The writer of Hebrews begins the sixth chapter of his letter by saying, "Therefore, leaving the elementary message about the Messiah, let us go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, faith in God, {2}teaching about ritual washings, laying on hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. {3}And we will do this if God permits." (Hebrews 6:1-3 CSB) Many go wrong in their entire thinking about Christianity because they do not take into account these words and others like them in the book of Hebrews and elsewhere. To them Christianity is all about the profession of faith, the decision for Christ. Such people are convinced that whatever happens beyond the momentous decision to accept Christ is irrelevant, for if you have made "the decision for Christ" you are saved and thus secure in Christ for all eternity. So for them it's all about 'the decision'.
But this view, which has come to be known as "easy-believism," is a shallow misunderstanding of salvation and the gospel because it doesn't demand any submission to Christ as Lord and contains no call to follow him. When the Lord was walking the sands of Palestine he was looking for people who were willing to deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow him (Luke 9:23). Obviously he wanted people to do more than simply say they believed in him. The Bible says that the demons believe in God in this intellectual sense in which I am now speaking, but they are not followers of the Lord (James 2:19). But Jesus was after followers. He wanted people who would do what he told them to do. The clearest expression of this can be found in Mathew 7:21-23: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord!' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. {22} On that day many will say to Me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name?' {23} Then I will announce to them, 'I never knew you! Depart from Me you lawbreakers!' (Matthew 7:21-23 CSB) What a dreadful day that is going to be for some! The will have lived their entire lives believing they were saved only to find out when it is eternally too late that they are not. I can think of nothing more heartbreaking than to be deceived regarding your eternal destiny.
Is there anything we can do to prevent being deceived regarding our eternal life? Thankfully, there is. We can leave the elementary message about Christ and go on to maturity. That is what our writer to Hebrews says as he begins this sixth chapter. When he says we are to leave the elementary message about Christ he clearly does not mean we are to despise or abandon the elementary truths of the faith. His point, rather, is that the elementary teachings about Christ are the door to progress, the foundation upon which we are to build; they are not the stopping place but the beginning. It's quite like the learning of the alphabet. When children learn their ABC's in kindergarten they have learned the elementary principles of reading and writing. But their learning is not to end there. Their mastery of the alphabet is merely the beginning. They are expected to build upon that basic foundation for the rest of their lives. It would be fruitless and pointless for children not to move on to reading books and writing sentences, paragraphs, stories, essays, research papers and the like. The whole reason for teaching children their ABC's is so they can move on to more complex things. And so it is to be with the fundamentals about Christ.
Now notice that the writer of Hebrews does not leave us in the dark regarding what those fundamentals are. He mentions six things: repentance from dead works, faith in God, teaching about ritual washings, layon on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Scholars are generally of the opinion that these six facets of the elementary message about Christ are the key teachings used to induct new converts in the Jewish churches of the first century. By looking at these, then, we get a glimpse at what we would have been taught before being baptized and accepted into a Jewish church almost 2,000 years ago.
Repentance from dead works
To begin with there is repentance. I trust that you have an understanding of what it means to repent. It means to turn around. And you turn around because God makes it plain to you that you are heading in the wrong direction. By his grace he opens your eyes to the fact that if you keep living your life the way you have been living it, in the end you will wind up in hell.
What could be more basic to the Christian life than this? This is where it begins, isn't it? You can't be saved if you don't turn around. You can't keep running away from God and rebelling against him and be saved. You've got to turn around and face him. You have to admit to him that you have been breaking his laws and trying to get out from under his authority so that you can be free to do your will. But you have to turn and face him and agree that his ways are right. You have to stand before him and confess your sins and ask for his forgiveness. You need to repent, he says, from your works because they are dead. That means they were nothing more than doomed attempts at self-salvation and they were leading you to death. You were on the broad road that leads to destruction and everything you were doing was actually only taking you ever closer to that destruction.
It's just at this point that so many stumble. Because they never truly repent they never get saved. One of the most famous stories of church history illustrates this. The story comes from the life of D.L Moody, one of the great evangelists in the history of the church. As the story goes, while walking down the street Moody was approached by a stumbling drunk who slurred, "Mr. Moody, I'm one of your converts." Moody's response is classic. He said, "You must be, because you're certainly not one of the Lord's!" We laugh, yet the sad reality is there are so many just like that stumbling drunk who claim they are in Christ yet have never repented. If you have any lingering doubt about the need to repent I would just remind you that when Matthew and Mark record the beginning of Jesus' ministry they each say he began with a call for people to repent (Matthew 4:17 and Mark 1:15).
Faith in God
Following instruction about repentance comes instruction about faith in God. This is the other side of repentance. Life before repentance is marked by distrust of God. But when you turn around you begin to trust him. In fact, the rest of your life will be marked with faith. No doubt in those early Jewish churches they would have taught young converts about the faith of all those 'old testement' believers that we read about in Hebrews 11.
It is important that we be absolutely clear what faith actually is. True faith involves a willingness to commit yourself into the hands of God. I can illustrat it easily enough this way. If I agree to get in your car and ride with you I do so because I have faith that you will take me safely to our destination. I am saying that I have faith that you will not drive into an oncoming vehicle, off the road and into a ditch, or into a brick wall. That is faith. It is the willingness to entrust yourself to another, to place your life into that other person's hands. Have you done that with God? Have you placed your life in his hands? The point goes well beyond merely believing that he exists. As we have seen, even the demons believe that, but that does not make them Christians. No, a Christian is a person who has entrusted his or her life to God through Jesus Christ.
