46 - Eternal Security, Part 1 (Can you lose your salvation)

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47 - Eternal Security, Part 2 (Can you lose your salvation)

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity's School of Systematic Theology, where we never discuss anything controversial in any way, shape, or form because theology is perfectly clear and no one has any issues with it.

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They never discuss it, never debate it, never have any controversial issues,

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I think not. This will be one of those classes yet again where I'm sure afterwards when people start watching this on YouTube and Facebook and whatnot and all the social media,

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I will start getting called all kinds of names yet again and be told that I'm totally wrong but no one will give me, oh, that's right, scripture to back up their positions.

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Actually, I shouldn't say it. Some people will. We are going to talk about a lesson today that for some people, it seems controversial.

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I don't know why. It's actually one of the things I think that's so clear that I don't have any idea why people debate this one but they do.

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So if you are a student of the academy, that means you've enrolled at the website down there and you've paid for the year, you get one of these, the syllabus, and there.

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So you get a syllabus and with that, you can follow along with all the notes that we have.

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You'll be able to see the fill in the blanks that I will be giving you throughout the show so that you will be able to kind of keep your own notes.

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The blanks are typically things that we think are so important. We want you to make sure you fill them in.

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It helps with your memory. And so why? Actually, this is a thing.

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The more senses that you use, the more you're likely to remember something. And so we not only want you hearing it as we say it, or as I say it,

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I guess, we want you to read it in your syllabus and then we want you writing it, really also you could read it to yourself even, but the more senses that you use, the more likely you're going to be to remember.

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Actually, one of our best students, we have a student of the Academy, probably one of the best students and she probably gets the most out of the classes.

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And that would be because one of the things she does is she takes her syllabus and she reads it all before class.

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And she looks up every scripture and she follows along by taking the scriptures and remember what

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I said, don't read just a Bible verse, where she actually reads the whole chapter like I encourage you to do. If I quote one verse, reads the context, and then she tries to fill in the blanks in pencil, then watches the show live, fills in with the right answers.

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I'm told from her, she's right most of the time, which is really cool, but some she's not going to get right today.

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I know that because they just, they could be anything, just saying, got some good blanks for you anyway.

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So she then does that and then after class, she reviews the lesson again and fills in the thought questions in the back.

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And she's probably one of the best students because she really retains the stuff by going through each lesson three times, before class, after class, and during class.

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So that's a good way to do it. So I encourage you guys to try that.

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So we are in book number two. We've been in there for a while.

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We're calling this God's gift to man. Why? Because we first talked about man, that's section number three.

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Section number three is on salvation. We are now done with lesson number eight.

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We've gone to lesson number nine. There should be cheering. Yeah, where's your, where's your cheer box now?

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Okay, so we're done with lesson number eight. We're on lesson number nine and we are, oh that, okay, there's applause.

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Thank you. We're on lesson number nine and we are, can we go back to me now or what?

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You're just going to leave lesson? Okay, so you're leaving lesson number nine up because they're so happy that we're done with it.

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Thanks. All right, so lesson number nine is on eternal security and there are people, and I'll be honest, to me this seems to be one of those things when, when this is an issue that should be kind of clear, but I understand why some people don't.

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And so we're going to discuss some of that. So let us follow along in our syllabus.

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We are always, this is a doctrine that talks about the fact that we are always saved once we receive

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Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Now, if you have been following along through all the lessons, especially since lesson one, we're in what, 45, 46, 46 lessons, you've heard this over and over because we've dealt with this issue several different times, several different ways.

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And because of that, we're, we're kind of surprised that some people, if they've been following along, would have some issue here, but maybe you do.

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So the thing here is that at this point, I hope that you understand the nature of salvation and who does the saving.

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That's really essential because if you believe that God is sovereign and God saves you, then you're going to have an easy time with this lesson because you're going to have no problem understanding that we don't save ourselves and we don't lose ourselves.

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If God's, as we're going to talk about today, the author of salvation, He can also be the finisher and He's the one that's going to hold us and keep us.

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We're going to talk about these things. We've dealt with it in the past, but there are people who make issue with this and there's a couple of reasons.

