THE ELEMENTARY TEACHINGS ABOUT CHRIST
Hebrews 6:1-2
CHAPTER 1 – AN OVERVIEW
Hebrews 6:1 is the only place in the Bible that refers to the ‘Elementary Teachings about Christ.’ The writer also refers to these six principles as the elementary teachings about God in Hebrews 5:12. I was very intrigued by these two similar phrases and decided to investigate the broader New Testament references to these six issues. This turned out to be very enlightening to me and, as a result, I have used the letter to the Hebrews in Life Coaching as the best foundational teaching for modern followers of Jesus.
The following is a distillation of these meetings with many different people in an effort to shed light on these basic issues of life in Christ. I happen to believe that these six issues have become a source of debate, conflict and disunity because the simplicity of the issues has been replaced by unnecessary complexity. I am seeking to help all who read this to nail down the basics so that maturity in Christ can become a realistic possibility. The disunity and pettiness surrounding these simple truths are indicative of the rampant failure of leaders in the Body of Christ actually achieving a reasonable level of maturity in their relationship with Jesus.
This Hebrew writer simply mentions the 6 elementary teachings and then says that we need to leave them and go on to maturity. That implies, to me, that the remainder of the information in Hebrews has something to do with Christian maturity. The writer does not elaborate on any of the 6 elementary teachings; he only alludes to them later in the book of Hebrews here and there, but independently from one another. The six elementary teachings he lists are repentance, faith, baptisms, laying on hands, resurrection, and eternal judgment.
As I looked at these six words I began to realize that they appear to go together in three sets of two. Each pair seems to relate to different aspects of our being and of our salvation. In I Thessalonians 5:23 Paul refers these three parts of our being, “May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Prior to this realization I was confused by statements in the Bible that cast salvation in the past, present and future. I am saved. I am being saved. I shall be saved. Hopefully my musings in this book will help bring you clarity in the matter also.
REPENTANCE AND FAITH
Repentance and faith are the two qualities that Jesus mentioned in Mark 1:15 that are essential to enter His kingdom. He said repent and believe the good news, the good news of the kingdom. So, through repentance and faith, we enter into the service of Jesus’ Kingdom. The first words of Jesus recorded in Mark are in 1:15 where he says, “The Kingdom is near. Repent and believe the good news.”
I also believe these two elementary teachings relate to one of the three parts of humans, our spirit. I propose to you that this first pair of elementary teachings, repentance and faith, relate to salvation of the spirit, that is, your inner being which is created in the image of God. Repentance and faith also produce perfection in our spirits. So, I happen to believe that salvation is complete in the spirit. I believe we are perfected in our human spirits through that initial experience of repentance and faith. That is why repentance and faith are the first two elementary teachings. They relate to our conversion by which your human spirit is made eternally perfect. These principles remain with us all through our Christian life, because we need to repent every time we sin. Also we must have faith in Jesus’s sacrifice to cleanse our inner being every time we sin. We never move past those two principles, but they are definitely the universal beginning point for all followers of Jesus.
So a follower of Jesus can say “I am saved”, “I have been saved” or “I was saved on a certain day”. I believe that salvation in the past is about the salvation of our human spirit. I believe that is where Jesus begins our transformation. We are a far cry from being saved in our souls (the way we think, feel, and act). Our physical bodies are yet to be saved as is evidenced by their weakness, frailty, and proneness to illness. But, in spirit we are perfected. We receive the righteousness of Jesus through repentance and faith so we can confidently say “I am saved”.
We can also say that our spirit is perfect because of what Jesus has done within us, by giving us His Spirit. Through repentance and faith, salvation could be described as being immersed in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came upon believers before the death of Jesus. Because the penalty for sin had not yet been paid prior to his death believers were not a vessel perfected for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Once Jesus died, the Holy Spirit came to live inside us. He said to the disciples one time, “You know him, for he lives with you and shall be in you”. John 14:17”. The Holy Spirit has come to live in all followers of Jesus since then.
Here is the reason. Through the blood of Jesus Christ, we are totally and completely cleansed in our inner being, that is, our spirit. We have become perfect in spirit and, therefore, a fit dwelling place for the Holy Spirit of God. I also believe that this reality was symbolized in those lengthy instructions in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about the cleansing of the temple and about the animal sacrifices that were to be without blemish. That Old Covenant physical Holy Place was symbolic of our human spirits.
Our spirits are the New Covenant temple as is stated in I Corinthians 3:16, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple”. Hebrews 3:6 says, “Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house.” You are the house of God. Our inner being is the place where the Holy Spirit abides, and he moves in when we repent and have faith in Jesus. All of the things that happen in our conversion result from our response to God through repentance and faith. These are the first two elementary teachings about Christ. I will address each of these in greater detail in the next two chapters of this book.
In summary repentance and faith, though active all through life, are the entry requirements to Jesus’ Kingdom. They relate to salvation past. They are essential to the cleansing and perfection of the spirit of a human being by Jesus’ blood. They are a requirement for regeneration brought by the Holy Spirit.
