly. In Hebrews 3;14 we have a situation that the Arminian really doesn’t want to; 3;14 proves too much. It’s like he’s punched and he’s punched too far; now he wanted to stop. He should stop here but he’s gone too far. Why? This 3:14 carried the argument far, far beyond where he wants to stop because in 3:14 the partaker is an unbreakable partaking; true, it is only believers. But the problem the Arminian has, he’s got to show a breakable partaking; he’s got to show that it’s possible to partake of Christ and then not partake of Him, it’s possible to partake of the Holy Spirit and not partake. But you go to 3:14 and 3:14 is clearly teaching once and for all unbreakable partaking. So it is true when you go to 3:14, yes it does refer to believers, that’s true, the problem is that the partaking of 3:14 can’t be broken, ever. But no matter how you interpret Hebrews 6, whether it’s Arminian, Calvinist, or any view you want to, it is obviously a breakable partaking. It is a breakable partaking because whoever these people are, they’ve fallen away from it, haven’t they. They’ve lost out. So it’s a breakable partaking. So you’ve got over here in 3:14 and unbreakable partaking and in 6:4 you’ve got a breakable partaking so you’ve got two contrary things and it’s not legitimate to run from one verse to the other, even though you’ve got the same words.

[someone say something, then someone else says something] how do we decide what? All right, turn to 6:4, I hope we’ve gotten that across, let’s hold it. That’s all right, just stick with it tonight because this is a classic hard to interpret passage. And it requires thought and the flaky way out is to go in your closet and say God spoke to me and say that therefore the interpretation is thus and such. God is not going to speak to you in your closet, if you hear a voice in your closet you’ve got problems but it’s not God. In Hebrews 6 forget for the moment whether you’re going the Arminian route or the Calvinist route. Won’t you all agree that something is lost? Whether it’s talking about salvation or fellowship, obviously Hebrews 6 is talking about something is lost, isn’t it. Because all these things, they’ve done this, they’ve done this, they’ve done this, they’ve fallen away and boom, it’s impossible to renew them unto repentance, period. Now obviously something’s lost there, isn’t it? The Arminian wants to show that it is a breakable partaking. If he is going to show that partaking of the Holy Spirit means salvation, let’s look at it this way. If “partaking of the Holy Spirit” equals salvation and the Arminian wants to show you can lose your salvation, he’s got to show that the partaking of the Holy Spirit can be lost. If it is equal to salvation and you lose your salvation you’re going to lose the partaking of the Holy Spirit. So the partaking of whatever it is in chapter 6 is a breakable partaking, is it not. Is that clear, that the partaking… if you want to equate it with fellowship for a while for the sake of arguing, play it whatever you want, football, if the football is lost the partaking is lost. We don’t care what it’s equated with, all we care is that it’s equated with something, we’ll call it X out here. “Partaking of the Holy Spirit” equals X; X is lost, therefore the partaking of the Holy Spirit is lost.

So regardless of how you interpret it, Calvinistically or Arminianistically, no matter how you interpret it, something is lost so you have a breakable partaking. But when you go back to 3:14 it’s talking about an unbreakable partaking. So 3:14 cannot be used as your control on 6:4. [someone says something] That’s all we need to show, because he has got to build a non-contradictory input from other verse to substantiate his interpretation here. [more said] Okay, let’s go with 3:14 again just to make sure you get the point. That’s all right, we’ll through this, if we only get this done… the advantage of struggling with something like this is that if you struggle with it correctly and you come with an answer you don’t have to bother with it again, so you won’t have to go wasting more time fiddling around with Hebrews 6 once you get it worked out.