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One is they come to pass, actually we're going to deal with some of the difficulties, but one is they come to passages that seem to talk about losing your salvation, that we have to persevere and we need to keep in mind that when we do a systematic theology, we need to evaluate what the entirety of the

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Bible says in its context, take those principles out and then start to work there.

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We don't start with our theology and then start to try to fit the other passages of the

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Bible that may not make sense to us and may not fit into our theology and try to fit them in. Okay?

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So, with that said, we'll start there. What about people who say that they were believers but they had no fruit?

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That's going to be a question we hope to answer today. Did they lose their salvation? What about those people who, you hear this from professing atheists all the time,

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I used to be a Christian but I gave up those fairy tales? We're going to talk about that.

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The simple answer is they were never a Christian. So these are some of the key questions we're going to talk about and these are questions being asked today in Christianity.

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While eternal security, the phrase itself, is found nowhere in Scripture, the concept is very clearly evident.

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Just like other things, like the word Trinity, you don't see that anywhere in the

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Bible. Oh, in fact, the word Bible is not in the Bible. So if you're only going to believe in words that are in the

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Bible, then you shouldn't believe in the Bible because it's not in there. Just saying.

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What do I mean by that? There's some people that argue that, well, you know, eternal security is not biblical because it's not found in the

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Bible. In other words, the words eternal security, the word Trinity is not in the

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Bible. Therefore, they'll say, well, it's not biblical. Well, we define biblical by seeing if the concept is in the

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Scriptures. And the Trinity, the concept of the Trinity is clearly taught. The concept of eternal security is clearly taught.

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The concept of the Bible, God's word, is clearly taught. So we have to understand how to understand these things when we systematize them.

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The reality is, is that Jesus, it doesn't say in our day and age, it doesn't say

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Jesus is God, but that's clearly taught. People have struggles with that because they're looking for language of our day and age.

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And we've used different labels throughout time to help us understand things as long as we all have the same understanding of those labels.

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OK, so so this this word is not there in Scripture, but the concept is taught.

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Eternal security is the belief that once a person enters into a relationship with God, they may never lose that relationship.

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Now, the following study that we're going to look at today is adopted from a book by Doug Bookman's.

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It's a great name for a guy that writes books, right? Bookman, Bookman's, his work on the subject, and we're going to provide some scriptural evidence for this doctrine in answer to this subject.

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I think we have, I think I counted there were 30 passages that we're going to try to look at today.

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30. And yeah, the Bible doesn't speak anything on it. And there's a lot more. I just don't have time for it.

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So let us start. This is where I say you're not going to get all these fill in the blanks, I'm sure.

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We're going to start by looking at the false views of eternal security, the false views of eternal security. What is the first false view that we're going to look at?

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If you have your syllabus, you may not have guessed this blank. Got to throw some in that you just won't guess.

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But here it is. The view of Roman Catholicism. The view of Roman Catholicism.

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That is your blank there. Roman Catholicism. That is this.

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And here we have several blanks here. The view of Roman Catholicism teaches that salvation may be lost.

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That's your blank, lost. That salvation may be lost by the committing of a mortal sin.

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Mortal is your second blank there. So Roman Catholicism teaches that you can lose your salvation if you commit one of their mortal sins.

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Salvation is number two there. Oh, it's not numbered. That's right. Okay. Salvation may be denied.

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Denied is your blank. Salvation may be denied by the authority of the church.

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So their argument is that the church can actually deny a person salvation.

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It kind of lifts up the church a little bit high. Just saying. Third is that salvation ultimately depends on the church.

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This is why the Roman Catholic Church has such a tie to them because they really are, in their doctrine, they are the dispensers of salvation.

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Where we talked about Calvinism and Arminianism and the views that some people have that God did 99%,

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He did all He could on the cross, but you have to do the rest. This is a case in Roman Catholicism where they say,

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Jesus did all He could on the cross and you do all that you can to not commit a mortal sin, but ultimately the church will decide if you're saved or not.

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Ultimately the church has the authority. That's real bad. That is a false view.

