What is a backslider and can they return to God?

Question 07060

A backsliding Christian is a believer who has drifted away from close fellowship with God, and yes, they can come back. In fact the whole of Scripture is arranged to tell them so, and I have never yet met a returning believer whom God turned away at the door.

The word backslider is not a technical New Testament term, which is worth saying at the outset. It has entered Christian speech from the Old Testament prophets, and it describes a condition rather than a category of person. Let me set out what the condition looks like and what the road home involves.

What a backsliding Christian is

The picture comes from Hosea 4:16, where Israel is “like a stubborn heifer,” and from Jeremiah 3, where the Lord repeatedly addresses “faithless Israel” and pleads with her to return. The Hebrew shovav carries the idea of turning back or turning away, a movement in the wrong direction rather than a settled destination.

So a backsliding Christian is someone who was walking with God and is now walking away, or has stopped walking altogether. It may show as neglected prayer, abandoned church attendance, a tolerated sin, a hardened attitude towards another believer, or simply a slow cooling in which nothing dramatic happens at all.

What defines it is direction, not distance. A believer three months into a drift is backsliding just as truly as one twenty years in. The difference between them is how much wreckage there is to clear up.

And it is a condition of fellowship rather than standing. The backsliding Christian has not lost their justification, which was settled once and permanently, as I have explained in the article on justification. What has been damaged is the warmth and usefulness of the relationship.

It also helps to say what a backsliding Christian is not. This is not a special class of second rate believer with a different status before God. Every Christian I know, including this one, has had periods of drift. The question is never whether we have drifted but whether we are drifting now and what we intend to do about it.

The Old Testament picture

Jeremiah 3:12-14 is as tender as anything in the prophets: “Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful.” That is God speaking to a people who had betrayed Him thoroughly, and the tone is invitation rather than accusation.

Hosea goes further still. God tells the prophet to marry a woman who will be unfaithful, and then to buy her back when she has ruined herself, precisely so that Israel could see what His own love was like. It is the most uncomfortable enacted parable in Scripture and the most reassuring.

The chapter that closes Hosea has God saying, “I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely.” The healing is offered before any conditions are met. God is not waiting at a distance to see whether the returning heart is sufficiently improved.

None of that is soft on sin. Hosea and Jeremiah both describe the damage in unsparing terms. But the damage is described in order to be healed, which is a very different thing from being catalogued for the record.

Notice too how often God takes the initiative in these passages. He is the one who calls, who pleads, who sends prophets, who goes looking. The picture of a backsliding Christian creeping timidly towards a reluctant God has no basis anywhere in Scripture, and it stops more people coming home than almost anything else.

Can a backsliding Christian really return?

David is the great case. Adultery, deception and arranged killing, followed by roughly a year of silence before Nathan confronted him. Psalm 51 is what came out of that confrontation, and Psalm 32 describes the misery of the year before it, when “my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.”

Notice what David asks for in Psalm 51:12: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Not the salvation, the joy of it. He had not lost his standing before God; he had lost the enjoyment of it, which is exactly what a backsliding Christian loses.

Peter is the other case. He denied Jesus three times with oaths, and the restoration in John 21 is one of the gentlest scenes in the Gospels. Three denials, three questions, three commissions. Jesus does not extract an explanation. He restores him to usefulness in front of the others.

If a man who denied Jesus to his face can be given the keys of Pentecost seven weeks later, then no backsliding Christian reading this is beyond restoration.

What Jesus does not do is anything we would expect. There is no interrogation, no probationary period and no reduction in responsibility. Breakfast on a beach, a conversation, and back to work. That is how God restores a backsliding Christian, and it is worth measuring our own instincts against it.

How backsliding usually begins

Almost never with a decision. In my experience it begins with something small and reasonable: a season of pressure when prayer gets squeezed, a Sunday missed for a good reason and then another for a worse one, a friendship that quietly cools, a grievance nursed rather than dealt with.

Unforgiveness is the most common single cause I encounter. A believer is wounded, often genuinely, and the wound is guarded rather than surrendered. Within a couple of years the guarding has hardened into a general coldness, and the person cannot now say when it started.

Unconfessed sin is the other great cause. 1 John 1:9 provides the remedy, and the remedy is refused because confession would mean stopping. So the believer keeps the sin and loses the fellowship, and the loss is felt as a vague dullness rather than an obvious judgement.

Disappointment with God accounts for a good many too. A prayer went unanswered, a child went wrong, an illness came and did not go. Nobody announces that they are withdrawing; they simply stop expecting anything, and the expectation is what had been carrying the relationship.

Prosperity is an underrated cause as well. Difficulty drives people to God; comfort quietly persuades them they do not need Him. Deuteronomy 8 warns Israel about precisely this, and I have watched it work on more believers than any persecution ever has in this country.

The discipline of a Father

Hebrews 12:6 says the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and verse 8 adds that a child left without discipline is no child at all. So the misery of a backsliding Christian is not the absence of God. It is the presence of God, applying pressure to a son He has no intention of losing.

This is not the same thing as a person who has walked away entirely and contentedly, which is what Scripture means when it speaks of someone who has committed apostasy. That is why a drifting believer is so rarely comfortable. They may be defiant, busy or distracted, but underneath there is an ache that the unconverted simply do not have. I have learned to treat that ache as good news when I hear it described.

In serious cases the discipline can be severe. 1 Corinthians 11:30 speaks of believers who were weak, ill and even died under the hand of God at Corinth. Sin in a Christian carries consequences that can be dreadful, and none of them touch the question of whether the person belongs to God.

The purpose throughout is restoration. Discipline in Scripture is aimed at bringing a son home, never at driving him out.

For the technical detail on how confession and forgiveness relate in the life of a believer, the NET Bible notes on 1 John 1 are useful, and they make clear that this is family language addressed to people who already belong.

The road back

It is shorter than most people expect. Confession, honestly and specifically, is the whole of the mechanism, and it restores fellowship without touching the eternal security that was never in question, and the promise attached to it in 1 John 1:9 is unconditional. There is no penance, no probation and no waiting period.

What usually takes time is the rebuilding rather than the return. Habits have to be re established, trust with other people may need repairing, consequences may still have to be lived with. David was forgiven immediately and lived with the fallout in his family for the rest of his life.

Practically, I would say this to a backsliding Christian: name the thing rather than confessing in generalities, tell one other believer, get back among the people of God even while it feels awkward, and start reading again in small quantities. Feelings follow obedience far more often than they precede it.

And do not wait until you feel ready. Nobody ever feels ready. The prodigal came home smelling of pigs, and the father was already running.

It also helps to expect nothing at first. A backsliding Christian who has been away a long time often carries shame that makes the first Sunday back feel impossible. Sit with them, take them for coffee, drive them there if need be. Shame is dismantled by presence far more effectively than by argument.

Helping someone else back

Galatians 6:1 sets the tone: restore such a one “in a spirit of gentleness,” keeping watch on yourself. That verse assumes restoration is the goal, gentleness is the method, and self awareness is the safeguard. Very little Christian confrontation manages all three.

Go, and keep going. Most people who drift are not waiting to be argued with; they are waiting to discover whether anyone noticed. A message that says you have been missed will do more than an argument about attendance.

So, now what?

If you are the backsliding Christian, come back today. Not next week, not when the diary calms down, and not when you feel more sincere about it. Say it plainly to God, tell one person, and turn up somewhere on Sunday.

If you know someone who has drifted, get in touch this week. No agenda, no lecture. Who came to mind while you were reading that?

I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.

Hosea 14:4, ESV