I’ve been thinking about apostasy and heresy.
The latter is a subset of the former.
The people who are warned about in Hebrews 6 are not false teachers, but apostates.
All false teachers are apostates. But not all apostates are false teachers, even if their fall involved believing false teaching.
Apostasy is harder to spot, because a backsliding believer may come back in repentance at some later point. Or they may not. A person may be apostasising whilst espousing orthodox theology.
It is hard to tell which of the four soils someone is. But we need to work hard at warning people, as the New Testament does, against deserting Christ. God will sovereignly use it to keep his chosen saints.
There are two modes of apostasy – passive and active. Some people actively give up the Christian faith. Others passively drift. The difference is the former are conscious of what is happening, the latter are deluded – hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. Both types can happen quickly and slowly.
Passive apostasy seems very common, in our time. And yet we talk very little about it.
C. S. Lewis said “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Take a moment and reflect on your own walk with God – are you trusting and clinging to Christ as closely as you always have? Are you tempted to love the world? What excuses are you making up to allow yourself to indulge in worldliness?
Pray Psalm 51.
Good post Wayne, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how Scripture defines those categories. Do you think this is a fuzzy theological area or a clearer one then we’d like to admit? (A related issue is the often mentioned but rarely defined primary and secondary issue situation.)
I think it is a clear theological area that we are fuzzy on today. I’ll expand in future posts, God willing.