In Hebrews 3:14, here’s the question, doesn’t it teach too that the partaking is breakable. I have just claimed to you that it is teaching the breaking is not breakable, that the partaking is unbreakable, that it could never be broken. How do I teach that? Because of the verb tense in verse 14, “you have become…” perfect tense in time past with results which continue, “you have become partakers with Christ if you endure.” The enduring is out here and he’s simply saying that if you flake out, you have never partaken. [someone says something] No, they have partaken of the thing… oh but aorist, there are other ways of getting involved in complicated grammar here that that isn’t a watertight argument, that’s why we’re not using it. [someone else]

Yeah, and in 3:14 if you don’t endure, you see that, if you don’t endure, if you’re not… let’s draw two pictures. Here’s a Christian and he goes on and flakes out. He didn’t endure… he didn’t endure. What would be your conclusion about his partaking of Christ on the basis of 3:14. He never was partakers of Christ, ever; isn’t that what you’d have to conclude from 3:14. If you don’t endure… if you endure you have become… you have become, past, it’s not you did become, it’s not enduring in order to become, watch it, this is not saying if you endure you will become. Watch your verb tense; it is not, if you endure you will become, it is if you endure you have already become before you started enduring. Put it another way, if you are breathing you have been born. You see that; I don’t breathe in order to be born, do I? My breathing is a result of being born and the author of Hebrews is arguing in 3:14 that your enduring is a result of being in time past a partaker of Christ. [someone says something] On a tight logical argument 3:14 wouldn’t prove that but if you wanted to push me to the wall I could prove that that teaches that. Granted it is incomplete as so stated but the argument placed in the context of this man’s writings is that endurance is a sign of salvation; “you have become a partaker of Christ.”

[someone else] The enduring here, the enduring, the author is saying if you maintain your allegiance to Jesus Christ, and he is not claiming perfectionism; he’s talking about that you endure in this context, in 68 AD he’s talking about the pressure on Hebrews Christians to defect back into Judaism, that’s the historic situation. He is making the same claim, if you’ll turn to 1 John 2, he is making precisely the same claim as 1 John 2:19 and this would tighten up the logic on Hebrews 3:14, by the way, to make that a logically symmetrical argument. I can tell some of you don’t like to discuss it; that’s too bad but you’re the kind of a person that’s not going to learn a thing from the Word of God. The people who are asking questions are interested in learning something so if this bores you, you can leave.

1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be manifest they were not all of us.” What’s that talking about? It’s talking about false teachers, it’s talking about people who were never regenerated. 1 John 2 is an important verse because that defines his phrase, “abide in Christ.” If you do not abide in Christ, says John, that’s a sign that you have never been born again. He is not teaching sinless perfection in this life; he is talking about just maintaining a basic allegiance to Christ so don’t think you have to be perfect to show that you’re saved. That’s not the argument. But there has to be some signs of spiritual life. Why is this?

Let’s go to the two circles to see why. When we are born again we are put in union with Jesus Christ. That puts under the work of the Trinity. The Father has done many, many things for us; He has elected us, and He also, according to Hebrews 12 disciplines His children. Why is it that no matter how much hell a Christian tries to raise God will always reach down and bring them along? He may clobber them physically, they may be miserable, but Hebrews 12 says once you are in the family of God you are under a disciplinary operation of God the Father. When you are under a disciplinary operation of God the Father that proves… that proves that He is going to keep after you and keep after you and keep after you and keep after you. So you have the Christian kind of peeling out of the bottom circle here but he can’t go out to infinity because God the Holy Spirit, through the Father, grabs him when he tries to get out. There’s always a hedge, there’s always a corral around the thing. This is why the author of Hebrews would argue that the believers are always known because they get out of fellowship, they try to apostacize and …

[Tape turns] … start suffering for it, whereas the unbeliever can apostacize and he doesn’t suffer, it’s just like a greased sled, he can just move on out, no problems whatever. Now 1 John 2:19 is talking about the same kind of thing. He’s saying they went out from us but they weren’t of us. What’s that mean? They were never part of us, they were never “in Christ” to begin with, and notice the last part, “that they,” purpose clause, “they might be manifest that they were not all of us.” Now do you know what that being manifest is? That was when in the first century you had believers mixed with unbeliever and you had… the Messianic movement for a while was a popular movement. Then God applied heat in the form of political persecution, physical deprivation and so on.

