Dr. Jay Snell Newsletter Feed and Free BonusesPart Three
Proof Texts The Devil and Well Meaning People (The Peddlers of Unworthiness) Use To Clobber You Over The Head To Make You Feel Too Unworthy To Receive Healing and Prosperity: Identified, Examined, Explained and Refuted
CHAPTER SEVEN
Does Hebrews 10:26-29 Teach That A Christian Can Sin Willfully and Lose His/Her Salvation? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Dr. Jay Snell Newsletter Feed and Free Bonuses
If you're going to exercise God's power in your life, you have to be able to handle what the Devil and the well meaning Peddlers of Unworthiness throw in your face. One thing they will continuously throw in your face is that you're not saved. Or, if you have settled it that you are saved, they will remind you of a sin you committed as a Christian and say to you, "You can't possibly be saved- look at what you did."
If you don't learn how to overcome this, you will be absolutely powerless in your Christian life. If you're going to exercise the power of God to receive the Abrahamic blessings, you've got to be able to deal with some of the Scripture passages that many well-meaning, but wrong thinking Unworthiness Peddlers present to you. They tell you that when you sin, God will be mad at you, that you've had it, and that you're going to hell.
One of their favorite passages to make you feel too unworthy to receive your healing and prosperity God promised you in The Abrahamic Covenant, is Hebrews 10:26-29. Remember, if they can make you question your salvation, at the very least they can and will make you feel too unworthy to receive the healing and prosperity God promised you. But, can they really teach that you, a Christian, can lose your salvation based on this passage? Absolutely not!
Look at Hebrews 10:26-29,
26 For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
28 He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
Are Christians Included In This Passage? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
The average Christian reads this, throws their hands up, screams in despair, and says, "Woe is me. See there, if I sin, I've had it!" But is that what this says? Christians look at such statements as the one found in verse 29, "....the blood of the covenant, with which he was sanctified....", and they will say, "Well, nobody is sanctified but a Christian; therefore, that means that a Christian can trample underfoot the Son of God, and there remaineth no more sacrifice but a certain fiery looking for...." But lets find out who this was written to.
First of all, may I remind you again of the name of the book - Hebrews. It was written to Hebrews, and Hebrews are Jews, the physical seed of Abraham.
Remember, before Jesus came, a Jew did not have to get saved, he was born saved. The Abrahamic Covenant gave him four things because of who he was. He was guaranteed salvation, healing, prosperity, and well being for his family, and all he had to do to get it was be born a Jew.
The Covenant that is spoken of in this passage is the Abrahamic Covenant. Jews were a sanctified people. Let's take the mystery out of that. The word "sanctified" has basically one meaning, which is "set apart". Out of all the world, God set apart one man, Abraham, and from that one man He set apart, or sanctified, all his physical seed - the Jews. He gave them salvation. You and I have to get saved, the Jew didn't.
Remember also, the people referred to in this book were Hebrews who had come right up to the edge of the cross and were forced to make a choice. They had to choose whether to stay with the blood of bulls and goats or go with the blood of the Son of God. Those who went with the blood of Christ kept on enjoying their Abrahamic blessings. Those who did not, fell away and lost them all.
Look back at verse 26 in this passage, "If we sin willfully." The average Christian will stick himself right in that verse. "See, it says if we sin willfully...." No, it says if those Hebrews who had come right up to the place of receiving Jesus as their Savior but refused to accept Him, then they willfully sin, there would be no more sacrifice for THEIR sins.
The book of Hebrews is teaching this - "Christ is the final sacrifice, whether you like it or not. You Jews can go ahead and make all those animal sacrifices, but it won't do you any good." The Jew who came up to the cross and refused to receive Christ as the final sacrifice, fell away from what he had been born into, which was his Jewish stream of Abrahamic blessings. He, the Jew, fell away from that which God had promised him, because he would not accept Jesus as the final sacrifice for sin.
What Is A "Willful Sin" and Can A Christian Commit It?
"For if we sin willfully." There were two different kinds of sins in Moses' Law. There was the willful sin, and there were sins that were not committed willfully. If a Jew willfully sinned, the Law demanded various types of blood sacrifices depending on what the sin was. If they did not make the sacrifice what happened? Their Abrahamic blessings shut down. When they made the proper sacrifice, the blessings continued. What blessings? Salvation, healing, prosperity, and well being for their family. But, again, if they failed to make the proper sacrifice for a willful sin, the Abrahamic blessings stopped, they lost it all. They could get sick and die. They could go to hell. Their kids could run amuck. They could go slap-dab broke. The only thing that guaranteed these blessings to them was the Abrahamic Covenant.
God No Longer Accepts The Blood of Bulls and Goats When A Jew Commits A Willful Sin
What about those Jews who came to the place where they had to make a choice - either accept Jesus as the final sacrifice or try to keep their relationship with God by sacrificing the blood of bulls and goats? What the writer of the book of Hebrews is showing is this - if you try it with the blood of bulls and goats and then sin willfully, there remains no more sacrifice for your sin, because God does not accept the blood of bulls and goats anymore. Where is the word "Christian" in this passage? There is no way that you can put yourself in verse 26, because that WE does not include YOU. He is speaking to Hebrews who are to the point of making a choice. He is saying, "If your try to maintain your hope in God based on your works (sacrifices of animals), then when you willfully sin there is no sacrifice for that sin, because God does not accept the blood of bulls and goats anymore." It's Christ, or nothing.