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The church does not. Now where do they get that? Let's not sit there and say, the Catholic Church is just heretical, they're nuts, this isn't in the

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Bible. No, they actually find biblical support for it. Because everybody finds biblical support for their arguments.

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They just take the passages out of context. So they get this from a passage in Matthew 18 where it talks about church discipline and it talks about the fact that the church, when you go to someone one -on -one, they've offended you, you go to them personally, privately, you don't make it public, they refuse to repent, you go and get witnesses, you don't tell the witnesses about the story ahead of time, but you go take the witnesses, you go to these people, you have them witness that the person is unrepentant.

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If they're still unrepentant, you go to the church, you have the entire church go and confront that person because by two or three witnesses, the unrepentance was observed.

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The whole church goes and encourages the person to repent and be reconciled. If the person still does not, the church votes to put him out of the church.

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That's what the process is. So you put him out of the church and there's an encouragement there that God is trying to say,

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Jesus is speaking and He's saying, hey, you know, be assured that what you've done on earth has already been done in heaven.

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What you bind on earth or loose on earth has already been bound or loosed in heaven, meaning God has already made the decision of what you're confirming, okay?

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That's the thing. So what you end up with is that they'll take

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Matthew 18 and they'll see this binding and loosing of the church and say that the church has the authority to bind or loose people in salvation.

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That's where they get it, alright? So, that's where they get it.

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Let's go to the second false view. This one should be clear to you by now because we've spent several weeks on this, but it is the false view of Arminianism.

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Arminianism, that is your next blank there, the false view of Arminianism. A person may be assured that he has salvation only in the present.

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When you believe in Arminianism, you are believing that you can lose your salvation, okay?

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Actually, this is the second one. So, a person, your second part there is a person may lose his salvation if he falls into willful sin.

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That's your blank, sin or apostasy. So, what's the difference? A willful sin is a sin that you commit over and over again willfully.

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In other words, you want to do it. You want to sin.

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Now, the issue is every sin we do involves our will. So, kind of every sin is willful. Apostasy is a person who is that person that used to profess, they used to say that they believed in Christ.

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They no longer do. They no longer believe that God even exists. That's apostasy. Someone who is apostatized has left biblical faith.

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They once were in a church or teaching or believing in biblical principles, though they were not a believer, and they apostatized.

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Now, the Arminian view would not say that they were not believers. They would actually argue they were believers.

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They were believing the truth, but they rejected the truth at some point. They committed some sin one too many times, and they lost their salvation.

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That is what the teaching of Arminianism would be. Now, this one, the assurance of salvation depends on the person.

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Now, in this one you have an issue. I'm saying the assurance of salvation. Actually, assurance of salvation is different than eternal security.

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So, I want to define these because I'm not going to really define them in your syllabus. What you have here is a case where there is the fact that we are eternally secure.

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That is a positional thing. When we're saved, we're set apart. We're positionally right before God, and we're in a right standing before God.

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And that doesn't change. But our assurance of salvation does. That feeling like we're close to God, that feeling like we're saved.

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That we can lose, that feeling. We often lose that when we're in sin.

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When we're committing sin, we feel like we're not saved. So, in Arminianism, unlike Roman Catholicism, in Roman Catholicism the ultimate source of salvation is really the church.

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Here, ultimately, salvation is ultimately dependent upon the person themselves to keep themselves saved.

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So, this is one where it is taught that somebody gets saved by Jesus Christ by faith, through grace.

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But then they must maintain their salvation through works. Ultimately, therefore, by being obedient to maintain that salvation, ultimately, you are saved by works.

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Your initial salvation may be by grace through faith of Jesus Christ, but your maintaining of it is by your own obedience.

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And therefore, it's really a works -based sanctification, not salvation.

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Note the difference. Let's be fair and honest with those that hold to this position.

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They're not believing in a works -righteous salvation.

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They believe in a works -righteous sanctification. Now, I've said it a couple times, but in case you're a new viewer here and you haven't understood these definitions.

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When I'm saying salvation, I'm talking actually regeneration. That time in the past when a person has changed from death to life, from being an enemy of God to a child of God.

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That point where God regenerates that person. At that point starts a process that we call sanctification.