BAPTISMS AND THE LAYING ON OF HANDS
The second pair of elementary teachings is baptisms and laying on hands. These two issues can easily be the most confusing and are often the source of dissention in the body of Christ. We know there are more types of baptism other than simply water. For instance, Jesus said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with that you know not of”. I have not read or heard anyone who believes he was referring to baptism in water. Virtually everyone agrees that he was talking about baptism into death. He was talking about His crucifixion. I do not hear people say that baptism in the Holy Spirit means the same thing as baptism in water. This is the only place I’m aware of in the Bible where baptism is actually stated in the plural, “baptisms”.
In Hebrews 6:2 the various kinds of baptism are combined as one of the elementary teachings about Christ. In this book I am presenting a more comprehensive description of the various kinds of baptism mentioned in the Bible. Baptisms and the laying on of hands are a picture of our life in the Lord now. The first pair was about the past and these second pair is about the present. I believe the first pair, repentance and faith, bring about regeneration, the second pair, baptisms and the laying on of hands, are the means of our being sanctified. Sanctification means being set apart. Though we are instantly regenerated we are not instantly sanctified. We are in the process of our souls being saved. Through baptisms and the laying on of hands, we are experiencing being set apart for the Lord. We are being sanctified.
I believe this present part of our salvation is about the soul. The soul refers to the way you think, feel, and act or your mind, emotions and will. We are far from perfect in the ways we think, feel, and act. But we are progressing and will continue until we are set apart perfectly upon our physical passing. If you walk in repentance all through your life, you will experience ongoing sanctification.
Sanctification means that we voluntarily resubmit ourselves to the Lord every single day by exercising repentance and faith and practicing baptisms and the laying on of hands. We submit our lives to the Lord for his purposes; we practice sacrificial love and service. We listen to the Holy Spirit within us and we obey. We die to our selfish desires and motivations. The sanctifying experience is present salvation. In addition to saying “I have been saved” or “I was saved” or “I am saved”, we can also say “I am being saved” because our salvation is in process.
Baptism and laying on of hands are the second pair of elementary teachings listed in Hebrews 6 that, in my opinion, portray sanctification, salvation present, being saved, salvation of the soul. It is about being saved in our thoughts, feelings and actions. This progression will remain incomplete until our bodies go back to dust awaiting resurrection. I happen to believe Jesus will complete this sanctification without us having to go through or do anything else. He will just make us completely like him. I will explain much more about these in chapters 4 and 5.
RESURRECTION AND ETERNAL JUDGEMENT
The third pair of elementary teaching about Christ listed in Hebrews 6:3 are resurrection and eternal judgment. There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that this is yet to come. This is salvation future. In addition to saying “I have been saved” or “I am being saved”, we can also say “I shall be saved”. Those three terms are used almost interchangeably to refer to our salvation. I grew up being taught and believing that I would not know who was saved, including me, until I died and then I would find out, because it was all future. That was sad because it is incorrect.
Salvation future is the completion of the salvation of our whole being. We have been saved sometime in the past and made perfect in spirit by Jesus’ death which brings about the regeneration of the human spirit. We are being saved in the present regarding the way we think, feel and act so that the sanctification of the soul is in process. The salvation of the third part of our being, our body, will never happen because the flesh and blood will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. These mortal bodies are a house in which the real person that you are, your spirit and your soul, live until your body gives out. Then, the human body returns to the dust of the Earth from which it came. When Jesus returns to earth our bodies will be raised in a glorified state and we will receive a new body like that of Jesus. This is salvation future. This is glorification of the body.
The judgment is called eternal judgment because it is final in nature. There will be no appeals. I think way too much speculation is made about these last two elementary teachings about Christ because they are future. God has not chosen to reveal details but he has given us enough information about the future to dispel our fear and encourage us to never give up. I think the best thing believers can do is have faith that all is well and not get into arguments about what you think the future is going to be like. This would be counterproductive to kingdom service and to the meaning of love and unity. But, I think we can take tremendous encouragement and confidence in the future because of what happens in the resurrection and. I will go into greater detail about these in chapters 6 and 7.
OVERVIEW SUMMARY
Although I just began to try to explain these elementary teachings, the Hebrew writer does not elaborate. The reason he didn’t is that there was likely to have been a higher level of Christian maturity in the early days with all the persecution. Persecution seems to motivate more intense devotion to Christ. Even though the writer says, in Hebrews 5:12, that “by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary teachings of God’s word all over again”, he still did not choose to do more than list the elementary teachings for his readers. When he wrote there was still a presumption of understanding the basics. In America, and perhaps all over the world, it seems to me that there is still an unnecessary amount of immaturity about these six elementary teachings. There is some controversy, division, and walls are built between us over baptism, the laying on of hands, and even repentance, faith, and especially the future. In the words of the Hebrew writer, “Let us go on a maturity”. It is in this hope that I write about these six issues.