Can a Christian Lose Salvation

Hey Michael, this is for you...

ABOUT ETERNAL SECURITY! {First view}
I enjoyed talking to you today Michael…I will give you my view and it comes from the Word of God…Listen, God’s Word says many things and I do not confess to be so smart to say I know them all…But one thing I do know is that of my “eternal security…” LISTEN TO THESE WORDS FROM THE VERY MOUTH OF JESUS…

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me…And I give then eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone 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 My Fathers hand.” John 10:27-29

Truly, we should not have to go any farther than this one verse…If we believe what Christ says, and we know He tells only the truth…then this is all the answer we need… but for the sake of study we will go a little deeper…

Is there any thing better than being saved? Now, be careful how you answer that, because it is a loaded question…Yes, there is something better than being saved: It is being saved and knowing that you’re saved, having that blessed assurance…Well, is there anything better than being saved and knowing you’re saved… Yes, there is! It is being saved, knowing you’re saved, and knowing that you can never ever lose your salvation…

We need to know these things for several reasons…One is for your “spiritual health…” If you had to go around all the time wondering an worrying about being kicked out of the family, then your physical and spiritual health would be in sad shape…

I know Christians who are emotional wrecks because they do not have the assurance that they are children of God…They’re in the family and they do something wrong and they think they are out of the family…the truth is that if we ever really get into the family, we can never get out…because we are in the hand of the Father…

The second reason that we need to know these things is because of “Our Productivity.” I know few Christians who are spiritually productive who do not have the assurance of their salvation and understand that they are eternally secure…why is this…why are they not productive? Because they worry about the future they cannot focus on the present…When we know that the future is secure, then we can concentrate on the present…When we know we do not have to worry about our salvation, we are better equipped to work on the things that Christ wants us to do…When we are confident of the future, we can concentrate on the present…

The third thing (And there are many more) is knowing your salvation is secure will “Aid in Evangelism…” A lot of people would like to be saved, but they think, “Well, I just can’t live it…I can’t hold out…I know how weak I am…” They’re just afraid that they would go forward in the church, profess to be a Christian, and then fall away and look foolish…The aid in evangelism is that we can tell these people that the God who saves them is the God who will keep them…Its a great tool in evangelism—sharing Jesus…anyway who would want to join, or become a member of a family if they thought they would be kicked out if they did something wrong!!!

Now, what do we mean by eternal security? We don’t mean that once a person joins a church and gets baptized she or he is eternally secure because they may or may not be saved…We are talking about somebody who has become a partaker of the diving nature, somebody who is heaven born and therefore heaven bound…a person who has a new birth, a person who has become genuinely a child of God…

I hear people all the time say… “I know somebody who used to be a Christian who is no longer a Christian.” My answer would be and has been, “You think you know somebody who used to be a Christian and is no longer a Christian…Maybe they never were a Christian, or maybe he still is a Christian… You and I are not equipped to judge…”

Words of Christ…”I NEVER KNEW YOU”

Many people look like Christians and act like Christians, but they have never been saved…an interesting verse is Matt. 7:22, …Jesus is talking about the final judgment: “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, {Now that’s the proper profession; they call Him Lord}, have we not prophesied in Your name, {The word prophesy means to speak for God; evidently they were preachers or teachers} cast out demons in Your name, {claiming that they were exorcising demons from people} and done many wonders in Your name…{Maybe they sang in the choir or took up offerings or stood at the door of the church and gave a nice face and greeting to whoever came to church}

And then Jesus says in the next verse, “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” Notice He did not say, “Oh you had it, but you lost it.” He says instead, “I never knew you.”

So lets look a little deeper into these words …Lets look at these two verses in contrast…

John 10: 27-28, Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me…” {In the other verse that we just used from Matt. 7:22, Jesus said, “I never knew you…” In Matt: 10: 27-28, He says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me…And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”

If you look close in these verses you can see the difference…Some are religious, but they were never saved…and the others were saved, and they will never perish…those who fall away were never saved…

Another key verse is 1st John 2:19…It talks about those who begin for a while and then they go away from the faith…{They had faith but it was not in Christ} This verse explains it: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would, {no doubt} have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.”

These people start out for God, continue awhile, and then they go back to the old ways…Somebody says, “They lost their salvation.”

