A Backslider Described

I want to take some time today, friends, to address a sore subject with many in the churches today. My topic today is the backslider. I know in my own life when I have been in a backslidden condition.

I was both useless to God and miserable with myself. The most miserable person in the world is a backslider. For nothing will bring him true satisfaction or fulfillment.

Here now is a backslider described. Sin has been welcomed. Sin has been regular.

Sin has been enjoyed. Sin has lost its shame. And sin has been looked for and longingly and lovingly embraced and is dear to the heart.

The taste for spiritual things is gone. Real spiritual truth is disliked and true preaching is not endured. Rather, it is hated and avoided.

Prayer becomes merely self-centered and selfish for one's own pleasure, advancement and gain. The intimacy with Christ is lost. Love of Christ has diminished.

Conviction of the Holy Spirit is quenched because of sin. This way, a backslider can sin with reckless abandon and enjoy his sin and even delight in it, whereas in former times the believer delighted in his God and lived for things of eternal worth. Proverbs 14.14 declares this about the backslider.

The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways. So a backslider is full of himself and full of the world. His own self-gratification comes first and is foremost in his life.

But a backslider is a miserable person to live with, often in a foul mood and critical of others and possessing an unforgiving spirit and a spirit of hatred and bitterness toward others. The Bible becomes merely a tool to the backslider to encourage him in sin by continually resorting to 1 John 1.9 as relief from judgment to continue in sin. And although the Word of God is true in that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, the backslider has no intention to part with his most beloved sin by true repentance.

So the last part of that verse does not apply to him and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. A backslider is more concerned with pleasing himself rather than pleasing God. A backslider will begin to hate the people of God and avoid their company.

A backslider knows nothing about his danger and is totally unaware of the great and grave danger of being removed by sudden death and thrust into eternity to face the Lord Jesus Christ while standing knee deep in the ashes of a wasted life. A church, a denomination, and a nation can be so far away from the heart of a holy God and in a state of spiritual stupidity that the only thing which will awaken and alarm them to their great danger is a sudden manifestation of God's convicting presence in revival, whether it's personal or corporate or national. Apart from this, a backslider walks on slippery places, ready to fall at any moment, 2 Peter 2.20 warns.

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. A backslider runs the risk of being suddenly removed by God before falling into complete apostasy. A backslider has been sidelined by sin and is completely useless to God in his barren condition, which bears no fruit nor vital testimony.

A backslidden church within a community will have no spiritual influence upon that wicked community. A backslider in the secular workplace will blend in with the lost and not stand out for God or the gospel. A backslider will have a religious life, but without the power, his witness will lack divine authority like Lot and Sodom.

His religious duties are done out of habit rather than love to God, and his works have no lasting spiritual fruit or influence upon a generation. He is a vapor without a scent, a shadow without any distinction. He is like Jeremiah's basket of fruit, rotten in the sun, good to nobody and good for nothing.

A backslider joins the company in Revelation 2.4, whose members had walked away from a hot pursuit of God and turned to the world because thou hast left thy first love, meaning Jesus no longer held the first place of priority in their lives and in their affections, but became secondary or lesser. But the backslider is ignorant to his great danger before an offended God, and the backslider has a weakened testimony for God and falls into the company of Demas, whom Paul said of, For Demath hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed. And almighty God will only bear so long with the backslider, for God is a God who must punish sin, and a holy God will not tolerate unrepentant sin in a believer long nor bear with it forever.

Either the backslider will fall on his face before God, broken in humility and shame, seeking the grace of true repentance, and be reclaimed back to God in a walk of intimacy and obedience to him, or bear the unforeseen consequences of that grievous disobedience to God in sin. A backslider runs the risk of ending his days in spiritual apathy and indifference to the things that matter for eternity, and will heap up for himself wood, hay, and straw at the judgment seat of Christ. We see the sad ending of a king who began well, but who did not finish well in the life of King Solomon, of whom 1 Kings 11.4 describes.

For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. Let us pray.