What is wilful sin, and what does Hebrews 10:26 mean?

Question 6063.

Wilful sin is sin committed with open eyes. Not the sin that overtakes you, not the sin you regret before you have finished it, but the sin you knew was wrong and chose anyway.

The phrase makes believers nervous because of one verse. If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10:26). I want to take that verse seriously and also take the fear out of it, because the two are not in conflict.

The Old Testament background

Israel’s sacrificial system distinguished between sins committed unintentionally and sins committed with a high hand. The unintentional sin had a sacrifice attached (Numbers 15:27-29). The wilful sin committed defiantly did not; that person was to be cut off, because he had despised the word of the Lord (Numbers 15:30-31).

That is the framework Hebrews is drawing on, and it explains the vocabulary. The Hebrew phrase is literally with a high hand, a raised fist. This is not weakness. It is defiance, the deliberate repudiation of the covenant by someone who knows exactly what they are repudiating.

It is worth noticing what the unintentional category covered. It was not restricted to accidents. It included sins of ignorance, weakness and inadvertence, which is to say most of what actually happens in a human life. God built into the system a generous provision for people who fail without meaning to defy Him.

So wilful sin in the biblical sense is not simply knowing sin. It is contemptuous sin, the act that says I know what God has said and I reject it. Numbers 15 sits between a chapter about entering the land and the rebellion of Korah, which tells you the kind of person it has in view.

What Hebrews 10 is actually addressing

Read the whole paragraph and the target becomes clear. The writer speaks of someone who has spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant and outraged the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29). That is not a description of a believer who lost his temper or fell to lust and hated himself afterwards.

The letter was written to Jewish believers under pressure to abandon their profession and return to the temple system. The wilful sin in view is precisely that: a considered, public repudiation of Jesus as the final sacrifice, going back to the very altar that His death made obsolete. If you walk away from the only sacrifice there is, there is no other one waiting.

The imagery a few verses earlier supports that reading. The writer has spent the whole chapter arguing that the repeated sacrifices could never take away sins, and that Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins for all time (Hebrews 10:11-14). The warning is the shadow cast by that argument. If the one offering is refused, the old ones will not serve, because they never did.

That is the logic of the verse. It is not saying that some sins are too big for the cross. It is saying that there is no alternative to the cross. A person who deliberately rejects the sacrifice of Jesus has not found a lesser remedy; they have refused the only remedy, and wilful sin of that particular kind leaves nowhere to go.

Is this a warning to genuine believers?

I approach the Hebrews warnings case by case rather than with a single formula, because the passages are not identical. My reading of this one is that the writer is addressing a mixed congregation and warning those who have come close, understood the truth and are now considering walking away from it altogether.

The strongest evidence is the way the writer immediately distances his readers from the warning. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls (Hebrews 10:39). He has just issued the sternest paragraph in the letter and then tells them it does not describe them.

That pastoral pattern recurs. In chapter six the same author says he feels sure of better things concerning his readers, things that belong to salvation (Hebrews 6:9). Warnings are among the means God uses to keep His people, and a believer alarmed by a warning about wilful sin is displaying exactly the sensitivity that shows the warning is not about them.

Why this does not overturn eternal security

Security rests on the faithfulness of God rather than the consistency of the believer. The Spirit seals us for the day of redemption (Ephesians 1:13-14), and Jesus says that no one will snatch His sheep out of His hand (John 10:28-29). If wilful sin could unpick that, security would be resting on us after all, which is precisely what Scripture denies.

I have set out the full case in what eternal security means, and the point I would carry over here is this. Every believer sins knowingly at some point. If Hebrews 10:26 meant that any deliberate sin exhausts the sacrifice, no Christian on earth would still be saved, including the ones writing confident articles about it.

The verse is about apostasy rather than lapse, about repudiation rather than failure. I have written more about the person who reaches a settled rejection of the gospel in whether there is a point of no return.

Taking wilful sin seriously anyway

None of that makes deliberate sin a small matter. The New Testament never soothes us about it. Paul asks whether we should continue in sin so that grace may abound and answers with the strongest negative in the Greek language (Romans 6:1-2). A believer who treats forgiveness as a licence has misunderstood what happened at the cross.

There is also real cost. wilful sin hardens the conscience faster than anything else, because it teaches you that you can override conviction and survive. Do that often enough and the voice grows quieter, which is what Paul means about a seared conscience, a subject I have taken up in what a seared conscience is.

There is a cost in fellowship too. Standing does not fluctuate, but communion does. A believer who keeps overriding conviction will find prayer harder work and Scripture flatter than it used to be, and that is not God withdrawing His love. It is the ordinary consequence of walking against the grain of the Spirit who lives in you.

And there is discipline. The Lord disciplines the son He loves (Hebrews 12:6), and the discipline of a believer who sins with open eyes is a mercy rather than a punishment. Punishment fell on Jesus. What remains for the believer is correction, and correction is evidence of sonship.

How to respond if this describes you

If you have sinned deliberately and the memory of it is troubling you, that trouble is itself a good sign. Hardened apostates do not lie awake worrying about Hebrews 10. The very anxiety you feel is the Spirit at work, and it is pointing you towards confession rather than towards despair.

So confess it specifically and receive the promise. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Notice that the promise is unqualified as to category. There is no footnote excluding sins you saw coming.

Then deal with the pattern rather than only the incident. wilful sin that repeats has usually been prepared for in advance, and the preparation is where the fight should be. Cut the provision, tell somebody, and start the work of putting it to death, as I have set out in what mortification of sin involves.

So, now what?

If you came to this article frightened, I hope you can leave it steadier. Hebrews 10:26 is aimed at people walking away from Jesus altogether, not at believers who have failed and grieved over it. Your alarm is evidence that you are not the person the verse describes.

It also helps to notice how the writer follows his warning. He goes straight on to remind them of the early days when they endured hardship joyfully, and urges them not to throw away their confidence (Hebrews 10:32-35). The cure he prescribes is memory and perseverance rather than panic.

If you came to it casually, take the warning as it stands. There is no second sacrifice. The blood of Jesus is not a resource to be spent lightly, and treating wilful sin as manageable because forgiveness is available is a spiritually dangerous habit that will cost you far more than you think.

Either way the next step is the same. Come to God honestly today, name what you have done, and then get up and go on with Him. What is the one thing you have been carrying that you have never actually said out loud to Him?

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

Hebrews 10:26, ESV