For where we sin wilfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains any sacrifice for sins,
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and heat of fire about to devour the adversaries.
This verse warns the person who has known the Christian message and then walks away from it on purpose. Two questions decide how we read it. What is the deliberate sin of the previous verse? And who are the "adversaries" the fire consumes?
The word "for" ties this verse to what comes just before — a call not to give up meeting together. One writer traces the line from that small neglect to the disaster described here.
It is a serious thing to read "not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some," so close to apostasy. But so it is. The habit is not only unworthy of Christians but dangerous... Little as the beginning seems to some, it is the beginning of a great and possibly fatal evil.
The sin here is not a believer's slip but a complete break. One writer draws the line by naming what the person does next.
The deliberate sin is turning away from the Christian faith. The Apostle is not speaking of a backslider who may go back into the world, like Demas, of whom we read in another letter. Such a person can be recovered. The apostate does more than give up Christianity. After professing it, he takes up some human religion. In effect he says, "I have tried Christianity, but I find Judaism, or Buddhism, or some other religion, better."
Another writer sets the law of Moses beside grace, and finds one exception.
For Israel under the law, deliberate sin had no remedy. The law allowed none. Under grace there is a perfect resource for all sins — "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin." Only one deliberate sin is now without resource: turning away from Christianity. That is, giving up Christ and His sacrifice.
Nothing is left because there is no second offering to fall back on.
If they left Christianity, what other divine provision was there that could help them before the throne of God?... "There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." That solemn statement shuts the door against everything besides the sacrifice of Christ... The language is decisive, so no one should mistake what lies ahead. No sacrifice remains. So a sacrifice was needed. Why speak of none remaining, if men could get to heaven without one?
The verse does not say the fire consumes weak Christians. It names a class, and one writer insists on the difference.
The sacrifices were still going on at Jerusalem, but there was no reality any more in anything there. They are not failing saints but adversaries. As such, they must expect a worse judgment than under the law of Moses — worse in proportion to the greatness of what they despised.
Earlier in the letter, Christ appears "a second time... to save those who are eagerly waiting for him." Here that same forward look holds something else.
No sacrifice then remains. At the close of the ninth chapter we saw the believer waiting for the Saviour from heaven. In place of that there is nothing but "a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries." The future is one of terror. Nothing can soften the dreadful doom awaiting those who have lined up on the side of the adversaries of God.
It might seem strange that such severity belongs to an age of good news. One writer answers that the good news is what makes it severe.
We do live in a day when the good news of God's grace is preached. But it is just that fact which increases the severity of the judgment... Grace makes known to us things of infinite greatness. To despise them is a sin of infinite greatness — far graver than despising the law of Moses with its holy demands.
The person frightened by this verse is usually the one it does not describe.
Their state is wholly in contrast with the apostate boldness described in this chapter as well as in Hebrews 6. There is nothing really in common. The apostate is as self-satisfied as he is scornful toward Christ. He hates the truth all the more because he once professed it. The tried and shaken believer condemns himself without sparing, and wants faithfulness to Christ above all things. The great remedy, valued by few, is confidence in His grace — a fuller sense of His work in judging sinful flesh, not forgiveness of sins only. He is also the believer's advocate when he fails.
- One sacrifice — Christ's offering is the only one God appointed; give it up and there is no other to fall back on.
- One sin — the deliberate sin here is giving up Christ altogether. A believer's failure has a remedy; this has none.
- One side — the verse counts those who quit not as failing saints but as adversaries, and the fire falls on them.
- One prospect — instead of waiting for the returning Saviour, they have only a fearful expectation of judgment.
- One caution — a backslider can be recovered, and the believer who condemns himself is not the person this verse pictures.
Any one that has disregarded Moses' law dies without mercy on [the testimony of] two or three witnesses
The writer reaches back to Israel's law courts, where two or three agreeing witnesses could send a man who set aside Moses' law to his death. That is the smaller case, laid down so the greater one in the next verse can land with full weight.
The phrase "without mercy" is not an overstatement. It describes how the law worked by design. Asked what the law can do for a person, one writer answers:
Curse me and kill me on the spot! Is there no mercy? Not in the law! There is no mercy at Mount Sinai. If a man stands before that fiery mount, the terrible choice is duty or damnation. There is no middle ground.
Israel did have offerings for sin. Why did they not cover the man in this verse? The answer lies in what those offerings were for:
When God set up this offering, the sins in view were those committed "through ignorance." Here we see the compassion of our God shining out. He knew well the weakness, ignorance and forgetfulness that mark poor, fallen humanity, and so He made this provision. Sin committed deliberately, in cold-blooded defiance of God, is not in view here... God is a God of mercy, but the law itself has no mercy in it. So the merciful provision of the sin and trespass offerings only took effect where the root of the sin was ignorance, not wilfulness.
Why witnesses at all? It follows from what the law judged:
The Law dealt only with outward acts. It condemned men for their deeds. So its punishments fell on what people could see and hear. Witnesses were therefore necessary to establish legal judgment... The Law thus worked effectively as a ministry of death.
Translations differ on one small phrase, and the sense turns on it:
The point pressed is not "before," or "in the presence of" witnesses... but at the agreeing testimony of two or three... The sense is that the despising transgressor died without mercy, but on the testimony of two or three.
The penalty was not invented for this letter. It stood in the law itself:
What was to be handed out to one who despised Moses' law? Death without pity was the penalty appointed there (Deuteronomy 13:1-11; 17:2-13).
The verse does not describe a man who slipped. Older translations read "despised the law of Moses," and contempt is heavier than neglect:
Clearly then, despising God's commandments shows deeper opposition to His will than setting them aside.
