43 - Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Part 5 - Perseverance of the Saints (Can you lose your Salvation)

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44 - Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Part 6 - Free Will and the Commands to Repent and Believe

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad to have you with us.

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You ever have that feeling like you know you forgot something but you don't know what it is?

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Yeah! Got that right now. I actually think like I'm supposed to have something here for class and I don't know what

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I forgot. If I could forget my brain, I would. That's the reason God put the brain solidly within this structure called a skull so we don't forget it because, well, some of us probably would.

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Anyway, well, let us begin with class tonight. Actually, I do got to start with a couple things.

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One, oh, we have, okay, I was going to hold this up but I was told that we have an actual copy.

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Let's see. Wait, which copy looks better? Hold it. Wait, I got to get this right.

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There we go. Yeah, okay. That one's not as glossy. That looks better. Fine. The book you have seeing up there right now is the

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Growing in Grace book that is available at the store right now if you wanted to purchase it.

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But if you're a student, we're going to be going through that one in just a few weeks as we finish up this book, the book that we're currently on, which is really our school's systematic theology.

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So, as we finish this book up, we're going to take some time to look into the Growing in Grace book which is going to be basically a study that we're going to do with you guys to teach you how to use it so that you can use it with others.

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It's basically a discipleship guide and it's going to be us trying to help you to be a discipleist.

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What's a discipleist, you say? Well, considering it's a word I just coined yesterday,

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I'm sure you never heard of it. But you've heard of an evangelist, someone that goes out and evangelizes.

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While striving for eternity, we are trying to create discipleists, people who disciple.

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This academy is just one of the ways that we seek to do that. One of the other ways is going to be using this book that we have available.

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It's actually available right now. You just don't have the blanks really filled in, but we're going to give you those blanks and we're going to show you how to use it with other people and basically we're going to teach you how to go through that so you can disciple people in your church on the principles, the basics of the

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Christian faith. We'll deal with issues like salvation and baptism, that'll be a hot one.

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We'll teach the right way, of course. But Lord's Supper, what is the meaning behind that? Church membership, studying the

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Bible, prayer, family, giving, evangelism, all kinds of things like that.

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Another thing that we have, this one's not on the store yet, but is our t -shirt.

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You can just email mitch at mitch at strivingforeternity .org or just email at shop at strivingforeternity .org

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and we'll get that to you. Let me put that there. And so, you could order those.

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Those are, I think $15, $15 I was just told. Okay. Pretty cool t -shirt.

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I got mine. I stole it. They don't notice.

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No, that's not true. Actually, I gave mine away already. So, I have to get myself a new one.

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Oh, well. So, we're in our book, number two of our systematic theology.

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And I should say, okay, thank you. I should say, just real quick, I'll say that if you are a enrolled student, you'll be getting the

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Grown in Grace book free. Or, well, you've actually paid for it. So, it's not that. It's free. You'll get that.

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That should be coming out. They may already have been sent out. If you have not paid for 2014, you're not going to get one in the mail.

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So, that means that don't email us going, where is ours? Because if you didn't pay for 2014, we didn't send it to you.

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Kind of one of the things. You got to kind of be enrolled and a paid student for it. So, that being said, we are in book number two.

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And we are going through this book, which is specifically, we're calling this the

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God's gift to man. Now, we're dealing with the man's sin, and now we're dealing with section three.

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We dealt with man and sin and salvation in the third session. Now, we've been spending quite a bit of time here in lesson number eight.

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Why is that? Because there's much confusion on this issue called

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God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Now, you say, well, hey, there's no issues there.

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What do you mean? But what we see here is that this is better known under the ideas of Calvinism and Arminianism that people seem to argue over.

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And so, we're looking at the Calvinist, well, and I've said this a couple of times, it's really a misnomer, but this is the side people think is the

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Calvinist side, is the God's sovereignty side. As if like those that don't believe in Calvinism, and that's a falsehood, is to say that those that don't believe in Calvinism somehow don't believe in God's sovereignty.

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But that's not actually true. And so, we've been kind of going through some of that. But let's look at the way of review, and I'm going to try not to do too much review in this class because, well, yeah, we're just going to have so much to do.

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This one actually should be the lesson that should be easiest. Most people actually agree with this last point of the five points of Calvinism, and yet there's still some out there that really have a hard time with this.

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So, we're going to have to spend a little bit of time. But it is really the easiest when you build up to these others.