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That is the process of us growing in good works, doing right because God is working through us to do those good works.

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Such that we are being made more like Christ. More saint -like.

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More set apart from the world. In other words, we're recognizing more sin on our lives and we're putting them off. We don't put them all off, but we put more and more off.

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And that continues, that process, until the day we die when we get to the third stage of salvation, which is called glorification.

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That's when we put away the sinful body once and for all and we are perfect. And we can sit in the presence of Christ.

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When we talk salvation theologically, there's three different meanings.

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Regeneration, sanctification, glorification. Those are the three stages. Past, present, future.

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Of course, for some people, maybe even regeneration is future because you haven't been saved yet. Could be.

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But that's the idea there. That there's a one time in both ends. Those bookmarks are a process of us growing.

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And that's really what people are talking about. And in that process, what's often revealed is whether a person really is a believer or whether they just make a profession of faith.

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Alright, so, last in your syllabus, let me not forget, who believes in his view of security?

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So, who are defined as these Arminians? Now, I'm going to say this and I'm going to say it up front so we don't get people emailing us.

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We do have a case where there are people that could be in these churches and they don't believe all of the doctrines of the denomination or the church that we're going to mention.

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This doesn't mean every person, every member of that denomination believes this.

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But this is what the denomination or the group believes.

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This is their official doctrine. So, one is the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes.

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The Nazarene church would believe in the view of Arminianism that you can lose your salvation.

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Wesleyans. Part of a Wesleyan church. Now, not every Wesleyan might believe this.

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But, this is the Wesleyan doctrine. Free Will Baptists.

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That's kind of put in their name, right? Free Will. They're arguing that we have a free will to choose

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God. Ultimately, it's us who chooses God. And therefore, ultimately, if we choose God, we can choose to reject

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God as well. So, that's just being consistent. I think consistently wrong, but it is consistent at least.

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But they would hold to that. Now, there are some people that are Free Will Baptists that don't believe that you can lose your salvation.

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Individual members, but the denomination does. Lastly is Pentecostals. Now, I have many good

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Pentecostal friends. And I know that that is a broad brush. I have many friends who are

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Pentecostals, Assembly of God church. And they do not believe that you can lose your salvation.

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Okay? So, the reality is that not everyone is going to hold to that.

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But that is what the doctrine of the denomination is. Okay, so let us now get, we're done with that.

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Okay, I plan to get done. I have, what, three pages of notes.

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I am, as anyone who has a syllabus knows, that I am at the bottom of the first page.

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And I got 30 verses to get through. We have one of two choices. I can do rapid fire and get through it.

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Or we can take it slow and pick it up next class. Now, I do know that someone put a challenge out in the chat room once before to see if I could get through a lesson.

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And offered to donate $50 if I could. Save your money, I'm not going to get it done.

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But if anyone is willing to take a bet the opposite way and bet that I won't finish this week and donate, well, hey, go to the website right down here, strivingforreturn .org

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slash donate. Go for it. You can even donate, really, if you want. You can donate to us monthly. That's right there too.

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So let us look at the biblical view, the biblical view of eternal security.

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So with this view, we have, let me start with a definition, all right?

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So the definition is that God provides, that's your blank,

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God provides and secures, those are your two blanks actually, provides and secures.

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God provides and secures final salvation for all true believers.

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In other words, those genuine believers that make both profession and possess salvation.

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And that's going to be the difference. But all true believers are God provides and secures final salvation for all true believers.

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This is an important recognition of God as the author, that is the blank there, the author of salvation, not the church and not the individual.

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Do you see why those two views that we started by talking about the false views, why I included those?

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Because what you see there is that those are two views that people have. One is that it is the church that ultimately saves you, what church you're part of.

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And the second believes that it is the individual. I would say that both of those are false views.

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Now the reality is many of my Arminian friends would argue as well that salvation is not based on the individual.

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And here we get into this distinction I'm trying to make. I would agree with them that regeneration is not based on the individual.

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But they would believe that sanctification is.

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And I agree with that to an extent as well too because sanctification is based on what we do, but the difference is the sanctification process doesn't cause us to lose our salvation.

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It may reveal that we were never saved in the first place.

