Losing Versus Leaving the Faith

November 24th, 2025
by Lance Waldie

Hebrews 6:4-6 For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away…

The author of Hebrews wants his audience to move beyond the “elementary teaching about the Christ” (6:1) and to grow in their faith, eventually being able to teach Christian principles (5:12). He feared, however, that some in his audience were so infantile in their understanding and love of Jesus Christ, in spite of having been professing believers for some time, that they were in danger of willfully leaving their faith—of intentionally falling away.

In v. 4, the author reveals a horrific scenario regarding apathetic, infantile believers in Christ. He does not fear that they will lose their salvation, for one cannot lose what God has graciously granted. He fears that they will leave their salvation. It appears that those who fail to grow in their faith, who remain willfully infantile in their understanding of the Christ and Christianity, are actually in danger of that very phenomenon. This is called apostasy.

Now, to be sure, the NT is adamant that true Christians cannot lose what God has graciously granted, namely their salvation. On the night before His death, the Son of God prayed to His Father about the souls given to Him, saying, “Even as You gave Me authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life (John 17:2)… Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Elsewhere, Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out… This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:37, 39)… “I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:28).

Paul also wrote about the security of the Christian: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:31-39).

It is therefore clear that nothing can separate a believer from the God who saved him by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This means that no sin a Christian commits—from adultery to murder to lying to coveting—will end God’s relationship with a convert to Jesus Christ based on God’s disappointment in His chosen people. The security of the believer is certain in that we can do nothing to lose what God has granted to us. That said, one who professes to believe in the promises of God can willingly leave the faith he or she once professed. This has already been illustrated in Hebrews 3-4 where the author reminds the readers that the Israelites under Moses initially acted in faith during the days of the first Passover. They faithfully selected a lamb, slayed the lamb, and painted the blood of that lamb on their doorposts (cf. Exod. 12). As a result, the firstborn in their households lived, and they all exited Egypt under Moses. All by faith.

In spite of this, most of the Israelites who came out of Egypt in faith willfully sinned in the wilderness and thus turned away the God who miraculously delivered them. As a result, they died in the wilderness and failed to enter God’s Promised Land because of unbelief (Heb. 3:19). The God they once had faith in, they departed from. It was their willful choice to do so. And now the author of Hebrews is warning the generation 1500 years later not to make the same fatal mistake: to willfully walk away from faith in the God who saves through Christ. So, a Christian can do nothing to cause God to take away their faith, but one can leave the faith if they choose.