Is there such a thing as an ex-Christian?

You remember how He speaks of His own in John 10:27-30: ”My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.” Of His own He says, “I know them.” Of these others, in spite of all their activity, in spite of all their accomplishments, He says in the day of judgment, “I never knew you.” That is a very solemn thing. That answers a question that is frequently put to us. I do not know how many times I have had individuals come to me with a hypothetical case like this: “Suppose a man who joined the church, who professed to be saved, who for a number of years was a very active Christian worker, perhaps a Sunday school teacher, perhaps an elder or a deacon in the church, maybe a minister, but after some years of apparent consistent Christian living and helpfulness in testimony he turns his back on it all, returns to the world, utterly repudiates Christianity, and now denies in toto the gospel he once professed. How does that square with your doctrine of the eternal security of the believer?” That does not touch the matter at all. The apostle John tells us how we are to understand a case like that. He says in 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us,” or literally, “That they were not altogether of us.” That is, it is possible to do all the things that I have spoken of and yet never be regenerated. It is quite possible to join a church, to make a Christian profession; it is quite possible to observe the Christian ordinances, to teach and to preach, and yet never be born again. If one teaches and preaches the truth, it will produce good results and will do men good whether the teacher or the preacher be real or not, for it is the truth that God uses. Of course He can use the truth to better advantage when it is proclaimed by a holy man living to the glory of God than when it is proclaimed by a hypocrite. Nevertheless, God uses His truth regardless of who may proclaim it, and that explains how people may do mighty works in the name of Christ and yet never be born again.

The second passage occurs at the close of the same chapter, verses 20 and 22: "For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning … But it is happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again: and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." The diffusion of scriptural knowledge and evangelical light may and does frequently exert an amazing influence upon the conduct and character of persons who have never known the saving, quickening, emancipating power of the gospel of Christ. Indeed, it is hardly possible for an open Bible to be circulated, or a free gospel to be preached, without producing very striking results which, after all, will be found to fall far short of the grand result of regeneration. Many gross habits may be abandoned, many pollutions" laid aside, under the influence of a merely intellectual "knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ;" while, at the same time, the heart has never really been savingly reached at all. Now, it will be invariably found that when persons shake off the influence of evangelical light — even though that influence never extended beyond their outward conduct — they are sure to plunge into greater depths of evil, and greater excesses of worldliness and folly than ever; "The latter end is worse with them than the beginning." The devil takes delight in dragging the quondam professor through deeper mire than that in which he wallowed in the days of his ignorance and thoughtless folly. Hence the urgent need of pressing on all with whom we have to do, the importance of making sure work of it, so that the knowledge of truth may not merely affect their external conduct, but reach the heart and impart that life which, when once possessed, can never be lost. There is nothing in this passage to terrify the sheep of Christ; but very much to warn those who, though they may for a time put on the outward appearance of sheep, have never been, inwardly, aught but as the dog and the sow.

Supposing there should be the sorrowful fact of those brought in who, having no life in their soul, in time depart from the Church. These are apt to turn out the greatest adversaries not only of it, but also of Christ Himself, the haters of His name, and deniers of His glory (such as, for instance, we find in Heb. 6). They had shared astonishing powers, as we are told, yea, "were made partakers of the Holy Ghost." This is a great difficulty to some; whereas, in point of fact, it is no mean help toward understanding the very truth that we are considering tonight. So far from its being an enigma, it seems to me to be that which falls in with the truth generally, and which gives us the key to facts that may occur at any time, as they have happened from the beginning. Thus we find unquestionably that there are men who creep in unawares among the saints, and these men, when alienated, are so much the worse — twice dead, as the apostle Jude calls it — just because, having taken the place of confessors of the Lord Jesus, they have gone from Him, abandoned the truth with disdain, treated it with the utmost contempt, become, therefore, infinitely fiercer zealots against the truth of God than they even were in its favour when they commenced. These men might have had any amount of outward privileges; for there are external mercies of no mean value entirely short of eternal life. It is not said that any of these professors of Christ had ever been quickened of God. Eternal life is in no sense an external privilege. Nor is there such a thing in the Bible as a man, who had once partaken of eternal life, losing that life. Those quickened of God do not afterwards fall back into death in that sense. It is very possible for a man, touched in feelings and persuaded in his judgment, to renounce the Christ he professed, and to walk no more with Him; as we read of certain disciples stumbled by the Saviour's teaching, so unsparing to the flesh and the world. Thus we only can understand these passages consistently with others. The professor, naturally dead, was now twice dead, as Jude says, having given up what he seemed to have, and gone back to earthly ordinances or to open sin, as the case might be, with even greater relish than before, and intenser hatred than he ever had for that which he thus openly abandoned. These are the persons described in Hebrews 6 and 10, and such departures every now and then present themselves before the eyes of sorrowing Christians, as Scripture explains.

