A.
I don't believe that a genuine born-again Christian would ever repudiate their saving faith and lose salvation.
You may not see how it could happen but the Apostles apparently considered it a possibility or they would not have warned us about it
28
For the LORD loves justice and will not forsake His saints. They are preserved forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off.
(
Psalm 37:28)
The fact that the Lord does not forsake us does not mean that we cannot walk away from Him:
15The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says:
16“This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds.”
17Then He adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”
18And where
these have been forgiven, an offering for sin is no longer needed....
(
Hebrews 10:15-17)
Still, even for this person the possibility that one so blessed can
turn away and
reject the covenant remains.
23Let us
hold resolutely to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.
24And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds.
25Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
(
Hebrews 10:23-25)
26If we deliberately
go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth,
no further sacrifice for sins remains,
27but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of
raging fire that will
consume all adversaries.
28Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29How much
more severely do you think one deserves to be
punished who has trampled on the Son of God, profaned the
blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
(
Hebrews 10:26-29)
The danger here is not fatherly chastisement (which is redemptive) but PUNISHMENT
In Hebrews 10:26, to sin willfully carries the idea of deliberate intention that is habitual, which stems from rejecting Christ deliberately. This is continuous action, a matter of
practice. Now we don't walk along our daily life and "accidentally" fall into a pit called sin. We exercise our will but, the use of the participle clearly shows willful, habitual, continuous action. The
unrighteous practice sin (
1 Corinthians 6:9-10;
Galatians 5:19-21);
not the righteous, who are born of God (
1 Corinthians 6:11;
1 John 3:9). *Hermeneutics.
If the word 'sanctified' in
Hebrews 10:29 is used to describe saved people who lost their salvation then we have a c
ontradiction because the writer of Hebrews in verse 10 said
"sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all" (
Hebrews 10:10) and in verse 14, we read,
"perfected for all time those who are sanctified." (
Hebrews 10:14) So, in
Hebrews 10:10, we clearly read
..WE have been
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all. In
Hebrews 10:14, we read - For by one offering He has
perfected for all time THOSE who are sanctified. To go from
sanctified back to un-sanctified would be in contradiction here.
*NOWHERE in the context does it specifically say the person who "trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant" was "saved" and/or "lost their salvation." The reference to "the blood of the covenant that sanctified him" in verse 29 "on the surface" appears to be referring to a Christian, but this overlooks the fact that the word translated "sanctified" (which is the verb form of the adjective "holy") which means "set apart," and doesn't necessarily refer to salvation.
Strong's Concordance
hagiazó: to make holy, consecrate, sanctify
Original Word: ἁγιάζω
Part of Speech: Verb
Transliteration: hagiazó
Phonetic Spelling: (hag-ee-ad'-zo)
Definition: to make holy, consecrate, sanctify
Usage: I make holy, treat as holy, set apart as holy, sanctify, hallow, purify.
*In
1 Corinthians 7:14, Paul uses it to specifically refer to
non-Christians who are "sanctified" or "set apart" by their believing spouse (and by this Paul does not mean that they are saved). A non-Christian can be "set apart" from other non-Christians without experiencing salvation as Paul explained. So the word "sanctified" means to be "set apart." If the word "sanctified" simply meant saved, then you would have to say that the seventh day was saved (
Genesis 2:3), the tabernacle was saved (
Exodus 29:43), Moses saved the people after coming down off the mountain (
Exodus 19:14), the priests and the Levites saved themselves (
1 Chronicles 15:14), the Father saved the Son (
John 10:36), the Son saved Himself (
John 17:19) and many other things that do not line up with scripture.
In verse 39, the writer of Hebrews sets up the
CONTRAST that makes it clear to me that he was referring to make believers/nominal Christians, not saved people: But
WE are not of those who draw back to perdition, but
OF THOSE who believe to the saving of the soul. Those who
draw back to perdition do not believe to the saving of the soul and those who
believe to the saving of the soul do not draw back to perdition.
So after considering the
CONTEXT, it seems most likely that "he was sanctified" should be understood in the sense of someone who had been "set apart" or identified as a professing believer in the Hebrew Christian community of believers, but later renounces his identification with other believers, by rejecting the "knowledge of the truth" that he had received, and trampling under foot the work and the person of Christ himself. This gives evidence that his identification with the Hebrew Christian community of believers was only superficial and that he was
not a genuine believer.
