Eternal Security, What We Believe, Part 33

What is their desire? Is their desire now to study the word more, to read the word more, to magnify

Christ more, to actually say I'm gonna die to myself and I'm going to live for Christ every chance that I get in every way that I can, right?

So there's the behavior we're looking for. There's the desire that we're looking for in what they value.

But in the stranger, it's a little bit tougher because we don't know them. And so that's where kind of conversation comes in and the ability to ask the right questions.

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the president and executive director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the

Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. I'm joined once again by half of the

Matter of Theology podcast, one of our other podcasters, Drew Vomnita.

Drew, how are you? I'm good, man. It's great to be back here with you.

It's always a fun time. And we have to be careful, though, because when you and I get talking, we can be here forever.

Yeah, I mean, first off, you triggered me just before we record with Andy Stanley, and then, you know, we go for almost two hours, but it was good and needful because people need to be warned.

You know, a lot of people, I think what we did different from a lot of people is a lot of people are talking about Andy Stanley, talking about what he said, which we did.

But we also talked about the tactics people like that play so that people can spot this and use critical thinking with others.

So if you haven't listened to the previous episode that we recorded, you could just check out the previous episode in The Wrap Report.

And the question there was, does Andy Stanley allow homosexuals to serve in church?

And that's what we are looking to answer, and I think we did effectively. But what we're going to talk about today is a very important question.

And one, there's a lot of debate over, and as you go through this podcast episode,

I'm going to say that I've always struggled with why there's debate when it comes to our salvation, whether it's secure.

In other words, can we lose our salvation, or is it something we have? Is it something we could lose?

Do we always feel like we're saved? These are things we're going to talk about in this episode. And so I hope you stay tuned for that.

Right now, as you're listening to this, if you're listening when it drops, I should be enjoying

Israel with Matt Slick and Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson. Those last two are from Mormon Research Ministry.

Most people here know Matt Slick from CARM .org. We're all going to be in Israel together with about 50 other people and enjoying the sights there.

So we've obviously prerecorded this. Just saying. So I'm going to say

I'm enjoying Israel right now. I'm just taking a shot in the dark. So what we're going to do is continue in our series as we've been doing.

We've been in a series that we're calling What We Believe. Now, this series is based off of a document you can get at strivingforeternity .org.

It is our doctrinal statement. We're going through this for a couple reasons. One, help you understand theology.

But really the purpose of it is so you can understand when you see a doctrinal statement, all that's in a doctrinal statement, what's behind it.

And you also get to see there's a whole lot more that often people don't think is in there.

They don't know about. And so this is 33, part three. So we've done—this will be the 33rd episode we've done in this series.

And so I encourage you to go back and listen to each of them. You could just go to rapreport .org.

And when you get there, just search for What We Believe. Start at part one and go through them all. But it will help you to get a good handle on it.

But we're in a section, so if you want to follow along, just go to strivingforeternity .org. On the

About section, click What We Believe. Scroll down to where it says Soteriology or the

Doctrine of Salvation. Open that. Expand that up. And we're going to cover the subtopic today of security.

Drew, I'm going to ask if you wouldn't mind reading that paragraph. I would love to.

And for your listeners, if you hear me clear my throat once or twice maybe during the show, it's because I'm getting over this little tickle in my throat.

So I want to apologize to you for that. I try to mute my mic as often as I can when it comes up, but just know that I'm just getting over a little bit of sickness.

But with that, let's get into this doctrinal statement here. On security, all the redeemed, once saved, are kept by God's power and are thus secure in Christ forever.

It is the privilege of believers to rejoice in the assurance of their salvation through the testimony of God's word, which, however, clearly forbids the use of Christian liberty as an occasion for sinful living and carnality.

All right. So even though this is a very short—this is probably one of the shortest two sentences that we've dealt with, there's actually a lot here, and there's been lots of debate on this.

There's debate over whether you can lose your salvation or not. There's debate on whether or not you can be saved and live any way you want.

There's debate over if you are saved and you can never lose it.

Does that mean that you have to be perfect? There's lots of different ways that this issue comes up.

What I want to first do before we get into the issue of whether you can lose your salvation,

I think there's a couple things we first have to start with, and I'm going to first start with a little bit of a story. The first time that I came in contact with this idea that you could lose your salvation, it was something that I was—some of you know, those who are regular listeners, you know

I grew up Jewish, so I didn't understand anything of Christian teaching. And in that process, when

I was in college and I started hanging out with other Christians, we used to have the family that would invite all the college students over that were

Christians, and even those that weren't, every other Friday night for a home -cooked meal, which was really a treat.

But it also had a Bible study. And so what we did is we'd have dinner followed by a

Bible study that Mr. McGlynn would do. And I remember as we were going through, there was once where he stated that he didn't want to get into a debate.

He didn't want to have arguments and disagreements. He's going to explain what he believes. And he didn't want to get into a debate about whether you could lose your salvation or not.

And he explained that he felt that you couldn't lose your salvation. One of the students started to make a case or argue that you could lose your salvation.

