Hebrews 10:26 For if we go on willfully
and deliberately sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice [to atone] for our sins [that is, no further offering to anticipate],
Four commentaries (portions of which I list below) all state the "deliberately sinning" refers to the sin of APOSTASY.
noun:
apostasy; plural noun:
apostasies ... the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief.
I believe the verse is being used in such a way as to define "sinning" as ANY SIN. This is not the case in the eyes of these four commentators.
Four Commentaries
Constable
The writer turned from positive admonition to negative warning, in order to highlight the seriousness of departing from the Lord.
"Between the imperatives of vv. 22-25 and 32, 35, the author describes, more fully than in 2:2f.; 6:4-6, the nature and consequences of apostasy, previously described as 'falling away from the living God' (3:12)."
10:26-27 "The word 'we' cannot refer to any other group of people than his readers and himself [cf. 2:1]."
Willful sin in the context of Hebrews is deliberate apostasy, turning away from God (2:1; 3:12; 6:4-8; 10:23).
"The faulty translation 'keep on sinning' misses the point altogether. The context suggests that the author is thinking of a particular sin rather than a lifestyle in which one
continues to sin."
If an apostate rejects Jesus Christ's sacrifice, there is nothing else that can protect him or her from God's judgment (cf. 6:6; Num. 15:30-31). Some interpreters believe that this is only a hypothetical possibility for a genuine Christian.
[ Others believe that only professing, not genuine, Christians are in view. Still others believe that "this sin could only be committed in the first century when the temple was still standing, and only by an unsaved Jew or proselyte to Judaism." However, what the writer said in all of the warning passages in Hebrews makes it clear that genuine Christians
can apostatize.
Henry
Having mentioned these means of establishment, the apostle proceeds, in the close of the chapter, to enforce his exhortations to perseverance, and
against apostasy, by many very weighty considerations, Hebrews 10:26,27, &c.
1.
From the description he gives of the sin of apostasy. It is
sinning wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, sinning wilfully against that truth of which we have had convincing evidence. This text has been the occasion of great distress to some gracious souls they have been ready to conclude that every wilful sin, after conviction and against knowledge, is the unpardonable sin: but this has been their infirmity and error.
The sin here mentioned is a total and final apostasy, when men with a full and fixed will and resolution despise and reject Christ, the only Saviour,--despise and resist the Spirit, the only sanctifier,--and despise and renounce the gospel, the only way of salvation, and the words of eternal life and all this after they have known, owned, and professed, the Christian religion, and continue to do so obstinately and maliciously. This is the great transgression: the apostle seems to refer to the law concerning presumptuous sinners, Numbers 15:30,
31. They were to be cut off.
Darby
Hebrews 10:26; which is founded, moreover, on the doctrine of these two chapters (9 and 10), with regard to the sacrifice. He insists on perseverance in a full confession of Christ, for His one sacrifice once offered was the only one. If any who had professed to know its value abandoned it, there was no other sacrifice to which he could have recourse, neither could it be ever repeated. There remained no more sacrifice for sin. All sins were pardoned by the efficacy of this sacrifice: but if, after having known the truth, they were to choose sin instead, there was no other sacrifice by virtue even of the perfection of that of Christ. Nothing but judgment remained. Such a professor, having had the knowledge of the truth and having abandoned it, would assume the character of an adversary.
The case, then, here supposed is the renunciation of the confession of Christ, deliberately preferring-after having known the truth-to walk according to one’s own will in sin. This is evident, both from that which precedes and from verse 29.
Calvin
And that the Apostle here
refers only to apostates, is clear from the whole passage; for what he treats of is this, that those who had been once received into the Church ought not to forsake it, as some were wont to do. He now declares that there remained for such no sacrifice for sin, because they had willfully sinned after having received the knowledge of the truth. But as to sinners who fall in any other way, Christ offers himself daily to them, so that they are to seek no other sacrifice for expiating their sins. He denies, then, that any sacrifice remains for them who renounce the death of Christ, which is not done by any offense except by a total renunciation of the faith.