Answers in August (Part One):
Eternal (In)Security
By Pastor Josh Wamble
This past Sunday, we started our annual Answers in August series. This year we are studying the doctrine of Eternal Security or the perseverance of the saints. We started this series off by talking about the view that it is possible for people to fall away from salvation. You can watch that service here or listen to the audio here. Below, I want to provide a short summary of what we talked about.
There are several Christian denominations and traditions who believe that those who have been genuinely saved and truly born again can still lose their salvation and go back to being lost under certain circumstances. Most of these traditions trace their roots and history to Arminian or Wesleyan origins. Some of them include:
Wesleyan—Methodists, Nazarenes
Restoration Movement—Churches of Christ, Some Christian Churches, Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ)
Charismatics—Assemblies of God, Pentecostals, United (Oneness) Pentecostals
Anabaptists—Mennonites, Amish
Others—Catholics, Some Lutherans
We talked about five reasons or arguments that are often given in favor of understanding the Bible this way.
1. Free-Will
One reason those who believe that true and genuine believers can ultimately fall away and be finally lost, believe that because of their understanding of free will. They say the Bible teaches that people are created with freedom of choice and are able to make real decisions that have real consequences. We see this very clearly in the lives of Adam and Eve. God gave them a command in the garden with the real possibility of either obeying or disobeying. They had a real choice, and (as we know) they chose to disobey. We are currently living in a world where the consequences of that choice are felt every day.
Just like with Adam and Eve, God gives all people this freedom of choice. The Bible is filled with commands from God and the history of people disobeying those commands. These commands are not only found in the Old Testament, they are found in the New Testament as well. People are given real freedom to obey or disobey and then held accountable for those choices. God would not be just if He held people responsible for the decisions they make if there were not really free to make them.
They say that people do not lose this freedom when they are saved and born again. All people still have freedom and the ability to make real choices. We can trust that God will not go back on His promises to people. He will not stop His work of salvation, but that does not mean that people are not free to reject His work in their lives even after they have initially accepted it.
2. The Bible Warns People Against Falling Away from God’s Grace
A second reason that they believe this way is because the Bible itself warns people to be careful that they do not end up falling away. It does this is several passages. We considered a few of them on Sunday night.
In 1 Corinthians 10:12, Paul is reminding the believers in Corinth about times in the past when the people of Israel turned away from the Lord and suffered the consequences of their unfaithfulness. He tells them that one of the reasons these events were recorded in the Old Testament is for our benefit. He tells the Corinthians that they should learn from these examples and be careful that they don’t turn from God and fall away the way the Hebrews did.
In Hebrews 2:1, they are told that we must pay very close attention to the truth of the gospel that we have heard (and believed). They are told that there is a danger of drifting away from these truths—especially in the context of false teachers whoa re teaching a different (false) gospel. In the next chapter (Heb. 3:12-14), the writer tells the whole church to take care or be careful and keep a watch on one another. He says that they are to help one another to remain faithful. He refers to them here as “brothers” which implies that they are real believers and warns them not to “fall away from the living God.”
Finally, in Colossians 1:21-23, Paul encourages the church by reminding them of how God has saved them and reconciled them to Himself through the death of Jesus. He tells them that God’s purpose is to make them “holy and blameless and above reproach.” But then, He says that God will do this “if indeed you continue in the faith” and not shift away from “the hope of the gospel” that they heard. So, it seems, that God has a plan for His people, but this plan will only be completed if His people do not turn away from him. The implication is that if they do shift away from the gospel, then God will not complete His work of sanctifying them.
Why would God give these warnings to His people if there was not the real possibility of falling away? If people cannot fall away from God’s grace and lose their salvation, these would just be empty threats, right?
3. The Bible Encourages Believers to Continue in the Faith
The next reason people have for this belief is that in the Bible, God gives encouragement for people to continue believing and remain in the faith. This is the opposite of the last reason. God does both—He warns not to fall away, and He encourages to remain faithful.
In Hebrews 6, the writer is reminding his readers about Abraham and how he trusted God’s promises to give him a son. In verses 11 and 12, he tells them to “show the same diligence.” He tells them not to be sluggish or lazy in their trusting God. He tells them to follow the positive examples of those who remained faithful to the end and inherited the promises. Here it seems like the way to be sure that they will inherit the promises of salvation is to diligently remain faithful to the very end.
