Part 17

The Holy Spirit Can Be Forsaken, Part 3

1 Samuel 16:14 (ESV) —  Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him. 

Recap 

Why am I starting a newsletter article with a Bible verse about King Saul having his spiritual protection withdrawn and a harmful spirit sent to torment him? Well, let’s recap. 

These articles are an exploration of the Holy Spirit and His Work. We began this whole series by laying out the scriptural testimony that shows His mission in the world: to give and create life (Genesis 2:7, John 6:63, Romans 8:11, 2 Corinthians 3:6). 

It’s important to understand that this “life” that He gives and creates is not simply biological or physical life. The “life” that God gives and creates by the Holy Spirit is eternal, both spiritual and physical (John 17:3). 

When we understand that life is more than just a biological process or a physical state, we come to see that conversion unto faith moves a believer out of their former death and into new and eternal life (John 5:24, Romans 6:4, 2 Timothy 1:10, Ephesians 2:1-5, Luke 15:24, 1 John 3:14). 

So we know that receiving salvation is synonymous with receiving life. Furthermore, we know that salvation is only accomplished by grace and not as a result of any of our works (Ephesians 2:8, Romans 11:6, John 6:63). The Holy Spirit is the one who brings us into the light of salvation. It’s part of His mission of creating and giving life. He also, however, does this work alongside, with, and through the Word of God. 

A few months ago we started looking at how the Holy Spirit uses the “Means of Grace” to accomplish this saving work. The preaching of God’s Word really does accomplish the work of saving souls and giving them life (Romans 1:16, Galatians 3:2-6). Baptism really does save you and give you eternal life (1 Peter 3:21, Romans 6:3-11). 

This does not mean, however, that the grace and the eternal life that we receive at our conversion cannot be forsaken. Whether the initial moment of our repentance came through someone preaching the Gospel to us or came through the Gospel being applied to us by the waters of Baptism, we can forsake our salvation and abandon the covenant of grace that God has made with us. 

The last few months have been an exploration of that important truth. Last month we looked at Hebrews 10 and the important warning there that if you “trample underfoot” the salvation purchased for you by the Son of God, it “outrages the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29). That text gives us a warning that “current, deliberate, ongoing and continuous unrepentance” can lead to your separation from God, which is a return to death from life (Hebrews 10:26-30). 

Contemporary Denials of Hebrews 10:26-30

Some theologians miss the clear meaning of Hebrews 10:26-30 (which we laid out last month). They miss it because their theological presuppositions prevent them from believing what those Scriptures say. This, obviously, has the cart in front of the horse. Their entire method of doing theology is backwards. The meaning of the text of Scripture needs to assemble and change our theological convictions, not the other way around. Sure, our theological convictions can help inform our understanding of a Scripture by guiding us toward the likely meaning, but our theological convictions cannot flatly contradict what a text obviously teaches. It should be obvious that if our theology contradicts Scripture, our theology is wrong. 

One example of such an erroneous belief is found in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology (1994 ed., page 792) where he boldly titles a whole chapter subsection “Only those who persevere to the end have been truly born again.” Grudem flatly denies that anyone born again (and therefore possessing the Holy Spirit) could forsake their faith and abandon their salvation. Grudem, however, doesn’t even attempt to explain how Hebrews 10:26-30 could be made to align with his assertion. 

Similarly, Lewis Sperry Chafer attempted to defend his “once saved, always saved” convictions by saying that Hebrews 10:26-30 was only “addressing Jews who are interested in Christ and have, in a sense, believed; but not to the extent of receiving the death of Christ” (“Systematic Theology”, Vol. III, page 304). 

Chafer is saying Hebrews is talking to people who “sorta-kinda believe,” as if that’s a category of people Holy Scripture speaks of. It’s not. Scripture so plainly speaks in categories of darkness and light, dead and alive, believers and unbelievers that this notion of his is disappointing. 

Chafer is also way wide left with the assertion that Hebrews 10:26 is speaking only to Jewish unbelievers. The text is obviously a warning to believers. Hebrews 10:26 comes on the heels of 10:24-25 which exhorts believers to worship together, a fact that Chafer even acknowledges but then inexplicably ignores. And both Chafer and Grudem ignore the fact that 10:29 says that the person “trampling underfoot the Son of God and… [therefore] outraging the Spirit of grace” was previously “sanctified” by that same Holy Spirit. 

My point here is not to use Chafer and Grudem as punching bags, nor to incite a book burning (please don’t burn my systematics textbooks!). My point is to show that lots of exegetical metamorphosis has been done by people to twist or ignore the truth that the Holy Spirit can be forsaken. 