Now when he applied the heat to the mixed group, what happened, according to 1 John 2:19. By the first hundred years of Christianity a lot of that early persecution was divinely designed to do something. What? [someone answers] Right, to at least in the first century to separate the wheat and the tares. Now that kind of persecution has not gone on since the first century. It’s true, the wheat and the tares now grow together and it’s hard to tell one from the other, but in the first century you had a tremendous pressure applied to purify the church for at least it’s initial start. And this is why all these epistles talking about these people going out from us but they never were of us. It’s talking about this pressure that was brought to bear so all those negative left the camp; they were all purged out during these persecutions. The ultimate persecution the Hebrew Christians are going to face in a few years. Now that is the massive disaster of 70 AD. And that is going to be the ultimate.

And in practice what happened was this: the Jews, millions of them congregated in Jerusalem. It was a holiday, it was one of their great holy days. And the Roman legions under Vespasian suddenly came and blocked off the city, trapping them in there. Now there was one group of people who fled Jerusalem, they actually did in history and they fled Jerusalem because their Savior had told them when you see this, flee. Now that’s true, that Mount Olivet discourse refers to the future but it has a near fulfillment in 70 AD. And they were very, very conscious of those last words of Jesus Christ, and when you see the Gentiles moving in, get out of here, just get, move it. And they did. And this is what saved them; they were not trapped in that massive disaster. Probably a few stupid ones were, but… as a broad principle, operating principle, you had believers just leave Jerusalem, because they respected Jesus’ authority. The ones who didn’t respect Jesus, said He’s just some dump carpenter from Nazareth, doesn’t know what He’s talking, would have stayed in Jerusalem and gotten killed, massacred under the Vespasian and Titus, the Roman legion. Those who respected the words of Jesus would have gotten out.

Now, the test: what was the test to show in real life experience whether or not they accepted the authority of Jesus Christ? Whether they got out of the city or not. That was a simple easy to see test. Now it was a number of these tests that is spoken of here in 1 John 2, “that it might be manifest that they were not of us.” So the idea is that you have this mix, and the pressure is put on to drive it off, one way or the other.

Now in Hebrews he’s talking about that kind of endurance under different situations, many, many different situations. Endure simply means to maintain your confession. For example, look at Hebrews 3:14 again, “We have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.” Okay, the confidence is a public confession. Remember when we went over that, you should have it in your notes. That confidence was a public identification with the Messianic movement. In history what did it mean? It meant they were having fellowship with the Christian leaders, they were involved in local churches. They were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were historically identified with this movement of this Jewish carpenter. So that was their allegiance and it was outward, it was public. And he’s saying that if we hold this steadfast unto the end, then we know that have become partakers. And the converse, if we haven’t become partakers then we’re not going to endure, it’s as simple as that.

[someone says something] That’s right, that’s the only solution we can come to because somewhere back in here… the partaking of the Holy Spirit is a wide… this is the way it’s going to wind up, I’ll give you a preview, and the partaking of Christ, this is the sphere of salvation, here, the partaking of Christ, the once and for all partaking. It is possible to partake of the Holy Spirit and not be a Christian. [someone says is this possibly what Christ was talking about when he said that they would come to Me and say Lord, have I not cast out demons in Thy name.” That’s right.

We’re going to get into the partaking, let’s finish out this phrase. “…partakers of the Holy Spirit,” we have seen that the word “partake” cannot… it’s meaning cannot directly be applied from 3:14 because 3:14 gets you into another problem, as we have seen for the past half hour. It is not clear at all that you can go from 3:14 back to 6:4; you’ve got a tremendous amount of theological hurdles to get across. So that cuts off this problem of fixing this thing easily from 3:14. So now we’ve got to go some place else. The next best thing to do is take our hapax legomenon apart, the second piece, Holy Spirit. Let’s look up the word Holy Spirit in the book of Hebrews and see how Holy Spirit is used in this epistle. For us it’s only used in two ways. The Holy Spirit is identified with two works throughout this epistle and the author rigidly and consistently identifies the Holy Spirit with only two works. Now this is going to be the key of what it means to partake of the Holy Spirit, it’s going to be partake of His works.