Now the antichrists, who had appeared when John wrote, had once taken their place amongst the believers, as verse 19 shows. By this time however they had severed their connection and gone out from their midst By this act they made it manifest that they never really belonged to the family of God — they were not "of us." The true believer is characterized by holding fast the faith. They had forsaken it and gone out from the Christian company, thereby revealing that they had no vital connection with the children of God. The real child of God has an Unction from the Holy One, and this was just what the antichrists had never possessed.

John’s ministry particularly exposed them, and their rejection of it manifested the fact that all of them were “not of us.” The Authorized Version somewhat obscures the force of this, for it may imply that some of them may have been believers; but not one of them was so. The case in 2 Timothy 1:15 is far removed from this. There Paul writes, “This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me.” This does not infer the rejection of such ministry as John’s concerning the eternal Deity and perfect Manhood of the Lord Jesus, but rather the unwillingness to be identified with Paul in suffering for the truth of the Church of God in separation from unrighteousness, which was a predominant feature in Paul’s ministry. Even true believers had apparently turned away from Paul in this way, as Demas similarly had forsaken him when the pressure of persecution threatened. This is pathetic weakness, but not the spirit of antichrist, of which John speaks. “They went out from us” refers to a cold, deliberate refusal of what they had previously outwardly acknowledged: there remained with them only a callous contempt for the blessed Personal glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

(V. 3). Behind this apostasy there is the direct influence of seducing spirits leading to the doctrines of demons in contrast with the truth. The apostate is not simply one who neglects the truth, nor rejects the truth. He is one who, having made a profession of the faith, deliberately gives up the truth and takes up some other religious creed as being superior to Christianity. The demons speak lies while professing to maintain the truth. The devil we know “is a liar” (John 8:44) and beguiled our first parents by speaking lies in hypocrisy. The fact that the truth has no power over their souls and that they give heed to doctrines of demons clearly proves that their consciences are so seared that they are no longer able to distinguish between good and evil. Apostasy, then, involves not only the giving up the truth but also the adoption of error — the doctrine of demons.

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.

It is apostasy that is contemplated in these verses, not just ordinary back-sliding — not the true believer growing cold and falling into sin; not persons, who have once professed conversion without reality, dropping their false profession and going back into the world — but that total falling away from, and repudiation of Christianity root and branch, which is APOSTASY.

This is to "fall away" indeed! To fall from the profession of Christianity right away until the depth of apostasy is reached. This is backsliding in its most aggravated form, so aggravated as to be possible only to an unconverted person and to be worthy of the most tremendous and unsparing judgment. It is IMPOSSIBLE to renew such to repentance. Their doom is irrevocably fixed.

Hebrews 6:4-8) describes the first class. Every Jew who had embraced Christianity had thereby found an entrance into a most privileged circle, and became a partaker of many striking benefits, irrespective of whether at the bottom he was really converted or not. It was possible that under stress of persecution and trouble some might wish to shake off allegiance to Christ and return to their Judaism, and in these verses the Spirit of God warns such of the consequences. In order to be properly reinstated amongst their former Jewish associates they would have to "crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame."

This is to "fall away" indeed! To fall from the profession of Christianity right away until the depth of apostasy is reached. This is backsliding in its most aggravated form, so aggravated as to be possible only to an unconverted person and to be worthy of the most tremendous and unsparing judgment. It is IMPOSSIBLE to renew such to repentance. Their doom is irrevocably fixed.