Hebrews Chapter Six, Pressing On

 

Hebrews 6:3 And this we will do if God permits.

 

To understand how the writer is transitioning his thoughts we need to focus on this verse for a moment. “And” is a coordinating conjunction: it connects two grammatically equal parts of a sentence. It is also used to link the idea that a former thought coincides with a future thought; that is, what comes before “and” and what follows are conceptualized together.

So, what comes before “and?” Retracing our steps, we return to Hebrews 5:12. “For though by this time,” the writer informs his readership, the Jewish Christians receiving the letter ought to be teachers, but have not moved beyond the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Their faith, as it were, is stagnating or sterile, still in its infancy despite solid teaching and a span of (chronological) maturation. Verse 13 alludes to the fact that these saints are unskilled in rightly dividing the word of God, because they are babies in the faith. Verse 14 commends solid food to mature saints, i.e., those who exercise their senses to discern good and evil. In short, such believers are not witless and oblivious like small children. They are aware and they are educated in the faith.

 

The chapter break doesn’t mean that there is a shift in the writer’s thinking. Rather, he continues this train of thought in 6:1, telling them that he wishes to leave the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ. He refers to these things as the foundation and lists: repentance, faith toward God, the doctrine (Greek logos, literally translated word) of baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

 

Paul summarizes the Christian foundation to the Corinthian church, stating: “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus,” 1 Corinthians 3:9-11.

 

Foundations are important. But the author and Paul want their audience to move on, not leaving the foundation behind, but building wisely upon it. Hebrews 6:3 is a hinge on which the writer turns to issue a bold warning to his audience that the infancy and sterility their faith is manifesting may have dire consequences. What follows in Hebrews 6:4-12 are his concluding remarks about Christians who profess the faith but do not walk in it. We do not abide, as Jesus our Lord would say.

 

The author wishes to move forward. “This we will do, if God permits.” Leave behind the first principles: not in the sense of forgetting or ignoring them, but building upon them as one’s faith matures. Paul informs us that there are deeper spiritual truths to apprehend in the Christian faith that belong only to those who have matured. “However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing…these things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual,” 1 Corinthians 2:6, 13. The author desires to move on, but turns to God, awaiting His permission. We all mature in our own way and our own time. For some in the church the author was writing to, they may not have been able to bear the deeper things the writer wanted to share with them. Spiritual stagnation makes one blind to spiritual truth and is a quick road to carnality. Like preaching the gospel, the bad news must come with the goods news, which serves to make the good news shine all the more. If the Hebrew saints being written to continued to be babes in Christ there were consequences. The following verses outline those consequences in vivid detail.