THE SPIRIT OF GRACE (HEBREWS 10:28-29)
Hebrews again invokes the Spirit in
another stern warning against apostasy, using a classic lesser-to-greater
argument:
One who has violated the law of Moses
dies without pity at the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse
punishment do you think will be deserved by one who has trampled on the Son of
God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and
outraged the Spirit of grace? (10:28-29)
“The Spirit of grace” (to pneuma tēs
charitos) is a NT hapax legomenon, which elsewhere appears only in
Zechariah 12:10:
I will pour out on the house of David
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a spirit of grace (LXX: pneuma charitos)
and supplication, so that, when they look on me, on whom they have pierced,
they shall mourn for him, as one mourns or an only son, and weep bitterly over
him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
In Zechariah, the “spirit of grace”
signifies a divine gift of compunction by which God’s people become acutely
aware of their own sinfulness and respond with heartfelt contrition. For the
early church, this passage could not be seen as anything other than a prophecy
of Christ, the true “firstborn” and “only son” who was “pierced” on the cross.
The Holy Spirit, then, is the “spirit of grace” who unveils the truth of Christ’s
atoning passion in the heart of the believer and arouses consequent repentance
and conversion. That the writer to the Hebrews can speak of the Spirit as
having been “outraged” or “insulted” (enubrizō) is evidence that he recognizes
the Spirit’s personhood, though without the developed Trinitarian theology of a later era. The term
“grace” (charis), close in meaning to “gift” (dorea) in Heb 6:4, underscores
God’s magnanimity in bestowing his heavenly treasures through the Spirit. To
turn away from Christ after receiving such gifts is to “outrage” the Spirit of
race. It is “to refuse the Holy Spirit’s inner summons to conversion, willfully
rejecting the mercy and grace that are available from ‘the throne of grace’
(4:16).”
In all three of these passages,
Hebrews draws an inseparable connection between the Holy Spirit and Christ’s redemption.
As High Priest, Christ is mediator of the salvation that consists in partaking
of the Spirit and his heavenly gifts. Those who “draw near to God through him”
(7:25) perceptibly experience the divine life and power in which they have come
to share. The negative corollary underscored by Hebrews is that those who apostatize
after parking of the Holy Spirit and his gifts “crucify the Son of God on their
own account” (6:6), which is the same time to affront “the very Spirit whose evidential
gracious gifting is the hallmark of new covenant inauguration.” (Allen, “Forgotten
Spirit,” 58) But those who “hold fast the confession of our hope without
wavering” (10:23) will receive “a great reward” (10:35). (Mary Healy, “The Holy
Spirit and Christ’s Ongoing Priesthood in Hebrews,” in Divine Action in Hebrews
and the Ongoing Priesthood of Jesus, ed. Gareth Lee Cockerill, Craig G.
Bartholomew, and Benjamin T. Quinn [The Scripture Collective Series; Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Academic, 2023], 234-35)