Pauline Teaching
On the mission field, after they had “made many disciples,” Paul and Barnabas returned to the churches they had planted earlier, “strengthening the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith” (Acts 14:21,22). This would have been an unnecessary expenditure of time and energy if apostasy was not an option. Later, Paul warned the leaders of the church in Ephesus that “savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29,30).
In Paul’s letters, his teaching was no different than in his preaching in Acts. He warned the churches in Rome, “For if God did not spare the natural branches, [Israel], He will not spare you either [Christians in Rome]. Behold then the kindness and severity of God; severity to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness [note the language of conditional covenant] if you continue in His kindness; otherwise, you also will be cut off” (11:21,22). He also challenged them, “If because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died” (14:15; compare also 1 Corinthians 8:11, where the same terms appear).
In 1 Corinthians 5:1–13 (compare also 2 Thessalonians 3:6,14), Paul challenged the Corinthians to excommunicate people who live in sin (compare Matthew 18:15–17). He chided libertines in the church at Corinth for allowing their freedom to cause the destruction of the weaker “brother for whose sake Christ died” (1 Corinthians 8:11). “Brother” indicates that all involved are members of the same covenant community). He believed there was a possibility that even he could become a castaway from the faith (1 Corinthians 9:27). Paul further warned the Christians at Corinth that this could be their lot as well, and that they could end up like the Israelites who died in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:1–13). “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall” (verse 12).
Paul also warned the Corinthians that belief in a defective version of the good news could endanger their salvation, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:1,2). Later, he challenged them again, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you — unless indeed you fail the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5). This challenge is similar to the one he delivered to the Colossian church: Jesus would present them blameless before God, but only provided that [they] “continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast” (Colossians 1:21–23).
To the churches in Galatia, Paul exclaimed, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel” (Galatians 1:6). In Galatians 4:1–11, he described a progression in which the Galatian Christians had gone from slaves, to sons, and then back to slaves again. In the conclusion of this section, Paul said, “I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.”
To those who had been saved by the blood of Jesus, but then accepted the Jesus-plus gospel of the Judaizers that added circumcision to the Ordo Salutis (way of salvation), Paul proclaimed, “You have been severed [kataergo: “cut off, emptied of, annulled from, canceled from, brought to an end, destroyed, annihilated”] from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen [ekpipto: “to fall from or out of, to forfeit, to lose, to cause to come to an end”] from grace” (Galatians 5:4).
To the Philippian church, Paul stated that he had suffered the loss of all things “that I may know him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10,11). If Paul’s salvation was final and nothing could change his status with God, he was not aware of it. He had taken to heart the spiritual devastation in the lives of some of his closest companions because, in the same context, he told the church at Philippi about people who once were well-known believers, but he lamented “they are enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18).
When Paul instructed pastors, the message was the same, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith” (1 Timothy 4:1; compare 2 Timothy 4:3,4).
Sidebar: Apostasy
To apostasize means to sever one’s saving relationship with Christ or to withdraw from vital union with and true faith in Him. Thus, individual apostasy is possible only for those who have first experienced salvation, regeneration, and renewal through the Holy Spirit (Luke 8:13; Hebrews 6:4,5); it is not a mere denial of New Testament doctrine by the unsaved within the visible church. Apostasy may involve two separate, though related, aspects: (a) theological apostasy, i.e., a rejection of all or some of the original teachings of Christ and the apostles (1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 4:3), and (b) moral apostasy, i.e., the former believer ceases to remain in Christ and instead becomes enslaved again to sin and immorality (Isaiah 29:13; Matthew 23:25-28; Romans 6:15-23; 8:6-13).
Donald Stamps, Gen. Ed. Life in the Spirit Study Bible, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 1918.
