Over the last few months I have been working on a passage from Hebrews 12:15-17 that describes Esau as a godless and immoral man who lost first his birthright and then lost his eternal soul when “he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.” How is it that Esau could find no place for repentance? How is it that his tears made no difference? The warning of the author of Hebrews seems to be this: There is apparently some point beyond which a person’s most fervent and tearful cries for repentance go unheeded. Is there some point beyond which the Lord will not listen to a perishing man’s cry? And if there is such a point, what do we do to make sure that we are never found in that terrifying place of “no repentance?” That is what I explore in a paper I have written and added to the site as a page.

The basic idea is that the Lord’s offer of salvation (the opportunity for repentance) is extended to sinners as an expression of His grace, but it is not extended forever. The Lord is gracious and compassionate and great in lovingkindness, but nevertheless He can and sometimes does withdraw His offer of salvation, and when He does withdraw His grace, it is forever withdrawn and the person without Christ is thereby doomed. God is sovereign in salvation and the sinner needs to come to Christ as soon as the offer is recognized, for you do not know when you will find yourself in the place of ‘no repentance.’ Esau trifled with the Lord and indulged his own sinful flesh and ignored the opportunity for repentance until his condemnation was sealed and there was no longer any hope of turning to the Lord. Thus Esau serves as a warning to us not to do the same thing.

Anyway, I have put that new page on the site for you to read. Let me know what you think.

The name of the page is: “Hebrews 12:15-17 – No Place for Repentance”