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That's what it may end up revealing. Now, let us start, and I don't know if we're going to get much past just this, but let's start with a defense of this.

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And then we'll see. We may have to, because I think that when I start talking about some of the difficulties, that's going to take a while.

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And so, because I'm going to need to explain what the different views are that people have that believe you can lose your salvation.

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I want to make sure that I don't misrepresent someone's view. And this is something

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I really strongly want to encourage you to consider. Trying to be fair to someone else's view and making sure you don't misrepresent what someone else says.

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I had this week a very unfortunate event. Someone in our

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Facebook group started a discussion on whether a Christian can drink. And in that, it became an issue where the person decided what my position was.

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Now, I'm going to tell you actually what my position sort of is. My position on drinking alcohol is that I do not publicize my position.

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So therefore, by definition, you don't know my position, right?

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Unless you know me very personally, do we talk about these things. I mean, I think my board of directors knows.

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Some of the people that I've counseled over time may know. But the reality is

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I don't make that public. The person started saying that I'm unbiblical. I hold to unbiblical traditions.

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And that I'm inconsistent. How can you make any of those claims if you don't know my position?

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That's the question I kept saying. What is my position? What are my traditions? And the person would tell me.

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And then I'd say, no, you're wrong. That's not my position. And they would say, yes, it is. Now, I think

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I know what I believe better than anybody else. Well, the person decided to then go. Because the person decided they were going to become divisive.

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And they were not going to stop pointing out what they believed was my unbiblical inconsistency.

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When they didn't know my position. And so, we ended up, unfortunately, having to remove the person from the group.

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And so, he went to his wall and started to say that we kicked him out of the group for promotion of alcohol.

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That's not why we kicked him out. We kicked him out because he was being divisive. That's why.

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But, on his wall, I challenged people and said, what is my view? Because a bunch of people said

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I was unbiblical. Now, I will say this. There's one individual who I gained a lot, a lot of respect for.

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Because he contacted me privately. And I explained to him that, he said, you know, you're saying publicly, you're asking me what's your view.

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And when I'm telling you what I think your view is, you're saying I'm wrong. So, he said, privately, he said, I want to know what your view is.

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He said, my view is that I don't make my view public. That's why I say it's impossible for you to know my view.

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And he said, you know something, you're right. And he went, he did two things that really impressed me. One, he apologized to me first.

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Then he went online to the thread and apologized publicly. I gained a lot of respect for that gentleman.

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Because there are not enough Christians that do what this gentleman did. And that is to try to understand someone's position.

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To know what their position is. And not attack a false position.

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Because I guarantee you it is always easier to attack a false position. Because I can make your position be whatever

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I want it to be so it's easy to knock down. That's called a straw man argument. And I do not want to do that with anyone's view on that you can lose your salvation.

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It would be very easy for me to stand here, well, okay, sit here.

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And ridicule and mock and belittle those who believe you can lose your salvation.

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That wouldn't be honest dialogue. Now, would it? No. We must understand what their position is.

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Their position is rooted in the Bible. Let's just face it.

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They will give you Bible verses for their position. Just like we will give them

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Bible verses for our position. But the reality is we need to evaluate both of those passages that we are going to throw at each other in context.

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In other words, we have to do all that stuff that we talked about in the school of Biblical hermeneutics.

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We have to dig into this stuff and evaluate what the scripture actually says.

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That's what we have to do. A lot of people are unwilling to do that. Because they are more interested in proving that they are right.

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Now, I am wrong in a lot of areas. I just don't know where those areas are. If I knew where they are,

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I would change. And when somebody points out to me areas where I am wrong,

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I appreciate it. When people name call, I don't appreciate it. And so we shouldn't do that with others.

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I mean, I am sure you don't appreciate it either. So we need to make sure that we are being fair and honest with what someone else believes.

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Before we try to counter them with an argument. This is a thing that someone once told me long ago.

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You only know the argument if you can argue that position.

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In other words, I had a professing atheist back when I worked at Lucent Technologies. It basically became

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Bell Labs. I used to work for Bell Laboratories. And they outsourced us to Lucent Technologies.

