October 18 – Hebrews 6:4-6. Crucifying Again.

October 18 – Hebrews 6:4-6.  Crucifying Again.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

These verses have been nearly impossible for me to manage – even digging as deeply as I can dig while taking the course on Hebrews this semester.  The worst thing is, the subtleties found in the Greek are difficult to comprehend as well.  The word used for ‘crucify’ in this passage is only seen here and when seen outside of the Bible, it does mean simply crucify even with the fact that it has a prefix on it which means ‘again.’  (Welcome to Greek confusion. And you thought everything the Bible said was all figured out!  Hah!)

Early church fathers believed that it meant crucifying ‘again,’ but what does this really say?

No, it doesn’t mean that Jesus is experiencing prolonged suffering.  That is not the case at all.  We see Him in His resurrected form throughout the Gospels and we also see Him in Revelation.  To be responsible for the continued sins of the entire world and have to suffer the crucifixion repeatedly for all of civilization would never allow Him to act as the Lamb of God, the ruler of all things, the Word of Creation and our Advocate before the Father.  He conquered death and suffering … He doesn’t continue to experience those things.

When we sin, we are committing the acts that put Jesus Christ on the cross.  As long as we continue to do those things and we know better … we are still in the same place that we were before we came to Jesus.   The author of Hebrews wants us to grow beyond that, to mature to the place that we can continue to move forward, not return to a life lived in sin.