"If They Shall Fall Away"
Hebrews 6:6
What is this falling
away? Without question, the end result of this apostacy is eternal death. Those
who fall away in the sense of this text can never be renewed to repentance. Let
me know what it is, so that I may carefully and deligently avoid it!
To fall away is not to
fall into sin. The righteous fall seven times a day.
But the Lord always raises them up. God's children in this world all sin. But
God will not impute sin to his own. To fall away is not to fall into spiritual
languishing. We often faint. But fainting is not death. It looks like it. We
feel nothing, sense nothing,and can do nothing. But
life remains, even when we faint. To fall away is not even to deny Christ.
Peter did that. But the Lord raised him up. What is it then? Is this merely a
frightening supposition, calling for us to consider what might happen if people
could fall away? No. The apostacy is real. And the warning is as serious as it
is alarming. Many do fall away. And this apostate fall, from which there is no
recovery takes two forms.
1. TO FALL AWAY IS TO FORSAKE THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL (Gal.
5:1-4). Those who turn away from the gospel of God's pure, free, sovereign
grace in Christ and revert to free-will, Arminian, works religion have gone
back to
2. TO FALL AWAY IS TO FORSAKE THE ASSEMBLY OF GOD'S SAINTS IN
PUBLIC WORSHIP (Heb.
See to it that you hold
fast the gospel of God's free grace firm unto the end, and that you forsake not
the assembly of God's saints in worship.
Don Fortner