Now what are the works of the Holy Spirit in this epistle. Hebrews 2:4, one place it’s used. “God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders, and with various miracle, and with gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will.” Now, God was bearing witness to the generation of Jews, notice in verse 3, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us…” us, us, us, so the Holy Spirit is used for certain works of authentication to the public crowd. That’s one way the Holy Spirit is used in this epistle, He makes authenticating signs, miraculous signs, to verify the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He has gifted His apostles and those apostles go around authenticating the message. Please notice also Hebrews 2:3-4 is the proof that the signs had ended, much as it upsets some people. These verses clearly teach that the readers at this time in history, in 68 AD, were not seeing signs any longer, aorist tense used in verse 3, “it was confirmed,” the confirming time is all over, the signs are all over. The signs had phased out, at least in this geographical area, by the time this epistle was written; they were no longer operational.

That’s one way the Holy Spirit is… He’s used in connection with works of authentication. In all the other occurrences of the Holy Spirit, and I’ll show you them now, Hebrews 3:7, [“Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit said, Today if you will hear His voice,”] you look at these verses, I’ll give you three of them, you tell me what work of the Holy Spirit is talked about here. Look at 3:7, read it, then turn to Hebrews 9:8, [“The Holy Spirit thus signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while the first tabernacle was yet standing.”] Read that one and then turn to Hebrews 10:15, “And the Holy Spirit also is a witness to us; for after He had said before….”]

Okay, the Holy Spirit’s work of authentication, one way; how are all these verses used? [someone answers] Okay, anybody want to amplify it and be a little bit more specific. The Word of God he said, the Holy Spirit is identified in the epistle of Hebrews with the Word of God, can you be more specific. [someone else] Okay, revealing the Word of God. There was one reference in the middle one, how would that have been true only for Jews. [someone answers] Okay, the Holy Spirit testifies to canonical Scripture, the canon of Scripture, plus Old Testament ceremonies. Remember the middle reference I gave you, 9:8, now was every Jew throughout all of Israel who walked by the tabernacle saved? But was the Holy Spirit signifying to every Jew that walked by the tabernacle that that spoke of Jesus Christ? Yes. So you have the Holy Spirit in the epistle of Hebrews doing two things; He is developing a canon of revelation into the world, he’s revealing that and illuminating men’s hearts to that revelation. He is also attesting to the validity of the revelation by special miraculous signs.

Now where in all these verses do we have one evidence that the work of the Holy Spirit has to do with regeneration exclusively? Where does He use this? So what are we going to say, that partaking of the Holy Spirit means? It simply means you have been exposed to the Word of God and you have been exposed to the authenticating signs of Messiah’s claims. Actually four things: partakers of the Holy Spirit means, one, you have His book equals Old Testament, that’s one way you are a partaker of the Holy Spirit, in the way this author is using the word; now don’t read Paul into this. Two, you experience nationally typology, the tabernacle, etc. That was an experience the whole nation experienced hat but it doesn’t mean the whole nation was saved, does it. You had only a saved remnant of the nation yet all the people in the nation experienced the typology. Three, you have heard the New Testament gospel. Four, you saw signs.

That means these people have partaken of the Holy Spirit. They have partaken of the Holy Spirit because they have partaken of what the Holy Spirit has been doing, according to this author. Remember, interpret it in the light of how this author is using the word Holy Spirit. Every time he talks about the Holy Spirit, not Paul, this author, this author is thinking in his head… remember you’re reading this man’s work, don’t try to read as though you’re reading Paul’s work. Let this man, just relax and let this man communicate to you and this man, every time he uses the word Holy Spirit he’s thinking of specific things; he’s thinking about how the Holy Spirit set up the typology; he’s thinking about how the Holy Spirit put together the canonical Scripture; he’s thinking about how the Holy Spirit worked through the apostles to give them the signs to help out their faith in Jesus Christ. All these things.

So the partaking of the Holy Spirit, again drawing our two circles, the partaking of the Holy Spirit means they have come under the Holy Spirit’s proclamation of the claims of Christ but they have not yet believed and they are not yet partakers of Christ. They have become partakers of the Holy Spirit but not gone so far as to become partakers of Jesus Christ Himself.