And I have to admit, I was in pure ignorance, okay? I didn't know any better.

I didn't really understand the doctrines. But I asked the question, and I didn't realize how profound the question was until I started studying the issue.

But I just asked the question of him, and I said, Mr. McGlynn, help me understand. If it is

God who saves me, how can I do anything to lose that?

I mean, salvation is not of me. How could I do something then to lose that?

And then if I could lose that, as this one student was saying, that you could lose it and regain salvation, I said, if salvation is of God, then how is it up to me to lose it and regain it?

In other words, I was questioning it by asking what is the nature of salvation?

And that's why we've gone through these several episodes in understanding what regeneration is and justification and these things, so that when we get to the issue of security, we have a handle on what it is where we talk about when we say salvation.

But there's a caveat. And Drew, I know you have seen this countless times. You've seen us deal with this on our

Apologetics Live when you come in. But there are many people who think they're saved and are not.

There's a word for that. Hold on. It's right on the tip of my tongue. It starts with an H. I believe it's a word you've used a lot of lately in talking about Christ's teachings, what he taught most of.

Yeah, I think it's hypocrite. That's it. There it is, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that a lot of people don't understand, that there are many who profess to be

Christian, but they're not Christian. And they think that just because they made a profession of faith, that that is enough to say that even if you have someone saying, well,

I was a Christian. Well, you know, we have a passage of Scripture that helps us to understand this. And all this is before we get into the doctrinal statement, because there is some things we have to first lay out so we understand the differences.

We speak about those that are hypocrites. We're talking about 1 John 2 .19, which says,

They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

But they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.

So what he's saying is that when somebody says they were a Christian and walks away from the faith, that is vindication that they were never of us.

They were someone who walked away. They were a hypocrite that stopped pretending. They were pretending to be a

Christian, and now they stopped. And this is really important, and Drew, like you said,

I speak about this often because so much of what Christ speaks about is on this subject.

He's constantly talking to the Pharisees who claim to be, in our terminology, saved.

They claim to be righteous, to be God's children, and in a right state with God. And yet they're not.

They're pretending. And he's constantly talking about hypocrisy. And we still have that today.

Now I would argue one reason why we have that today, Drew, I'll see if you agree with me or not, but I think the reason is because our enemy, he doesn't have to work in the false religions and cults and the world because they're already following their hatred for God.

He only needs to work within the Church. So if you've ever read C .S. Lewis's book

Screwtape Letters, it's this story of a demon who is being trained by his mentor demon, and he's got this human he's got to deal with, and how does he get this human who's just become a

Christian to walk away? And some of the things that the mentor says, well, expose to him that there's hypocrites in the

Church. Well, yeah, because if they can convince people there's hypocrites, they'll go, oh, well, that's not really what the

Church is about. Well, the Church doesn't say we're going to be perfect. Right. It says that we're going to be those who claim to be sinners and forgiven.

So if we act like sinners sometimes, that's not unusual. But what do we do with people that walk away from the faith?

I had a guy, Drew, that was in my church, my first church as a church plant. This is a guy who, he was an elder in the

Church, and you would never, ever have questioned his salvation.

I mean, this is a guy that wore his emotions on his sleeve. He really was a guy you were totally convinced was sold out for Christ, was willing to sacrifice everything for Christ.

And then we went through a rough season. Both his parents died in a short order.

Some issues happened in church where he was abused. And now his cousin tells me he can't even pass drug tests.

He denies Christ. He goes and has liquid lunches. He goes out to lunch and drinks. And I'm like, what is up with that?

Right? Well, he pretended for a period of time. And that's the thing MacArthur always says, truth and time go hand in hand.

Give enough time and the truth will come out. And given, this is a guy we wouldn't have questioned, but gave enough time and guess what?

He realized he wasn't a believer. Now, I would never have questioned that, but Drew, some people might be going, well, how could we then know?

Now, truthfully, you and I can't know. Like, you can't tell that I'm a Christian. You're assuming it, and I can't tell if you're a

Christian. I'm assuming it. What is it we look to to examine if someone's profession of faith, they're making a claim they're a

Christian, is there any way we could evaluate to say, you know what? I think they are. Or, hmm,

I'm going to give second thoughts. Yeah, so first, because in that, you have to deal with two different types of people, those whom you know who are close to you, and then those whom you don't know, right?

The stranger that kind of comes along. So in the person that I know, I look for behavior, right?

Do they act the same way they used to? Do they speak in the same way they used to? Is there a tangible change that has taken place to where I go, wow, this is not the same person that I used to know or that used to do these things.

So looking at behavior, then looking at desires, what is their desire?

Is their desire now to study the Word more, to read the Word more, to magnify Christ more, to actually say,

I'm going to die to myself, and I'm going to live for Christ every chance that I get in every way that I can, right?

So there's the behavior we're looking for. There's the desire that we're looking for and what they value.

But in the stranger, it's a little bit tougher because we don't know them. And so that's where kind of conversation comes in and the ability to ask the right questions.

So it works almost the same as if you were to evangelize someone. What are your thoughts about Christ?

