What does First B Jackson teach about backsliding?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First Baptist Jackson, the teaching on backsliding starts with a diagnosis before it ever gets to a warning. In the series through Hebrews, Pastor Josh and Pastor Scott both spent real time on Hebrews 5:11 through 6:3, pointing out that the writer of Hebrews is not describing people who never cared. The verb tense matters: these readers had been sharp and attentive, and something changed. The word translated "dull" carries the sense of blunt, sluggish, slack, like an axe that has not been kept sharp. People who by now should have been teaching others needed someone to walk them back through the most elementary things. That condition has a name, and the teaching at First Baptist does not avoid it: it is what many traditions call backsliding.
The teaching also takes seriously what causes that drift. Sin, the letters says, is deceitful, and when it gets a foothold it starts to look better than Jesus. The whole argument of Hebrews is that Jesus is better than everything else, so when a person begins drifting back toward what is familiar and measurable, whether that is a former religious system or simply the lazy habit of holding right beliefs without walking them out, they are trading the real thing for a shadow of it. Pastor Scott drew that line clearly when he described legalism as feeling safer because it is familiar, and named it as the same wrong move that would have cost Abraham everything if he had refused to leave when God called him forward.
The remedy the text points to is not what most people expect. The writer of Hebrews does not say to start again at the beginning. He says leave the elementary things and press on to maturity. Pastor John, preaching the warning passage that followed in Hebrews 6:4 through 12, held the tension in that text without softening it toward either theological extreme. He said the plainest reading of the warning describes people with genuine Christian experience, and he was not willing to do what he called verbal Olympics to explain that away. The warning is real, and so is the encouragement that follows it. The teaching at First Baptist presents both, and keeps the application pointed at the person in the room.
Taught from Hebrews 5:11-6:3 · Hebrews 6:4-8 · Hebrews 3:13 · Hebrews 6:9-11 · Ephesians 2:10
The passage taught · Hebrews 2
1 Therefore we ought to pay greater attention to the things that were heard, lest perhaps we drift away.
2 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense;
3 how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation—which at the first having been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard;
4 God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders, by various works of power, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- September 22, 2019 Danger, No Passage The pastor walks through Hebrews 6:4-12, holding the warning against falling away and the call to persevere in honest tension, without softening either.
- September 15, 2019 Diagnosis and Remedy Hebrews 5:11-6:3 warns against spiritual sluggishness and calls believers past the basics of faith toward the maturity that comes through daily submission to God.
- September 15, 2019 Diagnosis and Remedy Hebrews 5-6 warns believers who have grown dull to God's Word. Pastor explores the diagnosis of spiritual immaturity and the call to press on toward maturity in Christ.