When Someone Who Believed Says He No Longer Does
Most churches have known someone who taught the class, led the singing, or stood in the pulpit, and who now says he no longer believes. Scripture has a name for a final turning away from Christ, and that name is apostasy.
The subject raises hard questions right away. Was he ever saved? Can a Christian lose his salvation after all? Could this happen to me? What do I say to his mother? This study answers from Scripture by holding two truths together. God keeps every one of His children, and no one who has been born again will ever be lost. And the warnings against falling away are real, severe, and meant to be heeded. Drop the first truth, and believers live in fear. Drop the second, and the careless sleep on toward judgment.
A falling away from the faith a person once professed. Scripture says of apostates, They went out from us, but they were not of us (1 John 2:19). Apostasy does not undo a new birth. It reveals the truth.
What is your hope resting on: a past profession, or the living Christ? Every warning in this study drives toward that question, and the Gospel answers it.
The Word Itself
Our word comes from the Greek apostasia, a standing away. The noun appears only twice in the New Testament. A rumor in Jerusalem charged Paul with teaching Jews to forsake Moses (Acts 21:21), and Paul foretold a falling away before the day of Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:3; see The Falling Away in the Last Days). The related verb, aphistēmi, means to withdraw or depart. Jesus used it of hearers who for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away (Luke 8:13). Paul used it of those who shall depart from the faith (1 Timothy 4:1). Hebrews used it of departing from the living God (Hebrews 3:12).
Put those together and three marks appear. The person has received light: he knows what the Gospel says. He has made a profession: he has stood with those who believe it. And he has turned away from Christ, whether he walks out the door or stays in the building and denies the faith from within.
Loading the rest of this article
For Deeper Study
- Salvation Is ForeverAmazon Robert G. GromackiA Cedarville University Bible and Greek professor answers, text by text, whether a saved person can ever be lost (Moody, 1973).
- The Eternal Security of the BelieverAmazon H. A. IronsideA short classic that sets out the case from Scripture and then answers common objections.
- Eternal Security: Can You Be Sure?Amazon Charles StanleyA warm, readable defense with answers to the hard passages, by the longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Atlanta.
- Four Views on Eternal SecurityAmazon J. Matthew Pinson, ed.Classical Calvinist, moderate Calvinist, Reformed Arminian, and Wesleyan Arminian writers make their cases and answer one another (Zondervan, 2002). We differ with each of them at points, and the book lets you hear each view in its own words.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
As an Amazon Associate, Theologica earns from qualifying purchases.
Eternal Security
Everyone who is genuinely born again through faith in Christ is kept by the power of God and will never perish, because salvation rests on Christ's finished work and God's unbreakable promise.
Open Doctrine