Oh, you're a believer. Tell me about Christ. Who is Christ to you? Let's talk about the

Word. What is the Word? How do you view the Scriptures? And then depending on the answers that they give, just in those two questions, it's going to give me a good range as to whether they're a true believer or not.

Or even if they are a true believer, if they're a new convert or if they're a seasoned

Christian. That's a really important point because I think that for seasoned

Christians, a lot of times they expect the new convert to be seasoned. And that's a mistake.

We shouldn't expect that someone's just instantly saved. I remember going to church, when

I first started going to church and there was a guy who we had a new believer come in and this guy was frustrated because this guy was flipping pages trying to find where he should be in the

Bible. And the older guy was just grabbing this Bible, flipping it, handing it back to this guy.

And you could see he was impatient. And I remember pulling that guy aside and I said, Danny, I got a question for you.

You seem frustrated with him. He's like, well, I just keep hearing the pages turn and I want to pay attention.

I said, Danny, when you first got saved, did you know your way around a Bible? He's like, oh no, that took me a long time.

I said, would you have appreciated if someone was frustrated with you? And all of a sudden he's like, you know, you're right.

And now the next week I saw him, instead of grabbing the guy's Bible, he opened his own

Bible to the table of contents to show him where he was. And the guy, this is a funny thing, is people don't often think to look at the table of contents.

But I mean, that's what I did. The only way I could find anything was a table of contents and a Bible at first. But that's, we don't know if someone else is saved, but we are fruit inspectors, right?

We're looking at the fruit. Now I would say 1 Corinthians 13 says, love believes all things. So if someone tells me they're a believer, like you're saying with a stranger,

I want to believe that at face value, but then I'm going to inspect the fruit, right?

And so one thing we have to realize is when we talk about whether you can lose your salvation, there is a difference between those who possess salvation and those who profess salvation.

So possessing salvation is someone who is in Christ. They are a believer. And we're going to say, as we have in this doctrine,

I mean, they cannot lose that. But there's those who profess to have a faith and they don't have one.

And this is what the entire book of James is about. James is all about people that claim to be saved, but they don't have the works that go along with salvation and that should make you wonder.

Yeah. So it's funny that you mentioned the book of James because James, you can really retitle it as faith in action because I believe it was

MacArthur that I learned this from that the book of James is probably the first letter that was written to the church.

And it was written around the time of the dispersion of the Christians who were in Jerusalem after the stoning of Stephen.

And so the church is being dispersed and James is writing this to all these

Christians, to those who are the members of the church who are going through persecution.

And so it's an encouraging letter, but it's also one to say, hey, this is now when you put your faith in action, in trial.

And so with what you were saying about MacArthur, about truth and time, that's going to reveal the character.

I would also add another T, trial. Truth, time, and trials are going to reveal the character of the person.

Well, and so you look at the parable of the four seeds and what do you have? One is exposed to be a false convert by time and another is exposed to be a false convert by trials or thorns.

Right. And then the other two, well, it was clear. One not saved, one is.

And so we have to, and why am I spending the time to explain that? Because anytime you get into these discussions, it's going to fall into an area where people are arguing about the issue of what we would call a false convert, but they say are someone who's saved.

What 1 John 2 .19 says is they were never of us. That when they walk out from among us, that exposes, they were never of us.

And that's what John is saying. And that's what we have to recognize. When we look at these passages where people say, oh, this is teaching that you can lose your salvation.

What they often will say is that we keep our salvation by obedience.

So many of the people that would say you can lose your salvation will agree that we are saved by faith alone in Christ alone.

They don't dispute that, but they say we could lose our salvation if we're not obedient.

So really it would be sort of this way. You're saved by faith, but you keep it by works.

And that generates a works -based sanctification. Notice I didn't say works -based salvation.

There's a difference. These folks would not say you're earning your salvation, your regeneration by works.

They would be against that. But what is being taught either directly or indirectly is that you keep your salvation by your good works.

And if you stop, then that exposes that you're not a believer. Now there are the extreme, the sinless perfectionists who will say you must be sinlessly perfect.

And if you're not, if you sin willfully, then you're not saved. And many of them will turn to Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10.

I'm not going to take the time to read those because we got a lot of other passages I want to cover. But I just want to say that if you read those passages or many of the other ones, they seem to be saying that someone can lose their salvation because it speaks to someone who's tasted of the light.

But that's someone that's been in church and has heard the truth. They're a hypocrite, a false convert, someone who heard the truth, attended the church, pretended, but walked away.

That's what it's referring to. And by the way, in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10, if those are, let's put it this way, whatever that's speaking of, whether it's hypocrites or someone that loses their salvation, it says you can never get it back again.

It's impossible. So the most common argument, and you'll see this in a lot of the charismatic and assembly of God churches, will say that you can lose your salvation, gain it, lose it, gain it, lose it, gain it.

And they'll use these passages that say it is impossible to get back. Well, if it's impossible, then you can't lose it and gain it.

