How Does ‘Willful Sinning’ Threaten My Salvation?

[Music] Christian's struggle with sin because we Christians in this life are sinners still the presence of sin in us will not be eradicated until that glorious day when we will see Jesus face-to-face and what a glorious day that will be but until then we fight sin by faith and we can experience assurance inside of that fight but we also believe that there are forms of willful sin that evidence a heart that has not been saved patterns of willful sin that show the heart is not truly converted which leads to today's question from Josh hello pastor John my question is regarding some of those hard verses in the book of Hebrews specifically Hebrews 10:26 to 29 the writer seems to be speaking to the ability to lose salvation by engaging in willful sin as it has been called my question is what is the opposite of a willful sin is it an accidental sin or something else seems to me that due to the presence of the Holy Spirit's conviction all sin done by the believer is done willfully is there something I'm not seeing within these verses Josh is right that Hebrews 10 and Hebrews 6 often give people the impression that a person possesses the fullness of salvation and then loses it and these texts can easily look that way but there are clues that this is not what this author of Hebrews wants to communicate so Josh's question is twofold do these verses that he refers to teach that we can lose our salvation that's his first question and second what does the verse 26 of chapter 10 mean by referring to sinning deliberately or willingly since in one sense all sin is an act of the will and thus deliberate so the key verse that he's referring to is verse 26 of chapter 10 in the ESV goes like this for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins in other words we're beyond salvation now two observations about this phrase go on sinning deliberately are really important number one the word deliberately translates the Greek a qu Co sand this word is used in first Peter 5:2 like this shepherd the flock of God that is among you you elder Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight not under compulsion but EXO CIO's willingly it's translated that's the same word that translates deliberately now what this usage shows the reason I cited is that there are two different kinds of willing aren't there one is eager and wholehearted and the other is under compulsion in both cases one could argue that the elders are in fact exercising their will to Shepherd the flock of God but in the one case it's glad it's an act that engages the the whole will happy energized and in the other case it's begrudging an act that evidently goes against significant parts of the will that would rather be doing something else doesn't really want to Shepherd the flock of God but for money or for fame or to avoid guilt feelings or something you gut it out and and Shepherd the flock of God so this is a correction to Josh's assumption that all sinning is equally willing or all human acts are equally willing since all acts including sin are acts of the will that's true they are acts of the will we choose them but this text Hebrews 10:26 is saying something more than that the sin which destroys the soul is an act of the will of course it is but it's more than that all sins are acts of the will and not all sins destroy its a more intentional eager wholehearted act of the will an act which shows that there isn't a real identity of spiritual newness inside that acts as a constraint holding back the will at least in part here's the second thing to notice in the phrase go on sinning deliberately or willingly or eagerly it's that phrase go on sinning which is a good translation of the present tense of the Greek verb sin in other words it's not a single act it's not a few acts it's not periodic acts it's rather a a settled persistent continuation in sin so what destroys the soul what puts it beyond forgiveness in verse 26 is not sin per se but an eager deliberate willing persistent settled pattern of sin and we can see how serious this is by looking at what comes just before and what comes after verse 26 verse 26 begins with the word for which shows what kind of sin is being referred to in the preceding verses namely the sin of forsaking the Christian fellowship and the rejection of all brotherly exhortation in other words this person is walking away from Christ and His Church then if you look after verse 26 especially at verse 29 you see that the pattern of sin is so deep and repeated and committed that it's called trampling underfoot the Son of God profaning the blood of the Covenant by which he was sanctified and out raging the spirit of grace and right here is where it looks like we can lose our salvation because of the reference to by which he was sanctified so you can profane the blood by such a a deliberate continued settled pattern of sin you can profane the blood of the covenant by which you were sanctified which sounds like oh well we were saved and so now he's beyond forgiveness and so you can lose your salvation there are two passages in Hebrews that keep me from going there from saying that this reference to some kind of sanctified condition for the person who is lost means that we can have the full experience of salvation in Christ and be lost or lose it there are two passages hebrews 10:14 and hebrews 3:14 so here's 10:14 see what you think for by a single offering that's the offering of Christ God has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified in other words there is a kind of being sanctified which absolutely guarantees perfection for all time in other words nobody is lost who is experiencing this kind of sanctification here's the second the second one chapter 3 verse 14 for we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end now note it doesn't say we will come to share in Christ if we hold fast to the end it says we have come to share in Christ if we hold fast to the end which means that if we don't hold fast like the person in Hebrews 10:26 if we don't hold fast then we never had come to share in Christ that's the clear teaching of 3:14 we didn't lose our share in Christ we never had it so my conclusion is that the experience of sanctification referred to in the lost person of 10 26 and 10 29 is a measure of God influenced moral renovation in a person that has been absorbed by being part of the church professing some kind of faith being attracted by many things about the Christian faith and Christian people but never really coming to believe in Christ in such a way as to be united to him have a share in him and his eternal life and salvation so my answer to Josh is number one no I don't think genuine believers in Christ lose their salvation and two I think there is a kind of sinning which is more deliberate more eager more persistent than the way a genuine believer sins and confesses and is forgiven Amen this is a very helpful dichotomy here and hope giving for this life as we battle against sin in our lives and confess them to God Pastor John thank you for walking us through these notoriously hard texts in Hebrews and thank you for the question Josh and thanks for listening to this podcast you can stay current with the a special John podcast and get our latest episodes delivered to your phone or device by subscribing to us through your preferred podcast catcher and if you want to search our past episodes in our archive or send us an email you can do those things through our online home at desiring God org slash ask Pastor John and of course we always welcome questions about what the Bible says about sanctification and Christian growth and assurance while the core beliefs in enshrined practices of Roman Catholicism deeply concerned the Reformers 500 years ago and those concerns remain largely unalloyed for contemporary Protestants today problems that we still see in the latest version of the official catechism of the Catholic Church and it leads to the question over whether or not a devout Roman Catholic who is faithful to that Catechism can be genuinely saved well now that is a hot potato I'm gonna toss it over to Pastor John next time I'm your host Tony Rangi we'll see you on Wednesday you

Channel: Desiring God

Views: 627,410

Keywords: Desiring God, John Piper, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Christian Hedonism, sin, sinning, continue in sin, presistent, willful, salvation, saved, perseverance of the saints, Ask Pastor John, eternal life, lose, Christian, justification, blasphemy, Holy Spirit, called, born again, sure, promise, faithful, to the end, sustain, guiltless, perfection, perfect, lost, how do I know if I’m saved, walking away, unbelief, doubt, sorry, scared, security

Id: UWQiFKVaWVk

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2018