A friend saw my face and demeanor after a discussion of spiritual gifts, and he kindly checked on me. I told him I sometimes struggle with the fact that everyone agrees my spiritual gift is teaching, but I’m rarely allowed to teach because I tell people about the “don’t be deceived passages”: 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Galatians 6:7-8; Ephesians 5:5-7; 1 John 3:7. He even sent a text encouraging me that God will separate the wheat and tares on the last day.
I waited at least a week, probably more, and then I sent this text back:
Thank you for taking the time to send your voice text.
My hope is that Christian teachers will stop telling Christians that it is impossible that they are one of the tares; that they will tell them to beware of being choked out by the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches rather than hinting or outright saying that it’s impossible for us to fall away. If someone “wanders from the truth” we are to restore them in order to “save a soul from death,” but how much harder that has been in my experience because that soul is comfortably thinking “I’ll just lose rewards; that’s sad, but at least I’m saved.”
I think most Christians would admit that the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this world are one of the greatest problems we face in following Jesus in the USA. Who, though, is warning Christians of the danger?
If I were to ask the opposite: who is telling Christians there is no danger of being the third ground, the question would be much easier to answer. Almost everyone. This is my concern. You are being sent as a missionary, so I am happy to pass on that concern.
I do not want to separate the wheat from the tares myself. I just want to warn Christians that they can be found a tare on the last day.
Again, there are three “don’t be deceived” passages about this subject in the New Testament: 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Gal. 6:7-9; Eph. 5:5-7. I could also include 1 Jn. 3:7.
Since you will be teaching, let me exhort you to take a good look at Revelation 2-3. Does Jesus assure the 7 churches of their faith or warn them of their deeds?
When Peter says he wants to remind us of his teaching so we remember it after he dies (1 Peter 1:12-16), he is talking about “diligently” supplying extra things to our faith (2 Peter 1:5-7) and then diligently “doing these things” to “make our calling and election sure” (2 Pet. 1:10).
Warnings are central to the New Testament and rather than diligently passing those warnings on for the safety of the saints many, if not most, Christian teachers are diligently “protecting” the saints from those warnings.
This is my concern. Thus, it is very frustrating to have people say, “Yes, Paul, teaching is definitely your spiritual gift, but we can’t really let you teach because you’re going to tell people that they have to do things to make their calling and election sure” (2 Pet. 1:10-11).
The Rest of the Old, Old Story 
I always wonder how you and others will react, but I do think we have to start with what the Scriptures say, not what we wish they said, if we are going to talk about our reactions and what to do. When I write a post like this on Facebook, I almost always write a post on the mercy of God or the favor of God. In this case, though, I answered more than one email yesterday, and the other was about walking in the Spirit, so the second post followed naturally.
I made that FB post a blog post. I did that right now so I could link it in my answer to you, but I was going to do that anyway. It’s at https://ancient-faith.com/2026/04/15/how-to-walk-in-the-spirit/.
I think there is something about the first- and second-century way of speaking to one another that affects this whole subject as we read it in the 21st century. I don’t know exactly what that is, so I can’t help you, me, or anyone else with that. I do think that the apostles and early Christians promoted a far more confident expectation of living a righteous life by the power of God than we pass on to Christians today.
OK, but how do you hold together these two aspects? How do you live with the tension of the invitation to come boldly before God’s throne to receive mercy and grace on the one hand, and the fact that he is also threatening his children with eternal death for not doing enough on the other?
Jon
I took a day to give better thought to the answer to holding together God’s mercy and judgment. Then life took all my time for a couple days. I don’t know why WordPress did not automatically approve your comment. I hope this helps:
“Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, ‘Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.'”
So, the question is, for me, who are the guilty. I feel like Scripture answers this over and over in both testaments with “those who will not repent.” God constantly upbraids Israel for stubbornness and a stiff neck.
I’m not there with you, but I think you have to fight a war, and get help fighting that war, against “strongholds” and “high things” and bring them into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:4-5). I would begin by changing “eternal death for not doing enough” to “eternal death for not trying.” In Hebrews 10, the same chapter with the frightening warnings in verses 26-31, the writer of Hebrews says, “We are not of those who shrink back to destruction but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.” Better, I think is Hebrews 6:9, which follows equally fearful warnings with, “We are persuaded of better things concerning you, things that accompany salvation, even though we speak like this.”