[question asked] We haven’t said He has, let me show you John 16, the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the unsaved is extensive. Let’s turn to John 16, here’s a classic location. All we’re saying is… these are not mutually exclusive works, the Holy Spirit has a work to those who have been exposed to the gospel, he has another work for believers, same Holy Spirit. John 16:8, what does it say in John 16:8, “When He is come He will reprove” only the saved? “…of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.” It says He will reprove the world of it. Is the world, then, a partaker of the Holy Spirit? Yes it is. If you want to use the word “partake” the way John would like to use it… if you want to go to Paul I’ll go to John if you want to play that game. See.

In other words, theologically here’s what’s happened. There are circles of grace, there’s an inner circle of grace of God’s chosen believers, very, very few are blessed, such as David, Paul, and have special apostles, you know, this kind of thing. If you want to look at it as another circle of grace, all believers. If you want to look at it as another circle of grace, those men who have been exposed and exposed and exposed and exposed to the Word of God. And then out beyond that these are the men who have only Romans 1, God-consciousness. Now there are degrees of the work of the Holy Spirit in this world. And John 16:8 is showing you how the entire world is a partaker of the work of the Holy Spirit. See the word “partake” by itself doesn’t fix it. Remember as we started the evening off, we’re working with a hapax legomenon, you’re on shaky ground any way to make some dogmatic statement that this can’t refer to unbelievers.

See, we’re in a stronger position; now realize your strength here. Don’t lose the forest for the trees. Let’s just back off from what we’ve done here and try to see a big picture of what we’ve said. The Calvinist and the Arminian interpretation. The Calvinist can allow both believer and unbeliever to be covered by this vocabulary. All he has to show is that at least it’s possible for unbelievers. But the Arminian is limited, he has to show only believers. Now which position is harder to prove? Which position has the more restricted set of conditions to it. Obviously the Arminian, right? So to maintain the Arminian passage requires far more work and you have to prove far more things than I have to prove, I can just sit here and watch you sweat because I don’t have to prove all that, because my interpretation doesn’t depend on making all sorts of these deductions based on hapax legomena. All I have to figure out is an interpretation where unbelievers are permitted. I can dream up anything that’s allowable for lexicography.

[someone asks question] Yeah, and they don’t use it thinkingly because one counter that can come back to them was, is Jesus Christ Lord, and if He’s a good Arminian he’ll say oh, of course. Oh, that’s just your interpretation. Where do you want to stop, see, if you’re going to start this it’s just your interpretation business I’ll just keep pushing you and see where you stop, then you’re a hypocrite because you’re going to stop some place and then you’ll say no, no, this is not just a matter of my interpretation, this is the truth. What are you stopping there for? It’s like these idiots in public schools that teach evolution and morals. Evolution is not religious see, evolution is neutral. We don’t worry about that, but all of a sudden then, in a sex education course or something we come out in the last five minutes of the course, but don’t do it. Where does this come from; all of a sudden you’ve brought morals into the discussion when it’s totally illegitimate because for 95% of the time you’ve been talking about plumbing based on evolution, and now at the end of it you dress it up with a moral cover. Well, where are we getting morals from, I thought we dumped that out at the beginning of the argument, because this is a state school, we can’t invite religious moral into the system, how did we get those here? So it’s the old story of being consistent, that’s all.

Now let’s go back to Hebrews 6, obviously we didn’t finish tonight; that’s okay, don’t feel hesitant to say you don’t understand it; we’re all friends, never blame somebody for trying to understand something about the Word. Let’s look at the passage again and see if we can put verse 4 together, look at the sequence of things. We’ve seen the word “enlighten.” We’ve seen the word “taste the gift.” Those two are connected closely by te, I gave you some precedents in non-biblical literature last time to show you that tasting a gift, or the word “gift” can be used of wisdom, and so of revelation. So we have at least a cultural precedent for our interpretation, that both the terms, “once and for all enlightened,” and “tasted the heavenly gift” refer to illumination to the Word of God. So these first two participles are talking about the process of illumination.

Now come down to the third participle that we’ve worked on tonight, “have become partakers of the Holy Spirit,” instead of the process of illumination that speaks of the agent of illumination. So we now have the agent of illumination. The first two participles dealt with the process of illumination but the third term deals with the agent involved, the Holy Spirit is the one who is doing the illuminating ministry. In conclusion, let’s turn to Matthew 12 once again for the unpardonable sin. And notice again which member of the Trinity is being involved here.

