The person that starts in
Hebrews 10:26
I figured this was the passage to which you were referring. Here it is in the NASB:
Hebrews 10:26-29; 37-39
26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.
28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?....
37 For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay.
38 But My righteous one shall live by faith;
And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.
39 But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
Why would a person "go on sinning willfully after "receiving a knowledge of the truth"? Is the effect of the indwelling Spirit so small, so weak, that the saved person can go right on sinning just as they always have? I don't believe that for a second. It seems evident to me that such a person has had merely an intellectual belief in the Gospel, not a belief that has arisen from the heart and is characterized by a sincere desire to be ruled and transformed by God. This is the belief of demons that the apostle James wrote of in his letter (
James 2:19) I know many people within the Church who have a knowledge of the Gospel but who have not accepted it on a heart-level and yielded themselves to it. And, as you'd expect, they are "sinning willfully" on a daily basis. This is the sort of person described in
verse 26, not a genuinely born-again individual.
The Early Church included "tares" (
Matthew 13:24-40), "false brethren," Paul called them (
2 Corinthians 11:26; Galatians 2:4) who participated in the life and work of the Church but who were not actually saved. The modern Church is filled to the brim with such "brethren" today. It is not surprising, then, that the writer of Hebrews addresses these "tares" directly in his letter, describing and warning them of the danger of having a knowledge of the truth but nothing more.
27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.
This is all that remains for one who has obtained a knowledge of the Gospel but does not exercise saving faith in it. I encounter "Christians" quite often who are terrified of hell. Whenever I probe into their understanding of the Gospel and their experience of God since their "conversion," I inevitably discover that they have not had a genuine second spiritual birth. On some - often subconscious - level, they know this is so and go about with a constant feeling of dread, expecting the eternal punishment of hell should they die. And this is exactly what the writer of Hebrews describes in
verse 27. Again, though, this is not a description of a genuinely saved person going apostate but of a false convert reaping the consequences of their false "conversion."
29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?....
Certainly, this further description of the person in view in
verse 26 confirms that the person is not saved. No person in whom the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, dwells would ever do what is described in this verse.
But what to make of the phrase "by which he was sanctified"? The past tense "sanctified" indicates an accomplished state of affairs. Does this mean the person being described is a truly born-again person? Well,
verses 26, 27 and the first part of verse
29 all describe an unsaved person, so concluding that "sanctified" indicates a born-again status seems unwarranted. In what sense, then, can an unsaved person be "sanctified" by the blood of the covenant? I think the writer of Hebrew is referring to the "knowledge of the truth" that the person in view possesses, not their actual spiritual state. The person described in
verse 26 and on knows that he has been sanctified by the shed blood of Christ, and this is what the writer of Hebrews is acknowledging at the end of
verse 29. The writer of Hebrews is simply describing the false believer's "knowledge of the truth" when he writes, "by which he was sanctified."
37 For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay.
38 But My righteous one shall live by faith;
And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.
There is no suggestion of lost salvation in these verses that quote the prophet Habakkuk. It requires a prior commitment to a saved-and-lost doctrine to interpret "My soul has no pleasure in him" as meaning, "the one who shrinks back has lost his salvation." God had no pleasure in the faithless Israelites when they shrank back from the Promised Land. He was very angry with them, in fact. But He did not reject them as His Chosen People. Even in the wilderness in which they wandered as a result of their unbelief, God continued to lead and care for them. One is not obliged, then, to understand "My soul has no pleasure in him" as meaning "he has lost his salvation."
39 But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
Here the writer of Hebrews contrasts the genuine believer with the false one he has been describing in verses 26-29, the one who merely holds a knowledge of the truth but not a heart-belief in it. The false convert "shrinks back," but the genuine believer does not.
I don't see, then, that
Hebrews 10:26-39 offers any ground for a saved-and-lost point of view, which is exactly what I would expect given what Scripture says about works having nothing to do with one's salvation (
Ephesians 2:8-9; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:5) but rather with the believer being in Christ (
1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 John 5:11-12), saved by his perfect, finished atoning work at Calvary (
Romans 3:24; Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 10:10, 12).