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Which I don't even know if it's around anymore. I think they are even gone. Sad. But anyway, I had a professing atheist who had a

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TV show back then. And he wanted to debate me. And I said, I will debate you under one condition. I want you to argue for Christianity.

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And I will argue for atheism. He said, what would that prove? He's like, you know, there is no way to argue for Christianity.

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I said, and that is exactly what I am going to prove. That you don't know Christianity. But I understand atheism.

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So me as someone who understands atheism and says it's wrong. Compared to you who does not know

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Christianity and says it's wrong. I think the audience will side with me.

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Needless to say, I was never invited onto the show. Was never scheduled to appear.

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Alright. He didn't like that. So the reality is that's what we have to do.

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And that's one of the things I'm really glad in my seminary days. That that's one of my professors forced into us.

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Was that we had to be able to debate the other side of the issue. So that we understand what the issue is.

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Because people have what they believe as good reasons for everything they believe.

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As I said with this fellow, with the drinking of alcohol. He has good reason in his mind for believing what he believes.

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Okay. He does. I would disagree maybe with some of the things he would have.

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But the reality is that people are going to base what they believe on reasoning.

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Now it might be a logical reasoning. Or maybe taking scripture out of context reasoning.

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But that's where we need to do the work to study it out. And all of us approach the scriptures with presuppositions.

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We come to the text with an understanding of something. Unless of course you're a clean slate.

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Like when I first got saved and I didn't have anyone teaching me. Therefore I just read the Bible. And there's some things that I understood.

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Jesus was God. That clearly was taught in the scriptures. Understanding the Trinity. Yeah, I didn't quite get that one.

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I didn't understand how Jesus could be God and human at the same time. Didn't get it. But I believed it.

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Because that's what scripture said. Some of the finer points that we see as we study I didn't get.

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Whether I could lose my salvation? I had no doubt that I couldn't lose my salvation. So let's look at a defense.

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I think we'll probably just be able to get through those verses and wrap it up. But below is a list that you have in your syllabus.

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There's a list of direct scriptural statements that present a defense for the biblical doctrine of eternal security.

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And I'm going to hope to get through most of these. We may end up even picking this up next week. But let us start with some easy ones.

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This is John 6 and verse 39. And this is the will of Him who sent me.

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This is Jesus speaking. That I should lose how many? None of that which

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He's given me. But raise it up to the last day. So what is this clearly saying? Jesus is saying that the

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Father gives to Him certain people. Now this is why I had dinner.

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Here, we'll switch back over to me. So I had dinner this weekend with a friend of mine who does believe that you can lose your salvation.

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Now this is the friendships I actually appreciate. We can sit over dinner. And there was a gentleman who

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I've never met before. And the three of us are having dinner. And over dinner, we're discussing this flame war that was started up about me.

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And why I removed someone from the group and yada yada. But we're talking and my friend says, well you've called me a liar publicly.

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And I said, when did I call you a liar? He says, well you said on Facebook that all people. Or sorry, not that he's a liar, that he makes

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God a liar. And he says, well you said on Facebook that all people that believe you can lose your salvation make

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God a liar. He says, so you're saying that I believe God's a liar because he believes that you can lose your salvation.

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And I appreciate someone that we have our differences. We sit down and dig into the Scriptures and we discuss those differences.

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But we don't tear each other down. The conversation though, even though we disagree, is an edifying conversation.

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And we can joke about where we disagree. So now look at that verse again and see what this is saying.

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This is why I would say, as I said, that if you believe you can lose your salvation, it makes

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God a liar. Because God has said this. Jesus Christ is God. He said that the Father gives people to Him.

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And that He should lose none of them. I should lose nothing of all that the

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Father gives to the Son. But will raise them up on the last day. So if God the Father gives

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God the Son people to hold, Jesus is saying that He's the source of that.

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He is the one that will hold them. Do you see that? Therefore it is Jesus that's the ultimate source.

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It's not the church. It's not the individual. It's Jesus that will hold us until that last day.

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Let's look at John chapter 10. Three verses here. Verses 27 until verse 30.