Now as you look at these first two elementary teachings what you find is that they deal with the beginning of the Christian life. They describe how you get in. Of course they will continue to mark your life as a Christian, for even as a Christian you will continue to sin and will therefore need to repent and you will obviously need to continue to have faith in God. So there is no doubting the fact that these are fundamental, foundational truths of the Christian life.
Ritual Washings
The next item on the list is teaching about ritual washings. You may have a translation that uses the word baptisms here, but ritual washings is more accurate because the writer is not using the typical 'new testement' word for baptism. Besides, it is pural, whereas there is only one Christian baptism (Ephesians 4:5). The same word is also used in Hebrews 9:10 where it clearly refers to 'old testament' ritualistic washings. The Jews were constantly washing themselves and washing other things because purification was an important aspect of their religion. Apparently this teaching was used to make clear that true cleansing comes from God. Of course the important thing to remember is that God calls us to be clean of sin so that we can serve him. He wants to work in us and through us so that we can be a blessing to others, which can only happen if we are clean or holy in his sight. That means that as Christians there is no room for sin in our lives, for only when we have purified ourselves are we fitting instruments that are useful for our Master (2 Timothy 2:21).
Laying on of Hands
The next foundational element is the laying on of hands. In the 'new testament' the early church laid hands on those being baptized as a symbolic way of conveying that the new converts had received the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:17;19:6). Also, we see the early believers laying their hands on individuals when they set them apart for service (Acts 13:1-3; 1 Timothy 4:14; 5:22; 2 Timothy 1:6).
The ritual washings and the laying on of hands each, it seems to me, convey they logical next step in the progression beyond repentance and faith. Once conversion happens, which is what repentance and faith represent, the next step in the Christian life is to begin to serve God and others. How can you serve effectively? The answer is by remaining clean, by not contaminating yourself with sin, and by depending on the power of the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps if you can get this picture in your mind it will help. Before you are converted you are on what Jesus calls in Matthew 7:13 the road that leads to destruction. When you repent you turn around and begin to go on the right road, the road that leads to life, as Jesus calls it in Matthew 7:14. In order to travel on that road, which Jesus calls a difficult road (Matthew 7:14), you have to have faith in Jesus. So you take hold of his hand and you begin to follow along behind him. Because it is such a difficult road you need to travel as light as you can, so you have to keep your backpack clean of anything you don't need. Besides, if you have the wrong things in your backpack, it will be much harder to find in it the first aid kit and other necessary items you must carry to help you fulfill your mission while on this road, which is to help those who are going the wrong way to turn around as you have done and to help those who are following Jesus as you are but yet may get distracted and thus lose their way on the difficult road.
So you see why you are on the road, now, I trust. You are on the road to help others who are getting on it and to help those who are on it to stay on it. That's why you don't need your life cluttered up with sin and why you need the power of the Holy Spirit. As you remain clean from sin and filled with the Holy Spirit, you can be a fit vessel through whom God can work to bring the lost to him and to encourage the saved to keep following Christ.
The resurrection of the dead
The next foundational element is the resurrection of the dead. The 'old testament' knows a bit of this glorious doctrine that comes to full fruition in the 'new testament'. We read of it most clearly in the 'old testament' in Daniel 12:1-2 where we are told that some will awake to eternal life and others to shame and eternal contempt. Of course in the 'new testament' this doctrine takes on vastly greater significance, a fact which I am sure you are well aware of so I don't need to go into that with you now.
Eternal judgement
The last foundational element mentioned is eternal judgment. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:10 that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to be repaid for what we have done. This reminds us that a great day of accounting is coming, a day when everyone will answer for their actions. For those who are in Christ, however, this will be a day of receiving rewards, not a day of punishment, for our sins have already been punished on the cross when Jesus died in our place to pay the penalty for our sins. For those outside of Christ, however, it wil be a day of punishment.
So these last two foundational elements remind us of the future. Our lives and indeed all of history are moving toward a climax of resurrection and eternal judgment.
As we consider these elementary teachings about Christ, these foundational elements, we see they cover the totality of Christian experience, the beginning (repentance and faith), the middle (ritual washings and the laying on of hands), and the end (the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment). They tell us what the Christian life is all about. It is first of all about reorientation of life. We were going away from God but now we must go toward him. Second, as we go toward him we must serve him and others. And third, it is all heading toward a grand and glorious future marked by resurrection and judgment.
Now I remind you again that our writer tells us that we must go on to maturity. There is no need to lay this foundation all over again. These are the foundational elements of the faith. We are either convinced of their truthfulness or we are not. If we are, we will obviously want to go on to maturity. Just like a kindergarten student delghts to use the ABC's in reading and writing, so the Christian delights to utilize the six foundational elements of the faith and to build upon them. And this will happen, says verse 3, if God permits. This is a clear acknowledgement that everything is ultimately in the hands of God and therefore if we are to mature we must depend on God to make it happen. We can't just decide to make it happen and then go off and do it by ourselves. We need Gods help, and verse 3 is an acknowledgement of this fact.
You see where God is calling you to go, what he wants you to do, and what the Christian faith is about at its most basic level. Are you ready to move on? God is calling you to go on to maturity. Will you heed his call?
