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Love
Teaching Text: Hebrews 5:11–6:12
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites,the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.
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. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.
Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation. God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
Hebrews: A new and Living Way
The Substance of Endurance
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Sermon Summary
This passage contains some of the most intense warnings in all of Scripture. But the author of Hebrews is not a warning giver trying to make you afraid of him. He is a marathon coach who loves his runners — and refuses to hide the risks because he wants you to make it.
Two things marathon runners learn:
Not knowing where you are in the journey is discouraging.
False hope — being told you’re almost there when you’re not — is also discouraging.
Encouragement that doesn’t acknowledge difficulty, risk, or what’s at stake can feel like empty platitudes. The writer of Hebrews knows this. He knows some in his congregation are glazing over during the Melchizedek section — and he knows that’s evidence of a more serious problem.
The path of immaturity — four stops on the way to soul-level danger:
You stop trying to understand. “You no longer try to understand” (5:11). You show up to the book club insisting on the ABCs. Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985 — before the scroll existed. We now consume endlessly: brain candy instead of communion, taking instead of making. A day disappears into a phone. Over a decade — 50% fewer books, conversations, prayers, ideas wrestled with.
You stop living off what God has given you. Spiritual laziness. You can’t tell what’s life-giving from what isn’t. What sows death and what sows life. You lack discernment. You drift.
You only receive — no signs of growth. Thorns and thistles instead of fruit. The Dead Sea, not the Jordan River.
The opinions of unbelievers weigh more than God’s word or the community of Christ. This was the specific pressure on the first recipients of Hebrews. Different form, same pull today.
The final stage: treating the love and sacrifice of Christ as a worthless thing — to be trampled. No confidence in Jesus, no confidence in his community.
Can a Christian lose their salvation? We have to sit with the question honestly — this passage seems to raise it. Three world-class scholars help:
Scot McKnight notes the sin described is deliberate, conscious, Trinitarian, and behavioral — the sin of apostasy. Crucially: apostates don’t worry; they know what they have done. Those who worry are not the ones this passage is about.
Amy Peeler follows: if someone is heartbroken that they may have fallen away, that concern is evidence they have not.
N.T. Wright situates the passage in the full New Testament: Paul in Romans 5–8 gives the emphatic answer No to the question of whether a genuine Christian can lose everything — and advances detailed arguments to prove the point.
Conviction from the Holy Spirit is evidence of God’s work in your life. Far more dangerous is a seared conscience — one that feels nothing and looks at Christ with contempt.
If you are worried about apostasy, your concern is a clue you aren’t there.
The substance of endurance — what maturity actually looks like:
You use what God has given you in constant use — treating his word as a treasured gift, training yourself to distinguish life from death.
You stay connected to the community of Jesus. God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people.
Prayer, worship, service, love in action — and you become more and more sensitive to God’s heart, loves, and plans.
You show diligence — in hoping, in living in faith and patience to inherit what has been promised.
Dallas Willard: God is not opposed to effort. God is opposed to earning.
In Christ we have grace that saves us — and grace that leads us to live in an increasingly mature way. Not white-knuckle self-effort. Finished effort. His.
I don’t think you are almost there. But I think you can make it in Christ.
Direct Quotes
“The particular sin for this particular audience was willful rejection of God, his Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit in an open, conscious denunciation… Those who have committed apostasy not only know so, but they take delight and hubris in their decision. Those who worry over whether they have or have not committed this sin are not to worry. Apostates don’t worry; they know what they have done.”
— Scot McKnight
“If someone is heartbroken that they may have fallen away from the faith, that concern over one’s relationship with God is evidence that they have not fallen away.”
— Amy Peeler
“When he speaks of ‘falling away’… the writer seems to have in mind people who have belonged to the church, who have taken part in its common life, but who then decide it isn’t for them, abandon their membership, and join in the general public contempt for the faith… To this question Paul, in Romans 5–8, gives the emphatic answer ‘No!’, and advances detailed arguments to prove the point.”
— N.T. Wright
“God is not opposed to effort. God is opposed to earning.”
— Dallas Willard
Three Questions for Personal Application
Where have you quietly stopped trying to understand? It’s rarely a dramatic decision — more often a slow drift into consumption over communion. Think honestly about the last month: what has been shaping your mind most? Where has engagement with God’s word or hard questions of faith been crowded out? What would it look like to reclaim even one hour a week from the scroll?
Where is your conscience most active right now — and where has it gone quiet? The sermon draws a sharp distinction: conviction is a sign of life, a seared conscience is the real danger. Where do you feel the Holy Spirit’s nudge most clearly in your life? And conversely — is there an area where you’ve stopped feeling it? What might that silence be telling you?
What does “diligence” look like for you in this season — without slipping into earning? Dallas Willard’s line cuts both ways. Passivity can masquerade as grace, and striving can masquerade as faithfulness. Where is God inviting you into a more consistent, practiced engagement with him — not to secure his love, but to live more fully from it?
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
— Romans 8:35, 37
