Some people get confused by these apostates, because they believe this means
that they lost their salvation. But the answer is that they did not lose their
salvation but rather, never had it to begin with according to Mathew 13: 24-30.
This is something that the true Church is always going to face and the
scripture warns about it. A church can fall into a state of apostasy through
apostate teaching. Churches can descend into apostasy on a wide variety of
issues. They deny the essentials of the faith, like the divinity of Christ, the
sinless nature and life of Christ, salvation by grace through faith and not of
works of man. They succumb to mysticism, worldliness, false teaching of all
sorts and a host of other misuses of scripture that are designed to corrupt the
church. Be aware of churches whose leaders are proud and boast that their
memberships are open and tolerant of all forms of licentiousness as the
scripture calls them and even go as far as affirming acts of fornication and
immorality and do nothing to condemn them. Sin is not confronted and church
discipline is not faithfully practiced in them. Over time, the conscience both
individually and collectively grows cold as unconfessed sin becomes the norm,
and the church bears no discernable difference from the world. That is a
picture of an apostate church.
A church does not descend into apostasy overnight; the changes are slow and
steady. Rejecting Scripture’s authority as the priority is the first step and
usually followed by a succession of compromises. Their biblical mindset changes
in order to accommodate worldly thinking like: "Maybe we can be more
relevant and inviting to the world if we don’t take this verse or that sin too
seriously. After all we don’t want people to think that we are judging
them" "and besides, God is the god of love". That kind of church
is bound to end up attracting the culture rather than edifying and properly
equipping the saints.
The dangers of apostasy were warned about in the book of Jude, which serves as
a handbook for understanding the characteristics of apostates. Jude’s words are
every bit as relevant for us today as they were when he penned them in the
first century. Jude tells us the reason that we should contend earnestly for
the faith in verse 4. He says, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed,
those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly
persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only
Master and Lord, Jesus Christ”. In this one verse, Jude provides Christians
with three traits of apostasy and apostate teachers. He first says that
apostasy can be subtle. Second, Jude describes the apostates as “ungodly” using
God’s grace as a license to commit unrighteous acts. Third, Jude says apostates
“deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” and in doing so denies the
divinity of Jesus.
It is important to remember that ideas have consequences. Satan did not come to
Eve with an external armament or supernatural weapons. Instead, he came to her
with an idea ("surely God did not mean what he said") that caused her
to question truth. The Scriptures say that apostasy will only get worse as Christ’s
return approaches. “At that time (the latter days) many will fall away and will
betray one another and hate one another” Matthew 24:10. In describing the
dangers of apostasy, A. W. Tozer wrote, "So skilled is error at imitating
truth, that the two are constantly being mistaken for each another. It takes a
sharp eye these days to know which brother is Cain and which is Abel."
Hold
Fast,
-Bren
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