Goats and Backsliding

I have been writing about goats for some time.

I want to use that to explain backsliding in that context.

God created us with a sheep nature as the operating system.

He also included free will in the system so that we can decide on how we want to run our lives

Choosing disobedience introduced a very invasive virus into our system, a virus that completely corrupted our operating system, overwriting it with the goat operating system.

But the sheep nature did not disappear. It was suppressed to the point of inoperability.

That is why we have a verse like this

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can't find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11 WEB)

The sheep nature is therefore overwritten with the goat nature, yet it still exists.

That is the nature that responds to the Gospel call since the goat nature can never respond to a shepherd in submission and dependence (faith) (Romans 7: 14, 18)

After the response (conversion), the sheep nature is reactivated, yet it does not override the power of choice God created in us.

Choice is the fact that guides us on the operating system I will run in my life since both start operating in me. I must decide the one I want to depress as I give the other prominence.

I do that through the choices I make

Giving the Shepherd more leverage in my live automatically grows the sheep nature in me just as choosing independence grows the goat one.

Discipleship is a key element in the increasing of the sheep nature.

This is because someone submits to the exposure of the Shepherd so that we can then be able to accurately hear and respond to His voice so that we can then choose to follow Him as we get to know Him even more.

Feeding from the Shepherd will make us become in a growing measure His sheep as we learn dependence as opposed to the independence that was our operating system when we were goats.

It means that the more we are growing in discipleship, the more we will be growing into the likeness of the Shepherd, or the more of His sheep we become.

And it will be evident even to those around us.

But just like the goat virus overriding the sheep operating system did not kill the sheep operating system, the growth of the sheep nature will not obliterate the goat nature however prominent it becomes. It suppresses to the point it appears as if it is absent.

And that is because God still wants us to choose.

Since the goat nature is a virus, it will multiply faster when it gets the slightest chance.

It therefore means that I must be growing the sheep nature to guard against the explosion of the goat virus.

The slip in concentration in the growth of the sheep nature is what I want to call backsliding.

Sinning is not backsliding. It is the fruit of backsliding.

Someone can be completely backslidden yet appear to be as godly or even more godly than the next person.

Again, it is our choices that bring to the fore our backslidden state.

Our prayers and scripture input can point us to the state of our sheepishness.

You see a goat is self-centred whereas the sheep is shepherd centred.

Hezekiah is a clear example when we look at his prayer when confronted with death.

No wonder we read of pride coming out of that answer and Manasseh being the product of that season.

It is possible that God wanted to take him before his backslidden nature manifested but he prayed otherwise.

We backslide when we stop growing into Christ’s likeness. We backslide when we lose that compelling urge to continue growing especially by thinking that we have grown enough.

Paul for me exemplifies what I am saying.

Look at this verse

The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments. (2Timothy 4:13)

You realise that he was awaiting his execution when we look at verses 6 and 7. And of course, he was old, that being the reason he was asking to be brought a cloak.

Yet he was seeking the scriptures to be brought to him.

This is more striking because theologians agree that he had major eye problems, meaning that reading anything was probably very difficult and painful.

This means he was not seeking to increase his scriptural intake for ministry purposes. He was not getting into all that pain to be a better theologian.

He simply wanted to know Christ more, especially because he was very close to meeting Him.

But that described his whole life since we see that desire in Philippians 3.

That is what we must maintain if we are to be safe from backsliding.

Forget those who read their Bibles only when they are preparing to speak religious things, whether in church or seminary. They lost it a long time ago.

I have left some gaps so that you will fill them in your context.

God bless you