Question:
What does Hebrews 6:4-6 really mean?

Answer:
Hebrews 6:4-6:

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.”
The people spoken of in these verses were Jews who professed to be Christians, but were not. They kept company (came to meetings, social events) with saved people, and this is how they were “partakers” outwardly of the Holy Spirit, because the saved people they kept company with had the Spirit indwelling them. These professors had “tasted the heavenly gift” by hearing the good news of God’s salvation through Christ, but they had not swallowed the message by trusting in Christ as their Saviour.
These verses give the solemn warning that “if” these unsaved Jews should “fall away” by stopping to keep company with believers and would turn against Christ by going back to Judaism, they could not be saved. Why was this true? Because the Jewish sacrifices “can never take away sins” (Hebrews 10:11), and by offering those Jewish sacrifices they “crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh.” By offering those animal sacrifices they refused Christ’s sacrifice and said that “we are” not “sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” never to be done again (Hebrews 10:10).

 

Pharaoh is an example of a person who was enlightened, but did not partake. Pharaoh first hardened his own heart, but after a time the Lord hardened his heart. The book of Hebrews was written as a warning to Jewish people who made a profession of being Christian that if they went back to Judaism they would not find salvation there, and that it is impossible to find salvation anywhere else but in Christ. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).