What/How do you understand the definition of this work to mean? Actually, what picture is painted in your mind when the word is used? Webster defines it as: “… to lapse morally, to revert to a worse condition; … a person who has sunk below the normal moral standard.” The synonyms are degenerate, decadent, libertine, profligate, etc. Not a good upstanding individual – a person that one should flee from. This is a kind of – ‘you know it when you see it’ because the behavior is so very obvious.
There are as many reasons for the ‘why’ in the backsliding as there are backsliders. Do we care about their ‘why’? We should. I suspect that each of us is subject to the opportunity to backslide – ‘there but for the grace, go I’. What causes one person to act on this and another not to? Irrelevant questions? Perhaps. But the point is – what do we do to/with our brothers and sisters who do backslide – do we attempt to woo them back? Do we simply ignore?
Never limit backsliding simply to not attending church. It’s more significant and encompassing. Backsliding really refers specifically to you and who you are and are becoming, what you know and how you do your knowing. Each time you deny the truth of Who you believe or His abilities, it’s a slide back. Each time you decide that He wouldn’t ‘do (fill in the blank)’ because of who you were, you slide a bit more back. And yes, it is hard to put yesterday out of today’s thinking. But if you are committed to Jesus then you won’t stay in your yesterday but will move into who you are because you accepted His Lordship.
At some point backsliding becomes a decision. If you choose to move further and further away from the Lord – that’s a road to destruction. Or you can choose to stop your slide, confess your sin to the Lord, resolve to return because He tells us that He will forgive and cleanse us.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1John 1:9)
As difficult as it may seem to admit your sin, it is the way to restoration. You can never try and ‘live’ with the issue – you live in unrighteousness if you do. Pride always goes before us when we let that dictate. If you’ve ever hesitated in admitting to yourself you sinned and needed restoring, you remember the discomfort and shame associated with being out of fellowship with the Lord. Is your pride so important that you will stay in this state? Backsliding doesn’t need to define us. We can come into fellowship and receive the joy that occurs when ‘all’s right with the world’. What happens if we don’t?????