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So, let's look at the first. This is Calvinism, excuse me. So, Calvinism is the most known by, it's the acronym

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TULIP. So let's look at what those stand for. First is total depravity.

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And if you remember, we said that doesn't mean being as bad as you possibly could be. And I know that some think that I can't be any worse than I am, but I actually could be.

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So, praise God that I'm not. But it means that when we fell, when

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Adam and Eve fell, our whole being was influenced and fell by sin.

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Therefore, even our will is influenced by sin.

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So, oh really, okay, so I'm being told that people are enjoying my choking to death.

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Instead of being concerned, they're saying I'm choking on my heresies. Is that really, okay.

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Let me guess. Is that Ryan Muniak? Hey, we have a winner. Yes, Mr.

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Muniak who asks wonderful questions at Ohio Fire. Hmm. Anyway, and if you don't know what question he asked, then

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I would say that you need to order this year's Ohio and Jersey Fire, and you can order it at the shop at strivingforeternity .org.

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We'll get that out to you when they come available, but you can find out what question he asked. Speaking of total depravity, that was

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Ryan. Next was unconditional election.

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That's the U in tulip. And this was the idea that our election is by God, and that election coming from God is unconditional.

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It is not based on anything that we have done. So that is that our election is not conditional on our behavior in any way.

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The L, which is the one that many people seem to have a difficulty with, and that is this one called limited atonement.

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We spent some time on this because we said that there's many people that seem to misunderstand this one, and they are in this is that there's really one of two ways you can view this, and it is the idea that, you know, either the, what's really

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I think a historical view that the atonement was limited on the cross.

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In other words, when Jesus died, he only died for those he knew he would save, which keeping in mind the mind of God, he knows all things, so we can't think like that, just keeping that in mind.

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And then the other view of that, that we can hold to that some view it as, is that it was limited in its application, but not in the offer.

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In other words, we can offer the gospel to all, but it is limited in its application. That would be my view, the one

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I'd hold to if I say I believe in limited atonement. Irresistible grace is the idea that grace is, that the grace of, that God gives to us is from God.

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The idea really is this notion that it is God who does the, and that's really what all this is built on, right?

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So God, the understanding of this is we are bad, we can't save ourself, our works can't save us, our will can't save us, you know, our desire, our genealogy, and those things can save us.

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God had to, apart, completely apart from us, elect us, choose us, and then he paid the punishment for us, but that payment isn't made for all, it's made for some, and so therefore you get to the irresistible grace,

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God gives us even the grace to believe in him. And then we get to this last one, the

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P, which is the preservation of the saints, the preservation of the saints.

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Now with this one, I said this one really should be the easiest for people to understand, and it seems that this is one where most people who will hold to any of them, they hold to this one, the preservation of the saints, more than any other.

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It is the idea that comes under many different ways, eternal security, or what's also referred to as once saved, always saved, but there is a difference in that.

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The idea of once saved, always saved, sometimes has this notion, unfortunately, that as if once I am saved,

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I can do anything I want, and I can't lose that salvation.

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Now, some people balk at that and say, well wait a minute, if you're going to believe once saved, always saved, then anyone could live licentiously and there's no responsibility.

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This is actually the argument that was made against Augustine by Pelagius, and the idea that if you're saved by grace, he looked at the people in church and he said they weren't living this legalistic lifestyle, and what they ended up doing was trying to force legalism, force a living.

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We are saved by grace, but the reality is we should also live like it.

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Now, not everyone who's actually claims to be saved by grace is actually saved by grace.

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In other words, there's many people that profess Christianity, they just don't possess

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Christ. And so that's a difference, alright? Now this, really what this doctrine comes down to is, can

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I lose my salvation? I posted on Facebook as a little teaser that if you tune in tonight, we will teach you how you can lose your salvation.

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In other words, the real thing is, you've got to ask the question, can you?

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No, you can't. Now, if that shocks some people, I know there are some, and we're going to deal with some of this, because this is a real issue for some people and they get hung up on this.

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And the thing I often find is the very people that talk about the fact that you can lose your salvation also focus an awful lot on their works.

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Why? If you can lose your salvation based on your works, really what it means is you keep yourself saved by your works.

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In other words, they would, many would say, I'm not going to say all, but many would say that you are saved by grace.

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They wouldn't disagree with that. They'd say you're saved by grace, but you keep yourself saved through works.

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That's an important distinction. Do we keep ourselves saved or does

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Christ keep us saved? I don't know if I'm going to have time to get into all this, but boy, there's a lot here.