John says, “No, they went out from us because they were not of us…Had they been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us,” Here is a saying that sums up what we are talking about here…”The faith that fizzles, before the finish had a fatal flaw from the first…”

Another good place to look is in Romans 8:38-39…big verse… another is Philippians 1:6…So this is my first view and now for the second…they are both good but from different angles…

" Can a Christian lose salvation?" Second view.

Before this question is answered, the term “Christian” must be defined… A “Christian” is not a person who has said a prayer, or walked down an aisle, or been raised in a Christian family.. While each of these things can be a part of the Christian experience, they are not what “makes” a Christian… A Christian is a person who has, by faith, received and fully trusted in Jesus Christ as the only Savior (John 3:16 “For God so loved the world. Acts 16:31 And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy household; Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith…”)

So, with this definition in mind, can a Christian lose salvation? Perhaps the best way to answer this significantly important question is to examine what the Bible says occurs at salvation, and to study what losing salvation would therefore involve…

Here are a few examples:

A Christian is a new creation: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)… This verse speaks of a person becoming an entirely new creature as a result of being “in Christ…” For a Christian to lose salvation, the new creation would have to be canceled and reversed…

A Christian is redeemed: “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

The word “redeemed” refers to a purchase being made, a price being paid.. For a Christian to lose salvation, God Himself would have to revoke His purchase that He paid for with the precious blood of Christ.

A Christian is justified: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).

To “justify” means to “declare righteous…” All those who truly receive Jesus as Savior are “declared righteous” by God… For a Christian to lose salvation, God would have to go back on His Word and un-declare what He had previously declared...

A Christian is promised eternal life: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Eternal life is a promise of eternity (forever) in Heaven with God… God promises, “believe and you will have eternal life…”

For a Christian to lose salvation, eternal life would have to be taken away… If a Christian is promised to live forever, how then can God break this promise by taking away eternal life?

A Christian is guaranteed glorification: “And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified” (Romans 8:30).

In Romans 5:1, justification is declared at the moment of faith… According to Romans 8:30, glorification is guaranteed for all those whom God justifies… Glorification refers to a Christian receiving a perfect resurrected body in Heaven…

If a Christian can lose salvation, Romans 8:30 is in error, because God could not guarantee glorification for all those whom He predestines, calls, and justifies.

Many more illustrations of what occurs at salvation could be shared… Even these few, though, make it abundantly clear to me, that a Christian cannot lose salvation.. Most, if not all, of what the Bible says occurs to a person when he/she receives Jesus Christ as Savior would be invalidated if salvation could be lost… Salvation cannot be reversed… A Christian cannot be un-newly created… Redemption cannot be undone… Eternal life cannot be lost and still be considered eternal…

If a Christian can lose salvation, God would have to go back on His Word and change His mind - two things that Scripture tells us God never does.

The most frequent objections to the belief that a Christian cannot lose salvation are:

(1) What about those who claim to be Christians and continually live an immoral lifestyle? –

and –

(2) What about those who claim to be Christians but later reject the faith and deny Christ?

The problem with these two objections is the assumption “are Christians.”

(1)The Bible declares that a true Christian will not live a continually immoral lifestyle
(1 John 3:6, “Whosoever abideth in Him, sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him).

After hearing that, you might say, “I must not be saved because I know that the ability to sin is within me…”

Again we have to do a little study because there is an adequate answer…”whosoever sinneth” is in the present tense, and it speaks of a habitual course of action…John is saying that a man who is born of God does not make sin his practice, his lifestyle, his habit…It does not mean that he could not slip into sin…

(2)The Bible declares that anyone who departs the faith is demonstrating that he/she never truly was a Christian

(1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us…")

I do not believe a Christian can lose salvation… Nothing can separate a Christian from God’s love (Romans 8:38-39)…

Nothing can remove a Christian from God’s hand (John 10:28-29)...

God is both willing and able to guarantee and maintain the salvation He has given us…

Jude 24-25, “To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen”

Then my final view… WHAT ABOUT APOSTASY?
“If our salvation is eternally secure, why does the Bible warn so strongly against apostasy?"

