Can a Christian lose salvation? Once saved always saved? Eternal security? - Podcast Episode 68

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. As we continue to go through some of the top 20 questions of all time on Got Questions, this is one of the biggies. We're gonna be talking about eternal security, the question of, can a Christian lose salvation?

So with me today, we have Jeff, the administrator of Bible Ref, and Kevin, our managing editor. And we're gonna be taking a dive into this topic today and hopefully help you to understand the type of questions we receive about it, but also just why we are firm believers in eternal security and what precisely that means.

And I think after we launched Got Questions, we're about to hit our 20th anniversary. When we started getting objections to eternal security, it really surprised me because at that point, I had never really met anyone who didn't believe in eternal security.

And then over the years, we've met people who are strongly opposed to the doctrine of eternal security. And that just still surprises me because to me, it's such a dear and precious issue of the faith, the fact that Christ's sacrifice was so perfect, so complete, that we can't possibly lose it.

And I base all of that entirely on the work of Christ, nothing to do with me. And so to me, that's the core of why I believe in eternal security. And so we'll be discussing some of the relevant scripture passages and maybe some of the objections a little bit.

But so Kevin, why don't you start us out? What are some of the scriptures that to you point to the fact that a true Christian, a true follower of Christ cannot lose salvation?

Salvation Belongs to the Lord and the Golden Chain of Romans 8

Well, one of the things for me is I always go back to Psalm 3 and verse 8, which says that salvation belongs to the Lord. And that to me is just foundational, that salvation is a work of God. Jonah picks up on this and Jonah's prayer in his book, that salvation is of the Lord.

We are kept by his power and it is his grace. It is for his glory. And so that's the basis of our salvation. It doesn't have anything to do with my works or my worthiness or anything like that. Salvation is of the Lord.

But when we turn to Romans chapter 8, we could just park there in that chapter alone and see that we are eternally secure in Christ when we are a child of God. And if we just start with verse 15 of Romans chapter 8, we read this, you received God's spirit when he adopted you as his own children.

And so there's the wonderful truth that through the Holy Spirit of God, we are adopted into God's family. And my wife and I just recently went through an adoption of a daughter. And so we've added to our family and there's no way in the world that we would ever unadopt her, that we would ever reject her and send her back into the foster care system.

That would just be unthinkable to us. And to think that God would unadopt his own children, that he has chosen to adopt is just far-fetched. I mean, how in the world would that ever happen? He is not going to unadopt his children.

You read on down in Romans chapter 8, we get to verse 30, which says this, and those he predestined, he also called. Those he called, he also justified. Those he justified, he also glorified. And so some people have called this the golden chain and every link of that chain is important.

He predestined us, he called us, he justified us, that is he declared us righteous in Christ, and then he glorified us, which is in the, it's in the past tense. In other words, the glorification of believers is as good as done.

It is as good as accomplished. Those who are predestined and called and justified are going to be glorified. It's just a fact and we can't separate the two. And so there it is. We have this security that if he has called us and he's justified us, then we are looking forward to being glorified with him in heaven someday.

We're saved and salvation belongs to the Lord. It's his power at work in us. Reading on down just a couple of verses later, verses 33 and 34 of Romans 8, who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?

It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. So Paul asked two very important questions.

Who is going to bring a charge against God's elect? The answer is no one really can because it is God who justifies us. God has declared us righteous. It doesn't matter what charges come against us. We are kept by his power.

We have been justified by his grace. And then the other question is, who's going to condemn us? And the answer again is no one can because it is Christ who intercedes for us. Our judge, the judge of all the earth, is also our savior and our advocate.

He's on our side. And we are, again, kept and sealed by his power. We are eternally secure in Christ. And then still in Romans 8, we go on down to the end of the chapter, verses 38 and 39. We have this, for I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

And Paul here goes out of his way to cover all the bases, nothing in all the world, nothing in all of time, nothing in all of creation. And then just for good measure, he says, nor anything else. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

That sounds like security to me. We are eternally secure if we are in Christ.

Security, Easy Believism, and the Evidence of Real Salvation

When we look at what scripture has to say about the subject, I can resonate with what Shea's saying, that there are times where if you have a certain perspective on those verses, you can read them and it can just not really make sense to you how somebody could read them any differently.

