What happens to the otherwise obedient
believer named Mr. Fluffy, who fatally drives
into a telephone pole as a result of lusting after a provocative billboard? According to Matt
Matt 5:27-30
27 "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.'
28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. (NIV)
I Jn 5:16-18
16 If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.
17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. (NIV)
What if Mr. Fluffy died before he had time to repent of this damnable act? Would he go to hell?
Do you lose your salvation every time you commit a damnable sin? Believers disagree on this issue. I personally contend that a sure diagnosis of behavioral apostasy involves a continuing in sin. The purpose of this document is to explain why.
Now, certain sins are so heinous that a true obedient believer would NEVER commit them. I am not referring to these abominations in this document. I have another document where I refer to them.
Verse 18 above states that a true believer will not continue to sin--or sin in the continual sense. That does not mean that they will never accidentally sin at all:
I Jn 2:1-6
1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense-- Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.
4 The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
5 But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him:
6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. (NIV)
So, true believers will be obedient, but not as sinless as Jesus was. However, they seem perfect to God, because they do not continue in sin. If or when they sin, they repent (behaviorally-- 1 John 3:7) and ask God to forgive them—and He forgets about it.
Heb 10:13-23
13 Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool,
14 because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
16 "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds."
17 Then he adds: "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more."
18 And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,
20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. (NIV)
Since God forgets their sin that they forsook, he views them
as sin-less, or Holy as Christ is holy.
This sanctification is a both an event and a continual process that
occurs over time to those who are being
made holy.
Proverbs 24
16 for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again,
but the wicked are brought down by calamity.
A righteous man like Mr. Fluffy does not stay down in his sin. He believes God’s promise to forgive him and empower Him to “sin no more”. He rises again. He struggles against sin.
Hebrews 12
God Disciplines His Sons
1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of
witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance
the race marked out for us. 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the
author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the
cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that
you will not grow weary and lose heart.
4In your struggle against sin, you have not yet
resisted to the point of shedding your blood
Proverbs 24
10If you faint in the
day of adversity,
Your strength is small.
11Deliver those who are
drawn toward death,
And hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.
He does not let one mistake, or even 7 (verse 16) mistakes discourage him from continuing to run the race. He leaves his sin behind and continues to run the race. If he were to give up and give in to sin, it would lead to his spiritual death.
Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone
to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to
the one whom you obey–whether you are slaves to sin, which leads
to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
(Whole Chapter: In
context: )
Rev 2:19-25
19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.
20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.
21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.
22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.
23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.
24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan's so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you):
25 Only hold on to what you have until I come. (NIV)
1 Cor 6:15-20
15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!
16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."
17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (NIV)
If a member of Christ was abandon by Christ during an isolated and accidental act of sexual immorality, then there would be no issue of “members of Christ” uniting with a prostitute. It would just be the members of the flesh or the devil uniting with a prostitute.
I Jn 3:4-10
4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.
5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.
6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.
9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.
10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. (NIV)
James 1:13-16
13 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;
14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
15 Then,
after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown,
gives birth to death.
16 Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. (NIV)
What sins if
practiced lead to death? Here is a
quick summary:
1 Cor 6:9‑10
9 Do
you not know that the wicked will
not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually
immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual
offenders
10 nor
thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards
nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (NIV)
Gal 5:19-21
19 The
acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and
debauchery;
20 idolatry
and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition,
dissensions, factions
21 and
envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that
those who live like this will
not inherit the kingdom of God. (NIV)
Rev 21:7‑8
7 He
who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my
son.
8 But
the cowardly, the unbelieving, the
vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the
idolaters and all liars‑‑ their place will be in the fiery lake of
burning sulfur. This is the second death."
(NIV)
Who is an idolater?
Rev 22:14-15
14 "Blessed
are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of
life and may go through the gates into the city.
15 Outside
are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the
murderers, the idolaters and everyone who
loves and practices falsehood. (NIV)
So, because you are lukewarm–neither
hot nor cold–I am about to spit you
out of my mouth.
