Backsliding in faith is a grievous spiritual condition. It dis­honors God, spurns the invitations of Christ, grieves the Spirit, tramples on the law, and abuses the gospel. It involves not only passive spiritual declension and drifting away from God, but also an active lapse into old ways and, ultimately, a deliberate turning away from God — an act of faithlessness and defection. God warns against this sin repeatedly, especially through the prophet Hosea (4:6; 5:5; 7:8, 9, 11; 13:9). He complains, “My people are bent to backsliding from me” (Hos. 11:7).

Since backsliding in every form is abhorred by God and is totally unacceptable for believers, ministers need to target it in their preaching. First, they need to explain what backsliding is and how it reveals itself through worldliness and unbelief and eventually leads to pride and indifference toward the gospel. Ignorance, spiritual deadness, and self-centeredness are the multimate fruits of backsliding.

Second, preachers must explain how backsliding begins with a gradual distancing from God in personal prayer to a growing coolness toward the means of grace. Church services do not seem as meaningful to the backslider. The preacher is not “as good as he used to be.” The backslider still reads the Bible but without relish. He feels distant from Christ. He no longer car­ries his guilt daily and urgently to Christ’s blood for cleansing, nor his corruptions to Christ’s grace, nor his trials to Christ's heart. Talking about religion becomes a substitute for com­muning with Christ from the heart. Inner corruptions begin to multiply. Old lusts of the flesh begin to emerge with frightening power and frequency.

The desire to please God and the fear of offending Him are no longer primary motivations for living in a godly manner; rather, the consequences and punishment of sin become the primary motives for rejecting temptation. Self-examination decreases while self-presumption increases. Worldliness is subtly entertained rather than combated, even to the point of “pitching one’s tent toward Sodom.” Brotherly love grows cold. Gradually the backslider becomes less aware of Satan’s devices and more desensitized to sin. His vision so weakens with spiritual decay that he becomes blind to his own backsliding.

Finally, the minister must proclaim the cure for backsliding, which is God’s amazing willingness to heal backsliding. Oh, how backsliders need to hear this message! I once preached on the glorious text of Hosea 14:4, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely,” proclaiming God’s love without human cause from eternity past, without divine pause throughout time, and without earthly flaws to all eternity.

We need to preach about God’s sovereign love to backslid­ers but also about our responsibility to flee from backsliding. As Jesus said to the church in Ephesus: “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works” (Rev. 2:4-5a). The responsibility of backsliders is to return to the three Rs: remember, repent, and redo. We need to preach each of these with directness:

1. Remember⤒🔗

We must shoot the arrow of remembrance at the consciences of backsliders, moving them to reflect on their first love of Christ and the gospel and to consider how far they have departed from their Savior.

2. Repent←⤒🔗

We must shoot the arrow of conviction at backslid­ers, so that they recognize backsliding as sin; so that they confess, despise, and grieve over it; and so that they turn away from it and come back to the living Redeemer in repentance and faith.

3. Redo←⤒🔗

We must shoot the arrow of duty at backsliders, calling them back to participate in the means of grace, to become the peculiar workmanship of Jesus Christ, and to give evidence of their spiritual life through their zeal for good works (Eph. 2:10). We should not let up on backsliders until they return to a life of prayer, a life focused on the Scripture, and a life in which Christ and God’s grace are central.

Ministers should also target those caught in the hedges of spiritual bondage. People in bondage are similar to backsliders in that both fail to live in liberty in Christ. Yet, they are different because those in bondage have never felt free to say that Christ is theirs and they are His.

The Puritans presented two causes for souls that labored under bondage, and they believed that ministers should deal with them accordingly. First, there are some in the church who are under a radical spirit of bondage. They are convicted of sin but do not yet have liberty in Christ. Though it is difficult at times to discern whether these people are genuine Christians, some Puritans say they are experiencing “a preparatory work of grace,” by which they meant the Spirit’s ordinary way of leading a sinner to Christ through conviction of sin.