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Let me give you a story of how simple this could be for us, because we're now in several lessons into the doctrine of salvation, and even in several lessons looking at the doctrines known as Calvinism, but God's sovereignty, the side of God's sovereignty.

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And I hope that at this point it's really, really, really, really clear who saves who.

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But the issue is that. I mean, a reason many people have an issue is they look at someone's lifestyle and they have an expectation of how a

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Christian should live. And they say, if you're not living this way, and usually this way is my standard, living like me.

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So if I don't have TVs in my house, then you shouldn't have TVs in your house or you're not saved. And if I don't curse, then you shouldn't curse.

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Now, I'm not saying we should curse, but the reality is we have to remember that when people first get saved,

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I dealt with this this past week, that someone was very upset with another believer because the person was using foul language.

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Well, the person just got saved three weeks ago. Give them a break.

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I mean, we don't get saved and instantly sanctified and matured. It takes time.

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So let's have a little bit of grace with one another. Sound good? All right.

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So I remember in college I was, I know there was actually college back when

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I was that age. I know I'm as old as dirt. I understand. But back in college, every other

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Friday night, there was a local family that used to invite the college students and the

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Christians to their house for dinner. And I'm telling you, Mrs.

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McGlynn could cook. It was great, especially when you were used to getting campus food.

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I mean, I think that was the real draw there more than the Bible study. But Mr. McGlynn would always give a

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Bible study after dinner and we'd sit around and talk about it. And he knew that he had people from differing backgrounds.

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And so because of that, there were sometimes issues he didn't want to get into a debate on.

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And I remember I never heard the idea that you could lose your salvation. I was just ignorant of it.

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I was a relatively immature believer, had been saved for about two years, three years at that point, but really never taught.

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It was just me and the Bible. That's all I had when I first got saved. And I remember reading this Bible study he was going through and he said that he didn't want to get into a debate on this one text that he was going through on whether you can lose your salvation or not.

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And me being, well, the ignorant kid, I raised my hand because I'm kind of dumb.

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And I was like, I don't understand. What do you mean you can lose your salvation?

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He didn't want to get into it. And I said, but I'm confused. I mean, if I didn't save myself, how can

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I lose myself? And afterwards, a couple of students were like, you know, you just nailed it right on the head with that question.

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I'm like sitting there like dumb, like on what? I don't get it. Like, I really didn't get it. But in my stupidity, which

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I'm good at, really, that was the issue, isn't it? If I can't save myself,

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I can't keep myself saved either. God is the one who saves us.

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And so what we see there is that we have to have a proper understanding of who does what.

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God does the saving. So if it's God who saves us, it's

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God who's going to keep us. That's why it says that Jesus, He's the author and the finisher.

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Jesus said that all that the Father draws to Him, none will He let go.

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Well, who's the one that's got to let go of us? We're going to get to that. Let's get into the... I'll never get to all the verses.

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Yeah. Okay. So let us look in your syllabus. If you are an enrolled student, you have your syllabus there.

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So let us take a look. We've been going through this and we are looking at preservation of the saints.

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That is your P there. It's your blank. Preservation of the saints.

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And that is letter P. The Bible clearly teaches that one who truly receives

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Christ as Lord and Savior and demonstrate genuine repentance through spiritual fruit will be saved forever.

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That's your blank there. Forever. Now, what do I mean by that? Now, I'm not saying here that we have a case that it has to be demonstrated to be saved.

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I want to be clear about that. None of you can really see if I'm saved, can you?

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That's right. Oh, I said perseverance.

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Okay. Did I say preservation? I'm being told I said preservation. It should be perseverance. Okay. Perseverance of the saints.

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And that is a distinction maybe. So none of you can see if I'm saved.

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You can only see the fruit. How do we know if someone is saved? Well, we look over time at the fruit.

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But what we have here is a case where the thing that we have to look at is when a person is saved, they're saved forever.

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They can't lose it. That's the issue. But I do want to point out that we can't know if somebody's saved.

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And that is where an issue comes in. Because what a lot of people do is they go, okay, they're looking at the behavior of someone and they're going, well, they lost their salvation.

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No, they never had it. All right? Let's see what it says in our syllabus continuing.

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If someone is saved, he already, that's your blank, already has eternal life.

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Right? That's what John says. He says that he writes these things to you who already possess eternal life.

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1 John 5, I think it's 12 or is it 20? I forget now. So the reality is you already possess eternal life if you're a believer.

