Foundational Repentance and Falling Away, Hebrews 6:1-6

Hebrews 6:1-6 has nothing to do with losing our salvation through sinful acts. Instead, it teaches that we must repent from our rebellion and from our own dead works as a way of becoming acceptable to God. Further, when we do sometimes fall back into relying on our own works, we cannot repent of this in our own power. God must provide both the initiative and the power.

Hebrews 6:1-6 usually gets lost in arguments about whether it is possible for a person to “lose” their “salvation,” and, if so, whether they are ever able to return and regain it. However, the passage never mentions either salvation of the possibility of losing it. Instead, its focus is the central, foundational nature of repentance from seeking God through our own dead works:

Therefore leaving the teaching of the first principles of Christ, let’s press on to perfection—not laying again a foundation of repentance (metanoias) from dead works (apo nekrōn ergōn), of faith toward God,  of the teaching of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.  This will we do, if God permits. For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit,  and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame.

Hebrews 6:1-6 (WEB)

First, note the reference to the first five chapters of Hebrews–the “teaching of the first principles of Christ” that the readers are “leaving” in Chapter 6 to “press on to perfection.” That teaching leads directly to the “foundation” of “faith toward God” which is precisely “repentance from dead works.” Unfortunately, it is commonly taught that the “dead works” here are a synonym for our “sins” (plural)–our bad acts. Some modern translations even incorporate this interpretation into their texts–for instance, the current text of the New International Version reads “repentance from acts that lead to death.” Hebrews 6:1 (NIV). This confuses the meaning of the entire Letter to the Hebrews!

“Acts that lead to death” is not what the Greek in verse 1 literally says. It says “dead works,” a phrase that uses the adjective “dead” (nekrōn) to describe our “works” (ergon). Applying these words literally, something that is “dead” cannot “cause” or “lead to” anything. If it ever had that capability, it lost it when it died. So the phrase really cannot be saying that the “works” we are to turn away from are the causes of our death. Further, the Greek of the New Testament is not a language impoverished of constructions that can be used to indicate causation–quite the opposite! If the writer to the Hebrews had wanted to tell us that we are to turn away from our works because they are the causes of our death, he had numerous ways to express this concept–all of them using the abstract noun thanatos, “death,” instead of the adjective nekros, “dead.” For example, in Matthew 26:38, Jesus said he was sorrowful “unto” or “to the point of” death, heōs thanatou. And, in John 11:4, Jesus told his disciples that his friend Lazarus’ sickness was not “unto death,” pros thanaton–that is, would not ultimately cause Lazarus’ death–even though he knew Lazarus was already dead and that he would raise him from death in a few days. In Romans 7:10, through sin working within him, the commandment which was intended for Paul to be “to” (eis) life instead was “to death” (eis thanaton)–that is, caused him to die. In 2 Corinthians 2:16, Paul says that we who follow Christ are to the dying world an “odor of death unto death” (osmē ek thanatou eis thanaton), a very expressive phrase indeed. Finally, 1 John 5:16-17 repeatedly speaks of sins not unto death (mē pros thanaton or ou pros thanaton ) and once of sin unto death (hamartia pros thanaton)–that is, a sin (singular) which has caused death. If the writer in Hebrews 6:1 had meant “works that lead to death,” it would have been natural for him to use a construction similar to this–ergōn pros thanaton–to express his meaning.

But, no, he uses the simple adjective “dead” (nekrōn). The problem is not that the works are objectively, morally good or bad, that they are “sins” or sinful, or that they “lead to” death. The problem is that the “works” themselves are “dead”–unable to give us life, because they have no life. Hebrews 6:1 calls us not to turn away from our sins (plural), but from our sin (singular), our rebellion against God, a rebellion that impels us to do lifeless works of our own devising to buy God’s favor while we go on our own rebellious way.

Life comes only from God through faith–through permitting God, the Giver of life, to live through us. As long as we pursue our own works–even objectively morally “good” works–to appease God while keeping our distance from him, all we have is nekrōn ergōn, “dead works.” “If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:3. That is why the “foundation” of life in Christ, the only “foundation” on which it can be built, is to change my mind and turn away from my own works–both “bad” and “good”–and toward faith in God. To have life, I must trust the Source and Giver of life with my life.

The writer then lists several other “teachings” which follow repentance from our own dead works to trust God. Repentance and faith are not “teachings,” but states of being. These “teachings” or subjects of teaching–baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment–though also part of the foundation, must follow repentance and faith. The writer mentions them here only to express his desire to move on from them to other topics.

The writer then gives a parenthetical aside, verses 4 through 6, that has led to great discord on the subject of the possibility of “losing” one’s salvation. To make sense of this parenthetical, the first thing that must be remembered is that the “repentance” spoken of in this passage is repentance from “dead works”–that is, from our attempt to use our own works to appease God while going on our own rebellious way. It is not repentance from individual sinful acts, and it is not the same thing as our salvation.

