There follows a most solemn warning, as much in keeping with the one perfect sacrifice of Christ, as that given in Heb. 6. with the displayed power of the Holy Spirit in honor of His person. To abandon Him or His work is fatal; and that is the question in both warnings, not personal failure, or practical inconsistency within or without, however grievous and inexcusable, but apostacy from the power of the Spirit to forms or from the only efficacious work of the Saviour to indulge in sin willfully and habitually. Either is to prove oneself the enemy of God's grace and truth, though the two paths may diverge ever so widely. But faith, and the faith, are alike abjured, whether for religious vanities or for reckless unholiness. It is man in both, fallen man, preferred, God and His Son rejected, however seemingly far apart as the poles. Both paths of ruin, not without votaries in apostolic days, are at the present crowded, and ever increasingly.
“For if we are sinning willfully after we received the full knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fierceness of fire about to devour the adversaries. If one set at naught Moses' law, he dieth without compassion on [evidence of] two or three witnesses: of how much worse punishment, think ye, shall he be thought deserving that trod down the Son of God, and counted common the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him that said, To Me [belongeth] vengeance, I will requite, saith Jehovah; and again, Jehovah will judge His people. A fearful thing [it is] to fall into a living God's hands” (Heb. 10:26-31).
It is a serious consideration to read “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the custom of some is” in such proximity to apostacy. But so it is. The habit is not only unworthy of Christians, but perilous. It is to neglect, if not to despise, one of the greatest means of edification and comfort. It is indifference to the fellowship of saints. It is independence and slight of His presence Who not only loves us, but is pleased to be in our midst for blessing ever fresh and growing. Are these privileges of little account in opened eyes and to ears that hear? Then weigh what follows in the light of “the day drawing nigh,” when motives as well as ways will be laid bare. Little as the beginning seems to some; it is the beginning of a great and possibly fatal evil. “For if we are sinning willingly after we received the full knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins.” Giving up any assemblage which has the Lord's sanction for ease, or private reasons which are not imperative duty, may embolden to give up many, nay, all, and so end in callous contempt and fleshly self-indulgence.
It might seem incredible, did we not know as a fact, how many unestablished young get worried by the enemy when they find themselves so far below the standard of Christ, and particularly when through unwatchfulness they have found themselves guilty of sin. But their state is wholly in contrast with the apostate boldness described in this chapter as well as in Heb. 6. There is nothing really in common. The apostate is as self-complacent as haughty toward Christ, and hates the truth the more because he once professed it. The tried and shaken believer condemns himself unsparingly and desires above all things fidelity to Christ. Confidence in His grace through a fuller sense of His work in judgment of sinful flesh (Rom. 8:1-4), not remission of sins only, is the great remedy so little appreciated generally, as well as His advocacy in case of special failure (1 John 2:1-2).
The reader should observe that “sinning” in Heb. 10:26 is the present participle and does not relate to an act or acts of evil (as in the last text referred to), but to the habitual or continuous habit of the person. And this is strongly pointed out in a Greek Scholiast which Matthaei quotes. It supposes souls not born of God; which is in no way inconsistent with “we” or with having received objective knowledge, however accurate, full, or certain. On the contrary, both here and in 2 Peter 2:20, this is expressly allowed to be within the range of flesh's capacity: the lesson which is lost for all that assume, like Alford, that this can only be by those who are real possessors of life or spiritual grace. Hence it is a plain and instructive fact that not a word in any of those scriptures implies that they were begotten of God. They were mere professors of Christ, never children of God; and they might have had the highest external privileges of the Spirit and powers of the age to come (cf. Matt. 7:21-23), which only aggravated their defection from the Lord, but in no way intimated, as Delitzsch fancied, “a living believing knowledge of it [the truth] which laid hold of a man and fused him into union with itself.” It is a gross error that thus ver. 29 becomes unintelligible. Those who speak so only prove how far they themselves were from a sound intelligence of scripture as to God or man. Another form of misunderstanding appeared of old in the Novatian controversy from misuse of baptism; for which the curious reader may consult of the Greeks Chrysostom and of the Latins Augustine, as well as later writers, or the still lower because more human school of Theodore of Mopsuestia.
It is clear that, abandoning Christ, they forfeited sacrifice for sins, His only being effectual, and writing death even on what had pointed to His. There remained therefore for such as renounced Him “a certain expectation of judgment and fierceness (or heat) of fire about to devour the adversaries,” into which apostates necessarily pass. And this is confirmed from God's dealings in the past, allowing for the vast superiority of gospel over law. If one set at naught Moses' law and dies apart from compassionate feelings, in case of two or three witnesses, of how much worse punishment, think ye, shall he deserve that trampled down the Son of God, and counted common the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace? One cannot conceive thoughts or words more energetic, and a doom implied more awful. And so it must be: for a blessing spurned, after being received on the fullest proof and the surest attestation, becomes the measure of the guilt of abjuring it. As in ver. 26 we saw the eagerness of some to infer the defectibility of grace and the denial of eternal life, so here we have to face the straits of pious men trembling for the truth sacred and dear to their hearts, and conceiving strange evasions, instead of trusting absolutely God's word. Thus Dr. John Lightfoot, followed by Guyse, &c., argues that Christ was sanctified by blood! (Heb. 10:29), as others refer the sanctification in question to the covenant! Here again the contending parties overlook that the Epistle to the Hebrews contemplates, as does 1 Corinthians, Christian profession; which ought to be real by divine grace, but may be only external, and thus admits of a “sanctification” not necessarily inward.
The citation of Deut. 32:35 ought to strike those who question the apostle's hand; because it differs from both the Hebrew original and the Sept. version, and is identical with Rom. 12:19.