Beware the Backward Drift

In John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress, there is a sobering picture of the experience of apostasy in the lives of those who once professed faith in Christ but who ultimately abandoned that profession. As Christian makes his way toward the celestial city, he comes to the house of a man named Interpreter. The Interpreter is revealed to be the apostle Paul by the descriptions Bunyan made of him. The Interpreter showed Christian seven different scenes in this house that highlight various aspects of the Christian life, dangers, and realities. The sixth of these is a man in a cage who is in utter despair. When Christian goes to this man and asks him why he is in the cage, and why he is in such despair. The man responded by saying:

 “I was once a fair and flourishing Professor [professor of faith in Jesus Christ], both in my own eyes and also in the eyes of others: I once was, as I thought, fair for the Celestial City, and had then even joy at the thoughts that I would get thither.”

Christian then asked the man what had happened to him. The man said, “I am now a man of despair, and am shut up in it, as in this Iron Cage. I cannot get out; O Now I cannot.”

Christian followed up by asking him how he came to be in this miserable condition; and the man said:

“I left off to watch and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the Light of the Word, and the Goodness of God; I have grieved the Spirit, and he is gone; I tempted the Devil, and he is come to me; I have provoked God to Anger, and he has left me; I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent.”1

The imagery in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress has left many professing believers unsettled throughout the centuries; yet, it is functionally the imagery of Hebrews 6:4-6. What are we to make of the language of this passage? Surely these are some of the most fearsome words in all of Scripture. What do we do with the language of those who “were once enlightened,” “have tasted the heavenly gift,” “have become partakers of the Holy Spirit” and “have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come?” How are we to understand the teaching that there are some who it is “impossible to renew to repentance?” Are we to conclude that they were saved and lost their salvation? Are we to understand that somehow they did not do enough to stay in a state of grace? Are we to understand that it is possible for someone to sin so much that they are past the point of repentance? A prima facia reading of the language certainly seems to lend itself to such an interpretation; but a careful consideration of them leads to a vastly different conclusion. Prior to explaining the meaning of the text, we must consider how wrong views of this passage have frequently caused damage to true believers.

Warning Passages in Hebrews

There are essentially five warning passages in the letter to the Hebrews (Heb. 2:1–4; 4:1–13; 6:4–8; 10:26–31; and 12:25–29). Of these five, none have given Christians such interpretive difficulty as Heb. 6:4–8 and 10:26–31. The spectrum of interpretive possibilities published by theologians and commentators over the centuries has not alleviated the hermenuetical challenges that come with these passages. Rather, they have often offered solutions that only serve to extensuate the minds of believers. 

Towards the end of his ministry, the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones appealed to Hebrews 6:4-6 and 10:26-29 as “passages that the devil seems to use most frequently in order to distress and to trouble God’s people” by twisting it meaning to hold true believers in servile bondage. He wrote:

“I can definitely say, after some 35 years of pastoral experience, that there are no passages in the whole of Scripture which have more frequently troubled people and caused them soul agony than the passage in Hebrews 6:4-8, and the corresponding passage in Hebrews 10:26-29.  Large numbers of Christians are held in bondage by Satan owing to a misunderstanding of these particular statements.  I do not say that these are the two most difficult passages in the Bible.  I do not regard them as such.  But I do assert that they are passages that the devil seems to use most frequently in order to distress and to trouble God’s people.”2

If we read the warning in chapter 6 together with the warning in chapter 10 we must conclude that the warning relates specifically to what is called, “sinning willfully.” Here too, we must tread lightly when settling on a meaning of the clause, “to sin willfully.” It might help us to say what it cannot mean prior to suggesting what the author’s meaning must be.

“Willful sin” cannot mean what the Scriptures call “presumptuous sin” (i.e., that sin that we know we should not do and yet do it anyway). We know the writer cannot be speaking of this because the Psalmist prayed that God would deliver him from “presumptuous sin” (Ps. 19:13)–thereby acknowledging that he had, at times, fallen into presumptuous sin–and that he was susceptible of falling into it again. Surely the sin of David with Bathsheba and Uriah would have been categorized accordingly.  We also know that Peter’s denial of Jesus cannot be said to be the sin intended since he was personally restored by Christ. The prince of the Puritan theologians, John Owen, explained,

“A man may so fall into a way of sin as still to retain in his mind such a principle of light and conviction that may be suitable to his recovery. To exclude such from all hopes of repentance is expressly contrary to Ezek. 18:21, Isa. 55:7, yes, and the whole sense of the Scripture.”

So what are we to make of the “willful sin” that is tantamount to “falling away” from Christ and putting oneself in a place in which it is “impossible to renew again to repentance?” The answer to this question must be determined by a consideration of what those who fall away fall away from. In Heb. 6:4-5, they are said to be those who were “once enlightened,” have “tasted the heavenly gift,” been made “partakers of the Holy Spirit,” and “tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” Thew writer is noting that something has really and truly been experienced in the lives of those who are in danger of falling away. That something is that they have had the influences of the Spirit of God at work on them in the realm of spiritual gifts and experiences. Thomas Peck, the Southern Presbyterian theologian, noted,

 “The illumination and other spiritual endowments enumerated in the fourth and fifth verses are not ‘things that accompany salvation,’ that is, are not so inseparably connected with salvation but that they may belong to persons who never have been and never will be in favor with God. In other words, they are spiritual gifts, not spiritual graces. . .Gifts may be lost, graces never can. It is gifts, not graces, which are predicated of those who may fall away, in the passage under consideration.”

