Backsliding

 

Backsliding, also known as falling away

[1] or described as "committing apostasy",

[2] is a term used within Evangelical Christianity to describe a process by which an individual who has converted to Christianity reverts to pre-conversion habits and/or lapses or falls into sin, when a person turns from God to pursue their own desire.

[3] To revert to sin or wrongdoing, especially in religious practice, someone lapses into previous undesirable patterns of behavior.

[4] To be faithful, thus to believe backsliding is a reversion, in principle upholds the Apostle Paul’s condition in salvation: "If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9 (TNIV). 

In Christianity, within the Roman Catholic Church as well as those denominations which teach Arminianism such as the Methodist Churches, backsliding is a state which any free-willed believer is capable of adopting.

[5] This belief is rejected by Calvinists endorsing the perseverance of the saints doctrine.

[6] In these denominations, it is taught that the backslidden individual is in danger of eventually going to Hell if he does not repent (see Conditional security).

[7] Historically, backsliding was considered a trait of the Biblical Israel which would turn from the Abrahamic God to follow idols.[10] In the New Testament church (see Acts of the Apostles and Christianity in the 1st century), the story of the Prodigal Son has become a representation of a backslider who repented.