At the same time, there are some people who will look at some of these scriptures and they'll come up with something different. When it comes to eternal security, the question, can a person change from being on their way to heaven to not on their way to heaven, really comes down to a couple different options.

And there's not quite a clean spectrum, but there's a little bit of a spectrum that goes from having absolute perfect guaranteed security to having none whatsoever. One of those versions is something that a lot of people would refer to as easy believism.

And that's a term that gets thrown out a lot against people who believe in eternal security. This is sort of the cartoon version that says that you just nod your head and say, okay, I believe in Jesus, and then that's it.

Nothing about you changes, nothing in your life changes, nothing about your beliefs actually change, but because you said that, or because you express that, well, now no matter what you do for the rest of your life, you are on your way to heaven.

That's one of those extremes. There's the idea that we're talking about now, which is eternal security, and properly understood as we're gonna get into more, eternal security is the idea that when there's a real change that real change is permanent.

It's not that that change can be revoked or it can be undone. It doesn't mean that change makes you sinless or that you will never make mistakes, but it does mean that once the change is there, it's permanent.

Another step in the process is something we could think of as like maintenance security. In other words, as long as you do enough to maintain your security, as long as you just don't go too far, then you're secure.

So you just don't murder somebody, just don't mess up too much. Then we've got sort of the other extreme, which is zero security, which is the idea that you don't ever really have any reason to believe that you're really going to be secure.

You're just gonna have to hope that the balance of whatever you've done and not done is gonna work out. There's a few other options in between those, but what we see in scripture, I think to what Kevin was saying, you see this consistent theme of a form of security.

I think the idea of being told that we can obtain actual legitimate security and then lose it, doesn't seem to represent itself well in scripture. Now, where people are coming at from these different perspectives is just a different take.

They're not coming up with these things completely devoid of scripture, but they are coming at them without context and without the things that we're looking at. For example, easy believism, the idea that all a person has to do is just verbalize something about Jesus and that's it.

Well, that's contradicted by things like Jesus saying, if you love me, obey my commandments, or you'll know them by their work, you'll know them by their fruit and so on and so forth. There's a legitimate sense in scripture that says a person who's truly saved is going to show symptoms of that salvation.

It's not because you have to actively do those things to maintain your salvation, it's just a very reasonable statement that if a person is actually a true believer, we're going to see some evidence of that.

Persons who do not show any of those symptoms, we have good reasons to think that they're not actually saved. The idea of maintenance security, that you need to do certain things in order to sort of finish off or round off that security.

Well, that's interfered with with things it says, salvation is of the Lord. Titus says, we're not saved by works that we've done, we're saved by what he has done. If I have to complete something, if I have to finish some step, if I have to do something, then this is not of grace.

Paul also in Romans says, it's either of works or it's of grace. There's not some combination of the two. You're either saved by grace or you're saved by your works. And if my works are part of me keeping my salvation, then grace is not something that's involved anymore.

Then there's the idea of zero security. And zero security basically just comes down to works-based salvation. And at the risk of being dismissive, that's pretty much just completely antithetical to the gospel in general.

The idea that you just have to do certain things and hope that the balance gets you in the right direction. That's a very common idea. That's a very frequent idea in pagan belief and a lot of non-Christian religions that it's all about the balance.

Are you better or worse than some particular standard? There again, none of us lives up to God's standard. If this was just a question of be good enough, nobody would be good enough. Everything that we could possibly do for God is nothing in comparison to the infinite difference between us and him morally.

So I think when we look at the different options, you can understand why a person would read certain verses or certain passages and think, okay, maybe what that means is, like work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Okay, does that mean that I have to do certain things in order to maintain or to keep my salvation? But then when you actually look through what scripture says about these, not just in theology, but also from a logical standpoint, it doesn't hold up.

So there are different perspectives that people can have, but it seems like the one that's got the strongest support is the idea that you have to be truly saved, but those who are truly saved are eternally and securely saved.

New Creation, Born Again, and the Fruit of Salvation

Yes, and I think going along with your point that a child of God is going to exhibit fruit in his or her life is taught very clearly in scripture. We are new creations in Christ, scripture says, and Jesus said it a couple of times in John chapter three, you must be born again.

And I think that very term born again indicates that there is a change of nature. We're completely new. And so, yes, there's gonna be a change of behavior. There's gonna be fruits of righteousness that accompany salvation.

