Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

confidence, he first calls all his former experience into doubt;—questions
whether he has not put enthusiasm in the place of religion. By these
means his darkness and hardness increase, his memory becomes indistinct
and confused, till at length he forgets the work of God on his soul, next
denies it, and at last asserts that the knowledge of salvation by the
remission of sins is impossible, and that no man can be saved from sin in
this life. Indeed, some go so far as to deny the Lord that bought them; to
renounce Jesus Christ as having made atonement for them; and finish
their career of apostacy by utterly denying his godhead. Many cases of
this kind have I known; and they are all the consequence of believers not
continuing to be workers together with God, after they had experienced
his pardoning love.
Here (2 Peter ii, 22) is a sad proof of the possibility of falling from
grace, and from very high degrees of it too. These had escaped from the
contagion that was in the world; they had had true repentance, and cast
up "their sour-sweet morsel of sin;" they had been washed from all their
filthiness, and this must have been through the blood of the Lamb; yet,
after all, they went back, got entangled with their old sins, swallowed
down their formerly rejected lusts, and rewallowed in the mire of
corruption. It is no wonder that God should say, "The latter end is worse
with them than the beginning:" reason and nature say, "It must be so;" and
divine justice says, "It ought to be so;" and the person himself must
confess that it is right that it should be so. But how dreadful is this state!
How dangerous, when the person has abandoned himself to his old sins!
Yet it is not said that it is impossible for him to return to his Maker;
though his case be deplorable, it is not utterly hopeless; the leper may yet
be made clean, and the dead may be raised. Reader, is thy backsliding a
grief and burden to thee? Then thou art not far from the kingdom of God;
believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.
The backslider's soul, before influenced by the Spirit of God, dilated
and expanded under its heavenly influences, becomes more capable of
refinement in iniquity, as its powers are more capacious than formerly.