“So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding. Surely we don’t need to start again with the fundamental importance of repenting from evil deeds and placing our faith in God. You don’t need further instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And so, God willing, we will move forward to further understanding. For it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once enlightened—those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come— and who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back to repentance; by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame. When the ground soaks up the falling rain and bears a good crop for the farmer, it has God’s blessing. But if a field bears thorns and thistles, it is useless. The farmer will soon condemn that field and burn it.”
Sometimes when you know something, you can’t un-know it. Try to look at these words and NOT read them. It’s impossible. Once you learn how to read you will automatically read words in front of you. When you have heard the good news of Jesus and experienced the goodness of God for yourself, it changes you. You can’t truly un-know God. The Holy Spirit lives within you and shows you supernatural realities to which you had been blind. Seeing into the supernatural is a place from which you can’t really go back.
In today’s passage, there are some hard ideas. Can you lose your salvation? These verses point to the answer being “yes.” That loss will not be accidental, so you don’t need to worry that you will somehow “break” your salvation or mess up too much for God. That’s the opposite of the Gospel. But you can choose to walk away. If the Holy Spirit opens your eyes and then you decide to reject Jesus, there’s really no way you will come back from that. That’s a really significant choice to make.
Every single day of the spiritual journey is a choice. Will we follow Jesus one more step? That gets harder as we grow deeper with him. That’s probably why the readers of this letter were happy with their spiritual baby-milk. If we stay shallow, we can coast. That’s really not what following Jesus is all about. But this passage is a giant WARNING sign — going deeper means seeing more in the supernatural realm and that means harder and harder choices. Are you willing to keep going with Jesus? Are you going to stay? His disciples swore up and down that their answer was “yes,” but when he got arrested they split. Don’t choose to stay because you are coasting and not putting too much into your spiritual life. Choose to stay because you genuinely want to devote your life to Jesus no matter the cost.