And so that's clearly taught in scripture. We're not going into the easy believism camp, but we are saying that salvation is by grace, through faith, we are kept by the power of God. And yes, there will be fruit of that salvation.

The License to Sin Objection and the Role of Calvinism

Absolutely, great points, both of you. When I look at the questions we received over the years, and I think we've joked a couple of times about the different awards I've received from people declaring either me or got questions to be a heretical ministry, and all of them, this has been one of the issues they point to.

And when I kind of dive into, okay, why do they oppose the doctrine of eternal security, once saved, always saved, so strongly, one thing they always bring up is the license to sin concept, saying that if once you're saved, you can never lose it, well, then there's absolutely no motivation for you to live righteously.

So you're basically saying you can live however you want and you'll still be saved. And I guess there's a little bit of nuance in it, but yes, ultimately, we do believe you can live however you want and you'll still be saved, but the true Christian won't live that way.

It's a different perspective to say, I'm going to live my life for Christ in order to keep my salvation or so I don't lose it versus I'm going to live my life for Christ out of love for Christ, out of gratitude for the wonderful salvation that he has provided.

I have never in all my experience heard anyone who believes in eternal security teach, oh, because we're eternally saved, let's eat or drink for tomorrow we die. That attitude has never been taught. And when you have a proper perspective, it's a matter of, no, because of the perfect and complete salvation that God has provided in Christ, I'm going to live my life out of gratitude for that.

I'm going to live my life for him in response to that. To me, eternal security is a comfort that I know that if I mess up and I mess up, I don't have to worry, oh, is that a big enough mess up that I've lost my salvation or is it just something I need to confess?

Start getting to really, really messy things when you start wondering, okay, where exactly, which sins caused you to lose your salvation versus not which sins are big enough, those type of things. So that's the primary objection, the license to sin concept.

The second one we run into most often are just people who absolutely hate Calvinism, that they're so strongly opposed to Calvinism. If Calvinists believe this, I'm going to reject it. So since Calvinists would call it the perseverance of the saints, that a person who has been saved will persevere in that faith, will never abandon Christ, and therefore they are saved, not going into Calvinism too much, that's a whole nother episode, but because a Calvinist believes in that, then all the people who don't like Calvinism for whatever reason want to throw eternal security away, and that doesn't have to be the case.

There are many, many, what you would call once saved, always saved Arminians, or people who reject either all five points of Calvinism or four points, but hold on to the eternal security point. And typically when I'm explaining eternal security to someone, I don't go the Calvinist route.

I think you can, that is one way to explain why we believe we're eternal secure, but it's not the only way. You can believe in eternal security, in once saved, always saved, in the perfectness and completion of Christ's sacrifice without being a Calvinist.

Kevin mentioned in his summary in Romans 8, predestination calling. I'm not denying that there is a role in those doctrines in eternal security, but just believing, because we're in Christ, we're a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come.

Can a new creation be made anew? Can you be unadopted? Can you be unredeemed? Can you be unreconciled? All the things that have to be undone in order for us to lose salvation really have nothing to do with Calvinism.

So don't allow a disagreement or a strong distaste for Calvinism to cause you to reject what is a precious and most importantly, biblical teaching that Christ's sacrifice guarantees our salvation because it's off to him, not to us.

Eternal Life, Apostasy, and Permanent Consequences

Is it Romans 6, guys, where Paul asks, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? And then his answer, of course, is God forbid. How shall we continue in sin? We're new creatures in Christ. A believer in Christ doesn't want to sin.

I mean, he will sin, he will mess up, I'm sure, but we hate that about ourselves. That's the old life. And we do not want to continue in sin. I also think of this word eternal that is used so often in relation to our salvation.

In John 3, in verse 15, Jesus said that whoever believes will have eternal life. So what does eternal actually mean? I mean, if we can have life today in Christ, and then 10 days from now, we mess up big time and we lose that life and we're kicked out of the family of God, we're unadopted, we're unbaptized, we're unsealed, we're unredeemed and unjustified and all of that kind of stuff, then was it really eternal?

Why is that word there? Why is that word attached to life if it's not really eternal? And I think that comes into play too, that just the meaning of the word, it is eternal life that we are given in Christ, not temporary life.

