Biblion Bible Commentary
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Impossible to Renew Them
Hebrews 6:4-8
4 For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, · WEB
The severest sentence in the book describes people who had everything short of endurance, and the reason given is what falling away does rather than what God refuses.
For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.
The sentence should be read slowly, because every clause in it is generous before the last one turns.
Five experiences are listed, and none of them is second-hand. Enlightened. Tasted the heavenly gift. Made partakers of the Holy Spirit. Tasted the good word. Tasted the powers of the age to come. The people described are not fringe attenders or the merely curious; the description is built to exclude the escape of saying they were never really in.
Then the fall, and then the word that makes this the hardest verse in the book: impossible. Not difficult, not unlikely.
What must not be missed is where the impossibility is located. The reason given is not that God's patience has a quota. It is a description of what the falling itself does: seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame.
The tense is continuous. The people in view are not those who stumbled and grieve — grief is the opposite of the condition described — but those who, having known everything listed, hold it up to contempt as a settled posture. Repentance cannot be renewed in a person while the thing repentance turns toward is the thing being publicly shamed. The impossibility is in the direction they are facing, not in the mercy behind them.
The illustration in verses 7 and 8 keeps that shape. One field drinks the rain and produces a crop; another drinks the same rain and bears thorns. The difference is not in what fell on them. And even the second field's sentence is written with a hedge the preacher chooses carefully — it is near being cursed, its end is to be burned. Nothing has been torched yet.
Two verses later the writer tells his readers he is persuaded of better things concerning them Hebrews 6:9 — the warning is real and it is not addressed to them as a verdict. It is the cliff edge shown to people walking toward it, which is what every warning in this book is for Hebrews 2:1 Hebrews 10:26.
held with reason What this mark means