People say,
“Cut a bird’s wings,
And it no longer sings.”
Satan says of the Christian,
“Let not his heart to heaven soar;
Then he’ll be dumb, and sing no more.”
Correspondence.
Question: What does 1 Corinthians 8:10, 11, and Romans 14:23 mean? Does it mean that a Christian is lost if he does anything which he is not sure is right? What is meant by sinning willfully in Hebrews 10:26-29? Is it possible that a true believer in Jesus Christ can sin willfully and be lost? R. W.
Answer: The Word of God does not contradict itself. If it seems to do so it is only our want of understanding it, that is at fault. Let us therefore firmly believe what we understand, and rest upon it, and wait on God to enlighten us about the rest. There are many verses that give us the assurance that the believer has eternal life, and that he can never perish (John 3:14-16; 5:24;10:27-30). Also verses to show the believer that his sins are all put away, and that he is justified, and perfected in his standing before God forever (Acts 10:43; 13:38, 39; Rom. 3:22-24; 4:5, 23-25; 5:1-11; Heb. 10:10, 14, 17). These are samples but the whole Word agrees with them. Take these, believe them, rest upon them. Do not let what you do not understand, take away such plain scriptural assurance from you.
We may be sure that the understanding of the rest will confirm what we do understand. Let us look at the scriptures that trouble you. Romans 14 is not speaking of how to be justified, but of Christians receiving one another, though they may differ about what they should eat. The Jew was trained to eat certain things only, while the Gentile did as he pleased. The scripture instructs us that when we give thanks to God, we can eat what we believe is good for us. Only the blood of an animal we are not to use (Acts 15; 1 Tim. 4:4, 5). The Apostle is persuaded that all things in themselves are clean, (Rom. 14:14) but if a man thought it unclean, he should not eat it, for it would give him a bad conscience, and it is a serious thing to have a bad conscience. It is a saved and justified man that gets a bad conscience. His soul is not lost in eating thus, but his communion is broken. The meaning of the word damned in verse 23 is “condemned,” not damned eternally. That is, he feels he has done wrong. In 1 John 2:1 we find Christ is the advocate for believers if they sin.
If a believer loses his good conscience, and so does not walk with God, it wrecks his happiness and usefulness and thus the work of God in his soul is destroyed. Romans 14:20 and 1 Corinthians 8:10, 11 allude to this.
1 Corinthians 8:10, 11. The believer who was once an idolater, was afraid to eat meat that was offered to idols, and for what men call luck the butchers killed the animals to the idols. Some did not understand that giving thanks to God, (1 Tim. 4:4, 5) cleared them from idolatry, and if they ate it, they felt defiled, or brought into fellowship with the idol, and this destroyed the work of God in their souls. Therefore the Apostle warns the believers to be careful not to hurt the conscience of the ignorant ones by eating before them what would defile their consciences. So Paul shows how careful he was in verse 13. The question in these scriptures is not our eternal salvation, but of walking before God with modified hearts and consciences, maintaining communion with the Lord, and not grieving the Holy Spirit. This is very important for every saved one.
Hebrews 10:26-29 is apostasy, that is, sinning willfully. It is saying, “Christ Jesus is no Saviour. He is not the Lamb of God. His sacrifice is no atonement.” For such persons there can be no salvation, nothing but judgment. Could a real child of God, one with a new, divine nature say such words, or think such a thought? A true child of God might say like Peter, “I am no Christian,” but he would not say, “Christ is no Saviour.” A Hebrew that made a profession of Christ, yet not truly born again, would be likely to go back to his old way of worship, and be lost for eternity.