The best part of our faith walk is that there is never a stopping point. There is always another path to take, another river to cross, another valley to pass through and another mountain to climb. There is always another step to take toward Christian Perfection. God never brings us to a stopping place. There are no limits on how high we can go with God, except those that we impose on ourselves. These limits are how we backslide.
When we compare the Christian life to climbing a mountain, we can more easily comprehend the possibility of backsliding. We climb the foothills becoming awakened to our shortcomings, we reach the base of the main mountain, where we have that moment of decision and we are saved. We continue up the mountain in our journey toward Christian Perfection and Glorification at the Summit. At any point we could make a conscious choice to stop climbing, to climb down and go home. Or to choose a different path altogether, one that will not get us where we are going. That is one way to backslide, just give up and walk away from the faith, saying, “I’ve come far enough. It’s time for something else.”
Then there’s where we put a foot in the wrong place and we fall. We compromise on our path just a bit, possibly without even noticing, and soon we are toppling over the edge and careening down the mountain into sin. When we fall on foothills it’s not too bad. When we fall on the mountain, we take real damage and the higher up the mountain, the closer to perfection, the more damage we suffer when we fall.
To look at it another way, if we are climbing up the down escalator and we stop, the escalator brings us all the way back down. Or if we are swimming against the current and we stop, the current carries us back the way we came. If we stop moving toward sanctification we just might find we have lost our salvation as a result.