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It's not something you get when you die. You have it now at a believer. It is not a future event.

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That's your third blank there. Not a future event. Someone's salvation will be determined in his life unto the end and he will be eternally saved.

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This is sometimes known as the doctrine of eternal security, which is actually the very next lesson that we're going to look at after this one.

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So we're going to spend a lot of time on that. But because it is something that a lot of people have issues with.

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They get confused over. And we're going to look at that doctrine in the next lesson. Not next lesson.

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Well, next lesson, but not next class, if that makes sense. Because we'll have one more class in this lesson on human responsibility.

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But the idea behind this is that if someone becomes a believer in Christ, meaning that God has saved them,

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God did a work in their life and saved them, that then they are saved.

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They cannot lose it. Now, the idea of the perseverance of the saints is the idea that God will do the work to hold us.

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In other words, if I could lose my salvation, I would. And so would everyone else.

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Now, we won't have time to look at it in this lesson. We will probably look at it when we go through eternal security.

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But I will say this, that if you want, I know a lot of people use Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 to argue that that is proof that you can lose your salvation.

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We do have an article on our website that you can read on Hebrews chapter 6.

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And why that does not teach that you can lose your salvation. And those that believe that it is teaching that you can lose your salvation, please read the context because you'll see that it is saying that whoever these people are that it talks about, they cannot get that back again.

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So if you are saying that it's talking about them losing their salvation, then they can't be saved again. It is impossible is the word in Hebrews 6.

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In Hebrews 10 it says, therefore there is now no more sacrifice for them.

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So if you believe you can lose your salvation according to those texts, you can only lose it once.

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What's the real issue people are focused on? It's really a behavior issue. People are focusing on the way someone is behaving.

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They don't look like a believer. And when we say that they don't look like a believer, please take into account how old they may be spiritually.

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Don't expect them to be as mature as someone who's been saved for 20 years.

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Because they haven't been saved that long. And so we want to keep that in mind as well.

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So let's look at the first verse that we have. And that is Romans chapter 5 and verses 8 to 10.

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I know some of you thought I was going to go to Romans 8. We'll get there, don't worry. We're going to start with Romans 5. And it says here, but God shows

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His love for us. In that while we were still sinners.

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Now keep in mind, what state were we in? We were still sinners. Christ died for us.

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Well, when did Christ die? Well, it wasn't yesterday. It was 2 ,000 years ago.

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So we were still sinners. Christ died for us. Right? So this is, again, this is pointing out that this is a sign that God knows absolutely that this would be a case.

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And so, since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him.

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So who does the saving? God does the saving. We're saved from who? From what I mean? From the wrath of God.

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That's what we're saved from. We're not saved from Satan. We're saved not from ourselves. We're saved from the wrath of God, by God.

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For that while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.

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So we were His enemy. We were sinners. And while in that state, God saved us and reconciled us to Himself.

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Much more now we are reconciled, shall we be saved in His life.

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And so what you have there is this case where you see God who does the saving.

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Not only is God saving us in this, but He's the one that's the full actor in this.

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Now, one of the things I guess that I mentioned in the Hebrew passage, I kind of glossed over it. And so I guess there's some question about it with this sin of ignorance that's mentioned in Hebrews.

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So let me just say with that is that Hebrews 10 seems to talk about this willful and unwillful sin.

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And some people argue that that unwillful sin is if I sin without my will involved.

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Every sin includes your will. You don't sin without your will involved.

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You choose to sin. Every sin. You may be so numb to it because you do it so often that you don't recognize it, but that's a totally different issue.

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So I should clarify that. Thank you. But what we have there is we do have a case here where we see that the issue is that Jesus is the one who reconciles us.

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And I want you to think about something. If our sin is so bad and has such a heavy price that it requires the

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God of the universe to come to earth as a man and die on a cross to make a payment.

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And we think we can lose it, then the question is what can we do to get it back again?

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You see, we've already accepted the gospel. So you can't accept that anymore.

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So what is it? Oh, it's works. You see, ultimately, if you believe you can lose your salvation, you end up directly or indirectly with a works -based salvation.

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You believe that you are saved by grace, but you can keep it by your works.

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So how do you remain saved? By your works. So although salvation is important, the work of Christ is important, what's more important?

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Keeping yourself saved. Once Christ did His work. So the focus becomes on the work that you do.

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And in that case, it's your works that you boast in. And that's ultimately often what ends up happening.