Matthew 12:32, in the light of 1 John 2:19 and other passages we can conclude that these people were not believers, but yet look at the language of verse 32: “Whosoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him;”…it’ll be forgiven, “but whosoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven,” …it won’t be forgiven, ever. Now is there a difference between the Second and Third Person in that passage. The Second Person, the Son; the Third Person, Holy Spirit; in Matthew 12 there sure is a difference. These people have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit in the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They have rejected what? They have rejected the words of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, and they’ve rejected the authenticating signs because in verse 24, what has happened. “But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow does not cast out demons, but by Beelzebub, the prince of demons.” So they are taking a work of the Holy Spirit and rejecting it.

The sin then, the unpardonable sin of Matthew 12 has to do with the rejection of the words and work of the Holy Spirit. It is an unpardonable sin and will never be forgiven, ever, that’s the strongest it can come out in the original language, “neither in this age, nor in the age to come,” ever, ever, ever, ever will this sin be forgiven. Very strong statement.

Now observe the parallel in Hebrews 6; remember what we’re doing here; we’re checking our interpretation by theological analogy to see if we’ve got other places in the Bible where the same thing is occurring. Here, these people, have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, they’ve turned away and they will never be restored to repentance. We’ll develop that, this is not a case and this is why a lot of Arminians, when they really realize the passage, don’t like it any more than the Calvinist because they don’t intend that it be taught that once lost, always lost. And yet that is exactly what this passage is saying: once, whatever it is that’s happened in Hebrews 6, the game’s over. That’s it. And that’s pretty strong stuff, and the only other place we’ve got it in the Bible is Matthew 12, the unpardonable sin, and again, the Holy Spirit, not primarily the Son, is involved in that particular things.

[someone asks something] Yes partaking of the Holy Spirit is basically… you’re in that outer circle of His work, just like in John 16:8, the word partakes of the Holy Spirit, a partaker in His work. Every unbeliever who’s ever had the gospel, if you witness to an unbeliever and you’ve made the issue of the gospel, of Jesus Christ clear to somebody, that somebody has become at that point a partaker of the Holy Spirit. You’ve made him, you haven’t the Lord has, but through you that person, whether he believes or not, at that point he’s become a partaker of the Holy Spirit because John 16:8 says the Holy Spirit will convince the world, and that’s a work that’s done in here, the Holy Spirit is inside the unbeliever, comes inside, not permanent indwelling, the Holy Spirit is able to come inside the unbeliever and make clear the gospel issue and when He does that, woe to that person if they don’t believe. Now there’s some amendments to this thing, we’re not teaching they haven’t got a second chance. We’ll get to that later.

[someone asks something] Well, we can’t go into the details but you know it must be possible or Jesus wouldn’t have distinguished it. So right now… the best way to do that is to read the context of Matthew and watch the reaction, what He’s doing there. It has to do with this; that Jesus is simply saying you can think what you want about Me… well, let’s look at it this way, let’s look at the stages of the illumination of the person of Christ. Look, here’s the Old Testament, Christ was partially known in the Old Testament. But, who was doing the revealing in the Old Testament dispensation? The Holy Spirit. He revealed some things about Christ in the Old Testament; some things were not known about Christ. Jesus Christ Himself, during the period of His incarnation, spoke things about Himself but not all the things about Himself because there’s some yet to be spoken of in Paul. So the circle of knowledge about Christ was small and growing. So at any one of these points you could know something about Christ and be totally out of it in others. David, for example wouldn’t have known half the stuff Matthew knew about Christ and in ignorance David could have said many things wrong about Jesus Christ. But, the moment David rejected the testimonium of the Holy Spirit in his heart that was a new ball game. It is the Holy Spirit… think of the doctrine of the Trinity, whenever revelation occurs it’s always about the Son. But the personality of the Trinity that touches your heart is the Holy Spirit. In other words, visualize this, as God reaches out to you and touches you with His hand, the fingers that you would slap would be the fingers of the Holy Spirit. And so those who slap God’s hands as he gives them the gift would be people who have rejected the Spirit.

Well, our time is way over….