Hebrews 10:26-30 is an explicit warning that someone who has been born again and given the indwelling Holy Spirit can fail to persevere to the end. “The truth” that Hebrews 10:26 speaks of as having been “received” is only ever received by the renewing and enlightening power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:10, 14-16). Thus, the warning of Hebrews 10:26-30 is that you can forsake your new life in Christ and return to being an object of God’s vengeance instead of His grace. This is precisely the reason that Hebrews 10:24-25 exhorts us to continue gathering with our fellow saints. It’s at those gatherings (church!) where the Holy Spirit’s Means of Grace are at work. It’s those Means of Grace that we rely on to give us the Holy Spirit and to build up and strengthen our faith (John 6:63, 10:28-29). 

You can be “born again” of Spirit and water (John 3:5) and yet still fail to receive the “great reward” (Hebrews 10:35) that God has promised to us. Hebrews 10:26-30, and actually pretty much the whole book of Hebrews (see Hebrews 2:3, 4:1, 6:4-6, 12:25), is a warning from the Holy Spirit that this is the case. 

Yet Hebrews 10 is a warning given to us to guide us away from a potential disaster, not a concrete record of it actually happening to someone. I suppose someone preaching the false doctrine of “once saved, always saved” could engage in sophistry and say “Yeah but, Hebrews 10 is only speaking in hypotheticals. You need to give a real example of this happening to prove the point.” 

Well, my first response to that would be that the Bible is a book about real life, not a philosophical treatise that spends time pondering metaphysical hypotheticals. If the Holy Spirit was in the business of giving us warnings about things that are not actually possible, the Bible would be a book without limit. 

More importantly though, Holy Scripture does give us a few historical examples of people who had received the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit but then abandoned that blessing through their deliberate, ongoing and continuous unrepentance. King Saul is just such a person, and his fall is a warning to us. That is why we began this article with the account of the Holy Spirit turning to become his enemy (Isaiah 63:10). 

The Fall of King Saul

The tragedy of King Saul gives us a historical example of someone going down this disastrous road of apostacy. King Saul is the very archetype of a believer who confessed faith in the Lord Yahweh, was filled and blessed by the Holy Spirit, but then engaged in deliberate, ongoing and continuous unrepentance. Saul’s willful resistance and disobedience to the Word of God eventually led to the Holy Spirit departing from Him. 

Early in his reign, we hear Saul confess his faith in the Lord. 

1 Samuel 11:13 (ESV) —  But Saul said, “Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel.”

We also hear that Saul made diligent use of the Means of Grace that were given in the Old Covenant, and he also worshiped in Spirit and in truth. 

1 Samuel 11:15 (ESV) —  So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed peace offerings before the Lord, and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.

Saul was a follower of the Lord Yahweh, faithfully and obediently worshiping the Lord God. He also was spiritually enlightened enough to confess that the victory belonged to the Lord. That’s the kind of confession of faith that can only be made by the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:6-10, 12:3).  Furthermore, King Saul’s humble worship gave evidence that the Holy Spirit was at work in his heart. 

The Holy Spirit was also richly giving His gifts to Saul to empower him to serve God. Most notably, the Holy Spirit was at work to make Saul a bold military leader. 

1 Samuel 11:6–7 (ESV) —  And the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled.  He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of the messengers, saying, “Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen!” Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out as one man.

But sadly, Saul’s faithful obedience did not last long. Only a few years into his reign he found himself lining up for battle with the Philistines. He became afraid and his fear led him to offer sacrifices in a way that was both disobedient and unpleasing to the Lord Yahweh. Samuel showed up right as Saul finished this unfaithful action. 

1 Samuel 13:13–14 (ESV) —  And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.  But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”

The story of King Saul’s life is pretty much a downward spiral after that. After numerous transgressions against the Lord and instances of disobedience, and during a time when he very noticeably wasn’t worshiping the Lord or confessing faith in Him, the Lord sent the Prophet Samuel to King Saul one last time. 

1 Samuel 15:22–26 (ESV) —  And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.  For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.”  Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.  Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord.”  And Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you. For you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.” 

This is the moment in King Saul’s life when his deliberate, ongoing and continuous rebellion against God’s Word crossed the line into the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:28-30, Matthew 12:30-32). Saul had rejected the Word of God as it had been given to him by the Holy Spirit. Now Saul’s judgement day had come and he was in turn rejected by God. 

