Can You Lose Your Salvation?

by Russell Young

Can You Lose Your Salvation?

This question is frequently raised and deserves a thoughtful response. Much of the confusion rests in word meanings and often involves concepts that are philosophical constructs as opposed to Biblical truths.

Before it can be established whether a person can lose his or her salvation, it is important to understand what “salvation” means. A commonly accepted perception is that it means ‘brought to the state where you will go to heaven upon death.’ The Hebrew word y@shuw`ah has been translated to mean “salvation.” Its first Scriptural use is Genesis 49:18. y@shuw`ah doesn’t refer to “going to heaven” but to deliverance from danger or disease, the preservation of a person’s welfare, victory. The Greek soteria has a similar meaning without reference to heaven but referring in general to rescue, health and deliverance.

Salvation is used in the New Testament in a rescue or deliverance manner. The woman with the issue of blood was healed, delivered, or saved from the agony of her physical condition. Paul was saved from drowning when the ship he was aboard sank. Confessors are rescued from the death that they had earned and from the Old Covenant which brought about their condemnation.

Unfortunately, “salvation” has come to be specifically and singularly accepted as referring to the gaining of God’s heavenly kingdom. When this connotation is attached to the word, problems arise.

Those concerned with the thought of losing salvation are of the understanding that their heavenly hope has been established and they don’t want to entertain the idea that it can be lost. Two questions arise: Has their hope of heaven really been established? If it has, can it be destroyed?

Those who accept that they have been eternally saved, must accept that they are living the obedient life that Christ requires and that they will always live that life. Hebrews 5:9 states, “[Christ] became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” The believer’s hope comes through obedience. Paul has written, “For in this hope—our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies—you were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. But who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (Rom 8:24−25) He has stated that we were or have been saved, yet our adoption remains a hope for which we “wait eagerly” and that it comes with “the redemption of our bodies.” (v 23)

The “saved” or salvation that has taken place refers to a rescue or deliverance, but it does not mean to infer that the deliverance is into God’s heavenly kingdom; it is a different deliverance or salvation. Careful examination of the fullness of God’s Word reveals that confessors are first saved or delivered from the righteous requirements of the Old Covenant law and the death that they had earned, so that they might receive the Spirit (Gal 3:14). This is not an eternal deliverance. Following this gifting, they are to live in obedience to Christ as Spirit.

Can a person lose this salvation, deliverance from the covenant law? Yes! Paul has also written, “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.” (Gal 5:18) Those who have been given the Spirit but do not permit his leadership must revert to accomplishing the righteous requirements of the law apart from the Spirit’s help (The Spirit is Christ the Lord; 2 Cor 3: 17, 18), to the hopeless state that existed before their redemption.

The hope that is not reality and for which we wait eagerly is for “our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” and this is accomplished through obedience to the Spirit. “For if you live according to the sinful nature you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” (Rom 8:13−14) The hope of adoption is accomplished by putting to death the misdeeds of the body (redemption of the body) through the leadership of the Spirit.

Some might protest that the Word presents salvation and eternal life come through belief. Eternal life and eternal salvation are different. Eternal life is life unending or immortality, and nothing more. Eternal salvation refers to a deliverance from any circumstance that would cause a person harm or negatively affect their eternal welfare. The only passage that addresses eternal salvation in the Bible, Hebrews 5:9, reveals that it comes through obedience and is availed for those who have overcome the world and have found a place in the New Jerusalem. (Rev 21:7)

The confessor cannot lose his or her “eternal salvation” because he or she does not have it. Unless personal obedience to Christ can be guaranteed, neither can eternal salvation.; it is being awaited and will come following judgment. Confessors can lose their salvation from sin if they fail to obey the Lord and continue to deliberately sin (Heb 10:26; Mt 13:41) following their confession of Christ’s lordship (Rom 10: 9−10), if they have walked in darkness rather than in the light of the Spirit (1 Jn 1:6−7), and if they have failed to confess known sin when it happens. (1 Jn 1:9) Peter warned that confessors who “have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and again are entangled in it are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.” (2 Pet 2:20)

Paul, on whom many base their understanding of salvation, wrote that it remained for him to become like Christ in his death so that “somehow” he could attain to the resurrection. (Phil 3:11) He did not claim to have been eternally saved after many years of ministry and suffering. He had to live Christ’s death to the end.

Christ warned Jewish believers that sinful practices would render them impermanent members of God’s family (Jn 8:35) and cautioned that those in him who do not bear fruit would be cut from him. (Jn 15:2) He also spoke of the need to “stand firm to the end” to be saved (Mt 10:22), and that his angels would “weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.” (Mt 13:41)

The promise of God concerning eternal salvation is for the obedient; the disobedient will find themselves forever separated from him. (2 Thess 1:9) A person cannot lose their eternal salvation because they will not have achieved it until they have been judged acceptable for God’s eternal kingdom. (Rom 15:16).

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Russell Young’s column appears here on alternate Tuesdays. His first book, Eternal Salvation: “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” Really? is available in print and eBook in the U.S. through Westbow Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble; in Canada through Chapters/Indigo.

