⁴ For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, ⁵ and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,

So begins a very difficult passage, on a number of accounts. Can a believer actually lose his or her salvation? When Scripture presents such an exalted, eternal view of salvation that is a work of God and eternal in duration, (in this verse for example, and also of Romans 8:28-39, Ephesians 1:3-14) then to lose one’s relationship with the Lord would be to undo the work of eternity, to loosen the hand of the Almighty. That would be incomprehensible. Hebrews 6:4-8 on the surface looks like that is indeed possible.

But, when we understand this passage in light of the overall book of Hebrews and examine the grammatical structure of this passage, we will see that the superiority of Christ and the finality of His once-only sacrifice excludes any possibility of a genuine Christian’s losing his or her faith. In fact, the supremacy of Christ and His work on the cross completely trumps any other possible way of salvation, including a theology that says you can lose your salvation and then gain it back again. That would mean re-crucifying Christ all over again.

The debate about this usually follows this line: either the passage speaks of a genuine believer who falls away (that is, loses his salvation) or about one who comes close to being a believer, and then falls away (in which case, he doesn’t lose salvation because he never really had it in the first place). There are really two issues here. The first is whether a Christian is in view. The second issue is that if a Christian is in view, can he lose his salvation if he falls away?

First, the language of verses 4-5 is consistent with a description of a Christian. The individuals in question have been “enlightened,” a word that is used in 10:32 to clearly refer to the believing readers. These are not ones who love darkness more than light, but who have stepped into the light. They have “tasted of the heavenly gift,” which in context can refer to nothing less than the grace of God in Christ (see 4:6). They have “tasted,” a term the writer uses to mean full participation in (see 2:9 where Jesus “tasted death for everyone”—He didn’t just come close to death, but fully experienced it). They have fully partaken of the Spirit, enjoyed the Word of God and begun to experience God’s eternal power. I cannot conceive how one could more fully describe the Christian experience!