Everything in this verse exists to make the next one unanswerable. The greater offence is not a worse act of disobedience but a rejection of what God has given in His Son:
Those who despised the law of Moses died without mercy. What then must those deserve at the hand of God who trampled the Son of God underfoot? They counted the blood of the covenant, by which they had been set apart, a common thing, and they insulted the Spirit of grace. It was not simple disobedience, however evil that might be. It was contempt of the grace of God, and of what He had done in the Person of Jesus, to deliver us from the consequences of disobedience.
The comparison also guards God's character. He did not grow softer when the age of law ended:
Is God less holy under grace than He is under law? Does He think less of denial of His holy, spotless Son than of dishonour done to the commandments written and engraved in stone?
Anxious believers often read themselves into this warning. One writer draws the line:
The state of such believers is wholly in contrast with the apostate boldness described in this chapter and in Hebrews 6. There is nothing in common. The apostate is as pleased with himself as he is proud toward Christ, and hates the truth the more because he once professed it. The tried and shaken believer condemns himself without excuse and wants faithfulness to Christ above all things.
- Despised, not broken. The verse targets contempt for God's command. That is deeper opposition to His will than setting it aside.
- Without mercy. The law had no mercy to give; its offerings covered sins of ignorance, not deliberate defiance.
- Two or three. The law judged outward acts, so it needed witnesses. The man died on their agreeing word, not merely in their presence.
- Lesser to greater. Merciless death for despising Moses is the smaller case; the greater is contempt for the grace of God shown in His Son.
- Same holy God. Grace has not made God less holy. So this warning describes the settled apostate, not the trembling believer.
of how much worse punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and esteemed the blood of the covenant, whereby he has been sanctified, common, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
The verse asks a question instead of making a statement: how much worse a punishment does such a person deserve? It lays three charges in one sentence, and each one touches a different Person or gift — which raises the hardest question here: how can someone "sanctified" by the blood end up under judgment?
The question sets two things side by side: the penalty under Moses' law, and the Person now rejected.
The Jews knew Moses' law well. It demanded death for anyone who rebelled against it, once qualified witnesses established the case. But God's glory revealed in the Person of His Son goes infinitely beyond God's speaking by the law of Moses. If judgment under the law was that severe, then the far greater evil of the crime against the Son of God demands a far greater judgment.
Each charge answers a gift the gospel had held out.
The gospel presents to us, first, the Son of God; second, His precious blood, as the blood of the new covenant; third, the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of grace. Now what does the man who abandons the faith do — especially the Jew who professed Christianity, gives it up, and goes back to Judaism? He tramples the first under foot. He counts the second an unholy thing. He utterly despises the third. He treats the very things that bring salvation with the utmost scorn and contempt. There is nothing beyond them, nothing but judgment. He will deserve every bit of judgment he gets. All this, note well, is a vastly different thing from a true believer growing cold and careless and so falling into sin.
The sin in view is of a different order from breaking a rule.
It was not simple disobedience, however evil that might be. It was contempt for the grace of God, and for what He had done in the Person of Jesus to deliver us from the consequences of disobedience. On the one hand, if they knew what it was and still renounced it, what was left for them? On the other hand, how could they escape judgment?
That leaves such a person with nothing to fall back on.
If they now abandoned the infinite sacrifice of the Saviour which they had confessed up to that point, there was no other that could avail for their sins. None had real and everlasting efficacy but that one; and those who gave it up, after owning it, were absolutely without resource… Of course in their case it had been mere profession, and the sanctification only outward, separating them from their Jewish fellows.
This phrase is the knot in the verse. Commentators take the word here in an outward sense: a setting apart by open association, not the inward work of new birth.
As we have already seen, "sanctification" in Hebrews is outward — a matter of position. It is not the work of the Spirit of God in the soul by new birth… Nowhere does Scripture mean that a single sheep of Christ can ever perish. Our Lord's own words put the seal on this: "I give them eternal life," and "no one will snatch them out of My hand."
The Greek tense points the same way.
Here it speaks of a person with a Jewish background who has professed to be a Christian but then abandons that profession… The Holy Spirit does not use the present participle, for sanctification is not characteristic of this person. He does not use the perfect tense either, for no sanctification has been accomplished for him. He uses the aorist, which simply means that an event happened in the past, without implying a lasting consequence.
The third charge strikes the One who testified to the worth of the blood.
The Spirit of grace has testified to the value of that blood of the covenant. So to deny its value is a direct insult to the Holy Spirit… How true it is, also, that sin against one Person of the Godhead is sin against all. If a man tramples the Son of God under foot, he has also insulted the Holy Spirit, and denied God the Father, the giver of the Son.
The warning has a target, and the anxious believer is not it.
Such passages hold no terror for those who judge themselves. Knowing they are utterly unworthy in themselves, they rejoice in Jesus as their sure salvation… The heart that grieves in deep dismay over how little good it has done is in no mood to reject the ministry of grace, or to count the blood of Christ a common thing.
- Greater light, greater guilt. Moses' law demanded death for the rebel. The crime here is against the Son of God, so the punishment must be far heavier.
- Three gifts, three insults. The Son trampled, the blood called common, the Spirit outraged — he throws back all three of the gospel's gifts.
- Contempt, not weakness. This is not a believer growing cold. It is contempt for grace by someone who knew what he was giving up.
- Set apart, not saved. "Sanctified" here means an outward setting apart through open profession. It is real as a position, but it carries no lasting result.
- Nothing left over. Give up the one sacrifice and nothing is left but judgment. Yet the person who trembles at these words shows he is not the one described.