To read all of Russell’s contributions here at C201, click this link. There is also an extended article at this link.

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Solomon’s Advice: Go to a Funeral or Two

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11).

This morning at North Point Community Church, Jeff Henderson spoke on Ecclesiastes 7:2.

“Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies – so the living should take this heart.”

Fun verse, huh? But people in vocational ministry actually spend a whole lot of time at funerals. David Meldrum, a Church of England pastor based in Cape Town, South Africa writes about this:

Beware of what you promise. That’s a maxim which could easily apply to any area of life, but over recent weeks a variety of different promises I made as I stood in an ancient English cathedral less than 3 months before 9/11 have been re-echoing in my mind.

These are the promises made by those about to be ordained – set apart by the church for service in and to the church and the world. The one echoing loudest at the moment is a few simple words: ‘to prepare the dying for their death’.

A cursory reading of that, together with popular assumptions about the role of the vicar/priest/rector, may lead you to assume that the promise is about visiting, spending time with and praying with or for those who are facing death in an immediate sense. Of course that’s part of it – one of the indisputable privileges of my job is to be there in the big moments of life and death.

But there’s much more. One retired priest told me, just before I was ordained, that part of the role and calling of the priest is to ‘think the unthinkable and say the unsayable’. I don’t know if he was quoting someone else or if it was one of his own truisms, but it’s stayed with me. It’s become increasingly true for me in the 11 yeas since – there are times when we’re called to say things that people just don’t want to hear, compelled to speak when everyone else is wearing earphones. The unsayable I’m thinking of here is that ‘the dying’ of that ordination day promise is all of us, all of the time. We’re all dying. Scientists call it entropy – that all things tend towards decay and disorder; part of the calling of someone called by the church to the church and the world is to hold before a community and a people the fact that we’re all dying and the sooner we reconcile ourselves to that fact and live in the light of it, the better.

Of course, like everything, there all sorts of places we could make a serious mis-step here. We could become sour faced misery-peddlars who sneer at anything remotely fun with a ‘not of this world’ air; we could repeatedly scare people into salvation (finding out much later people saved thus often either fall back into old ways or become disturbingly hard-hearted); we could become so concerned with the after-life that we forget to do any good in this life.

All of those and more are dangers we need to constantly check ourselves against. An awareness of death, though, while being a consequence of our insistence on going our own way, can also be something of a gift to the perpetually busy and stressed. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting” (Ecclesiastes 7:2, ESV). To live and love at least with that awareness, that life is a process of preparing to live eternally with the one in whose image we’re made and in whose creation we dwell, should for the Christian be an immensely joyful and liberating process. It should hone our sense of call – what is MY role in preparing all around me for death? How am I pointing people to a bigger, deeper reality? How do I live well in such a way that I will die well?

This doesn’t mean that we don’t cry at funerals or feel absence and loss keenly and deeply. Of course we do. We all do. Death is an enemy. It is horrible. It’s in the nature of God, though, to take that which may seem intended for evil and transfigured it into something deeper and better altogether. Death is horrible. Death is defeated. Death, then, because it is defeated, can help us live well. Now, and forever.

At Daily Encouragement, Stephen and Brooksyne Weber write:

Solomon, writer of Ecclesiastes, states, “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting.”  This begs the question, in what sense is it better?

Actually, on first instinct, I would much prefer the house of feasting. Consider the family gathered around the table for a big Thanksgiving meal or joining together with friends to watch the Super Bowl and inevitably feasting on addictive snack foods such as guacamole dip with chips, chicken wings or spicy meatballs. We look forward to church fellowship dinners, especially the potluck variety, or a group of friends joining us for a cookout.

But let us consider the sense in which the “house of mourning” is better than the “house of feasting”. The Scriptures are so insightful. They go way beyond skimming the surface to exploring the depths of who we are and how our greatest needs can be met. The reasons that mourning is even more essential than feasting is listed in the following two phrases in the text. In retrospect as I consider the times we have experienced the “house of mourning” I fully understand the writer’s premise.

1) “For death is the destiny of every man.” In other words, death is inevitable. It’s part of the grand plan of how things work as a result of the original fall. Each time we go to the house of mourning this universal reality confronts us. We are reminded that life on this earth is temporary and that we all have an expiration date. Otherwise we might get so caught up in the “here and now” that we don’t make adequate plans for the “there and later”.

2) “The living should take this to heart” The “house of mourning” helps us to consider our heart’s condition and the state of our soul. Of course most of us have been to a variety of house of mournings, yet the tone of the memorial service and the variety of people who gather can make the setting as different as night and day.

I have attended memorials for those who lived outside of Christ where no hope in Christ was presented. I recall one with “Grateful Dead” music being played throughout the gathering. I found that experience to be a spiritually dark place! Anyone attending who might be giving thought to their eternal destiny would surely not find the proper answers to life beyond the grave in a setting like this.

However we consider the blessedness of being in the “house of mourning” of one who lived for Christ. In the service Saturday we heard godly music that lifted the soul, a pastor reminding all in attendance of the need to prepare for their eternal destiny (as requested by Marian who planned her own funeral service). Verbal tributes included a granddaughter who overflowed with tear-filled joy as she gave thanks for Grandma Marian who gave her a Bible and took her to church, where at 16 years of age, she surrendered her life to Jesus.

