Do We Still Believe in Backsliding?
“If a Christian fails to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and if he fails to attach himself to the Lord Jesus Christ gaining an intimate relationship with Him, He opens the door for what we use to call ‘Backsliding.’” - P&D
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I think this is a great conversation. I find that too many people view those as backsliding as an individual who has fallen away and was never truly saved. I think we miss the constant struggle that we have on a daily basis and the significant moral depravity that many examples of the faith experienced in various times of their lives.
We’re a lot better off speaking of the Christian life using biblical language. When we do that, we avoid a lot misunderstanding or misemphasis.
So the starting point should be three questions:
- Does Scripture use the term ‘backsliding’?
- If so, does it emphasize this term?/How does it use the term?
- Given how the term is used, what does it mean?
It’s an interesting study. The bottom line is that all occurrences of the term (more than one underlying Hebrew word, though) are in the Old Testament in reference to Israel’s failure to abide by the covenant.
It’s not clear that the expression ever refers to a true believer. Doing a quick survey, the term seems to mostly refer to unbelieving Israelites.
There is certainly truth and application there for NT believers, but we should look at backsliding Israel (a nation) through the lens of what the NT reveals about believers’ relationship to the Spirit, how sanctification works, and what language is used to describe the Christian life.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I made a profession of faith as a child and was baptized when I was 12. I probably never missed a church service until I went to college. After that my life resembled that of the backslider in this article. When confronted with my condition I would respond, "I was saved when I was a child, I've been baptized, I'm just backslidden." That worked on everyone until a man confronted me with these questions. "If you're a Christian, how can God let you live like you're living and why aren't you miserable? How come God hasn't chastened you?" That dose of truth led to my conversion.
To answer the question: If the backslider is miserable like the prodigal son and is experiencing the chastening love of his Heavenly Father the answer is yes. I think sometimes some of us use the term to describe those who were professors but never possessors as it gives us hope and sometimes an excuse not to confront. I don't think there are as many as we imagine.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
Like Calvin, I don't want to argue about mere words, like "backsliding."
Substantively, how do you know when someone is a flagging believer versus an unbeliever? Answer: church discipline helps to vet this. If you confront a believer with his sin, eventually he repents. Hence the three endpoints in Matthew 18 where you can "gain a brother." If you confront an unbeliever with his sin, he resists. At that point, there is judicial reason to regard this person as a "tax collector and sinner," an outsider.
This is why Hebrews exhorts people to be involved in each others lives, admonishing each other about the deceitfulness of sin, etc. Of course we're supposed to examine ourselves, but it's better if there's more.
An aside re: the article linked here: I would never apply the negatives of Psalm 1 to a believer, even a flagging believer. Psalm 1 is binary: the godly, and the ungodly. It is not talking about levels of faithfulness and consistency among believers.
Michael Osborne
Philadelphia, PA
Words matter. We have a set inspired ones that are profitable for doctrine, correction, instruction in righteousness.
So this raises two questions.
Should we make up our own terms for things when we don’t need to because there are perfectly good inspired terms?
Secondly, should we respect the inspired words enough to use them the way they’re used in Scripture?
I think the answers to these questions ought to be pretty obvious.
We also have a long track record of error of various sorts when we answer the first ‘yes’ or the second ‘no.’
A caveat on the first one: included the phrase ‘when we don’t need to,’ because sometimes we do. ‘Backsliding,’ though, is not a term we need—unless of course we want to use it the way Scripture does.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
A THOUGHT ON THE CHURCHES AT EPHESUS, SARDIS, AND SOME CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATIONS: One generation … believed the gospel and held… that there [are] certain social, economic, and political entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments. The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything.
– D. A. Carson
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
I think it’s pretty close to how the term is used in the OT.
- Collective: Church as a whole.
- Apostasy: If they actually rejected the gospel, they rejected the faith. (I’m not sure if any of the 7 churches really qualify on that point, but maybe. Would have to take a closer look.)
- The call to repentance is issued to the entire congregation
It’s still not a nation, but the fit to the biblical concept is much better than how we tend to usually use the term “backsliding.”
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
It’s still not a nation, but the fit to the biblical concept is much better than how we tend to usually use the term “backsliding.”
Usage determines meaning. The way we use it is what we mean.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Usage determines meaning. The way we use it is what we mean.
I'm not sure I understand your statement. Are you saying that the way we use the term "backsliding "determines what the Biblical concept means? Shouldn't the Biblical concept determine how we use the term?
Or are you saying that it's okay if we have a different usage of backsliding than how the Bible uses the term, because our meaning for the term is determined by the context of our own usage of it?
The way we use it is what we mean.
This is what I see as the problem. If we’re using a term of our own making, fine. It can mean almost anything we like.
If the word actually occurs in Scripture, though, and if we’re trying to leverage biblical authority for our own usage of the term, we need our usage to conform to biblical meaning.
To put it another way, we’re free to “coin a term” for lots of things, but if God has coined a term, we’d better work with His definition.
The case of “backsliding” is a bit complicated, though, because it’s often not really a good translation for the Hebrew, which has more the idea of turning back or turning away. In some contexts, “backsliding” might be good English. I haven’t looked at each of them with that question in mind, but it I think I recall seeing one or two places where the context made that term a sensible choice.
In my experience, though, people mostly use the term “backslidden” to express the idea that there are strata or categories of Christians and you are in the “backslidden” category or some superior category. But the NT doesn’t seem to frame the Christian life that way. So we’re misusing a biblical term to reinforce a distorted theology of sanctification.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Works for me
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
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