Hebrews 6:6

_ _ If — Greek, “And (yet) have fallen away”; compare a less extreme falling or declension, Galatians 5:4, “Ye are fallen from grace.” Here an entire and willful apostasy is meant; the Hebrews had not yet so fallen away; but he warns them that such would be the final result of retrogression, if, instead of “going on to perfection,” they should need to learn again the first principles of Christianity (Hebrews 6:1).

_ _ to renew them again — They have been “once” (Hebrews 6:4) already renewed, or made anew, and now they need to be “renewed” over “again.”

_ _ crucify to themselves the Son of God — “are crucifying to themselves” Christ, instead of, like Paul, crucifying the world unto them by the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14). So in Hebrews 10:29, “trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith ... sanctified, an unholy thing.” “The Son of God,” marking His dignity, shows the greatness of their offense.

_ _ put him to an open shame — literally, “make a public example of” Him, as if He were a malefactor suspended on a tree. What the carnal Israel did outwardly, those who fall away from light do inwardly, they virtually crucify again the Son of God; “they tear him out of the recesses of their hearts where He had fixed His abode and exhibit Him to the open scoffs of the world as something powerless and common” [Bleek in Alford]. The Montanists and Novatians used this passage to justify the lasting exclusion from the Church of those who had once lapsed. The Catholic Church always opposed this view, and readmitted the lapsed on their repentance, but did not rebaptize them. This passage implies that persons may be in some sense “renewed,” and yet fall away finally; for the words, “renew again,” imply that they have been, in some sense, not the full sense, ONCE RENEWED by the Holy Ghost; but certainly not that they are “the elect,” for these can never fall away, being chosen unto everlasting life (John 10:28). The elect abide in Christ, hear and continuously obey His voice, and do not fall away. He who abides not in Christ, is cast forth as a withered branch; but he who abides in Him becomes more and more free from sin; the wicked one cannot touch him; and he by faith overcomes the world. A temporary faith is possible, without one thereby being constituted one of the elect (Mark 4:16, Mark 4:17). At the same time it does not limit God’s grace, as if it were “impossible” for God to reclaim even such a hardened rebel so as yet to look on Him whom he has pierced. The impossibility rests in their having known in themselves once the power of Christ’s sacrifice, and yet now rejecting it; there cannot possibly be any new means devised for their renewal afresh, and the means provided by God’s love they now, after experience of them, deliberately and continuously reject; their conscience being served, and they “twice dead” (Jude 1:12), are now past hope, except by a miracle of God’s grace. “It is the curse of evil eternally to propagate evil” [Tholuck]. “He who is led into the whole (?) compass of Christian experiences, may yet cease to abide in them; he who abides not in them, was, at the very time when he had those objective experiences, not subjectively true to them; otherwise there would have been fulfilled in him, “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance” (Matthew 13:12), so that he would have abided in them and not have fallen away” [Tholuck]. Such a one was never truly a Spirit-led disciple of Christ (Romans 8:14-17). The sin against the Holy Ghost, though somewhat similar, is not identical with this sin; for that sin may be committed by those outside the Church (as in Matthew 12:24, Matthew 12:31, Matthew 12:32); this, only by those inside.