Is it possible for a believer to unbelieve?

It is certain that no soul that God has quickened unto life eternal can ever abdicate its title of salvation by a deliberate repudiation of the cross. The power which begets the children is pledged in Christ to their eternal preservation. No sheep of Christ will ever perish, because He is competent to save His flock. Nor is it possible that one alive to God should ever heartily despise His grace. Yet is it well that warning should be added to instruction. For it is thus that our feet keep practically the sure ways of life. No Christian is exempt from the danger of a large departure from the truth of God, although he is kept from drawing back unto perdition by His faithfulness who has otherwise appointed him (1 Thess. 5:9). If faith and patience be not kept in exercise by a continual minding of the things of Christ, it will soon be forgotten by the negligent believer that the friendship of the world is enmity with God. God's Holy Spirit will be grieved in those whom He has sealed, if He be not hearkened to with diligence as the alone Conductor of the children through the present evil world.

There are some other texts, nearly akin to the standard passage in Corinthians, which we may now take up. I believe we shall find, if we have got hold of what has now been before us, that we have already the key to the understanding of these also. In Col. 1:22-23, for example: "To present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight: if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel" or again, in Heb. 3:6: "Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end;" and verse 14: "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end." Addressing a number of professed Christians, these "ifs" had their right and necessary place. Men were giving up faith in Christ, as this epistle to the Hebrews conclusively shows. The warning was perfectly in place. Nor could men be saved while giving up this faith; drawing back from Christ would be drawing back unto perdition. Yet this same apostle could in the selfsame epistle put those who had believed unto salvation in a different class altogether from those who could so apostatize: "We are not of them who draw back unto perdition" — not simply, "who have drawn back," which there could be no need to say, but "who draw back;" we are not the sort of people who do that — "but of them that believe to the saving of the soul;" that is the class to which we belong, and it is a different one to the other.

Most clearly, then, the apostle did not mean that such believers, positively saved ones, could draw back unto perdition. It was needful, on the other hand, to warn professors about it for two reasons at least. First, because the giving up of Christ put outside the possibility of salvation altogether, for none else could save. Secondly, because it was and is important, that men should not rest in a faith they had, or thought they had, in times past, which was not true for the present moment. Faith that I had faith once is not faith in Christ, and may be a dream of my own. Just so, the vain argument that "I was converted once, and therefore" — which is vain because it is a mere belief in what my heart may have deceived me. If I am trusting my conversion or my faith, the result may prove I had neither. If I trust Christ, He cannot deceive, and so I am safe. "Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." (Ps. 2:12.)

But if one should "draw back," that is, if he abandons faith. God can have no pleasure in him. How could God be pleased with one who refuses to trust Him, - a God of perfect truth and goodness.' But there is no possibility of this on the part of any true believer. Some drew back unto perdition, "but we are not of them," says the apostle. Believing to the saving of the soul is in fullest contrast to that type of belief that is merely an outward assent to the truth of Christianity.

"Could I be sure," said a troubled soul to the preacher one evening, "of the very time, circumstances, and means of my conversion, I should be quite happy." Happiness resting on such a foundation, she was told, would not last long. Satan would soon beat her in argument and plunge her soul in deeper troubles than ever. Then how can I be sure, many will be ready to inquire, that I am converted? If you are now really caring to be assured that you are converted, most likely you are. Both the desire and that which satisfies it must come from God. But the word of God alone can give assurance. "Look unto me and be ye saved," are the Lord's own words. From the first moment that the eye looks to Christ as the Saviour, the soul is beyond all question saved. It may not believe it; it may be judging of its state by its feelings; it may be miserable, even on the brink of despair; but the word of God must ever be true notwithstanding. "Look unto me and be ye saved." Our unbelief cannot make the word of God untrue, but it hinders our enjoyment of Christ and salvation.

The most effectual way is being at home and happy in the presence of God. The personal knowledge of pardon and acceptance in the Beloved — of being complete in Christ, silences doubts, dispels fears, and quenches the fiery darts of the wicked. But the grand sheet-anchor of the soul is the knowledge. of God's unchangeable love as He has made Himself known to us in Christ. We may, alas! for a time, become indifferent, careless, lukewarm — turn aside, fall away; but the door is always left open for our return, and no change can take place either in God's heart, or in His counsels, towards us. The heart, in the calm assurance of His love, can say, I change, you change, all change; but He changes not. Circumstances change, friends change, everything around may seem changing; but there is no chancre in Him. Oh, what a hold this gives the soul of the living God! What peace, what joy, what repose, what happiness, and what irresistible power against the enemy! His arrows cannot reach us here. We are behind the shield of faith. Under the painful sense of failure, the heart is broken by the assurance that His love is the same, and cannot change toward us, though chastening may be necessary. But in place of doubts, or dark despair under His chastening hand, there will be the bowings and the meltings of worship.

