1 John 2:19 is speaking about gnostics, not persons that thought they were saved but really weren't.
Yes, I've heard this several times before. The gnostics stuff has to be imported into the text, though, not discovered in it. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, Gnosticism was only just taking shape at the time John was writing his first letter and would not have been known by that name by him as he did. In any case, several Bible commentaries to which I often refer in study give no indication that Gnosticism was in view when John wrote what he did in
1 John 2:19 and certainly nothing in the immediate context forbids or restricts reading the verse in the way I (and several notable Bible commentators) have done.
Instead, I see many verses in the NT warning us not to stray from the faith.
I don't mean persons such as the ones that write to this forum on a regular basis, but those that know their theology, are firm Christians, and then something happens and they leave the Christian faith.
As far as I can see, the many verses offered up as proof of a saved-and-lost view can readily and legitimately be understood either as referring to false brethren in the Church, and/or describing, not a lost
relationship with God, but only the loss of one's transformative
fellowship with Him. The parable of the Prodigal Son is a great example of the difference between relationship and fellowship and how, though the latter may be "dead," the former remains intact.
The very, very few "firm" believers I've encountered who had apostasized revealed in conversations with me that their actual fellowship with God was virtually nil. In fact, all of them had a great deal of confusion as to what fellowship with God was, exactly, and could not readily distinguish what He was doing to them from what they were doing for Him. Essentially, for all of their knowledge and defense of doctrine, and for all of their high-level Christian service, their daily, direct experience of God, their communion with Him, was non-existent.
How does a believer distinguish mere pangs of conscience from Holy Spirit conviction? How does a believer distinguish mere Bible study that any atheist, or Muslim, wanting to tangle up an ignorant Christian might do, from the illumination of the Holy Spirit? How does a believer distinguish the enabling power of the Spirit in the midst of temptation and trial from simple, fleshly will-power and self-discipline? How does God's comfort of the believer differ from the comfort a non-believer (or a believer, for that matter) might obtain from friends and family, or from any other non-supernatural source? I've asked Christians who've been Christians for many decades - some who are even pastors - these questions and have never got a solid, biblical answer! Amazing. And deeply concerning. This confusion and ignorance, though, is an integral part, I believe, of why many "firm" Christians leave the faith.
When one has real, daily, deep and transformative fellowship with God, it becomes less and less possible even to think of departing from Him. In fellowship with God, He takes me farther and farther into Himself, into all the wonder, goodness, truth and love that He is, which totally eradicates any thought in me of leaving such an experience and causes me to rid my life of anything that even slightly hinders, or fouls, my fellowship with Him. It's this incredible, daily experience of God that is supposed to be "ground zero" for my entire life as a Christian. But, you know, very few Christians I know have anything like such an experience of Him. Instead, they are doers for God, doing their best to manufacture their own human, fleshly version of a godly life, and in the process exhaust, frustrate and deny themselves until they run completely out of gas and collapse into sin. After a bit, they start the whole struggle over again, wondering for the umpteenth time when the "abundant life" in Christ will begin.
James tells us that if we bring back one of those we are saving them,,,
bringing them back from what? To what?
Saving them means that when they left they became lost.
James 5:20?
As I understand it, this passage is not speaking of genuinely born-again believers but of the many false brethren (ie. "tares) in the Church.
James 5:19-20 (NASB)
19 My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back,
20 let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Though James used "brethren" in
verse 19, he doesn't refer to the one whose soul is saved from death as such but only as one who has strayed from the truth. James doesn't write, "if any
brother among you strays," or "if any of
you stray," but only "if any
among you stray." Both the fact that false converts occupied the Early Church (who, being in the Church, would know something of the Truth) and James' very non-specific description suggest to me that he was not referring to born-again believers. This is strengthened by James going on in
verse 20 to describe one who had strayed from the truth (as opposed to "the faith"), again, not as a wayward
brother who is turned from the error of his ways, but only as a "sinner."
Inasmuch as I don't subscribe to a saved-and-lost perspective, this is the most sensible reading of this passage that I can see. It does no violence to the text and comports well with other places in God's word that I think deny a saved-and-lost view.
