Pulling Them Out of The Fire

Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts. Morse Corner is a non-denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's word through the ministries of the local church.

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. Can a believer lose his or her salvation? That's the subject we're going to be looking at this morning, so if you would, please turn to Galatians chapter 5.

Falling from Grace and the Question of Losing Salvation

And the title of the message is Falling from Grace. Now, there are some people who have already made up their minds. As soon as I raised the question, well, you heard, didn't you? Can a believer lose their salvation?

They automatically say no, no way, can't happen. But I'm sure there's a few. There may be one or two, maybe more, sitting here this morning. Or maybe someone listening later on the internet or on the radio.

There are people who think yes, of course, a believer can lose their salvation. Here's what I know for sure. Well, there's a few things I know for sure, but here's one thing I know. Somebody's wrong. Somebody's wrong.

The people who say you can never lose it, the people who say you can lose it, you can't both be right. So let's look at this passage of scripture and we'll try to answer this question. Galatians 5, 1 through 4, the Apostle Paul says, Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Indeed, I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And I testify again to every man who becomes uncircumcised or becomes circumcised, excuse me, that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.

You have become estranged from Christ. You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. So let's just address one thing from the start. Even if somebody believes that you can lose your salvation, I do not believe that Galatians 5 is saying that.

Even if you think that that's something that's possible, I do not believe that's what Paul is saying here. So what is he saying? One thing we can agree on, he doesn't come out and explicitly say you can lose your salvation or these people who have fallen from grace have lost their salvation.

You see that, right? Like that's not explicitly stated. So whatever he's saying, how do we find out? Well, you know how we find out. To know what a verse or a statement in scripture is saying, you must consider the context.

You read the verses before, you read the verses after, you consider the whole context of the book of Galatians, you compare it with scripture as a whole. So for those of you who have been following along in Galatians, you know what the book is about.

It's about defending the true gospel, defending the true gospel, because a group of false teachers known as the Judaizers had led the churches of Galatia astray into thinking that they were justified by their works.

So Paul had originally established these churches. He preached the true gospel to them. They accepted the true gospel. That's by grace through faith, not of works. Remember the shorthand for this is what?

Grace alone, the true gospel is grace alone, faith alone, in Christ alone. But then over time, the Judaizers came in and they started to preach something different and they convinced people that they needed to become circumcised in order to be saved.

So yeah, you need to believe in Jesus, but you also had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. Paul identifies that in chapter one as a different gospel. And he said, if anyone preaches any other gospel, let them be anathema, let them be accursed.

In other words, the Judaizers aren't Christians. Stop listening to them. That's what he's telling the church. Circumcision, again, was sort of the main issue that was added to the gospel. And Paul is talking about circumcision in the verses before and the verses after.

So that's the general context here. So in this message, I'm going to begin by addressing this passage, exactly what Paul is saying. And then for the second part of the message, we'll look at some of the verses that people use to teach that salvation can be lost.

Because you know how this goes, don't you? If you've ever had this conversation with somebody, one person will have their verses stacked up of why you can't lose your salvation. And then the other person, they'll have their verses.

So everyone's proof texting each other. You know what proof texting is. You know, on the one hand, we should have Bible verses to back up our statements and to back up our beliefs. The problem with proof texting is it's so easy to take verses out of context.

I think everyone's heard of attention deficit disorder, right? Even if a person doesn't have ADD, a lot of people these days, you know, you have a hard time just paying attention, right? What's the statistic that the average congregant retains 10 of what the pastor says in the sermon?

Something like that. I don't lie, that's what I heard. I don't know if that's true. But even if a person doesn't have attention deficit, you know, opening up a Bible, reading a passage, you know, looking at the verses before and after, considering the context and talking about the scripture.

You know, after a little while, you start to lose people. What people want is something quick and easy. Hey, the Bible says they have fallen from grace. They have lost their salvation. Okay, yeah. That's how people are convinced, something quick and easy to understand.

But again, fallen from grace. There's a big difference between saying fallen from grace and they lost their salvation. That is not necessarily the same thing. Okay, you agree with that? You're on board.

Paul does not explicitly say they lost their salvation. Everyone should agree with that. Okay, let's go through this. Paul ended chapter four by talking about the two covenants. You might remember that from last week, law and grace.

And that was symbolized by the two women, Sarah and Hagar. As Christians, we are under, we know, we're under the new covenant. Salvation is by grace, not works. So Paul begins chapter five in verse one by saying, stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free.

And do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. So he's exhorting the Galatians to remain faithful, you know, stand fast, remain faithful to the true gospel. You know, the true gospel is the only thing that can set the sinner free from sin, its penalty and guilt.