You lose it and that's it. That's right. And especially touching on the topic of works, because there are people that would try to say, well, like you were saying, works equal regeneration or works equal justification.

So I have to continually be re -justifying myself by my works. Well, you're confusing the whole point.

It's an act of sanctification. Now, our works, we should desire good works by having our nature transformed.

So because God has changed our nature, the works that we do are now desired within us.

They're works that we didn't actually desire beforehand. And we don't do them for our own benefit.

We do them because they bring glory to God. So when James talks about works, it's the fruit that comes from the root of salvation.

So it's that proof of sanctification, as you were talking about being the fruit inspector.

And I've had people say to me, Drew, I just don't see in scripture where it gives me the sheriff's badge to judge other people's fruit.

And I go, then clearly you haven't been reading scripture because I can just take you to one, Titus 1 .9.

And the person saying this to me is a minister. And I go, Titus 1 .9,

the elder, the overseer, is to be someone who knows sound doctrine and then is able to refute those who contradict it.

The only way you know how to refute it is if you can spot it by inspecting the false fruit.

Now, I like to turn to a different one because, you know, all these people, if it's not in the red letters, it just doesn't count.

Did Jesus actually say that? Well, I like to point out that in John 7 .24, Jesus said this, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

Now, here's what I find interesting about that. The word judge there is an imperative in the

Greek. What does that mean? That means it's a command. Jesus is commanding us to judge, but he's commanding us not to judge by appearance, but to judge by a righteous judgment.

And that judgment there in that is a definite article, which means it's the judgment.

What is it? It's the word of God. It's the standard. And every time you see Matthew 7, do not judge, everyone knows that one.

Do not judge. Shall not judge. They don't keep reading. It's never against judging.

It's against, it's always the standard of judgment. And so as we get into discussing, can you lose your salvation?

It's important for us first to lay the groundwork as we've done to say there is a difference between people that profess to be

Christians and those that possess Christ. And that is the difference. And if you don't understand that distinction, we'll probably have a very difficult time with this doctrine because it can get confusing to those that are trying to make it so.

Because people will see, well, to those who endure, well, the whole point is though, those who are

Christians will endure, and we're going to get to that. Yeah. Now, I do want to make a statement about the passages you made in Hebrews because, or reference, because there are several of what we would call warning passages in Hebrews.

And what people who use those to try to say that you can lose your salvation, what they're failing to connect is the context behind Hebrews, the historical context, because Hebrews was written to a group of Hebrews that were being pressured and persecuted to turn away from Christ and to go back to Judaism, to go back to the old system.

And so the author of Hebrews is writing these warning passages to say, no, don't do that.

So you've seen it, I've seen it. People completely rip the passages out of context, misapply them.

And if people want, they could go to strivingforturning .org and just read my article that I wrote on Hebrews 6.

And I try to go through and lay out the case of what it speaks about. But let's real quick take a word from our sponsor before we get to our doctrinal statement, and that would be

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Go to mypillow .com. Use the promo code SFE. It stands for Striving for Eternity to get yourself not only great discounts, but it also lets them know you heard about them here so that they will continue sponsoring this show and our ministry.

We appreciate that. So what we want to do is look at this. We're saying in this doctrinal statement, and as you're seeing already, when we have a doctrinal statement, what it says is also contradicting or countering things it doesn't say.

So what is this saying? This is saying all the redeemed. Now, let me just stop there.

Why are we saying all the redeemed? Because that phrase is to be very specific about what we've just spent the last 10 or 20 minutes explaining, that not everyone who claims to be redeemed are the redeemed.

So what we're trying to say is this is specific to those who are in Christ, not because they make a proclamation of that, but because God regenerated them.

Redeemed, because you're absolutely right. This is a specific term. And to redeem, it means to buy back.

And so it's a purchase. So the redeemed are those who have been bought with Christ's blood.

And so anyone who would say that you can be a redeemed and then walk away from it, all they do is cheapen the sacrifice of Christ.

Yeah, because the reason I think that there's a struggle for so many is when were our sins paid?

Now, I'm not going to ask you, Drew. You already know this. You've watched me do this on Apologetics Live time and time again.

I'll get someone that comes in and we get this discussion and I'll ask them, when were your sins forgiven?

And if they look at me kind of funny, then I say, okay, were your sins forgiven when you believed?

Like when you put your faith in Christ and made a choice to believe in Jesus? Or was it like at a different time before the foundation of the world or at the cross or some other time?

And almost always someone that is holding to this view will say, when

I believed. And I say, can you do me a favor? Can you just turn to Colossians 2 and read for me verse 13?

So they turn there and it says, when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,

He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.

So at that point I stopped and I said, okay, how many of your sins have you been forgiven?

Well, all. Okay, so first off, whenever you believed, whenever you went from being dead to alive, all your transgressions would have been paid.

So if you're going to say it's when you believed, then all of your transgressions have been paid for.

So therefore, if they're paid for, they can't be charged against you.

That'd be double jeopardy. So we can't have where you're going to sit here and say that, oh, well, when

I believed, all my sins are forgiven, but now God's going to hold it against me. But it's even worse.

