Contendah, my Friend,
You tell me:
The chapter begins (v.3) with an address to "holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling." Thus there is absolutely no question about whether saved persons (“Christian believers,” to employ your preferred frame of reference) are being addressed here.
Does Paul consider these "holy brethren" to be saved unequivocally, unconditionally, without any concern that such "holy brethren" could lapse into a condition that could separate them from their first love and cause them to depart from the God to whom they committed their lives and souls when they first became Christian believers? Verses 12-14 powerfully suggest otherwise. Thus I reproduce them below in whole from the KJV: Note that this warning is addressed to “brethren” (v. 12), there being absolutely no doubt that the persons addressed are the same as those “holy brethren” of v.3.
Have you ever addressed a church group, i.e., a local fellowship? Did you begin with, "Brothers and sisters (i.e., brethren)"? Would you declare upon your soul that ALL the people in the audience were truly believers? Or could some of them have been attending that church -- and still not yet be believers?
How many pastors and speakers have you heard begin a message in a church fellowship, "Brothers and sisters. . . " Was everyone in that congregation a true believer -- or could some have been only social believers?
The same thing with Paul. He addressed a group which he believed to be all believers. But, was everyone a believer? Keep in mind that shortly after Paul left, often false teachers jumped right in and started preaching false doctrines.
So, when we read of Paul:
12. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.
13. But exhort one another daily,. While it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14. For we have become partakers of Christifwe hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end....”
Could he have had that same thought in mind -- that although he addressed the group as brethren -- that some in that group might not yet really be believers -- and those could be led astray and have a hardened heart? Something to consider.
My Friend, you are so intent upon proving Bill Gray wrong -- that I believe you lose sight of the big picture.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
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How very widely you again miss the mark, Bill. And if anyone is refusing to see the "big picture", it is Bill Gray.
The POINT is that Paul’s remarks were addressed to "holy brethren" to exhort them against "departing from the living God." Is it likely that Paul considered himself to be addressing those who had never come to a saving relationship with God? Can one depart from that which one never embraced? Even if I should accept your assumption that both "holy brethren" and unsaved persons were included in those to whom he wrote (which I do not), I can not logically escape the fact that those "holy brethren" among Paul's readers, however many or few, had not, in Paul's understanding, departed from the Living God; that they were subjects of God's grace, but that it was nevertheless appropriate to warn them, for he. admonished them to, "Take heed, brethren ,lest there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.
Your presumptuous characterization of Paul's audience as a divided configuration--some saved and some unsaved--thus fails to deal honestly with the undeniable FACT that his warning was inclusive of all to whom he addressed it--and that "all" includes the "holy brethren", the "Christian believers.", whether or not it included any unsaved.
I note that you elected not to deal with my second issue, namely that in the sixth chapter of Hebrews, there are those described as having been “partakers of the Holy Ghost”, but who are said to become incapable of repentance should they “fall away.” Thus, even though they. as with every Christian believer, had received the Holy Ghost as the “earnest of [their] inheritance” (Ephesians 1::14), by their subsequent actions, they had “crucifi[ed] to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” Your OSAS theology would find nothing in that rejection of the Savior that would place their souls in jeopardy, so ensnared are you in your embrace of the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance. Think about it, Bill. The scriptures confirm, without question, that a person who at one time received the Holy Ghost can indeed subsequently come to so self-willed an alienation of him/self from love and loyalty to Jesus Christ as to behave such that he “crucifi[ies] the Son of God afresh, and put[s] him to an open shame.” To deny that,. Blll, in the face of the clear teaching of the inspired word, is not only quirky, twisted theology; it smacks of blasphemy, characterizing God’s soteriological relationship with man as something that it decidedly is not!