He was speaking to Jews who were in a unique situation. Christ had come, He'd made His claims, He'd died, and He was now being preached. He was being preached by Jewish men. They were preaching Christ as the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believed. The Jews, as a nation, were faced with the most momentous
decision in their history, for here was the Son of Almighty God, their Messiah, being offered to them. God ascended Calvary in the body of Jesus Christ, and God Almighty in human flesh poured out His own blood, not just to pay for our sins, but to cement the feast that had begun between Him and Abraham way back in the book of Genesis. Abraham shed his own blood, and every male who was born into the Jewish family had to shed their own blood in honor, not of Moses' law, but Abraham's Covenant. Yet God's blood was never shed - it was done through the sacrificial death of an animal - until Jesus. But when Jesus Christ ascended Golgotha and then the cross, the blood of God Himself poured down cementing that blood covenant of friendship between Himself and Abraham that was initiated in the book of Genesis. See What've They Done With Abraham's Blessings?.
When Jesus came, God set aside and did away with the old animal sacrificial system and said, "This is My sacrifice, My Son." And these Jews had come to the place where they were either going to take the step of accepting Christ or they wouldn't. If they didn't they fell away from The Abrahamic Covenant- Hebrews 6:6. If they refused Jesus Christ and tried to hang on to the sacrifices of bulls and goats and then sinned willfully, there was no more sacrifice for them. Listen, these people were sanctified, they were the people of God, they were the partakers of the Holy Ghost, and the Covenant that sanctified them was the Abrahamic Covenant. They had everything going for them. The writer of Hebrews was pointing out to them the pitfalls that awaited them if they made the wrong choice. "God has sent His Son, and you people are on the edge. What are you going to do? If you refuse Him, there remains no more sacrifice for your willful sin, because God is not going to accept the blood of animals anymore."
The Total Removal of The Abrahamic Covenant Explains The Deadly Views of The Peddlers of Unworthiness
The reason modern theology has such a problem with these passages is very simple. They do not understand the relationship of Moses' law to Abraham's Covenant, and because of that lack of understanding their theology is flawed. Brother Jay, "How do you know this?" Because God revealed it to me. And, what He showed me, agrees with the entire body of scripture. It took seven years for God to get this revelation into my spirit and then write it down in the form of my four Abrahamic books - seven years. And this matter of the Law gave me more trouble than anything else. I would think about it, and God would show me more about it. I would think some more about it and then think about it some more to the point that I would have headaches, I thought about it so much. My brain would almost short circuit because I thought on it so much. Finally, I had to put it down and not think about it for two or three months. But God finally got it through to me, and once He did, it eliminated all of my messed up theology.
There Is No Such Thing As A "New" Covenant
Verse 29, again, is talking about the Jewish nation. The blood of the covenant is talking about the blood of Christ and the Abrahamic Covenant. Modern theology wants to read "new covenant" into everything, but let me give you a Greek lesson about the new covenant. There are two Greek words for "new". Neos means "new in time". Kainos means "new in quality". The so-called new covenant is a Kainos covenant, which means it is not new at all. It's been given some new twist that makes it qualitatively different. If you would like to have a detailed word study on this, look at Volume 2 of my Abrahamic Covenant books (What've They Done With Abraham's Blessings?) in the section that lists and explains every place in the entire Greek New Testament where the Greek word Kainos is used. You'll find that it is a word that means "new qualitatively, but not new in time". Our new covenant is simply the ratification of the Abrahamic Covenant by the blood of Jesus Christ, giving it a quality it did not have before. Hence, the Kainos, or the "new" covenant as we call it.
In order for you to successfully exercise the power of God you're going to have to beat the Devil on this point - that he can take a Christian and burn him. Because he can't! Let's get a balance on this though. What about the man who comes down the aisle, fills out a card, gets water baptized, then goes out and lives like the Devil himself for the balance of his life. I don't any more believe that he was saved than I believe the moon is made of cheese, because when a man gets saved, a genuine case of Holy Ghost salvation, there is going to be a 180 degree shift in him. God is going to take out the garbage that was in him and put good things in him. He's going to change his wants, his desires, his habits, and his activities. He's going to change everything about him. He's going to cause him to want the things he used to hate and hate the things he used to want. He's going to stay saved supernaturally, because the Spirit of God is going to make him. Yes, he may fall and stumble, but God will reach down, pick him up, dust him off, stick him back on his spiritual horse, and he'll keep right on riding. And then he'll stumble and fall again, and God will do the same thing for him again. But once a man has been saved, supernaturally filled with the Holy Ghost, God Almighty does a work in him that nobody can undo. This is just how it is. I'm living proof of this. I've stumbled and fallen a lot, and yet God has picked me up every time, stuck me back on my horse, got me back on the trail, and I'm still riding for God! That is genuine Holy Ghost salvation. You see, the natural man doesn't even want to ride for God. But when God saves someone, He changes that person from the inside out.
Nowhere is a Christian mentioned in these passages in Hebrews. You can't include Christians here, because it was written to Jews who had come up to the very place of decision. Many of them made the right decision, but many of them didn't. As a nation, they did not.
Please don't put yourself in Scriptures where you don't belong. There are enough of them where we do belong to keep us busy.
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February 27, 2008
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