Read verse 14. And they go, okay, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

So then I explain, okay, verse 14 talks about this canceling the certificate of debt. In other words, He has totally removed the debt for all of our sin.

The question is when in that passage did He do it? At the cross. So if all of our sin, if for all the redeemed, if our sin was paid at the cross, all of it, such that the debt was canceled, then there is nothing else to pay because all of our sin is already future to the cross.

You see, Christ is saying He paid that at the cross, all of it.

So how could it be that He paid for only some of it then? Was there some

He didn't see? And I have had people argue that. Maybe Jesus didn't know you were going to do that sin.

Well, then what you have is a God who's not omniscient, and that's not the God of the

Bible. Notice what I just did there, folks. What I've been telling you throughout this series, I went right back to the attributes of God.

Yes. Right back to who God is and said, ah, I see a problem with that theology.

What is it? God's not omniscient in that theology because He didn't know I would do something. Now, the reason that Jesus could say that we're secure is because He's saying that He paid it at the cross.

In other words, it is so finalized for Him because He's an eternal being and there is no past, present, future to God, it's a done deal.

So He's saying it was paid at the cross even though you are post -cross and all your sin is post -cross.

So when He says all the redeemed, He's speaking of all those whose sins were paid at the cross. And so He says once they're saved, okay?

So we say all the redeemed once saved are kept by God's power.

That's important. In other words, it's not us who keeps us, it's God who keeps us.

That's why we endure to the end. Not because we're so strong and we're so good and we're so obedient.

We endure to the end because God is so good and God is so strong and God is so obedient.

You see the shift there. This is the difference between a God -centered theology and a man -centered theology.

When you have a God -centered theology, it focuses on how great God is and how pathetic we are.

But in man -centered theologies, we're the obedient ones, we're the good ones, we're the strong ones.

We steal that from God. And so what we're saying here is that all the redeemed once saved are kept by God's power and thus secure forever.

Why? Because God is the one that holds us. The classic passage on this to look at is going to be

Romans 8 because he's going to say, what is it that could separate us from the love of God?

And he goes through a whole litany of things. What's going to be stronger than God?

The answer is nothing. And it's interesting because what people will do is they'll sit here and say that somehow

God's saying that He won't let us go, but we can kind of wiggle ourselves out of His hand. Well, Romans 8 starts by saying there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ.

So if there's no condemnation, then how did there suddenly become condemnation?

How could it be that we're not under any condemnation and then all of a sudden we are?

And so he ends up saying, what's going to separate you from the love of God? It's going to be things in the world, things invisible, things of the earth, things above and below.

The answer is nothing. He goes through all these extremes to say nothing can separate you from the love of God.

Why? Because God is strong enough, omnipotent, faithful enough.

He's all -knowing. There's no sin that you will ever commit that God didn't know you'd commit, and He still paid it at the cross.

Before you knew you would do it, He knew you would do it because He's omniscient. When you look at those attributes and you realize there's no way that we could ever lose that if God's the one holding us because there's no sin we could do that He didn't know about.

He says there's no condemnation. How could He say that? Because He already knows the end from the beginning. What I find is what helps me in these struggles that people have with this security is to focus on who

God is, and it helps in our understanding in our theology because we start to realize, oh, we're secure because of what

God has done. We're secure because we can't lose that salvation because of who

God is, right? He was willing to, as it says in Romans 8,

He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all, how will

He not also with Him freely give us all? What do we see?

This is where He gets into the question. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Well, tribulation. Drew, you mentioned trials. Well, tribulation? No. Tribulations won't.

That's the answer He's giving here. No, tribulations won't. Distress? No. Persecution?

No. Famine? No. Nakedness? No. Herald? No. Sword? No.

And then what does He say? Paul says, just as it is written, for your sake we are being put to death all day long.

We were considered as sheep being led to slaughter, but in all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

It's because of Him, not us. The reason we are able to have security in our salvation is because of what

God does, not what we do. That's right. I think about the quote from Dr.

John MacArthur, where he said, if you could lose your salvation, you would. And when we think about just us on our daily basis, how we live our lives,

I think there should be numerous times then where I should lose my salvation, but it's not of me.

You're talking about the power of God to keep me. Another famous passage is

John 6. Well, two famous passages. John 6 and then John 10. John 6,

Jesus describes how the Father gives a group of people to the

Son, and the Son does what? He keeps them. He secures them until He raises them.

And then if we go to John 10, the comparison that Jesus is using between the shepherd and the sheep, do sheep go and find their own shepherd, or does the shepherd go and choose and bring together his sheep?

If I'm a sheep, I'm too dumb to go find the right shepherd that I need.

That's why the shepherd came to me, and the shepherd, by His grace and by His mercy, pulled me to Him, and then

He keeps me. And then some of those times, we'll just say trials and tribulations when they come, and I have those moments of doubt where sin basically creeps in.

What does the shepherd do? Well, he breaks my legs and carries me through it, right?