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My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow

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Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

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Notice here in verse 28. This is Jesus speaking. He's saying that He's the one that they hear

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His voice. He gives them eternal life. That's a present tense. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

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Now the word never actually means never. He says they will never perish.

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And no one will snatch them out of My hand. Now this is the issue. People say yes, no one can snatch them out of Jesus' hands, but we can pull ourselves out.

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We would have to be stronger than God to do that. Jesus says that we have eternal life if we truly believe in Him, that we will never perish, and that no one will snatch us out of His hands.

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My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of His hand.

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I and the Father are one. So what you have here is He's saying God is greater than all.

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So with this, what you see is Jesus is, again,

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I mean this is why I say it's really hard to understand how they deal with it because, look, we have to reconcile the passages.

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They're going to look at passages that seem to teach that you can lose your salvation. Hebrews 6. We'll look at that next class.

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Hebrews 10. I have a paper on our website on Hebrews 6 and explaining why that can't mean that you can lose your salvation.

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But we have to reconcile those passages with these passages, and we don't reconcile it by just tossing it out or ignoring it or saying that, well, we can pull ourselves out of His hand.

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The argument that Jesus is making there is that Jesus will not let any of us perish, any of us.

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None will perish. And that it's the Father who gives us to Him, and God is greater than everyone.

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So no one is stronger than God. This is why I say if you believe you can lose your salvation, you're actually arguing that you as an individual are stronger than God.

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And the reason I say that is because if you can pull yourself out of God's hands, and He says no one can, and He says

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He's going to hold you, and He's saying He's stronger than all, then you must be stronger than Him to pull yourself out.

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Do you see that? I mean, I hope you do. I know I'm taking a long time on these, trying to exegete these passages, explain, pull the meaning out of the passages.

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I challenge you to look at these passages in context. I don't have time to basically preach a sermon on each of these passages, the entire chapters.

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But go home, or you may be home, and read the entire chapter.

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You don't have to read the context. Study these out. But we do have to reconcile these with those passages that seem to imply that you can lose your salvation.

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Let's be fair. There are passages that do seem to teach that. Okay? But we have to be honest with what they actually believe, what they actually teach.

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Let us try to get through Romans 8. This is one of the clearest, I believe. This is a long one, but I think a good one.

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This is Paul writing. He says, What then shall we say to these things?

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If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare

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His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?

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Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? Okay, so this is the question.

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You've got God's elect. How can anyone bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.

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Okay? God is the one that justifies us, not our behavior after we're saved. Who is to condemn?

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That's the question. Can we condemn ourselves? Well, Jesus Christ is the one who died.

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More than that was who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, meaning the

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Father, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

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Okay, so you see how this is transgressing here. Okay? It's Jesus who can condemn us, and it's only

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Jesus that can. But He's the one who died for us, and even more so He raised for us. He sits at the right hand of the

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Father, meaning He's acting as judge, and He's the one that's interceding for us to the

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Father. And then look at what it says. What shall separate us from the love of Christ? And He gives us a list of every possible thing.

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Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sorts.

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So let's look at these. He's trying to cover a wide range. Tribulation, things that go wrong in your life, or distress in your life, or being persecuted, or not having food, or not having clothing, or dangers, or being threatened with your life.

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Can any of those things, even if you give in to them, can you lose your salvation? No. The answer to these questions are no.

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As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all day long.

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We are regarded as sheep to the slaughter. No. And see,

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He even says it in verse 37. No. That's the no to the question that He just asked. In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

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Notice how it is. We will conquer, not because of us, but we will conquer through Him who loved us.

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So it's God who does that work. That's why we're conquerors, because it's through Him who loved us.

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For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else, in case

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He missed anything, nor anything else, in all creation will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus for our

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Lord. Now see what He does here again. He gives His long list. And these are opposite things, or some of them are opposite.

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So He says life or death. Notice how that's an opposite. It's neither life nor death is going to separate you.

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That's the extreme. That means everything in between. Angels or rulers, this is thought of holy angels or unholy angels.

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Nor things present, nor things to come. Whether it's now or in the future, height or depth, or anything else.

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He basically wraps it all up with the or anything else, in case He missed anything, or anything else.