#786 Apostate or Backslidden?
June 05, 2022Hello Dr. Craig. I noticed in your YouTube video titled Doctrine of Salvation, Pt. 15 that you assert in your opinion the Bible says that a saved Christian who engages in apostasy against God loses his or her salvation and can never get it back. So if a person rejects Christ at 12 noon and at 12:15 realizes his mistake, he is doomed to go to hell no matter how much love and devotion he has for God for the rest of his life? What about the many saved young people who go away to college and get influenced by atheist professors and students and decide to reject Christ and then perhaps days, hours or even minutes later realize their mistake and want to be even greater devoted Christians than before. Are you saying, they are forever doomed to hell because, as you claim, they lost and cannot regain their salvation? That seems to cut very sharply against what the Bible as a whole says about God's love and devotion for his flock.
Pastor Charles Stanley is one of many prominent theologians who reject the notion that one can lose his salvation. In his book, Eternal Security, he devotes a number of chapters on Hebrew 6. In it, he raises a question I would like you to answer. He says, if one can permanently lose his salvation, "aren't we doing children a great disservice by encouraging them to be born again? Shouldn't we wait until they are much older to lessen the likelihood that they fall away during their teen years and thus lose their salvation forever?"
I know something about apostasy and salvation. I became saved around the age of 40. I later rejected the idea of being any kind of Christian and lived a life of abject sin for several years. As far as I am concerned, I was engaged in pure apostasy for those years. After a while, I suffered some very serious difficulties in my business, finances and social life. As a result, and the fact that I have struggled with depression most of my life, I became very suicidal. I attempted suicide 7 times in 6 months and was admitted to a psychiatric facility three times. None of the treatments helped me. Each time I was discharged from the hospital, I was more suicidal than before. One late night, while suffering from incredible mental anguish, I, like the proverbial atheist in the foxhole who turns to God when the bombs are falling, got down on my knees in utter desperation and fervently pleaded with God that I couldn't go on with life, couldn't kill myself and couldn't deal with my problems, so what was I to do? God then spoke to me. I do not mean I got some obscure emotional feeling or urging. God actually spoke to me in my head. I heard him just as clearly as I could hear anything with my ears. He uttered just two words. He said "WORSHIP ME." And I did just that. I devoted myself to living a genuine, devoted Christian life from that point on.
To make a very long story short, my life miraculously and incredibly turned completely around. My serious problems magically disappeared in a relatively short period of time. Most incredibly, I immediately developed an overwhelming thirst to learn God's Word. I started attending three different bible studies five days a week. But that wasn't enough to quench my thirst so I ended up attending a Bible school. I joined a church and in response to God's direction, headed a ministry there along with a great woman God led me to who eventually became my so beloved wife. It is clear to me that I did not lose my salvation despite my apostasy! God, in his great and unbelievable love, still considered me one of his children and knew that I needed strong spiritual discipline to help me become like Jesus. Accordingly, He brought those storms in my life so I would turn back to Him. I am so, so glad He did. Even today, 12 years after my dreaded but much needed ordeal, I daily look at the scars on my wrists from my self-inflicted wounds and smile. Prominent Apologist Frank Turek says that when we come to come to Christ in a strong genuine way, He may start to give us our reward of everlasting life while we are still here on earth. I believe He has done that with me, despite my apostasy and that fact that I am so undeserving. So I know, beyond all doubt, that one CAN NOT lose their genuine salvation and never get it back.
Thank you.
Louis
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
I’m thrilled to read your testimony of how God has worked so marvelously in your life, Louis! But be careful when you assert so confidently, “I know, beyond all doubt, that one CAN NOT lose their genuine salvation and never get it back.” Your personal experience, however real, however vibrant, cannot overrule the teaching of God’s inspired Word. If the Bible does teach, as I believe, that a regenerate Christian can lose his salvation irretrievably, then you have misinterpreted your experience. We must judge our experience in light of the teaching of Scripture and not vice versa.
How might that be the case? We must distinguish fundamentally between apostasy and “backsliding.” A backslidden Christian is one who is genuinely regenerate, but who is controlled by the flesh, that evil principle within man. When the apostle Peter, for example, denied Jesus, he remained in his heart a genuine believer, though overcome by fear. He repented and faithfully followed the Lord until his death. By contrast, an apostate irrevocably rejects Jesus Christ and casts him out of his life. Judas would be an example, I think. The book of Hebrews has a great deal to say about those who commit apostasy.
Backslidden Christians can and frequently do repent and turn their lives around and come back to the Lord to live triumphant Christian lives. Here at Reasonable Faith we constantly receive testimonials from people who have come back to the Lord after being overcome by doubt and sin, sometimes for many years. The spark of true faith, perhaps repressed and subconscious, had not been extinguished within them. Such persons may even verbally renounce Christ, as did Peter, and yet deep inside they remain believers.
Alternatively, some people make professions of faith, sometimes as children, on inadequate emotional grounds without sufficient understanding. Perhaps they were moved by peer pressure at a youth camp or went forward during an evangelistic campaign. But in fact they were not really regenerate Christians. It is easy to imagine how such persons could fall away from the faith. What to all appearances looks as if they’re returning to faith may, in fact, be their initial encounter with the Holy Spirit and regeneration.
Which scenario fits you is impossible for me to say. But on the basis of the teaching of Scripture, I do believe that a genuine, regenerate Christian can apostatize, and if he does so, he can and never will come back. If you disagree with this teaching, then you must counteract it, not on the basis of your personal experience, but rather on the correct exegesis of the Scriptures I discuss in the Defenders lesson you mention.
So with respect to the persons you mentioned in your opening paragraph, they are no more apostates than was the apostle Peter when he denied Christ. A genuine apostate will not want to return to faith. It’s not that he desires to but finds himself unable, but that he has no desire to return to Christ. He has repudiated Christ irrevocably.
The argument you cite from Charles Stanley is really stupid (I’m sorry, but it is). Given the hardening effects of sin upon one’s heart and the sharply declining chances of someone’s coming to Christ late in life, it would be the most unloving thing you could do to a child to keep him in an unregenerate state, alienated from God and under the power of the flesh, outside the will of God rather than knowing and obeying God’s will for his life. The very best way to ensure his salvation is by helping him to come to know and love the Savior early in life and then living as his disciple in the power of the Holy Spirit, not by rejecting Christ until some later opportunity!
Backslidden Christians are pretty common, but genuine apostates seem to be rare. The difficulty is that it’s hard to tell whether someone who has fallen away from the faith is apostate or merely backslidden. Therefore I believe that we should always assume that they have not irrevocably repudiated Jesus Christ and that therefore there is the opportunity for them to come back. We should take encouragement from the words of James:
My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5.19-20)
- William Lane Craig