ACC ~ Hebrews 10 v26 - 27

IF WE SIN DELIBERATELY. THEODORET OF CYR: Now, it was not that he was ruling out repentance in these statements; rather, he was claiming there is no second sacrifice: our Lord was immolated for us once and for all. He used the term deliberately to emphasize that what is done against our free will enjoys a degree of pardon. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 10.

YET ANOTHER CHANCE OF REPENTANCE. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: So a person who has received pardon for sins must refrain from future sin. For in the light of the first and only repentance of sins—sins committed earlier in a person’s first, pagan life, I mean, a life led in ignorance—repentance is immediately available to those who are called, and it cleanses the region of the soul from anything discordant to provide a foundation for faith. The Lord, “who knows the heart,” and foreknowing all that is going to happen, has a foreknowledge from the very first of human instability and the devil’s crooked villainy. [The Lord has knowledge] of how the latter is jealous of the forgiveness of human sins and, by his mischievous calculations to induce them to share in his fall, will introduce other occasions for God’s servants to sin.

So in his great mercy he gave yet another chance of repentance to those who, despite their faith, fall into some form of disharmony, so that if anyone should, after their calling, fall into temptation and be forced or tricked into sin, they may have one more chance of “a repentance that brings no regret.”“For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.” Continual and repeated repentance for sins is no different from those who have once and for all turned away from faith, except alone in the consciousness of sin. I do not know which is worse: deliberate sin, or, after repentance for sin, offending again. … To repeat an action repented is a deliberate accomplishment of an action already condemned. STROMATEIS 2.13.56-57.

A MORE WRATHFUL JUDGMENT. BASIL THE GREAT: Each one should conciliate, as far as he is able, anyone at variance with him. He should not hold past wrongs against the repentant sinner but from his heart should pardon him. He who says that he repents of his sin should not only feel remorse for the sin which he has committed but should also bring forth fruits befitting repentance. If he who has been corrected for his first sins and has been deemed worthy of pardon again falls, he prepares for himself a more wrathful judgment. LETTER 22.

NO LONGER REFERS TO CHRIST’S SACRIFICE. CHRYSOSTOM: At this place we are again assailed by those who take away repentance as well as by those who delay to come to baptism. The one says that it is not safe to come to baptism, since there is no second remission. The other asserts that it is not safe to impart the mysteries to those who have sinned, if there is no second remission.

What shall we say then to them both? The Lord does not thrust away or cast down those who are fallen into despair. Nor does he take away repentance or the propitiation itself through an act of repentance. He is not thus an enemy of our salvation. But what means “no longer”? He takes away the second washing. For he did not say that no more is there repentance or no more is there remission, but “no longer” is there a “sacrifice”; that is, there is no need for a second cross. For this is what he means by sacrifice. “For by a single offering,” he says, “he has perfected for all time those that are sanctified,” unlike the Jewish rites. For this reason he has so consistently shown, concerning the sacrifice, that it is one, and one only. This calls us to be more steadfast. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 20.2.

HE DOES NOT DESTROY THE POSSIBILITY OF REPENTANCE. OECUMENIUS: He did not speak of people who have sinned, but he addressed the reckless and desired to admonish those who wish to remain in sin until the end. Hence it is especially clear that he does not destroy the possibility of repentance. FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 10.26.

ONE TAKES NO NOTICE OF STUMBLING. THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA: Those who have changed from the better to the worse must in the end be handed over to punishment, when they rise from the dead, since they did not allow any repentance in this life. For not merely in the present life does such an individual abolish repentance, but by his inability to assent to repentance he remains content with his fall and takes no notice of his stumbling, accomplishing every sort of sin with much pleasure by a certain lack of reason. FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 10.26-27.

Heb