Yeah, and the reason we can understand these things is because we dig into what the

Scriptures say about who God is. And this is important to do. In fact, I would argue this way. The better tools we have for understanding the

Bible, the better we're going to be able to dig into it. And with that, I'd encourage you to check out Lagos Bible Software.

It's one of our other sponsors here that you could check out all that they have. Thousands and thousands, well, tens of thousands of books that you could get.

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I have a lot of really bad theology in my Lagos library because it's good to get information from the source, but I have, what

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So, check out Lagos .com slash S -F -E. Now, let's get into this next section here, because this next sentence, we deal with another aspect of security, that is whether, okay,

Drew, I'm convinced, you convinced me I can't lose my salvation, but man,

I've been struggling with, name your sin, whatever thing you struggle with, okay,

I will tell you my biggest struggle, anyone who's a regular listener here, you already know it, but I may not look like it, but my biggest struggle is food.

I love to eat. I may not look like it, because I run a half a marathon a day.

That keeps a lot of that off, but the reality is I struggle with that.

Now, that is something I have struggled with for so long, and I could sit there now, you could look at, no matter what the sin is, whether it's maybe you struggle with looking at your thought life, or maybe it's alcohol, or you're addicted to something, cigarettes or drugs,

I'm not going to belittle these things and say that there's not a struggle, there is.

People who struggle with same -sex attraction, that's a struggle. It doesn't make any of these things, just because we struggle with it doesn't mean it's not a sin, and just because we struggle with it doesn't mean we're not saved.

But when we struggle for a long time, there could be a question we ask ourselves, and I know this because I've dealt with this in counseling countless times, is someone will come to me and say, but I just don't know that I'm saved.

I have doubts. And one of the questions I ask anyone that comes in my office for counseling and says,

I'm really struggling, I'm not sure if I'm saved, my question is, what sin is besetting you?

And I'll get something that'll be, oh, no, no, no, it's nothing like that. I go, absolutely, it is. It's one of two things, either there's a sin besetting you, or you're not saved.

So which is it, right? The fact that we as believers struggle does not mean we're not saved.

In fact, one of the questions I'll ask someone that is doubting their salvation, I ask them, let me ask you this question.

This is just a general question I ask. With whatever the sin is, so we'll take lying.

Drew likes to lie. Drew likes to say nice, kind things about me, which is a complete and utter lie, and he likes to do that.

So that must be his besetting sin. So when you lie, Drew, the question that I would ask, if this was you,

I'd be like, okay, do you hate the sin of lying?

Or do you hate the consequences of lying? There's a big difference between those two.

When you hate the sin of lying, it's because what does lying stand for? It stands for what

Christ paid for on the cross. And we have a hatred for it because it's something God hates.

And therefore, it just irks us from within, even though we do it and we have that short -term pleasure from it.

But yet we hate the sin itself. Or do we hate the consequence? I don't like getting caught.

I don't like the feeling of guilt. I don't like when people know that I did that. Well, if you like the first one, you're a believer.

And if it's the second one, you're probably not a believer, right? Yeah. That's the difference.

And we'll just stick with lying, right? When we lie, if we claim to be in Christ, when we lie, we say

Christ is a liar. We attribute that to Christ. Because, and this is the thing, right?

In that such a good line of questioning that you're going through, do you hate the sin of whatever it is?

Because we should, when we sin, hate that, I mean, we should have a morbid hatred to where it leads us to do what

John Owen said, mortify it, continually put it to death. And a good way, because I've been asked this question too, a good way you can know if you are saved is if you have that hatred, you have that strong conviction, and then you have that hatred for the sin.

That is a good indication, because otherwise you wouldn't care if you did the act.

So you have the hatred for the sin that came through a strong conviction of the sin, and then that's seeking you to want to rid yourself of it, to put it to death.

But another indication is the sensitivity to it, right? Because we have sins that are sins by commission, and sins are omission.

Commission, I willfully do it. Omission, I'm not aware that I'm doing it.

And we all have those, and sometimes it's, we need, that's where in our prayer time we say,

Lord, the things I don't know that I did, please forgive me for those things. And part of my prayer for that is make me sensitive to those things.

Because when I willfully sin, and I know I sin, like if I wronged my wife or something, like I told her

I did something, or I didn't do something when I was supposed to, or something like that, well, that should bother me.

And if that doesn't bother me, that's a problem. So I need to have a sensitivity to it. And we see where Paul, in the

Scriptures, he becomes more and more sensitive to his sin the closer and closer he gets to Christ.

And so we need to have that, because that enhances the conviction, that brings us more and more to repentance, which is what we need.

And that's a good indication that you are in Christ. Yeah, because even, so like you said, we have sins of commission, those things we know we should do and we don't do.

We have sins of omission, those things that we shouldn't do but we do. We have the case where we could be desensitized to either one and not recognize it.

But the more we walk with Christ, the more we should be kind of, some of those things being chiseled off, but more refined, we start to notice more things that are under the covers.

And so what we're saying in this is, because we have the security, it becomes then, as we say here, it is the privilege of believers to rejoice in the assurance of their salvation.