The Puritan writer Simon Ford devotes 180 pages to describing this convicting work of the Spirit.¹Ezekiel Hopkins offers this succinct summary of the preparatory work of grace:

1. The preparatory work of conversion is usually carried on in the soul by legal fears and terrors.
2. This legal fear is slavish and engenders bondage.
3. This slavish fear is wrought in the soul by the Spirit of God, though it is slavish.
4. When the soul is prepared for the work of grace by the work of conviction and for comfort by the work of humiliation, the same spirit that was before a spirit of bondage becomes now a spirit of adoption.
5. Those whose spirit becomes the spirit of adoption never again struggle with a spirit of bondage and fear.
6. A reverential, filial fear of God may and ought to possess our souls, while the Spirit of God, who is a spirit of adop­tion, is, by the clearest evidences, actually witnessing our sonship to us.²

The Puritans advised ministers to warn those who were under the spirit of bondage that they will perish if they do not take refuge in Christ with penitent faith and come to know the spirit of adoption. They are then to offer them encouragement, inviting those in bondage to come to Christ immediately, confessing their sins, such as the lack of childlike fear, and asking the Spirit to drive them out of their self-confidence as they storm the mercy seat. As Simon Ford says, their encouragement is that God will not keep His elect indefinitely in bondage because (1) religion would become uncomfortable and unappealing, (2) people would faint under their burden of sin, and (3) they would develop hard thoughts of God. God will lead those in bondage to liberty to show that they do not serve Him in vain. He wants to wean His own from this world and to commune often with them.³

Other souls labor under a milder form of bondage. They are sincere children of God, but they have a weak sense of their sonship. Objectively, all of God’s children are sons of God. But, as Thomas Manton says, “All God’s children have the spirit of adoption in the effects, though not in the sense and feeling of it. They have the spirit of comfort, though not the comfort of it.”

He goes on to say, “There is a childlike inclination and impression left upon them, though they know it not, (and) own it not.” Christ had the spirit of sonship without measure, but weak Christians have this spirit in lesser degrees. As Manton says, “They have neither so pure and fervent a love toward God; nor such a respectful obedience and submission to Him; nor such an holy confidence and boldness.” They are not as happy as those who have the sure hope of the blessed inheritance and that son-like disposition that the Spirit works by revealing the love and mercy of God, contained in the gospel, in the hearts of His people. Manton concludes, “Some do more improve their privileges than others do; now they cannot rationally expect the best and richest fruits of this gift, and to be enabled and enlarged by the Spirit, who do not give such ready entertainment and obedience to his motions, as the more serious and fruitful Christian doth.”⁴

There is a difference between people who have a weak sense of sonship and those who are still under the spirit of bondage. People may have a childlike inclination to God, but they lack childlike familiarity and boldness with Him. They have a child­like reverence for God as Father (1 Pet. 1:17), but they lack a childlike confidence in Him as their Father. They have a child­like dependence on God’s general offers of grace, but they are not persuaded of the sincerity of their claim. They have a childlike love for God, though they lack assurance of His love for them.

They possess the childlike adherence of faith without having full assurance of faith. They experience both childlike groans (Rom. 8:26) and childlike comforts (1 Pet. 1:8), and their hearts are drawn to heavenly truths, but they often cannot claim such truths as their own. Unlike those under the spirit of bondage who seek God out of a mercenary spirit, those with assurance seek God from a childlike spirit.⁵

Manton suggests four ways to help the weak in faith call on God as their Father and to come to greater liberty in Christ:

First, they should “disclaim when they cannot apply.” If you cannot say, “Father,” Manton says, you must plead on your fatherless condition, using such texts as Hosea 14:3, “In thee the fatherless find mercy.”

Second, they must “own God in the humbling way.” They can come to the Father like the prodigal son, confessing their unworthiness, or like Paul, come as the chief of sinners, Manton says. They can come to God as their Father-Creator if they cannot come to Him as their Father Savior.

Third, they should “call Him Father in wish.” If you cannot call Him Father with directness, do so with desire, Manton says. “Let us pray ourselves into this relation, and groan after it, that we may have a clearer sense that God is our Father in Christ.”

Fourth, these weak ones should make use of Christ. “If you cannot come to God as your Father, come to him as the God and Father off our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:14), who means so much in heaven, Manton says. “Let Christ bring you into God’s presence. Take Him along with you in your arms. Go to God in Christ’s name for ‘Whatsoever you ask in my name, shall be given to you.’”⁶

Pastors need to be familiar with the reasons why some believers are in spiritual bondage. The Puritans explained spiritual bondage in terms of a believer’s personal experience of his spiritual adoption by God, but there are other areas that need attention. Weak believers can be harassed with all kinds of doubts about their salvation. They often are spiritually depressed as well.

Obadiah Sedgwick’s book, The Doubting Believer, and William Bridge’s volume, A Lifting Up for the Downcast, are excellent guides on how to preach to those with spiritual depression.⁷Peter Lewis’s The Genius of Puritanism is also helpful for understanding the wisdom of the Puritans in encouraging the spiritually despondent.⁸