One of the things that people will look at when they're examining that, however, is the idea that the promise is eternal. In other words, that the idea is that the end product is eternal, but there's some sort of a parsing or a difference between what you are guaranteed to receive or what you're supposed to receive and whether or not you're actually in permanent possession of that.

One of the interesting versions that goes sort of against eternal security, and I'm trying to use terms that don't pigeonhole people into thinking that we're stereotyping, but would be something sort of like the punched ticket or the held security.

That's the idea that a person can say, I have my salvation, I'm holding this here, this is my salvation. As long as I'm holding this, then I'm saved. But if I want to, if I choose to, I can set this aside, I can throw this away.

That's one of the ways that people would say, for example, we would deal with hard questions like apostasy. So what happens when you have a person who professes faith, lives out faith, seems to be very engaged in their faith?

And then that person turns around and just completely walks away from everything. Some people would indicate that insofar as that person was choosing to hold on to their salvation, that that person was saved.

But when the person decides to voluntarily step away, that's the attitude that says when Jesus says, no one can snatch them out of my hand, he's referring to the devil and everybody else, not necessarily to that person.

And I think there again, there's some level of reason behind that. You can understand how a person's trying to respect things like free will and the idea that, what's to say that a person couldn't choose to turn away from God?

Why does the Bible warn me so much about walking away from the faith and not losing faith and not turning away from faith? But I think from a biblical standpoint, we understand that the same God who can protect me from falling into deep and desperate sin, theologically there is no more deep and desperate sin than completely rejecting my creator.

It seems to run counter to the idea that God can provide me with an escape. The Holy Spirit will give me power to stay away from certain sin. But the worst sin from a theoretical standpoint is one that he somehow wouldn't protect me from.

And the other thing that people need to remember is that it's not a violation of free will to have permanent consequences. I have the ability to decide right now what I'm gonna do with my legs. I can walk, I can go walk where I want to.

Well, if I choose to walk out into traffic, that may come with a consequence that's permanent. I can't revoke the consequences of that. That doesn't mean I didn't have free will. That doesn't mean I don't have free will after the fact, but my free will insofar as we believe in that can lead a person to make a decision that's permanent.

Just because a person comes to faith in Christ doesn't mean they lose their ability to make decisions. And that decision does not mean that God is obligated to let me back out of that. If the change is there, it can be permanent, and we would expect it to be permanent.

I understand. Those are good points, Jeff, that you're making. And I also understand what you were alluding to there about people wanting to accommodate free will and all of that. But I always come back to salvation is of the Lord.

I mean, if I have my salvation here and I choose to revoke it, lay it down, then what does that do with the biblical truth that salvation is of the Lord? I mean, doesn't that make it a little bit of me if I can revoke it like that?

That was just my thought there as you were giving that other perspective there.

Apostasy, False Professors, and the Meaning of “No One Can Snatch Them”

Yeah, and I agree. I think that that's, again, where I come to it is I can understand the reasoning, but I think when you follow it through all the way, you wind up saying, so we, by faith, believe that God can give me the power to overcome sin.

He can give me the power to not do these things. But of all the things he's gonna let me do, he's gonna let me just completely walk away into an eternity of damnation? I don't know about that. Another thing I think we should at least touch on just briefly, very briefly, is the idea that there are still hard questions that views on eternal security bring up.

For me, the toughest involve what we call apostasy, just a fancy term for walking away from the faith. You know, we have questions like if a person seems to be a believer and then walks away, were they really saved?

Did they lose salvation? We have things in scripture that talk about people who are gonna believe that they are believers, the ones that Jesus is gonna say, go away from me because I never knew you. That seems to suggest that a person, even if they live a life that seems to be in line with Christianity, but then they get to the end and it turns out they're not, that's not a person that Jesus says, I don't know you anymore.

He just says, I never knew you. We have other warnings where we're talking about working out your salvation with fear and trembling, all the warnings against what we're supposed to do to examine ourselves, make sure that we're in the faith.

None of those have really clean and simple answers, but I think again, as we go through and look at those, we still come down to the balance of saying, even if we don't understand every little tiny nuance, we still understand that once legitimate salvation is there, it's there.

The thing that we're really gonna be disagreeing about mostly is when that happened. And also we're gonna notice that when it comes down to brass tacks, a lot of people, whether you believe in eternal security or not, we generally will have the same conclusions when we look at a person's life or the quality and character of their life.