The second thing to note is the changes our translators have had to make in the word order and word relationships of the original Greek. I do not criticize any group of translators for changing the word order in this or any other passage–Greek and English are grammatically very different languages, and retaining the Greek word order almost never results in grammatically correct English sentences that accurately reflect the meaning of the original. But the original word order of verses 4 through 6 tells us a few things about its intended meaning:

Impossible therefore [to] those once having been enlightened, having tasted and both of the gift <the> heaven-fitting [one], and partners {or sharers} having become of-[the]-Spirit Holy, and [the] goodness having tasted [of] God’s word {or voice or utterance}[,] [the] power also [of the] coming age, and [then] having fallen away {or failed} again to make fresh again {or restore} to repentance[,] crucifying again {or impeding} [in or of] themselves the Son of <the> God and exposing him to infamy.

Hebrews 6:4, 6:5 and 6:6, Biblehub.com interlinear.

In the above rendering, multiple English words within the same underlined link mean that all of the English words were required to translate a single Greek word (which is very common with Greek verbs). Words or phrases in square brackets, “[]”, are not found as separate words in the Greek text (they usually indicate information carried by Greek noun case endings). Words in pointed brackets, “<>,” are words found in the Greek text but generally omitted in English translations. Finally, words in curly brackets, “{},” indicate reasonable alternative readings of the preceding word.

As can be seen, these three verses constitute a single sentence, and the first word of that sentence is “Impossible”–adynaton–which has a primary meaning “powerless, without strength” (a + dunatos), with a secondary meaning “impossible” in the sense that nothing is able to do the thing referred to. English translations usually translate adynaton as part of verse 6, referring to the present infinitive verb anakainizein (to make fresh again, renew, restore), but it is actually stated at the beginning of verse 4.

It can also be seen that this long sentence contains no indicative verb, and, thus, applies the adjective adynaton to the rest of the sentence through an implied copula: “Impossible [it is].” However, it is ambiguous as to whether the impossibility applies to all of the verb forms in the sentence or only some of them. The verb forms translated “having been enlightened,” “having tasted,” and “having become,” are all aorist participles in either the passive or middle voice. They are things the person involved either had done to them, passively, or allowed to be done to them, at some already completed time in the past. The verbs translated “having fallen away {or failed},” “crucifying again {or impeding},” and “exposing [him] to infamy,” are also aorist participles, again appearing to imply completed past action, but in the active voice–that is, these are things the person involved was an active agent in doing, not just something that was done to them. Finally, though not in the indicative mood, anakainizein is the only verb in the sentence in the present tense. It is also in the active voice–that is, it refers to someone (not necessarily the person who fell away or failed) actively restoring them to repentance or making their repentance fresh again, not to the restoration being done passively.

However, remarkably, there is nothing in the phrasing of verse 6 that suggests that the person doing the restoring or refreshing of repentance is a different person than the one who actively performs the other three active forms in the verse–failing, crucifying Christ again, and exposing him to infamy. Thus, what the whole sentence appears to be saying is that when true followers of Christ–people who have become full partners with God through the Holy Spirit, as described in verses 4 and 5–“fail” or “fall away” in their faith, they are not, in their own power, able to renew their repentance. God must provide the renewed repentance in that circumstance, just as he provided it the first time (John 6:44; Romans 2:4). This is consistent with the teaching of verses 1 through 3: “repentance” of human origin, self-imposed penance to “pay” for our sinful act and “prove” we have changed without ending our rebellion, is a “dead work.” Given the seriousness and effect of our rebellion, only God can make it possible for us to return to him. For us, it is “impossible.”

This reading is also supported by the range of meaning of the verb usually translated “fall away” in verse 6: parapesontas. This is an aorist participle, active voice, of parapíptō, “I fall away, fall back, fall back into, fail.” As discussed in greater length in my previous articles “Sin” Words: Lexical Definitions and Repentance, Confession and the Textual Variant in James 5:16, and the articles following these, parapíptō is the root from which the noun paráptōma is derived. The noun paráptōma generally does not refer to blatant sinful acts–instead, it is, literally, a lapse or false step. In the specific context of sin, it refers sometimes to carelessly slipping or being tripped into falling away from God and sometimes to the personal weaknesses and character flaws that leave us vulnerable to this. So it appears that the failure to which verse 6 is referring is, through our own weakness, “falling back into” our old way of relying on our “dead works.” This reading makes perfect sense, integrating verses 4 through 6 with their context.

And, when we do this, we cannot repent on our own. God must make our repentance possible.

Next in the Repentance Series: God’s Patience and Our Repentance, 2 Peter 3:9.

Next: Top-Down or Bottom-Up Repentance:  Shift toward group conversions