You are welcome back. That's what the story of the prodigal is all about. Here is part of a commentary on Hebrews by Tom Wright, a well known biblical scholar.
HEBREWS 6.1-8
"The writer of Hebrews is working his way round to saying “If you're prepared to grow up to maturity, here's some meat for you to get your teeth into!' As he prepares further teaching, he issues a stern warning about the impossibility of giving people a second start in the Christian faith if they turn round the first time and trample on it. His point is that when you've learnt the ABC of the Christian you must go on from there. You can't go backwards, any than you can set off on a bicycle and then, a minute later, backwards to where you began and start off again. If to do that, you'll fall off, which is more or less what verse 6 says.
Before we discover why Hebrews says this, and what the writer means, let's take a closer look at how he Christian beginnings and basic Christian teaching.
Verses 4 and 5 offer a lavish description of what when you become a Christian. First, you are come to 'see the light' with your mind's eye, to recognise the truth about God, the world, yourself and your neighbour.
Second, you 'taste the heavenly gift'. You begin to experience a new kind of life and love which reaches out and embraces you, and you realize that this life and love come from heaven, from God himself.
Third, you have a share in the Holy Spirit. This is a more personal way of speaking about how the one God comes to the individual and community, revealing truth, assuring us of love, awakening hope.
Fourth, you 'taste the good word of God'. You experience the Bible, and the message about Jesus, like a long cool drink on a hot day, or like solid food when you hadn't realized how hungry you were.
Fifth, you also taste 'the powers of the coming age'. The new creation which God will one day accomplish has already begun in Jesus, and a sense of that newness steals over you, making you long both that the new world will come to birth very soon and that you will be made ready for it.
The writer assumes that, though his readers are still only babies, needing milk not solid food, they would be able to nod with recognition to all of these. If, today, we don't regard them as foundational for our Christian experience, what's gone wrong?
Similar questions arise when we look at his description of the Christian ABC, the rudimentary teachings which he shouldn't have to repeat. Here they are in verses 1 and 2.
First, repentance from dead works. This refers both to the religious practices of paganism (the worship of idols and all that it involves) and the behaviour characteristic of pagan society. In Hebrews, the phrase also hints at the continuation of the Jewish Temple rituals, which have become redundant with the achievement of Jesus.
Second, faith towards God. This is spelled out more fully in 11.1 and 11.6. It means, of course, belief and trust in the true God as opposed to idols.
Third, teaching about baptisms and laying on of hands. This double action was, from the earliest times, associated with admission into the Christian community. Jesus' movement began with John's baptism, and from the earliest days the church new converts received baptism, followed by laying on of hands, as the sign and means of their sharing the new common life of the Christian family.
Fourth, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment (or perhaps we should translate it 'the judgment of theco ing age'). Again, from earliest times the Christians were clear that there would come a time when God would the whole world and usher in the age to come. No hope for 'a better by and by'; no sense that, after death, behaviour in the present life won't seem to matter so much. Rather, a very specific hope, solidly rooted in 1ongstanding Jewish tradition and given fresh focus and impetus by Jesus’ own resurrection.
At this point, once more, many modern Christians will their eyes in surprise. These are the ... basics? The early Christian ABC? Most of Our congregations don't much about them! Many in our churches today couldn't tell you why we baptize people, what precisely the resurrection is and why they should believe in it, let alone what 'dead works’ are and why you should repent of them. If this is the of Christian education, I fear there are many churches, as well as individual Christians, that need to go back to school. It's not, I think, that they've learned the alphabet ago and forgotten it. No: they haven't ever learned it in first place. They are getting by on the spiritual equivalent of grunts and hand signals.
The point of this list is for the writer to say that he is not going to go back over all this ground again. Rather, he wants to go deeper, to teach them more developed and wide-ranging truths. And the solemn warning about 'falling away' in verses 4-8 fits here as a way of saying that if you have learned the ABC thoroughly, and have started off enthusiastically on the Christian path, you can't expect to be restored if you then renounce it and go off in a different direction. As with the child who, having learnt the ABC, refuses either to read, write or even speak intelligibly, the teacher comes to suspect that nothing is ever going in, or at least that it's not doing any good.
That is the picture we have in verses 7 and 8. The land gets watered, and produces a crop. But if the only crop is thorns and thistles (this echoes Genesis 3.18, where thorns and thistles are a sign of the fall) then the farmer will give up hope, and eventually turn the whole thing into a bonfire. But what could a Christian individual or community do that would be the equivalent of such a thing?
When he speaks of 'falling away: and of 'crucifying God's Son all over again: the writer seems to have in mind people who have belonged to the church, who have taken part in its common life, but who then decide it isn't for them, abandon their membership, and join in the general public contempt for the faith. This raises an interesting question, which the writer doesn't pursue here: is it possible first to become a genuine Christian and then to lose everything after all? To this question Paul, in Romans 5-8, gives the emphatic answer 'No!: and advances detailed arguments to prove the point. In the present passage the writer quickly goes on to say that he doesn't think his readers come into the category he's describing, but he doesn't unpack the wider theological question. The normal way of holding what he says together with what Paul and others imply is that the people described in verses 4 and 5 are people who have become church members, have felt the power of the gospel and the life that results it through sharing the common life of Christian but who have never really made it their own, deep down When he says in 12.15, 'Take care that nobody lacks grace,' he seems to envisage such a category of people. But he doesn't press the point. Nor should we press him for answers to questions he wasn't asking.
We should, rather, let him pose his sharp and uncomfortable question directly to us. Are we - or are some within Christian fellowship - in danger of turning our backs on faith, and joining in the general tendency to sneer at the gospel and the church? Are we lining up with those who hold firm their original faith and hope, or with those who, like Peter the charcoal fire, are ready to deny that they have anything do with Jesus?"
John
NZ
