Hebrews 6 issues a stern warning about falling away, and follows with an extended metaphor involving rain, earth, and plants.

Rain falls on earth, but yields different crops. As a son or daughter of Adam, you’re made of earth. You’re designed to produce fruit that will delight you and feed others. You’re created to be tilled, useful and fertile land.

Baptism is the rain. Baptism enlivens the ground that you are so you can be fruitful. With baptism come all the gifts of the new covenant – enlightenment, the heavenly gift, the Holy Spirit, the word of God, the powers of the coming age.

The question is: After the rain falls on you, what kind of plants spring up? Are you producing the fruit of good works – the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control? Are you refreshing and nourishing others with your life and words?

Or, has baptismal rain fallen on your field and produced fruitless thorns and thistles, which feed no one, which only snag and hurt and cut? Are you a thorn bush in your family, at church, at work? Baptism is a great gift, but it’s worse than useless if your life is a field of weeds.

It’s not enough to believe once. It’s not enough to walk the aisle or to pray the prayer. It’s not enough to be baptized into the body of Christ. You can receive all these gifts and lose them, if you don’t continue in these gifts and crown them with good fruit.

This is the constant message of the New Testament. “If you continue in My Word,” Jesus says, “you are truly disciples of Mine” (John 8). God shows His kindness to you, Paul says, “if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off” (Rom 11).

He will present you holy and blameless “if you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast” (Col 1). Don’t lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap “if we do not grow weary” (Gal 6). You stand in the gospel “if you keep in memory what I preached unto you” (1 Cor 15).

You can’t retain the gifts given to faith if you stop trusting, if you defect from your Lord. The dull and sluggish don’t inherit God’s promises. You can’t get to the promised land if you turn back to Egypt.

This really happens. People really do taste the heavenly gift, receive a share in the Spirit, enjoy the powers of the age to come, and fall away. Don’t end up like that. Don’t receive these things, and then stop growing to maturity. Don’t let it happen to your kids.

Imitate the faith of Abraham. Trust the God who can’t lie. Trust the God who swears by Himself., He says He will finish the work He’s begun in you. He says He will bless all nations in Abraham’s seed. He will. Believe it, keep on believing it to the very end. And live like you believe it.