Damnable or
“wicked” lifestyle choices are listed above in 1 Cor 6:9‑10, Rev 21:7‑8,
Gal 5:19-21, and
Imagine two different men:
The first man who repented is not necessarily an adulterer anymore. What if he was seduced once, 20 years ago? Is he still an adulterer, in the same way that the unrepentant adulterer is? Clearly he is not. Why should you tell a man who already repented to repent again for his salvation’s sake? However, you need to warn the wicked unrepentant adulterer to repent, less he burn in hell:
Ezekiel 3
18 When I say to a wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and you do not
warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his
life, that wicked man will die for [1]
his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. 19 But if
you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his
evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself. (NIV)
The man who repented and those around him have already been (and probably still are) reaping the consequences of his sin. The story of King David’s affair shows us this principle.
Am I teaching a license for occasional immorality? No. No person behaving immorally should ever think they have a ticket to heaven. Notice that Mr. Fluffy was not thinking, “hey, I can get away with this, he he he”. That type of attitude would be less than accidental would it not?
People with this attitude believe in a false gospel called a “license for immorality”. They think that they can “get away” with sin. Some don’t even ask for forgiveness, many feel no remorse. Many do not agree with how the bible defines sin, and most don’t know. Few even care enough to find out by reading the entire bible.
Isaiah
5:20
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who
put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and
sweet for bitter.
(Whole Chapter: Isaiah
5 In context: Isaiah
5:19-21)
Mr. Fluffy, on the other hand, was caught off guard and enticed, he was not scheming. No one should think they can get away with sin for any amount of time, as Jesus teaches below:
Matt 24:48‑51
48 But
suppose that servant is wicked and
says to himself, 'My master is staying away a long time,'
49 and
he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards.
50 The
master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an
hour he is not aware of.
51 He
will cut him to pieces and assign him
a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of
teeth. (NIV)
There was nothing accidental about the
lifestyle of wickedness that the servant above chose to adopt. It was clearly pre-meditated. This is the opposite of an accident.
2 Cor 10:9
9We should not test the Lord, as some of them did--and were killed by snakes
1 Chr 28:9
9 "And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. (NIV)
So, at what point does God leave someone? The same point they leave God. God won’t violate their will, not even through someone else praying for them.
I Jn 5:16-18
16 If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.
17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. (NIV)
Why should he not even bother praying about it? The person in question will not respond to God. By continual sin they have pushed God out of their life. Some who do this don’t even call their sin “sin” anymore. They feel no remorse:
Titus 1:15-16
15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.
16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good. (NIV)
Rom 1:24-32
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-- who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (NIV)
2 Tim 3:6-8
6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires,
7 always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.
8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth-- men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. (NIV)
Titus 1:15-16
15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.
16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good. (NIV)
1 Tim 4:2
2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. (NIV)
Like Ozzy Osbourne sings in “Flying High Again”, there is “..No use saying sorry for something that I enjoy”. Now, when you don’t even bother asking God to forgive you, you can forget about forgiveness. If it is a damnable sin that you are continuing in, you will bear the price of death in Hell forever—unless you repent.
People who resist their conscience and the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the point where they do not even agree with God’s definition of sin are clearly not forgiven and consequently hell bound.
Hebrews 6
4 For in the case of those who have once been (1)
enlightened and have tasted of (2)
the heavenly gift and have been made (3)
partakers of the Holy Spirit,
5 and (4)
have tasted the good (5)
word of God and the powers of (6)
the age to come,
6 and then have
fallen away, it is (7)
impossible to renew them again to repentance, (8)
since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open
shame.
This seems like a second type of unforgivable sin, similar to the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit mentioned in Matt 12:22-37. However, it is so similar that it is actually the same type of sin.
Matt 12:22-37
22 Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see.
23 All the people were astonished and said, "Could this be the Son of David?"
24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons."
25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.
26 If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?
27 And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges.
28 But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
29 "Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.
30 "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.
31 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
33 "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.
34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
36 But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.
37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."
(NIV)
The reason that this sin is unforgivable is because the person is confusing God’s work from that of the Devil’s. They label the move of God’s spirit as Satan’s doing. People still do this. For example, the cohabitator (live-in lover) mentioned above might (if God gives him grace) feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit letting him know he’s going to burn unless he repents. He could repent and turn from his sin to follow God as a response to that guilty feeling. However, he might blaspheme the Holy Spirit since he is “feeling condemned” and rebuke that demon spirit of condemnation. Now, he can’t follow God’s voice since he believes it is the devil’s voice. He is stuck in a trap and will not find forgiveness until he first repents of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
For a more
extensive explanation of Heb 6:4-8, see:
http://www.evangelicaloutreach.org/hebrews.htm
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