What is individual apostasy? The term means “standing away” from God. Refers to abandoning what one has previously believed and experienced in Christ. Personal apostasy involves a disowning of Christ and departure from the body of Christ and the Christian faith. Apostasy is the consequence of a deliberate and willing choice to depart from the living God.
Individual apostasy is possible only for those who have first experienced the blood of the new covenant in regeneration and sanctification, renewal through the Holy Spirit, and relationship with Christ. The Christian faith is primarily about the relationship with God. The Bible speaks of God’s Fatherhood, Christ’s sonship, and our relationship to God as His family and children. Logical systems of thought and natural law are cold, fixed, and unspiritual. However, salvation in Christ is personal, relational, and requires our responsiveness.
God’s grace and His Son make possible our relationship with Him as sufficient for sustaining it. In Jesus’ analogy about the vine and the branches in John chapter fifteen verses one through eight, the believer is the branch, who remains in relational union with Christ the vine is secure and has life. Should a believer, because of the hardness of heart, ever choose to break this relational grace-union with Christ and thereby “depart,” that person may perish eternally as an unbeliever.
The Bible issues warnings about the possibility of the deadly danger of abandoning our union with Christ, as the example in Matthew chapter twenty-four, verses four and five, eleven through thirteen.
The unfortunate steps of individual apostasy are the following:
Believers, through unbelief, fail to take the truths, exhortations, warnings, promises, and teaching of God’s Word with utmost seriousness.
If the realities of the world become better than the realities of God’s heavenly kingdom, believers gradually cease to draw near to God through Christ.
Through the deceitfulness of sin, they become increasingly tolerant of sin in their own lives. They no longer love righteousness and hate wickedness.
Through hardness of heart and rejecting God’s way, they ignore the repeated voice and rebuke of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit grieves, and His fire is out, and His temple is in contamination. He eventually departs from the former believers.
If backsliding continues on its course unchecked, individuals may eventually reach the point when no second beginning is possible. Those who once had a saving experience with Christ but deliberately and continually have their hearts hardened to the Spirit’s voice continue to sin on purpose and refuse to repent and return to God may reach a point of no return where repentance is no longer possible. There is a limit to God’s patience. Therefore, the only safeguard against the danger of ultimate apostasy discovers in admonition.
While backsliding is a danger for all who drift from the faith, apostasy does not occur without constant and willful sinning against the voice of the Holy Spirit. The person whose heart hardens by sin may then calculatingly choose to turn away from God.
Those who genuinely become concerned about their spiritual condition and find in their hearts the desire to return to God in repentance have sure confidence they have not committed the unpardonable sin or apostasy. Scripture affirms that God does not want anyone to perish and declares that God joyfully receives the prodigal who repents and returns to Him.