In other words, when you understand that your salvation is secure, then it's a privilege to rejoice in our assurance.

What it actually does to us is make us realize, instead of saying, oh, I doubt I'm saved, look at what I did.

No, every time we lie, we're gonna go, wow, God is so amazing that He saved someone like me.

You see, what many believe is that if you teach that if someone is secure in their salvation and they can never lose it, that what they're gonna do is go out and sin as much as they want because they're never gonna lose it.

Well, that actually exposes that they don't have salvation. Right. Because the attitude that the person would have is that they hate the sin itself so much because of what it costs

Christ. And think about, Paul even addresses that very issue in Romans 6.

The very beginning of Romans 6, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound?

And then what does he do? He gives the strongest negation in the Greek language you can, me gnoita.

No, no, a thousand times no. Yeah, that's the whole thing is that the person who says, well, then you can sin and do whatever you want, that's a person who wants to go and sin.

I remember when I was in college and I had this couple come to me. We were in a retreat. This couple, they were,

I can't remember, I think they were engaged, but I can't remember if they were engaged yet or working on it. And they came to me and they asked a question.

They said, how far can we go in our physical relationship before it's sin?

And my answer was, too late. Yeah. It's already entered your mind.

Exactly. I said, the reality, the fact that you're asking that question, it's too late.

It means that you're already thinking, how far can we, we want to not sin, but we want to go as far as we can.

Well, see, the genuine believer doesn't want to see how close they can come to sin without crossing the line.

They want to see how far away from sin they can stay because they love

Christ. Right. Totally different mindset. Yes. And that's the difference. That's why it's a privilege.

When we understand who God is and that he saved us anyway, the more we sin, the more undeserving we recognize we are, and more amazed we are that God would have anything to do with us.

That's why it's a privilege and that's why we could rejoice. And then we're saying in this, it is the privilege of the believer, of believers to rejoice in the assurance of their salvation, but how?

Through the testimony of what? Their own works? No. Through the testimony of God's word.

You see, that's the difference here. Those that say you lose your salvation, their testimony's in their ability to keep themselves saved.

We have no ability to do that. We didn't have an ability to save ourselves, therefore we don't have an ability to keep ourselves.

And that was my question when I was at the McGlynn's house asking that during that Bible study.

I'm like, if we can't save ourselves, how can we keep ourselves saved? Well, that's the thing.

And so we're saying by the testimony of the word of God, when someone says, how do you know you're saved?

I'm not gonna turn and say, but I've done this, this, this, this, this. No, I'm gonna say, look what

God's word says. It's because the testimony of the word of God, which, as we say here, which, however, clearly forbids the use of Christian liberty as an occasion for living in a cardinal way.

This, I just think of 1 Peter 2. Okay, in verse 11, he says,

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against your souls.

So he's admitting that these fleshly lusts do wage war against our souls.

There is that struggle there. He's recognizing that. And yet he's saying that we wage war against that.

Okay, we don't use our freedoms as a means of vice.

And therefore, what we want to do is, this is the difference that we have, is it's not, do you have

Christian liberty? Yes. Are there certain things that maybe for Drew, it wouldn't be a sin, but for me, it would.

Maybe Drew can sit there and say, you know what, he can kick back and have a beer and it has alcohol.

And that's not a problem for him, but maybe it is for me. Maybe I can't handle that because maybe

I have an addiction in my past. If I have even one, I'm going to give myself over and I'm going to lose it.

So it's better to stay away. Or maybe I just think that to even have any bit of alcohol is bad.

I was actually out with a pastor and we were at one of the hibachi places where they serve, they cook the food in front of you.

And it's a kind of an entertainment thing. And he had this bottle of water. Well, it was like a vinegar water, but he, you know, and they had the heavy accent.

I couldn't understand what he was saying. Most of us at the table couldn't understand what he was saying. And I thought he was saying, as he squirts the squirt bottle, he was saying suck, like as he's squirting it.

Now he squirts it first to some of the kids. Okay, then he turns to the pastor and one of the people at the table said he was saying, as he squirts it in this pastor's mouth, and then in mine, the pastor's wife said, he's saying sake, not sucky.

Right? We couldn't really tell. I still don't know which one he actually said. The pastor was of the, you know, he had never had alcohol and he has a conviction that any alcohol would be a sin.

So he immediately spit it out, right? I reasoned with him and looked at him and said, do you really think that the restaurant would have given it to a bunch of kids if it was alcohol?

Right? Besides the fact that I had it in my mouth for, you know, a taste, I was like, it was just like, you know, rice vinegar.

You know, I have tasted sake once before. Trust me, I know the difference and I don't like the taste of sake.

So, but you know, like, what did I see? He had a conviction. For him, even if it was not sake, it wasn't alcohol, the thought that it could have been was a conviction he had.

To him, it would have been sin. That's what Paul says. If it goes against your conscience, you don't want to go against your conscience.

So if it's against your conscience, it's a sin. And so in that case, could some people have a liberty that others don't?

