Most people who fall away from the faith don’t experience a sudden, Damascus-road-type de-conversion. Studies indicate that a strong majority of those who leave the faith do so gradually. Every time we ignore the urging of our conscience we smooth and broaden the path of apostasy. We need to develop the kind of spiritual disciplines and friendships that will help ensure that if we begin to drift church leaders, family, and friends will notice and take action.

I was recently driving with my young daughter a few days after she publicly professed her faith in Christ. She asked an important question: Not everyone who says they trust in Jesus stays faithful to him. How can I be sure that isn’t me?

You can probably think of someone who at one time claimed to trust in Christ but later fell away. A contemporary term for this is deconstruction. Scripture uses a more catastrophic image: some, “concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck” (1 Tim. 1:19–20). Paul wasn’t exaggerating. He had been shipwrecked (2 Cor. 11:25). He knew that apostasy was no less tragic than the sinking of a vessel on which people’s lives depend. These apostates Paul names—Hymenaeus and Alexander—punctuate Paul’s charge to the church to “wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience.”

How can the failures of others help you be diligent in resisting apostasy?

Take Heed Lest You Fall

The surest way to fall away from the faith is to assume you are immune to falling away (1 Cor. 10:12). “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today,’ lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:12–13). Jesus exhorted even his closest friends: “Abide in Me… If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned (John 15:6). Perseverance in the faith requires constant vigilance. “We have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end” (Heb. 3:14).

Understand the End of Apostasy

Apostasy is not simply a different way to practice faith. Apostates turn off the path that leads to eternal life. Those who renounce faith will be cut off from the tree of life (Rom. 11:22). “For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them” (2 Peter 2:20–21).

Not everyone publishes their apostasy in carefully postured social media posts. Some who have professed the Christian faith quietly stop coming to church and bearing fruit but continue to identify as Christians.

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