The one question that I struggled
with the most from elementary school all the way through college was whether or
not I could lose my salvation. The
church I attended taught that I could not, but I met others who believed differently
and used Bible verses to back up their stance.
I was confused by passages that, in my mind, seemed to conflict with
each other. Though I had many excellent
biblical teachers and leaders growing up, it wasn’t until I attended Frontier
School of the Bible that this issue of eternal security (the inability to lose
one’s salvation) was really settled in my mind.
While immersed in the Bible and in teaching about the Bible at school, I
learned more in depth how to observe what I read, how to thoughtfully and
prayerfully interpret it based on both its immediate literary and historical
contexts, and how to appropriately apply it to my life. I also learned the importance of interpreting
muddy passages in light of clear ones, not the other way around. This instruction helped me to clearly see why
it was true that my salvation could never be lost. I want to share with you why you too can rest
in the security of God’s guarantee if you have believed in Jesus as we
discussed in part 4.
1.
God can’t and won’t lose it.
Hebrews 6:16-18 –
“For men swear by one greater than
themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every
dispute. In the same way God, desiring
even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His
purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which
it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong
encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.” God cannot lie, and He won’t change His
mind. His purpose toward the heirs of
the promise (those who have believed) is unchangeable. When He says that those who believe in Jesus
will be saved, we can know on the basis of His character that it is true and
that it will come to pass.
2 Timothy 2:13 –
“If we are faithless, He remains
faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”
Unlike us, God is faithful. He
will never betray us or deceive us.
Hebrews 13:8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and
today and forever.” Not only is God’s
purpose toward the heirs of promise unchangeable, but He Himself is
unchangeable in His character. People
shift and change constantly, but God is always the same. We can trust Him and His Word; He keeps His
promises.
John 14:16-18 – “I will ask the Father, and He will give you
another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you
know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come
to you.” The very second you believe
in Jesus for salvation, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you
forever. He will never leave you. Romans 8:9 also makes it very clear that if
you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you don’t belong to Christ. Those who belong to Christ have the Holy
Spirit. This provides the setting for
our next passage…
Ephesians
1:13-14 – “In Him [Jesus Christ], you
also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation –
having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy spirit of promise,
who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of
God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” The Holy Spirit seals us in Christ. In volume 1 of Wuest’s Word Studies, Kenneth
S. Wuest provides some helpful insight into these verses. He gives some examples of how a seal means
that everything is in done and ready to be delivered (Wuest, 49). He goes on to further explain, “In the
symbolism of Scripture a seal signifies (1) A finished transaction…(2)
Ownership…[and] (3) Security....Thus, God places the Holy Spirit in us
permanently..., indicating that the great transaction in which God the Son paid
for sin, thus satisfying the just demand of God’s holy law, is finished; that
we saints belong to Him as His heritage, and that we are eternally secure”
(Wuest, 49). Wuest also explains how the
word “pledge” refers to earnest money, or a down payment of sorts of our
salvation. Believers now experience
justification and sanctification, but we await our glorification. The Holy Spirit is God’s “earnest money” – a
guarantee that we will be glorified (Wuest, 49-50). I have also heard this concept illustrated in
terms of engagement. The Holy Spirit is
like an engagement ring given from God to us; it is a commitment and promise of
the marriage to come. The gift of the
Holy Spirit gives us great assurance that we are secure in Christ.
1 John 2:1-2 – “My little children, I am writing these
things to you so that you may not sin.
And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation [satisfactory payment] for
our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” Satan doesn’t need to accuse us falsely. We give him plenty of ammunition even after
we have been saved by sinning. On our
own, we are all guilty (like we talked about it part 2). Thankfully, we
believers have an Advocate to stand against the accuser, no matter how true his
accusations are. Our Advocate, Jesus,
stands before God and declares that our sins cannot be held against us because
He took the punishment for them already.
Not only that, but He gave us His righteousness as a gift when we
believed. We will not be condemned while
Jesus advocates for us.
John 10:27-30 –
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them,
and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never
perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is
greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s
hand. I and the Father are one.” Jesus will not drop believers or toss us
aside. He has a hold on us, and no one
can change that.