The reason the Bible warns us so strongly against apostasy is that true conversion is measured by visible fruit... When John the Baptist was baptizing people in the Jordan River, he warned those who thought they were righteous to “Bring forth therefore fruits meet (suitable) for repentance” (Matthew 3:8)…

Jesus warned those who were listening to Him while He was giving the Sermon on the Mount that every tree can be known by its fruit (Matthew 7:16) and that every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 7:19)…The purpose behind these warnings is to counter what some people would call “easy-believism…” In other words, following Jesus is more than saying you are a Christian…

Anyone can claim Christ as Savior, but those who are truly saved will bear visible fruit… Now, one may ask the question, “What is meant by fruit?”

The clearest example of Christian fruit can be found in Galatians 5:22-23 where Paul describes the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control… There are other types of Christian fruit (such as praise {Singing }, playing musical instrument for Christ...winning souls for Christ), but this list provides us with a good summary of Christian attitudes…

True believers will manifest these attitudes in their lives to an increasing degree as they progress in their Christian walk (2 Peter 1:5-8, And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity…For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ…)

It is these true, fruit-bearing disciples who have the guarantee of eternal security, and they will persevere to the end… There are many Scriptures that bear this out… Romans 8:29-30 outlines the “Golden Chain” of salvation by pointing out that those who were foreknown by God were predestined, called, justified, and glorified—there is no loss along the way…

Philippians 1:6 tells us that the work God began in us, He will also finish…

Ephesians 1:13-14 teaches that God has sealed us with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance until we possess it…

John 10:29 affirms that no one is able to take God’s sheep out of His hand… There are many other Scriptures that say the same thing—true believers are eternally secure in their salvation…The passages warning against apostasy serve two primary purposes.

(1)They exhort (urge) true believers to make sure of their “calling and election…” Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 13:5 to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith… If true believers are fruit-bearing followers of Jesus Christ, then we should be able to see the evidence of salvation…

Christians bear fruit in varying degrees based on their level of obedience and their spiritual gifts, but all Christians bear fruit; and we should see the evidence of that upon self-examination...Now there will be periods in a Christian’s life where there is no visible fruit… These would be times of sin and disobedience…

What happens during these times of prolonged disobedience is that God removes from us the assurance of our salvation…

Note He doesn’t remove our salvation, but the assurance of it…
That is why David prayed in Psalm 51 to restore to him the “joy of salvation” (Psalm 51:12).

We lose the joy of our salvation when we live in sin… That is why we must examine ourselves… When a true Christian examines himself and sees no recent fruitfulness, it should lead to serious repentance and a returning to God.

(2)ND Primary reason for the passages on apostasy is to point out apostates… An apostate is someone who abandons his religious faith.

It is clear from the Bible that apostates are people who made professions of faith in Jesus Christ, but never genuinely received Him as Savior.

Matthew 13:1-9 (the Parable of the Sower) illustrates this point perfectly… In that parable, a sower sows seed onto four types of soil: hard soil, rocky soil, weed-choked soil, and freshly tilled soil.

These soils represent four types of responses to the gospel…

The first one is pure rejection, whereas the other three represent various levels of acceptance...

The rocky soil and the weed-choked soil represent people, who initially respond favorably to the gospel, but when persecution comes (rocky soil) or the cares of the world bear down (weed-choked soil), that person turns away… or turns back…

Jesus makes it clear with these two types of responses that though they initially accepted they never bore any fruit.. Again, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom” (Matthew 7:21).

It may seem unusual for the Bible to warn against apostasy, and at the same time to say that a true believer will never apostatize… However, this is what Scripture says… 1 John 2:19 specifically states that those who apostatize are demonstrating that they were not true believers…

The Biblical warnings against apostasy, therefore, must be a warning to those who are “in the faith” without ever truly having received it... Scriptures such as Hebrews 6:4-6 and Hebrews 10:26-29 are warnings to “pretend” believers, that they need to examine themselves and realize that if they are considering apostatizing, they are not truly saved… Matthew 7:22-23 indicates that those “pretend believers” whom God rejects are rejected not because of having lost faith, but because of the fact that God never knew them...There are many people who are willing to identify with Jesus… Who doesn’t want eternal life and blessing? However, Jesus warns us to count the cost of discipleship (Luke 9:23-26, 14:25-33)… True believers have counted those costs, whereas apostates have not.

Apostates are people who, when they leave the faith, give evidence they were never saved in the first place (1 John 2:19).

Apostasy is not a loss of salvation, but rather a demonstration that salvation was never truly possessed.