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And that's why we need to be careful with this. Because we want to make sure that we're not teaching a works -based message.

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I don't know that it's up on the website, but at both Jersey Fire last year and the

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NorCal Fire, both of which you can get at our store. You can feel free to go to the store at store .strivingforeternity

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.org. And you can order the messages from Ohio Fire of 2013 or the

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NorCal Fire of 2013. Both of which I dealt with, actually no, sorry, 2012.

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The Jersey Fire of 2012 and NorCal Fire of 2012. Where I dealt with this topic of what is the gospel.

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And what we had there was we talked about the doctrine of imputation.

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And we also gave a warning to some in that. I also had taught at Jersey Fire and on Sinless Perfection, actually both on Sinless Perfection.

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Which is where some people get to some of this. And what you end up with is, you end up with this thing of people, because they don't have a right view of imputation.

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End up living as if they're saved by works. Not by grace.

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And then what ends up happening is, they end up living in a way where it is, unfortunately, far more focused on the works.

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Now, I say that if we could lose our salvation we would, but can we? Romans chapter 8

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I think is the clearest. And we're going to take a look at a lot of this, but let's first look here. Romans chapter 7 gives this explanation of how

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Paul gets saved. And he recognizes the law in his life.

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He comes to repentance and faith and recognizes his need for Christ.

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And here then in chapter 8 verse 1 he says this. There is therefore now, current tense, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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So we no longer have condemnation. Now, if we could lose our salvation based on our works, then there could be condemnation.

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But Romans says that there is now, present tense, no more condemnation. Now, some will argue that Paul is saying, oh, for himself, he's in a state of grace, so he doesn't lose it because he's in that state.

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I don't believe that to be the case. Alright, let's continue to see how clear this is.

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Romans 8, 29 -30. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined.

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That means to decide beforehand. So God knew us beforehand.

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And because He knew us beforehand, He chose us beforehand to be confirmed to the image of His Son.

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That He might be the firstborn among the brethren. Moreover, whom He predestined, those

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He also called. Whom He called, those He also justified. And whom He justified, those

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He also glorified. Do you notice the points here? So what you have here is, when did this occur? Paul is saying that this occurred before you and I were around.

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In other words, in the mind of God, He foreknew us, He predestined us, He justified us,

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He glorified us. It's a done deal because it is in the mind of God.

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That's the point. This is a done deal. And God's thinking this is past tense.

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It already happened. He glorified us already in His mind. It would be incredible for God, incredibly unfaithful of God, to say

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He confirmed us and glorified us, but then we can lose it somehow. Okay? So, what we have here then in Romans 8, 35 -39, one of the clearest ones.

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It says here, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Now, let's stop there. He's going to go this whole list.

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And actually, I'll give you a little story. This is actually the passage that probably is the reason that I'm married to my wife.

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And you go, wait a minute. What does that have to do with anything? Actually, my wife, before we were married, I was discipling her.

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And as I was discipling her, she was from a church that was kind of liberal and believed a lot of bad things. So she was asking me, can you lose your salvation?

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I really didn't know if you could. Sorry, I didn't know if she believed that you could.

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That was a bad slip of the tongue. But I didn't know if she believed it or not, if that's what she was taught.

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So I'm going through the Scriptures. I'm explaining what the Scriptures say. And when I get done, I give this verse that we just looked at.

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And I exegeted that passage. And she said, good, you answered correctly. I was like, you were testing me?

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And she said, yes. And I was like, this is the kind of woman I need to marry. I mean, if I'm going to be a pastor,

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I need a woman whose spiritual walk isn't based on mind and is going to correct me when I need correction and is willing to test me and make sure

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I'm accurate and study the Scriptures on her own. So that was kind of one of the things I first fell in love with her about.

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But some people will say that, OK, God in this passage says that there's nothing that He's going to do to let go of you.

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But it doesn't mean that you can't break out of His hands. Really, you think you're stronger than God?

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No. So let's look at these things that He says. He says, who can separate us from the love of Christ?

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And then look at this list of things. He tries to capture everything, right? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword and others.

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These are the things that what they would see is as people came under persecution, there would be these things in the person's life and many people would give up their professed faith, but not their possessed faith.

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In other words, there would be those who would claim to be Christians until the hard times come, and then they give that up to save their own life.

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And so this would be a thing of, well, can I lose my salvation? Look at these other people. They give up their profession of faith.

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Did they lose their salvation? Could I lose mine? But He's saying, could these things?