John 6:39-40 – “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that
of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last
day. For this is the will of My Father,
that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life,
and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” It is the very will of God that Jesus not
lose anything that has been given to Him, including those who have believed in
Him for eternal life. The one who
conquered death will bring about our salvation to its completion and bring us
back to life as well. God’s will
stands.
Romans 8:38-39 –
“For I am convinced that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can separate us from His love for us in
Jesus. Nothing. God is above all and cannot be defeated.
2.
We ourselves can’t lose it.
John 10:27-30 –
Refer back to this verse in the previous section. It says that no one can snatch us out of the
Father’s hand – that includes ourselves.
I cannot even pluck myself out of the hand of God once I am there.
John 6:47 – “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes
has eternal life.” Eternal life
doesn’t begin with the death of our physical bodies. We don’t wait for it. This verse is in the present tense and says
that we who believe have it already. It
starts the moment we believe and lasts forever.
It cannot be lost for the very fact that it is eternal.
1 John 5:10-13 –
“These things I have written to you who
believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have
eternal life.” We don’t have to
wonder whether or not we have eternal life.
Portions of Scripture (including the book of 1 John) have been dedicated
to showing us that we can know for certain that we have eternal life. If it could be lost, then there would be no
certainty.
Colossians
2:13-14 – “When you were dead in your
transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together
with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the
certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us;
and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” Jesus died for all sins past, present, and
future. Think about it. When Jesus died on the cross, all of your
personal sins were in the future at that point; yet, they were all paid
for. Salvation comes by having His
righteousness credited to our account, not by our own righteousness. We cannot lose our salvation by sinning
because the sin has already been paid for.
All we need is Jesus’s righteousness through belief.
Romans 8:28-30 –
“And we know that God causes all things
to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called
according to His purpose. For those whom
He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son,
so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He
predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and
these whom He justified, He also glorified.”
A lot could be said about these verses, but the point I want to make
is that God sees us as glorified already.
We have a hard time understanding this because we are bound by time, but
God is not. He created time and is not
limited by it. Even though at the
present time we have not been glorified, it is certain that it will happen, not
on the basis of anything we do, but on the basis of Christ’s completed work and
gift of righteousness to those who believe.
John 1:12-13 – “But as many as received Him, to them He
gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His
name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will
of man, but of God.” We believers are
called children of God. Why would God
use a the illustration of a permanent relationship to show us what our
relationship to Him is if that relationship is not also permanent?
Romans 8:15 – “For you have not received a spirit of
slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as
sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” Here again, we are called children of
God. We are adopted into this permanent
new relationship by faith. A son is
always a son, no matter what he does. We
have no need to fear.
Galatians 3:1-3 –
“You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched
you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out
from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing
with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being
perfected by the flesh?” We are
saved by faith, by believing in Jesus for salvation, and are at that moment
given the Holy Spirit as a seal and a pledge.
Nothing we could do could earn us salvation. It is a gift accepted by faith. If we can’t even save ourselves in the first
place, what makes us think we could keep ourselves saved by the things we do or
don’t do? If we could do nothing to earn
it, what makes us think we could earn the loss of it? It is not based on what we do, but on what
Christ did for us.
These verses could be discussed more
at length, and they are not by any means an exhaustive collection concerning
this matter. However, I believe they
decisively reveal that our salvation cannot be lost. We are secure in Christ. We may not always feel secure in Christ,
particularly if we are living in sin.
When we live in sin, we live as though we are unbelievers, so it would
make sense that we would doubt our salvation.
However, our security is not dependent upon how we feel. If we have believed, then we are saved, we
have (present tense) eternal life, and we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us as
a seal and a pledge. If Jesus can come
back to life, He can certainly keep us safe in His care until we are glorified
with Him. He cannot and will not lose
us, and we cannot lose Him. This is the
deepest security anyone could possibly know, and it is available to you if you
will just believe.
*Wuest, Kenneth
S. Wuest’s
Word Studies. Grand Rapids, Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1966.
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