Yes. However, let me be clear when I'm saying that. Does that give us a right to flaunt our liberties?

No. Okay? If you believe that having an occasional beer once in a while, that you can do that,

I can't find scripture that says you can't do that. You just can't get drunk. Fine.

Am I going to encourage you to do that, say at a conference where they have everyone go to the bar, or am

I going to encourage you to do that? I still remember at an evangelism event, we were at, a whole bunch of evangelists got together.

I told my team that I would take them to dinner beforehand because we weren't going to have a lot of time. So I just said,

I'll set up a place. We went for dinner, and that way I got to talk to the whole team. And we had one guy on the team that ordered a glass of wine.

Now, was there anything wrong with ordering a glass of wine? Not really. But you know what?

I was uneased with it. I know some others that looked at that and were struggling with it.

Now, would I, if I was in that case, would I have done that? No. Why? Because I don't know how that might cause others to struggle.

Right? Yeah. Well, I've got a story for you. And my conviction about alcohol is different than yours and some of the other friends that we have.

But there was a time where my dad was living with us, with my wife and I.

And I would keep maybe a six -pack in the fridge or something. Well, there was an incident that happened to where my dad couldn't drink alcohol.

He would be monitored for it. And this gets right into what you're talking about, about flaunting.

Would it have been sin for me to continue to keep, say, a six -pack in the fridge because I wasn't affected by what he was going through?

Yes. So what I did was I took it and I didn't have any in the house, in the whole house, until he was done going through what he was going through.

And even still then, I really didn't. Because I'm okay with alcohol, but even if I drink it myself, it's sparingly.

Because I really just don't like the taste. Well, the thing is, Paul gives us an example when it comes to these things.

He says, look, you go to someone's house. You're with another brother in Christ and you go to an unbeliever's house.

And that unbeliever, because he's an unbeliever, he went to the market to get the cheapest meat he could, and he got meat that was offered to idols.

Basically, what they'd do is they'd have meat they would offer to idols. Maybe some of you go to a Chinese restaurant and you see the little

Buddha and they have some oranges in there. I remember as a kid, that was so bad. We were living in a

Chinese restaurant. I grabbed the orange to eat it on my way out. Did you grab Buddha's belly, too?

Yeah. I'm like, well, what are they going to do with it? They're just going to throw it out and put another orange out the next day, right?

To me, I was, you know, but what would they do? There's some people that wouldn't eat the meat that was offered to the idols, say turn around before it's bad, and they sell it on the market a lot cheaper.

Here you've got someone who's a newer believer and he is struggling because the meat that was offered to idols should not be eaten.

And here you find out that you're at an unbeliever's house serving meat offered to idols and your brother is offended.

And this is the thing, most people, if you ask them, okay, you're in a situation, you have to offend one of two people, either your brother in Christ or the person you want to evangelize.

Who do you offend? Do you know most evangelicals will say, offend your brother to share the gospel with the believer, with the unbeliever.

And what Paul says is you offend the unbeliever and you protect your brother's conscience.

He says, you don't eat the meat offered to idols, even if it's going to offend your host, because your brother's conscience is more important.

And that is what you end up seeing. We do have Christian liberty, but we use our

Christian liberty not because it's like, well, hey, I can do this, so everyone should celebrate.

That's actually the very thing that many Christians complain about with LGBT, because what do they want to do?

They want to flaunt it. They want to throw it in your face and make you celebrate. Well, if you're going to be against that with the

LGBT, then you should be just against it when you flaunt your liberties in front of your

Christian brother or sister. I'm all for Christian liberty.

I'm also for not infringing upon someone's Christian liberty, but I'm also mainly for responsible

Christian liberty, and I would call it biblical Christian liberty, as you're talking about, because there are things that I might consider sin that you might not consider sin, and there's things you might consider sin that I might not consider sin.

But when we come together, what should I do? Well, for the sake of unity and loving my brother,

I'm not going to flaunt whatever it is. Why? Because I love my brother more than I love whatever this is.

And so how can you tell if someone loves themselves more than they love others? Do you hear this all the time?

Well, it's Christian liberty. Well, it's Christian liberty. Okay, you love yourself. If you can't just hold on for a little bit, maybe wait until you get home and it's just you.

If you can't, there's a sin problem that we need to address. Correct, and that's the thing that we're saying here, folks.

So once you are redeemed, are you saved forever? Yes, you cannot lose that.

That should give us the assurance that we can rejoice in that assurance, but it does not give us an excuse to abuse our

Christian liberty. So I hope that helps with this question of whether we can lose our salvation, the security we have in salvation.

Now, what we're going to talk about next week is we're going to finish up— well, I can't say we'll finish it up next week, but we'll at least start it next week— to finish up this topic of salvation in the area of separation, talk about separation from sin.

So this is going to be a good topic for you for next week. So my brother Drew's going to join me again next week.

If you like what he has been saying, go check out Matter of Theology. That's the podcast that they have.

It's available on christianpodcastcommunity .org. Check out all that they're doing.

And for this episode, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.

more content, or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.