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It’s difficult to visit the internet these days without seeing another story about someone’s “deconstructing” his faith or undergoing a “deconversion.” The process these fancy terms describe once went by a simpler name: apostasy. The English word apostasy comes from the Greek apostasia. Derived from a verb meaning “to withdraw, depart, desert, fall away,” the noun refers to abandonment of and defiant rebellion against authority. It is used twice in the New Testament. In Acts 21:21, Jewish Christians had been told that Paul was teaching apostasia from Moses—that is, he was supposedly teaching Jews to forsake and reject their Jewish culture. And in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, Paul declares that the day of the Lord will not come until the apostasia (here indicating a general rebellion or falling away from the Christian faith) happens first. When theologians speak of apostasy, they are referring to those who once declared an allegiance to the Lord but then turned away from Him and His people. The Israelites in the exodus generation “turned back from following the Lord” at Kadesh-barnea (Num. 14:43). The people of God in the days of the divided kingdom were frequently denounced by the prophets for their apostasy (e.g., see Jer. 2:19).
Under the new covenant, apostates reject Jesus and His church, deserting their previous profession of faith in Him. Jesus paints a word picture of apostasy in the parable of the sower:
“As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.” (Matt. 13:20–21)
This falling away began even while Jesus was still ministering on earth. After Jesus taught that He is the Bread of Life, many of those who had followed Him fell away:
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? . . . But there are some of you who do not believe.” . . .
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:60–66)
When Jesus asked the Twelve if they wanted to go away, too:
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him. (vv. 68–71)
Indeed, Judas Iscariot is the classic example of the apostate in the New Testament. He walked with Jesus for three years, teaching, performing miracles, and calling others to follow the Savior, yet from greed he abandoned Jesus (and his fellow disciples) and delivered the Lord over to the Jewish authorities. The early church experienced a number of incidents of apostasy, for John speaks of those who “went out” from among the believers, leaving the church and ceasing to walk with the Lord Jesus (1 John 2:19).
The reality is that not everyone who professes faith in Jesus actually possesses genuine saving faith in Jesus. Not every member of the visible church (“a society made up of all such as in all ages and places of the world do profess the true religion, and of their children”; Westminster Larger Catechism 62) is in fact a member of the invisible church (“the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ the head”; WLC 64). The visible church is always made up of wheat and weeds, the elect and the nonelect (see Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43). As John goes on to explain: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). Only those who have been granted saving faith from the Father and are therefore “of us” will persevere in faith to the end.
The Scriptures are clear that none who have been given by the Father to the Son before the foundation of the world, who have been purchased by the Son on the cross, and who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit can finally fall away from the grace that has been granted to them: “By God’s power [we] are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). Warning passages such as Hebrews 6:4–6; 10:26–31; 12:15–17; and 2 Peter 2:20–22, far from denying this truth of eternal security for God’s elect, show that it is possible to enjoy blessings among the people of God yet still not possess “things that belong to salvation” (Heb. 6:9). God works through means, and warnings of the dire consequences of falling away are one of the chief means of enabling us to “hold our original confidence firm to the end” (3:6, 14). Genuine faith is proved precisely as we heed the cautions to take care “lest there be in any of [us] an evil, unbelieving heart, leading [us] to fall away from the living God” (v. 12).
It is possible, however, “through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalence of corruption remaining in [us], and the neglect of the means of [our] preservation” (Westminster Confession of Faith 17.3), for the elect to fall into grievous sins, even to the point of making “shipwreck of [their] faith” (1 Tim. 1:19). Paul mentioned Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom he had “handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme” (v. 20). The potential repentance implied in that verse (see also the case of a man in Corinth; 1 Cor. 5:1–5; 2 Cor. 2:5–11) reminds us that a person’s apostasy may not be final. While the warning passages in Hebrews (and John’s warning in 1 John 5:16) alert us to the reality that there are true apostates whose continual and hard-hearted rejection of Jesus makes it impossible to be restored to repentance, yet because we cannot see the hearts of those denying the faith that they once professed, we should keep praying for the Lord to restore them. Jesus prayed for Peter, that even in his denials of the Savior his faith would not ultimately fail (Luke 22:32). Perhaps as He did for fleeing Jonah, the Lord may bring back to repentance those who have fallen away, and they will return to Him and to His church before they die.