In other words, the phrase cannot mean that a true believer can fall from saving grace. We know this to be true because of such passages as John 6:37; 10:28; Romans 5:1-21; 8:1; 8:28-30; Phil. 1:6; etc. There are so many passages that speak of the definitive safety true believers have in the Person of Jesus Christ. Because of the perfections and finality of His saving work, those who are in union with Him by faith are also safe; since we cannot have an infallible knowledge of who has a true and saving profession of faith–in contrast from those with a false and temporary profession–all we can do is look for the fruit and perseverance they exhibit. This is why the writer of Hebrews can follow what he said in vv. 4-6 with what he says in verses 10-12.

The “we are confident of better things concerning you beloved…things belonging to salvation” is meant to be an encouragement to them that there is evident fruit in their lives. This is important because the writer rebuked them for not going on to maturity in the things of God in 5:13-6:3. Then he gave them the teaching on apostasy, and how he comes with the evidence of a real and saving faith: “God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.” That’s how we know that he cannot mean that those who have had saving faith can lose that saving faith. Those who have saving faith will most certainly persevere to the end. They need the warning, the encouragement, and the exhortation to persevere in “showing the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end,” and that they “do not become sluggish” in regard to faith and patience.

Danger of Apostasy

There is always a very real danger of those who once professed faith in Christ to depart from a profession of faith in Christ in order to return to a form of Judaism and the Old Covenant rituals of religion in order to avoid the persecutions that follow being a Christian is indisputably the context of the book of Hebrews . Some were in danger of returning to the sacrificial system, and, in doing so, were in danger of “trampling the Son of God underfoot, and counting the blood of the Covenant, by which they were sanctified, a common thing” (Heb. 10:29) and of “crucifying again for themselves the Son of God” (6:6).

Reflecting on the language of “crucifying again for themselves the Son of God,” William Still explained,

“The great danger is that converts remain only what I think we must call half-converted…who do not want to go on to work out their faith with fear and trembling…therefore, in that halting, static state of mind they are in imminent danger of apostatizing…that is, quietly renouncing the faith and almost surreptitiously calling for the hammer and the nails yourself to recrucify the Lord Jesus personally–and on your own account–thus personally rejecting Him, just as much as you had been involved in killing Him.”3

Backsliding and Apostasy

There is a recurring teaching in the book of Hebrews about the nature of sin and departing from God. In chapter 3, the writer presses the fact that the more we walk in unbelief and disobedience the more we are in danger of hardening our hearts and in so doing we “depart from the living God.” The more we embrace and love sin, the more our souls are in danger of rejecting the Gospel. While the Gospel is for sinners (and not for those who clean themselves up to be accepted by Jesus), once someone has made a profession of faith in Jesus, the more they need to bear fruit and so evidence that profession in their lives by “laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets them” (Heb. 12:1-2). If we are not putting sin to death, then we are in danger spiritually. It was John Owen who coined that now famous phrase, “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.”4

While we must be steadfast in our conviction that a true believer cannot fall away from Christ, we also must note that these warnings come to all who profess faith, and, therefore, all must take the reality of this warning with all seriousness. In order to distinguish between what happens to a believers when they fall into grievous sin, and a false professor of faith who falls away (the who is given over to irremediable hardness of heart) we must distinguish between the categories of  “apostasy” and “backsliding.”

The issue of backsliding, as distinguished from apostasy, must be carefully broached. It is possible that the souls of true believers may be damaged by a careless approach to this subject, or that the souls of unbelievers may be wrongfully comforted. The Westminister Confession of Faith carefully charters the waters of the subject in its chapter on Perseverance of the Saints (ch. 17). There, the Divines expound the theology of perseverance of the saints:

“I. They, whom God has accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

1. This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father; upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ, the abiding of the Spirit, and of the seed of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace: from all which arises also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

III. Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein: whereby they incur God’s displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others,  and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.”5

While the first two points in this chapter must become a cherished part of the fabric of our souls, the last section of the chapter must be known and believed as well. Do we really believe that, for the various reasons listed above, believers may “fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein?” Do we really believe that as a consequence they may “incur God’s displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves,” and yet, not be in a place of irremediable hardness of heart? We must fear being in such a condition, and yet, we must be careful not to deny that a true believer may be, for a time, in such a place. I have written a short article on the Scripture’s teaching about the sinful weakness of the saints here.