The Webers ended with a reference to a related text, Hebrews 9:27-28:

Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.

…and added this prayer:

Father, we rejoice in the feasting periods and reflect in the mourning periods of our life. The richest experiences that shape our character are from the great highs and the deep lows we encounter over a lifetime. Not only do we spend time reflecting, studying, and learning from these experiences, but they speak to us of the importance of who we are in the midst of those circumstances. In the house of feasting we rejoice in our accomplishments and those of others from year to year. But in the house of mourning we consider the lives of those who go before us, seeking to mirror the good we witnessed or experienced from their lives. It prompts us to assess our own hearts. Are we ready should You call us to our eternal destiny? We know that planning for this life is important, but planning for the next life is absolutely essential. We want to be ready by receiving Jesus into our life and living according to Your plan as revealed in the Bible. By Your grace we can do so through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

 

Do You Have A Soul?

^{I Cor: 15:3} For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born…

^…12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴ And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. ¹⁵ More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. ¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. ¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰ But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep…

^…35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” ³⁶ How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. ³⁷ When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸ But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. ³⁹ Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another…

^…42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; ⁴³ it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴ it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. ⁴⁸ As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹ And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

⁵⁰ I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹ Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵² in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³ For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

Today we’re living up to our “digging a little deeper” tagline, with a look at a topic which confuses even veteran Christ-followers.  As we spun the giant internet wheel, today it stopped at WhyTheology,  the blog of Troy Medley. This is a two part article, you might want to start with the first part reading it at source, at the bottom you’ll find the link to part two.

So I recently attended and presented at a conference on the soul and body at Oxford. It seems, however, that the theme actually shifted to talking about identity generally, which was identified as the soul, rather than the soul as a separate thing.

A reason for this shift was a general skepticism surrounding the idea of a platonic soul. If you are unaware of that term, it is the conception of the soul most frequently portrayed in popular media. A sort of “ghosty” type of thing that is identifiable as us, and yet has no material form. While some medieval theologians might have taken exception to the fact that it is sometimes portrayed as visible, the idea still seems to accurately reflect this idea of the soul. According to that view, then, people are essentially embodied souls. In other words, the you that is you (i.e. your soul) is simply occupying and manipulating your body, which is not you.

The problem is, this is not the biblical view of the soul. It is clearly platonic (whether we have Augustine or Rene Descartes or someone/something else to thank for its pervasiveness is another issue). The Hebrew Bible always and only refers to people as entire units. There is nothing separate from the body. When someone loses an arm, their body doesn’t lose an arm the person does. There isn’t a separate soul. Alister McGrath noted that if you take every instance of the word soul in the Old Testament and replace it with life, the verses would read just the same, and sometimes more clearly than by retaining the word soul. I feel comfortable sharing this bit of his talk, of course, because it is a fairly uncontroversial (and not generally disputed claim); I doubt he’d object.

The New Testament doesn’t seem to help very much either with the idea of a Platonic soul. In fact, the New Testament is adamant that the thing which is raised and transformed into an eternal thing is the entire body, not jut a separate soul. That’s why Jesus’ bodily resurrection is important. That’s what Paul is going on and on about in 1 Corinthians 15. There isn’t a separate soul independent of our bodies. Instead our identity (or soul) is a way of talking about ourselves, and in particular our minds, even if it “emerges” in some way. This is a very subtle shift in thinking that I think might be very important.

While I certainly believe that God can and will transform our bodies into something new and eternal when Christ returns, this has the potential to transform our thinking about the physical world. If we are platonists about the soul, then we devalue the physical body. This leads to all sorts of problems. The body then becomes something of a prison to escape, something that is constantly our adversary, not who we are. This can lead to self-loathing, self-abuse, willingness to take abuse and unhealthy attitudes about sex (for instance, the idea that, even when married, sex should not really be a source of pleasure ever). It also leads to a devaluing of other aspects of creation. But if, instead, we believe that our bodies are the source of our identity/soul rather than something our soul inhabits, then we begin to value it. We feel we must take care of it and, within appropriate ways we can celebrate aspects of it: athletic ability, a good steak (in moderation), a slowly sipped cup of coffee. We can appreciate our physical stuff, because that’s the thing that we are, and that’s what Jesus is redeeming and beginning to transform. It also means we value other people’s bodies. They are not tools to be used for personal gain, objects to be oggled, but when you see someone else’s physical form you are looking at another person. That is important and is something we’ve lost. If we begin to recapture it, it means that our bodies, our blood and sweat and tears, our aches and pains and joys, the tickling that my kids love, the feeling of a warm mug in cold hands, all of this matters in a way we can’t even fathom yet.

But what do you think? Should we instead hang on to the platonic notion of the soul? Does it have more biblical grounding than I’m giving it credit? Does this idea have some other pitfalls?

~Troy Medley

Here is the link to part two of this subject which looks at three different options as to the state of those who have died in Christ. If you got this far, you want to keep reading.  To engage the author, your best bet is to leave comments at his blog, WhyTheology.