#hebrews 6

The Peril of Falling Away

1 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 with instruction about ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits. 4 For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt. 7 For land which has drunk the rain that often falls upon it, and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed; its end is to be burned.

9 Though we speak thus, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things that belong to salvation. 10 For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

The Certainty of God’s Promise

He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. 

First, his name means ‘king of righteousness’; then also, ‘king of Salem’ means ‘king of peace’. Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.” 

during junior high and high school, I suffered from an extremely intense fear that I wasn’t really saved, that I’d somehow gone too far and I was going to hell. that I could live my whole life in pursuit of Jesus, loving Him, serving Him, dedicating all I could to Him, bearing ‘good fruits,’ but in the end find out I was never saved at all. I feared I’d permanently fallen and nothing could redeem me.

let me tell you, that is a hard, hard fear to shake. it’s a fear that kept me shaking. literally. (‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling,’ Paul wrote. lemme tell ya, I am exceedingly, uncomfortably familiar with trembling.) the reason it’s so gripping is because it feeds itself. if you fear you’re deceived, you can go to great lengths to find out the truth, but then what if you’re deceived about not being deceived? and so the cycle of doubt carries on endlessly.

Hebrews 6:4-8 was not the passage that sparked my dreadful “pure-O” OCD descent (I know now that’s what it was), but it certainly exacerbated it. I couldn’t read passages like that without triggering a full-scale anxiety attack. my stomach would turn, my mouth would dry out, I would tell myself “you’ve been over this, Bry, you know it’s not true” but I was already gone, and would stay gone, shivering and rocking back and forth trying to drown out the Bad Thoughts for hours. I can think of no other period in my life where I felt so completely unstable. I couldn’t trust myself or my perception of anything.

despite all that, I continued to pray. despite fearing God would reject me, I strove to love Him. despite fearing He would curse me, I filled my prayers with praises to Him. I read the Bible despite fearing it would change nothing in me. even if Hell is my true end, I thought, I still want to know Jesus and show others who He is. I was so afraid of death, but if I turned away from the only One who could give me life, what else was there?

today, I have a better grasp on the Scriptures. I have a pastor dad, a mom, and a sister who patiently prayed for me and explained to me, multiple times, the issues of conscience, the real evidence of apostasy, and God’s power over fear. I finally started to snap out of it when a Christian mentor told me “you’d have to have a spirit of anti-Christ to do what you fear you did. you are literally the worst at being the anti-Christ I’ve ever seen.” 

God did answer. I don’t have panic attacks about it anymore. I can read those passages without disconnecting from the world. I look back now and clearly see the evidence of OCD and rejection-sensitive dysphoria that had its roots in a shaky parental relationship and a genetic predisposition to worry. despite the mess that was my brain, Jesus never once abandoned me, and I know that with a lot more certainty than I did back then.

but if I’m honest, my brain is still kind of a mess. there’s still this niggling but what if...? hiding out in the back. domesticated but ever-present, it still drives me to seek answers, just to be certain. just to make sure. sometimes I still catch myself saying, maybe I’m still going to Hell, but I’ll press onward and upward to Christ til the day I die anyway, because He’s better than giving up.

but I’m beginning to think that attitude--not the going-to-Hell part, but the rest--maybe that’s what the writer of Hebrews was trying to get at in the first place. maybe that was the point of his warning. to keep looking to Christ, no matter what our fears tell us. it would be all too easy to give up hope, to turn back instead of continuing to struggle. we can debate the finer points of backsliding vs. apostasy and Calvinism vs. Arminianism and “did he really mean impossible” and completely miss the point: to keep pressing on while looking to Christ.

so if my fear tells me I can’t trust myself, well, fine. then I’ll trust in Christ. He’s more capable of saving me than any institution and any person, including myself. that’s what the rest of Hebrews is dedicated to explaining. my job is to keep trusting in exactly that truth, even if every conceivable dark force is screaming at me that it’s not worth it. Christ can do what I can’t.