All the blessedness that Christ has procured is for those that believe; but this of course supposes that they hold Him fast. Hence it runs: "If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven." The language does not in the smallest degree insinuate that there is any uncertainty for a believer. We must never allow one truth to be either shut out or enfeebled by another; but then we need also to remember that there are, and have always been, those that, having begun seemingly well, have ended by becoming the enemies of Christ and the church. Even antichrists are not from without in their origin. "They went out from us, because they were not of us." There are no enemies so deadly as those who, having received enough truth to over-balance them and to abuse to their own self-exaltation, turn again, and would rend the church of God, wherein they learnt all that gives them power to be specially mischievous. The apostle could not but dread the slide on which the Colossians found themselves; and the more so as they themselves had no fears, but on the contrary thought highly of that which had attracted their minds. If there was danger, certainly it was love to admonish them; and in this spirit he therefore says, "If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled."

T. Believers have to be kept. And it is by the power of God they are kept. But it is through faith, which keeps the unseen things in view so that they become more real to the soul than things visible; and it is the visible things that are our real danger, for we are so ready to settle down in them, and give up as an object of faith that to which we have been called. There is always danger on our side, not on the side of God’s care and unfailing grace. Had Peter had a better knowledge of himself, he would have hearkened to the warning of the Lord, and his fall might have been avoided. But on the Lord’s side—“I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not”—secures the restoration of the self-confident disciple. Then again, as I have said, the Epistle being written to the profession, the possibility of there being a mixed multitude in that profession has to be considered. Ifs are found in all the Epistles, except Ephesians. There we could not have an “if,” for we are seated in the heavenly places. That Epistle, concerning itself with the counsels of God, shuts out the possibility of apostasy from Christ on account of the difficulties of the pathway. In Romans 11 we read, “If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee.” In 1 Corinthians 11 we have, “Wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” In Galatians 4:11, we read, “I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.” In Colossians 1:23, “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel.” But I need not quote more passages of Scripture. These will suffice to show that the warnings of Scripture are not inconsistent with the assurance ministered to those who profess Christ as partakers of the blessings of the gospel.

Such being the case, how urgent is the warning of verse 12: "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God," (or "in falling away from the living God"). He is not speaking of weakness of faith or of failure in details of conduct, but of an evil heart of unbelief, faith not being present at all. This is the cause of falling away, a fall into a state of cold rejection of One previously acknowledged as the Son of God. Only faith can maintain this position of firm confidence in the blessed Son of God; so that a mere lip profession that lacks this vital root of the matter, may very soon give place to a callous reaction of deliberate apostasy, from which there is no recovery: the living God is rejected, and the only alternative is the cold, cheerless state of death.

"Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." The apostle here is certainly not seeking to unsettle faith, but to encourage it. But he would definitely unsettle anyone who rested upon anything but Christ. All false confidences would eventually leave souls bereft and hopeless. Pro­fession must necessarily be tested, and its reality is prov­en only by continuance. Some of the Hebrews who had publicly embraced Christianity were giving it up, and returning to Judaism. Did they actually then have part in the house of God? No: their giving up proved they had never really been brought in faith to the Lord Jesus. Faith is not a mere cloak one may put on and later put off again. It is rather the vital gift of God (Eph. 2:8, 9), which purifies the heart, remaining as the settled attitude of its possessor; and it is proven only by holding fast the confidence and rejoicing of hope firm unto the end.

It is possible indeed, as we are warned, that some who have confessed the Lord, and been sanctified too by His blood, might give Him up (Heb. 10). Such is the solemn admonition to those who from among Hebrews had been baptised; and a like danger of course applies to the Gentiles also, as we hear in 1 Cor. 10. Evidently, however, not failure is here in question, but abandoning Christ. It is apostasy, though no doubt the Holy Spirit speaks to check the incipient tendency to turn aside, pointing out the awful result. The renewed man heeds the word of God; whereas the warning is lost on the unconverted man, perhaps only attracted by the novel and intrinsic beauty of the gospel as an intellectual scheme; and so much the more in those days when it was first heard by the Jews so long inured to Rabbinical traditions — dry as their parchment rolls, as Gentiles were to the clashing vanities of Greek philosophy.