By and large, when people who do or do not believe in eternal security are looking at the sum total of some person's life, we're gonna come to the same sort of conclusions about what we think is happening with that person.

And as long as we remember that that's all we can do, God looks at the heart, we look at the outside appearance. It's not my job to actually determine somebody's salvation. As long as I recognize that that's all I'm really doing with this is just trying to understand to the best of my knowledge, but know that God is doing what he's doing in the background, then it's not that eternal security does not matter, but it's not a question that I absolutely have to have answered on anybody else's behalf in order for me to have the right relationship with Jesus.

So I can hear some of our listeners who may not agree with us on this issue saying, but what about all the different passages? You're not talking about this verse or this verse. And it's like, hey, we're aiming for 25 to 30 minutes.

There's only so much we can do. But this is essentially gonna be like a part one. Very soon after this episode airs, we're gonna air a part two where we discuss some of the main objections to eternal security.

But that's not really the point of today's episode. Jeff brought up a really interesting point. And I remember a conversation I had with someone, and essentially it was a question of, so are you saying that someone who at one point seemed to be a believer, but then now they are denying the faith, they're completely denying faith in Christ, they're living a life that's completely antithetical to the gospel, that person is still saved.

And I'm like, no, I'm not. I mean, to an extent, those who believe that salvation can be lost and those who believe eternal security would agree that that person very, very likely is not saved. So it's a question of whether they were ever saved to begin with, or whether they were saved and lost that salvation.

I mean, I would point to 1 John 2 .19. And context is referring to false prophets. But the verse reads, "'They went out from us, but they were not of us. "'For if they'd been of us, "'they would have continued with us, but they went out.

"'That it might become plain that they are not of us.'". In this passage, John's talking about a false prophet who at one point seemed to be a believer, but now is teaching a false gospel. Demonstrates they were never truly with us to begin with.

So it's not a matter of they were believers and fell away. No, they're never really believers to begin with. And to me, one of my favorite passages on eternal security, which also got mentioned briefly is John 10 .28 -29, which reads, "'I give them eternal life, "'and they will never perish.

"'No one will snatch them out of my hand.'". In verse 29, "'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.'". So people who say, well, no one can snatch you away from God, but you can kind of squirm your way out.

It's like, really? So Christ has you in His hand and the Father has you in His hand. You're going to be able to squirm your way out of that? That seems to be the opposite of what this verse is talking about, and similar to Romans 8 .38, which Kevin read earlier, with nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

Really, absolutely nothing includes you. But kind of in conclusion, probably the verse I go back to again and again, and what I introduce this episode with, is that eternal security is not about me. It's not about Jeff.

It's not about Kevin. It's not about you. Eternal security is about God and the perfect and complete salvation He has provided in Christ. And to me, Jude, verses 24 to 25, is a powerful reminder of this.

And it starts out, "'To Him who is able to keep you from falling "'and to present you before His glorious presence "'without fault and 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.'".

Amen.

It's not a matter of us keeping ourselves from falling. It's not a matter of us keeping ourselves safe.

No.

Salvation is all Christ's work. He's the one who keeps us saved. He's the one who keeps us from falling. He's the one who holds us in His hand. He's the one from whom we cannot be separated from His love.

So for us, for Kevin, Jeff, and I, and for most who hold to eternal security, it's a matter of just understanding, again, the perfect, complete, absolutely sufficient salvation that Christ has provided and that all of our sins are forgiven.

Amen.

And when we accept that gift, it results in a transformation that cannot be undone. It results in a transformation that will result in a person whose life is transformed to the point that they would never deny the faith.

So that's why we believe in eternal security. And again, stay tuned for episode two. We'll release sometime soon after this one where we discuss some of the objections because granted, there are some verses in the Bible that seem to teach the opposite of eternal security, but we believe there are biblically plausible, understandable explanations for those passages that don't actually teach the salvation of God.

So that will be kind of a part two to this coming soon. This has been the Got Questions podcast with Jeff, the administrator of BibleRef .com, and Kevin, the managing editor for Got Questions Ministries.

I'm Shea Hoodman, the president and CEO of Got Questions. Hope this conversation has been encouraging to you, but that's always our goal. So Got Questions, the Bible has answers.

We'll help you find them.