In 1 Corinthians 1:21-23, Paul gives a very similar encouragement using an example from his own life. He tells the church that he, himself, exercises this same diligence. He says that he disciplines his body and keeps it under control. His reasoning is especially relevant here. He says that he does so, “lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” We can have assurance that Paul was a genuine and true believer, and if he was worried about being disqualified in the end and took pains to make sure that he wouldn’t be, we should take the same measures.
Again, why would God encourage people to make such efforts to make sure that they remain faithful unless the possibility of falling away was a real and dangerous one?
4. The Bible Gives Examples of People Who Did in Fact Fall Away from God’s Grace
Not only does God give warnings against falling away and encourage His people to remain faithful, but in the bible, He also provides examples of people who seem to have actually fallen away from His grace and stopped believing.
In the beginning of Acts 5, we read about a married couple int eh early church—Ananias and Saphira. In these days, the church in Jerusalem was facing heavy persecution, and the believers were helping one another often selling some of their possessions and donating the money to the church for the benefit of others. Ananias and Saphira had sold some property they owned and donated the money to the church for this purpose. The problem was that they lied about it. They said that they donated everything when they really had kept some of the money back for themselves. Again, the problem was not that they kept some of the money but that they lied to God about it. When Peter confronted them about it separately, they both doubled down on the lie and refused to admit the truth. Instantly, the Lord struck them down and they were killed. Some believers point to this passage as an example of two people who had once believed but didn’t remain faithful. To use the language of Hebrews 3, their evil unbelieving hearts led them to fall away.
Two other examples are found in Paul’s letters to Timothy. In 1 Timothy 1:19-20, we read about Hymenaeus and Alexander. Paul urges Timothy to “wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience.” He tells him that Hymenaeus and Alexander had rejected these things and made shipwreck of their faith. He says that there are several individuals that have done so but names Hymenaeus and Alexander as examples. In his second letter to Timothy, he warns about Demas. Paul was in prison when he wrote 2 Timothy and names several of his former companions and partners in ministry who have left him. Some of them, Crescens and Titus, it seems have gone to other ministry assignments. However, in 2 Timothy 4:2 Demas is said to have gone to Thessalonica because he has fallen “in love with this present world.” This seems like a very clear-cut example of someone who was not only a believer but also a worker for the gospel and a coworker with Paul who has turned away from God and rejected His salvation. This becomes even more clear when we take into consideration that James says, “friendship with the world is enmity with God” and that anyone who “wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
So, how can anyone say that it is impossible to fall away from grace and lose salvation when God, himself, gives examples of people who have done just that in His word?
5. Personal Experience
A final reason people give for believing that salvation can be lost is their own personal experiences. They point to people in their own lives—people they have known closely—who once seemed to be faithful genuine believers but are no longer walking with the Lord. At one point in their lives, many of these people were leaders in their churches and served in various ministries but now want nothing to do with God or His church. Many of them are actively denying the gospel and the truths of God’s word and outright opposing Him now. Many people believe that such a drastic change can only be explained by what the Bible seems to so clearly say—they have fallen away from God’s grace and are not longer one of His children.
I don’t believe the Bible teaches this at all. I believe this conclusion is a misunderstanding of God’s word in whole and these passages specifically. However, we can learn from this perspective. Often Baptists and others get a bad reputation for believing that believers are secure and cannot lose their salvation. People take that to mean that we are saying sin doesn’t matter, and people can live however they want to as long as they have prayed a prayer or walked down an aisle or been baptized. This could not be further from the truth. Sin does matter. How professing believers live does matter. Praying a prayer or walking down an aisle or being baptized is not a license to sin or live without any boundaries.
The Bible does give warnings against falling away and urge people to continue on in the faith. How we live does matter. However, the Bible also says that God is faithful to save His people and that nothing and no one can prevent Him from accomplishing His purposes in His church. If you are trusting in Christ, if you are hoping in the promises that God has made, you can have assurance that God, Himself, is holding on to you and will not allow you to fall away.
I look forward to the next two Sunday evenings as we study how both of these things can be true!