When we consider our own spiritual condition, and we acknowledge that it is possible for a true believer to backslide, we must, with fear and trembling, acknowledge that the first signs of backsliding should drive us back to the Savior in repentance and faith. Sinclair Ferguson–in his 2014 Tabeltalk Magazine article, “Apostasy and How it Happens“–explains, so well, the danger of backsliding in comparison with the danger of apostasy. He writes,

“The solemn fact is that none of us can tell the difference between the beginning of backsliding and the beginning of apostasy. Both look the same.”6 

The great danger of backsliding is that it happens often imperceptibly. Spiritual growth and decline are both a matter of process–they happen gradually, slowly and imperceptibly at first; but both became evident in time. This makes it all the more necessary for us to examine our lives to see if there is a increasing drift away from Christ in unbelief or toward Christ in faith. The cause of backsliding is one and the same as that of apostasy–a inordinate love of this present world. Stuart Olyott has rightly noted, “Backsliding is when, for a time, the visible world becomes more important than the invisible world to the Christian.”

If we see “thorns and briars” (Heb. 6:8) springing up in our souls, we must go to the one who Himself wore the crown of thorns––the symbol of the curse upon the ground (Gen. 3:17-18). Jesus is the sin-bearer who takes the spiritual thorns upon Himself when He bore the wrath of God that we deserve. When we see spiritual thorns, we must swiftly flee to Him in faith and repentance.

The Recovery

The subject of apostasy is among the most sobering truths in Scripture. The ultimate hardening of some who at one time professed faith in Christ ought to leave us unsettled in heart. The severity of apostasy is that there is no return. This ought to be felt by those who continue to profess faith in Christ. There will always be Judases among the people of God in almost any congregation. This means that we should examine our own hearts and lives to see if we have turned our gaze to the world and away from Christ to such an extent that we have hardened our hearts against the truth. The subject of apostasy has massive implications for our spiritual lives.

The point of this teaching is to drive true believers in the arms of Jesus by faith–and to encourage them to zeal in faith and obedience to Christ. It is meant to be a tool of recovery for the backsliden believers. The writer of Hebrews transitions to this exhortation in vv. 8-12 when he writes:

“But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

There is an encouragement here for all who have entered the Christian race. There can be no ultimate uncertainty of the outcome of true believers. This is why the writer says, “Beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation.” He knew that such a severe warning as he has just raised might be received improperly. He knew that his readers might be overly terrorized by the thought of an irretrievable hardness and impenitence. He knew that true believers feel the remaining corruption of the old sin nature with which they find themselves in an irreconcilable war. For these reasons, he wishes to encourage true believers to continue on in the faith. In fact, he did not simply wish to encourage them to press on in their pilgrimage, he wanted to help any of those who were spiritually languishing to regain their spiritual strength in the confidence in the faith. He called them to remember the fruits of their faith in their previous experience. In this way, the author gave his readers the solution to this problem without drawing attention to it in such a way as to downplay the force of the warning of those who hear it.

One principal solution to languishing in backslidden experiences is to remember the work of grace that God wrought in our lives. As we do in other places in the New Testament epistles, we find that the solution to so much of our spiritual decline is to remember our former experience of faith and the ways in which our faith in Christ bore fruit in our lives for the good of other believers. Peter tells his readers to be diligent to be pursuing all of the spiritual virtues in our quest for spiritual growth. However, he warned that “if we lack these things, we have become shortsighted even unto blindness and have forgotten that we were cleansed from our old sins” (2 Pet. 1:9). The Apostle Paul was constantly directing his readers to the foot of the cross to remember what had happened to them when they had died with Christ and been risen with him unto newness of life (e.g., Romans 6:1-14). There is grace in remembering our sinfulness, our sense of longing for the Savior, our having trusted him, and our former acts of love and grace toward other believers. Remembering these things ought to help awaken us from the spiritual slumber that many of us have known throughout our pilgrimage here. When we are awakened, we return the Savior and ultimately find that he was the one sustaining us and restoring us by his redeeming mercy and grace. 

As we continue on in our journey to the celestial city, we are called to constantly hear the warnings of God’s word so as to help us on our way. These warnings, as severe as they are in fact, are meant to be gracious tools in the hand of the Savior to help us persevere in the faith. 

nota bene:

In church history, no one dealt this subject more thoroughly than did John Owen.7 In vol. 7 of his works (On the Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Gospel), Owen takes up the plethora of objections and perversions of this teaching. He deals with the theological nuances that must be drawn out, and brings rich application to the lives of Christians. It would do ministers of the Gospel a great deal of good to revisit this subject on a somewhat regular basis.  

1. John Bunyan Pilgrim’s Progress(New York: P F Collier and Sons) pp. 38-39
2. Martyn Lloyd-Jones Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 8:17-39(Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975) pp. 318-319
3. Excerpt taken from a sermon Rev. William Still preached on Hebrews 6:4-20.
4. John Owen The Mortification of Sin(London: The Religious Tract Society, 1842) p. 9
5. Westminster Confession of Faith(ch. 17)
6. Sinclair Ferguson “Apostasy and How it Happens,” Tabletalk Magazine(April 1, 2004)
7. John Owen The Works of John Owen,  vol. 7(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1862)