Only the true gospel can do that. So he's saying stand fast, hold to the true gospel and the liberty, the freedom it brings, the blessings. You know, going back to the law, that makes no sense. Why would you want to go back to the law?

I think of it this way. It would be like the Israelites entering into the promised land and receiving all the blessings, you know, the land flowing with milk and honey. And then after a while enjoying that, they're like, you know, let's go back into the wilderness.

Wasn't it great when the previous generation all died in the wilderness? Let's go back into the wilderness and try to find Mount Sinai and we'll go through that. That's what it's like. And it makes no sense whatsoever.

Why would you want to go back? Verse two, indeed I, Paul say to you that if you become circumcised, that is if you become, and it doesn't matter if somebody is or isn't, but what he's saying is if you become circumcised, thinking that it adds to your salvation, if you think that, if you do that, Christ will profit you nothing.

It's either salvation in Christ alone, or if you try to add even one thing, that's a different gospel. Christ will profit you nothing. Verse three, and I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.

He's saying you can't pick and choose. You can't take one or two things from the law that you like and add it to the gospel and then ignore, you know, 600 other instructions. It doesn't work that way.

If you put yourself back under the law, you have to keep the whole law. What does James chapter two, verse 10 say? For whoever shall keep the whole law and yet stumble in one point, just one, he is guilty of all.

So if you think that keeping the law of Moses saves you, then you have to keep the whole thing. And guess what? Nobody can, nobody ever has except Christ himself. And then he says this in verse four, for these who have become circumcised, thinking that it adds to their salvation, he says, you have become estranged from Christ.

You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. To put it plainly, you are abandoning the new covenant in order to go back to some version of the old covenant. You're falling away from the new Testament, which is better.

And when you do that, you are now estranged, estranged from Christ. Basically, you're going back to the types and foreshadows. You have Christ in you, the hope of glory, the Holy Spirit. You have Christ himself.

And now you want to go back to the shadow. You just think about it this way, someone you really care about, someone you love. You can either have them and you could hug them or you could have their shadow.

Which would you rather have? And that's what it's like. The old Testament, the old covenant is like the shadow. The new covenant is having the person, right? John MacArthur writes this about verse four, Paul's clear meaning is that any attempt to be justified by the law is to reject salvation by grace alone through faith alone.

Those once exposed to the gracious truth of the gospel who then turn their backs on Christ and seek to be justified by the law are separated from Christ and lose all prospects of God's gracious salvation.

Their desertion of Christ and the gospel only proves that their faith was never genuine. And let me repeat that because this is really the point you need to remember. Their desertion of Christ and the gospel only proves that their faith was never genuine.

That's the key part. It's not that they lost their salvation. They were never truly saved to begin with which is why they fell away. Anyone who follows Christian news over the past, I don't know, four or five, six years, you've heard all of the stories about well-known pastors, authors, and especially Christian musicians who have done this very thing.

They've fallen from grace. And that expression doesn't refer to someone who got caught in a scandal or did something really bad and they've fallen from grace. That's not what he's talking about. No, they've fallen away from the faith.

Now they are denying Christ. I don't believe that anymore. And there's a long list of well-known people. Again, just in the past five or six years, this seems to be an increasing trend, a disturbing trend.

So 10 years ago, they professed to believe the right things. They seem to believe the right things, but now their beliefs are very different. This happened even locally. Many of us witnessed this. One of the bigger evangelical churches in the area.

Years ago, the pastor said that he believed the salvation was through faith in Jesus Christ. And then whatever happened, he slowly started to bring in a different message and it caused a big kerfuffle.

And now the message that church is putting out is that everybody's a child of God. It doesn't matter what you believe. It doesn't matter if you think Jesus is a fraud. Everyone is a child of God. Now, in fairness, and that's heresy, by the way.

That's heresy. Now, in fairness to the Galatians, even they didn't go that far, but they were starting to fall away. And Paul was trying to bring them back. That's what you want to do. When you see somebody starting to drift, if you love them, if you care for them, you want to bring them back.

It wasn't too late for the church members in Galatia. That's the good news. Paul has already condemned the false teachers. So I don't know that there was much hope for them, but you notice, and we could go back and look, but he's calling the church members brethren.

He's still calling them brethren. So there's still hope. He wants to bring them back. Don't you know, sometimes people get mixed up in things. If you listen to false teachers, it can be very easy to get confused and you start to get led astray.

And that's when a faithful believer who knows what's what has to try to bring the person back. Thanks for listening. I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Moores Corner Church. If you'd like to listen to the complete message or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, moorescornerchurch .com.

And we'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett. Until next time, may the grace of God be with you.