by Keith Needham

Created on: April 20, 2009

The passage found in Hebrews 6:4-6 is a notoriously difficult passage to interpret. I believe that it needs to be interpreted in light of the context of the entire book. Hebrews is a book that seems to be written to Jewish people who had come out of Judaism into Christianity, but who were now being tempted to return to Judaism, or to blend Judaism with its sacrificial system with the one-time-for-all-time sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Thus the book sets out to demonstrate that Christ is better than anything that Judaism has to offer. In chapter 1, we see that Christ is better than the angels, through whom God gave to Israel His law. This subject matter is culminated by the warning passage of chapter 2 verses 2 and 3, in which the writer argues that "if the word spoken by angels (the Old Testament law) proved to be unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience (to the law) received a just punishment; how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation - which at first began to be spoken by the Lord . . . ," whom the writer had already set forth to be greater than the angels anyway.

His argument is that if disobedience to the law garnered a very severe punishment (often death), then disobedience to the revelation of the salvation of God in Jesus Christ was bound to carry with it an even more severe punishment - as it was now God speaking through His Son who was being ignored rather than simply the word of God as given through the angels. And thus we have the flow of this book. There are teaching sections in which Christ is seen to be greater than something within Judaism, followed by a warning passage, which basically states that obedience to Christ is a higher calling, and disobedience to Him - or falling away from Him - would be met with greater consequences as well.

This is what I believe we see in Hebrews 6:4-6. The writer is arguing that the Jewish believer must move on in the faith rather than fall back and apostacize from the faith and go back to Judaism with it temple sacrifices and offerings. He has introduced the priesthood of Christ in chapter 5, demonstrating that Jesus Christ has a higher priesthood than the Levitic priesthood - and thus, that His offerings and sacrifices are of a higher order than the sacrifices ministered by the Levitical priesthood under the law. Hebrews 6 comes in as an aside really, an aside arguing that for one to now go back to the inferior priesthood would be equal to doing despite to the blood of the superior sacrifice,

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