We who believe are believing into the favor of God (Rom. 5:1-2). As we enter his favor, he begins a work Paul calls good, and then doesn’t give up. He has laid before us a course to run that he has empowered us to run, so maybe this addresses your other question I just saw about needing something more so that you’re not spending your thinking time on discouragement and condemnation. You’ve got the warnings. I spend time on my blog fighting a war to stop Christian society from erasing the warnings. You’re not erasing them. Spend some time reading promises, and then believe them. “Jesus will confirm you to the end so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:8-9).
Run your course and quit being distracted by what will happen to those who don’t. Also, I don’t think the theological debates in your head have to be bad. Write the main points down as your mind wanders so that you’re not stuck in the debate. Maybe God is teaching you in your mental theological debates, but if you keep restarting and covering the main points, you’re not getting to the answers. Jot things down so you can keep the process going and not get bogged down. Then the wandering thoughts that bug you may get somewhere and thrill you.
A war is a war. It must be fought and that is not always pleasant. My brother called me just last week with thoughts of condemnation as well. It was over a work issue! Not a moral failure, a human error failure. He got in an “I failed” cycle of thinking, and it spiraled from “I should have double-checked that new guy’s work” to “God is mad at me.” I told him several things he already knew but wasn’t thinking of because he was so bothered by the result of his oversight that the bad feeling he had, probably stirred up by a harassing demon, muddled his thinking. If God were mad at him, that wouldn’t be a problem because if God is mad at you, you just need to repent and surrender at the throne of favor where you find both mercy and favor to help you not do it again.
Every time you feel condemned without a specific thing to repent for, that is the devil. That is an evil conscience to overthrow and ask God to save you from. When God convicts you it is specific enough that you can repent and know what to do. If your guilt does not give you something specific to repent for and change, then smash it with a hammer. Hate it, drive it away, sing a song … maybe that one from Lamentations 3 that says the mercies of God are new every morning and his lovingkindness is forever. The Hebrew word for lovingkindness is Chesed. The ch is pronounced like German. Whisper it to yourself. That is God’s attitude toward you. Repeat it, pull out your weapons that are at your right hand and your left, and crush aimless guilt with the sword of the Spirit. Use your imagination for theological debates, give those debates a goal, and never let yourself use your imagination to imagine God tormenting you for no reason. “Oh, let’s dump worry on Jon about whether we can save him so that he’s crippled in his attempt to live the life of Christ” is something neither God nor any of his messengers has ever said.
Thank so much for this Paul. I have emailed you in response.
Jon
Hi Paul
I don’t want to go over ground we’ve covered before, nor am I sure that what I’m about to say lines up exactly with the kind of people you have in mind (those who ignore the warning passages and assume they are eternally secure).
Nevertheless, I’d like to comment on why I personally struggle with many of the warning passages, and with teaching that emphasises the real possibility of believers forfeiting eternal life through their behaviour.
My difficulty isn’t in accepting that these passages exist, or in trying to explain them away. It’s more about how they fit with relating to God on a everyday basis, especially when they seem to sit alongside what can feel like contradictory exhortations.
On the one hand, we are commanded to rejoice in the Lord (Phil 4:4, 1 Thess 5:16). On the other, the Lord we are called to rejoice in appears to be regularly warning his own adopted children of eternal damnation. I find it hard to experience joy, or even general warmth, toward God in that light. Is part of the Christian life meant to be a kind of constant background terror that one might ultimately go to hell?
I’ve particularly felt this tension when reading Revelation 2-3. I find it difficult to love, from the heart, the Jesus presented in those chapters (and I fully acknowledge that this reflects a flaw in me – I’m not at all advocating a subjective or progressive approach to Scripture).
Similarly, when reading passages like 1 Cor 6:9–11, Gal 5:19–21, and Eph 5:5–7, I find myself scrutinising my life to see whether any of these behaviours are present, sometimes to the point of scrupulosity. For example, I may not give in to outward fits of rage, but I know my heart has burned with unrighteous anger at times. I may not be an obvious idolater, but have I placed other things before God in my affections? Certainly, and repeatedly. Does that mean I’m in danger of hell?
I suspect many Christians recognise at least the seeds of these sins in their own hearts. It’s often said that one of the key ways to fight inward sin is by cultivating joy and delight in Christ, but passages like these don’t naturally seem to produce that joy.
Perhaps another way of expressing this is that I hear you emphasising different truths in your teaching which, while not contradictory to you, can feel so to me. Sometimes you stress the kind of warnings you’ve highlighted in this post. At other times you emphasise God’s abundant mercy and the invitation to come boldly before him (Eph 3:12, Heb 4:16). But how does one come boldly to God if one feels threatened by him?
I’d be very interested to hear how you hold these different aspects of God’s character together.
Jon