Are the Warning Passages About Me?
Author’s Note: This is an adapted excerpt from Known and Loved: Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139 (Moody, 2025) by Glenna Marshall. Used with permission.
I’ve been a pastor’s wife for twenty-two years, and that time in ministry has given me the ability to read people well. It’s easy to identify the hard workers, the intentional encouragers, and the (hopefully) unintentional complainers. It takes all kinds of people to make up the church, but one of the easiest to spot is the Christian with a scrupulous conscience. These are the church members who think every call to repentance is about them personally. They live in regular fear of the Lord’s discipline. They welcome it, even, because the only way they can categorize their relationship with the Lord is “guilt-ridden.” They struggle to believe in God’s faithful love and affection because they live in constant fear of Scripture’s sobering warning passages. Their fear of falling away outweighs their confidence in God’s promise to keep them.
Maybe that’s you. You live with your sin ever before you (Ps. 51:3) but don’t believe God willingly upholds you (Ps. 51:12). You don’t doubt God’s general love, but you are so certain you qualify as a potential apostate that you live your whole Christian life with regular, crushing condemnation. You’re sure that if you let in even a glimmer of God’s approval, you’ll probably give yourself license to sin and eventually fall away. To anyone who pushes back against your bleak view of God’s love, you are armed with a stack of warnings against apostasy. Fear is your shield, and doubt is your sword. But your weapons will crumble if you realize you’re giving yourself too much credit for your faithfulness to Jesus. You’re not solely responsible for keeping on the path of righteousness. The Lord is the One who keeps you on the way everlasting.
“But! But the warning passages!” you argue. Well, let’s talk about that. The warning passages are indeed sobering. Consider these (if you haven’t already learned them by heart):
“Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. . . . Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor. 10:5–6, 12)
“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. . . . How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” (Heb. 2:1, 3)
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” (Heb. 3:12)
“Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.” (Heb. 4:1)
“For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened . . . and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.” (Heb. 6:4, 6)
“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. . . . How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?” (Heb. 10:26, 29)
Perhaps just seeing those verses ignites fear in your heart. It’s good for us to read with reverence for God. Walking away from faith in Christ and from the truth of Scripture is a dangerous, dangerous thing. But if you live in constant fear that you’ll fall away, you might be misreading those warning passages.
A warning is simply that: a warning. It’s not an indictment about what has already happened to you. A warning should lead to discernment about keeping a check on your life. Both Paul and the author of Hebrews are writing to believers about the apostasy of other people outside of their address. They are not giving current believers the label of apostate. They are speaking of people who were, at the time of their writing, currently repudiating Christ: rejecting Him, exulting in their sin, willfully turning away from Jesus, and deliberately ignoring correction from the church. They were not examining their hearts with humility. They were not asking God to show them their sin that they might repent and walk in holiness. Holiness was the furthest thing from their hearts. They were gleefully holding Jesus in contempt.
Ask yourself these questions:
Do you hate Jesus Christ?
Do you reject His sacrifice on the cross?
Do you deny that He is the Son of God?
Do you pretend like you don’t know Him so you can run hard after idolatry and wickedness?
If those things are not true of you, then you can read the warning passages as warnings, not indictments about how God feels about you. Apostates don’t fight for faith. Apostates don’t examine the heart for sin. Apostates don’t worry about God’s love.
You do not have to live in constant fear that you are losing God’s love. His grip is stronger than yours. The author of Hebrews doesn’t lump in faithful believers with those who have left the faith. Rather, he points to those who have left the faith and draws a line in the sand. Don’t live like them. Don’t shrink back like them. Be steadfast in faith. You are different! “But we are not
of those who shrink back and are destroyed,” he writes, “but of those who have faith and preserve their souls” (Heb. 10:39).[1]
When you read the warning passages, it is fair and right to ask God to show you your sin, but it is also right to remind yourself that you are not one who shrinks back. You have faith. You live by faith, as have many, many saints throughout the church’s history. That’s why the author of Hebrews follows up his many warnings with the list of imperfect but faithful people who kept to the path of righteousness because they were kept by their faithful God. [2]
You can hold two truths in your heart at once: you struggle with sin and God still keeps you. The former does not cancel the latter. Live by faith, friend. Not by fear. Let God’s perfect love drive out your fear (see 1 John 4:18).
The warning passages in Scripture are there for our benefit—so that we can learn from those who went before us and wandered away (1 Cor. 10:6, 11). But those aren’t the only passages in Scripture that speak to how we live as the people of God. Hold the tension of sober warning and faithful love. Know that God is more faithful than you and is perfectly capable of keeping you until the end. While our faithfulness is commanded, it is also upheld by our endlessly faithful God.
Read the warning passages and check your heart, but also read the passages below and check your heart, for though they may be harder to believe, they are equally true.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (Ps. 23:6)
“The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.” (Ps. 34:22)
“Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” (Rom. 8:34)
“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11)
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Rom. 5:6)
“Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:15–16)
Yes, you are weak, but oh, His love is strong. He Himself describes His love as steadfast and everlasting throughout Scripture. With that love He is able to keep you until the day you see Him face to face. Until then, His goodness and mercy are chasing you, keeping you on His path to the very end.
[1] On this subject, I am indebted to Collin Hansen for his helpful article “Warning Passages Ahead” at The Gospel Coalition, January 9, 2012, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/warning-passages-ahead/.
[2] See Hebrews 11, which comes with great hope after the warning passages. There were many greatly flawed people in this list who finished in faithfulness. We should be encouraged by this list!