Matthew 12:30–31 (ESV) —  [Jesus said] “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.  Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”

Saul was no longer gathering the nation of Israel to the true King of Israel, the Lord God (1 Samuel 8:7). Instead he was serving himself (1 Samuel 15:24-26) and gathering Israel to himself (1 Samuel 10:19). He was scattering from God instead of gathering to Him. He was against the Lord and idolatrously worshiped his own strength (Habakkuk 1:11). 

Though the Lord was gracious to Saul and gave him time to repent, Saul continued to ignore the Word. 

The Outrage of the Holy Spirit Against Saul

In 1 Samuel, after Samuel tells Saul that the Lord God has rejected him, the story flips over to David for a paragraph or two (1 Samuel 16:1-13). When the story of David’s call and anointing is finished, the spotlight returns to Saul. 

1 Samuel 16:14–15 (ESV) —  Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him.  And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, a harmful spirit from God is tormenting you. 

The text quite literally says that the Holy Spirit departed from him. Saul abandoned his salvation. The Lord God has been gracious to him, both in a temporal/worldly sense (God made him King and blessed him with victories over his enemies) and in an eternal sense (offering him salvation and eternal life). Saul had trampled all of that under-foot and outraged the Spirit of the Lord. 

Isaiah 63:10 (ESV) —  But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit; therefore he turned to be their enemy, and himself fought against them.

The Spirit of Grace that Saul had once had indwelling him had now turned to be Saul’s enemy. 

This is a somewhat radical thing for us to wrap our heads around. We’re not used to thinking of the Holy Spirit as someone’s enemy. Somehow we tend only to think of Him as the Spirit of Grace (which He is), but not the Spirit of Righteousness and Judgment. We’re used to thinking of the Spirit of Christ as He is named in Isaiah 11- 

Isaiah 11:1–2 (ESV) —  There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.  And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

We spend very much less time thinking of the Lord working as He’s described in Isaiah 4-

Isaiah 4:3–4 (ESV) —  And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem,  when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. 

The Holy Spirit is not only the Spirit of Grace, but just as God the Father is both gracious and righteous, the Holy Spirit is both gracious and righteous. Some of His work is work of judgment and purging. In Isaiah 4, this work of cleansing, judging and burning is actually being applied to the saints. Imagine then, how much more He does this work on the rest of the unrighteous world. 

When we start to see the wrathful side of the Holy Spirit’s work, it helps us see the broader scope of His mission. Not only is He the creator and giver of life, He is also the defender of it. As King Saul became more and more bent on the unrighteous destruction of David, the Holy Spirit did more and more to confound Saul’s plans. 

The most comedic and perhaps clearest example of the Holy Spirit confounding Saul is found in 1 Samuel 19. Saul has given the order to apprehend David so that Saul could execute him. Obviously the Lord was opposed to that, since He had anointed David to rule over Israel. David had to flee from his own home and hide out in Naioth. 

Word came to Saul that David was hiding in Naioth, but the troops that Saul sent on this unrighteous mission were intercepted by the Holy Spirit (1 Samuel 19:18-21). Then this happened- 

1 Samuel 19:22–24 (ESV) —  Then [Saul] himself went to Ramah and came to the great well that is in Secu. And he asked, “Where are Samuel and David?” And one said, “Behold, they are at Naioth in Ramah.”  And he went there to Naioth in Ramah. And the Spirit of God came upon him also, and as he went he prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah.  And he too stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel and lay naked all that day and all that night. Thus it is said, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

The Spirit of God could have struck Saul dead, but in His grace towards Saul He did not. God is patient and gives people many chances to repent and return to the Lord’s salvation (Exodus 34:6, 2 Peter 3:9). Still, the Spirit of our Lord utterly humiliated King Saul to protect God’s righteous servant David. 

The outrage of the Holy Spirit is not only some childish emotion of revenge. It’s not merely God’s reaction to having been insulted. It’s more than that. It is a part of the Holy Spirit’s work of creating, giving, maintaining and protecting life. Saul’s continual unrepentance eventually resulted in the Holy Spirit departing from Saul and instead opposing him. Saul went from being protected by the Holy Spirit to being combated by Him. 

Saul’s fall from grace, which was really more like a sprint away from grace, is a historical testimony to the reality that we can forsake our faith and cast the Holy Spirit away from ourselves. We ought to heed that warning. Hebrews 10:24-31 is the same warning, but packaged differently. We should follow what the Holy Spirit advises us to do there: make diligent use of His Means of Grace. When we do that our faith will grow and the Holy Spirit will always be with us. We will be able to rejoice because the protecting Holy Spirit is with us as He was with David.