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Verse 36, as it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long.

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We are regarded as sheep to the slaughter. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

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Those of us who know Christ, we're more than conquerors. We're going to persevere to the end.

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We're going to be at the end. We're going to remain in that state.

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We're going to be conquerors. Verse 38, for I am sure that neither death nor life, that's kind of the opposites, nor angels nor rulers, and the rulers are the idea of demons.

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Rulers of this world is the idea, so it's holy angels or unholy angels, nor things present nor things to come, whether it's now or later, okay, so it's not something in the future that I could lose my salvation, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else, in case

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He missed anything, anything else in all creation will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. He's saying there, it's like there's nothing. There's nothing that can separate you from the love of God.

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He's trying to make it really clear by going through all these, there's nothing that can separate you from the love of God. Nothing, because it's

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God who does the work. You did not get yourself into the state of grace, okay?

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I like what, when we talk about this salvation, I like what F. Budimai Sai says, people always use this illustration, oh, there's two people in the water, and someone throws a life preserver to the person, and he reaches out to it.

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It's the person who threw the life preserver that's saving him, that's doing the work. All they're doing is reaching for it.

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Well, reaching for it's still a work, but it's not really a good illustration. Why? Because the scriptures say that before we are

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Christians, we're dead. Dead people don't reach for a life preserver. But my buddy

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Sai explains it differently. He says, we weren't just dead. We were at the bottom of the ocean, drowned and dead.

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Throwing a life preserver isn't going to do anything for you. God had to actually go down to the bottom of the water, pull us up, throw us onto the boat, and resuscitate us, because we were dead.

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Well, if we were at the bottom of the ocean, dead, and it took God coming in and getting us out, well, we're not now, once being alive, going to return to that state because God is the one that says

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He's going to keep us. Well, let's look. Let's take a look at some others. John 3 .16,

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we're going to see a couple of verses in John 3. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten

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Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

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Now, it doesn't mean whoever believes in Him when they die. It's whoever believes in Him should not perish.

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John 3 .36 says this, For whoever believes in the

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Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the

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Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. So, if you have the

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Son, you have life. Let's look at another. John 5.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent

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Me has eternal life. Now, that has is present tense. And what we see there is the case, it's a case where we,

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I don't know how else to explain this, but in the Greek, it's not like our English. Our English, we have a real issue where we don't look at the cases so much.

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And what we have is a situation where we need to realize that the

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Greek has a past present tense. This is a present tense. So, He's making an emphasis here.

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Has eternal life. We have it now. Okay? So, truly, truly,

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I say to you, whoever hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but is passed from death to life.

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He doesn't say you pass back into death. Another one here.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.

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You've seen this. Every one of these that talks about eternal life is past tense or present tense.

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We have it already. It's something we possess. Let's look at 1

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Corinthians 10 verse 13. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

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God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

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But with the temptation will always provide a way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

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Now, I know that some falsely teach that that verse is teaching that you will not get tempted beyond the point of sin.

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If you believe in sinless perfection, these people will teach that. That God will keep you from actually sinning unless you're an unbeliever.

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That's not what it's teaching. It's teaching that there is no temptation that's going to befall you that you're going to lose your salvation.

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There is nothing. Why? Put that back up if we can. Notice what it said there.

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There's no temptation that overtaken you that is not common to man. Because who is faithful? God is faithful and will not let that happen.

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God is the one that is faithful. When you say you can lose your salvation, you're bringing

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God's faithfulness into question. Because He's saying He is the author and finisher of your salvation.

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If He's the author and the finisher, then it's Him who's going to have to finish it. He's the one in that verse who's going to hold you.

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If you're saying that you can break out of His hands, that He can't hold you because your behavior, your works, have a greater power, that's a real problem.

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You're calling into question His faithfulness. Okay? And where a lot of this is, let me just explain this.

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The reason so many people have struggle with this is because they don't understand these passages that talk about the person who's going to overcome, the person who's going to persevere to the end.

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And they think that it means that those who are saved are those who remain in a faithful state.

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I mean, we are so blinded by our sin. We sin so often we don't recognize. God calls us to make every single decision we make purely for Him.

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I mean, we make 10 ,000, 20 ,000 decisions a day. Can you honestly say out of every decision, what shirt you put on, if you brushed your hair,

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I mean, every single decision, did you make them all for the glory of God? Or were you not even thinking? You were just like, yeah,

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I look good in this shirt. Or I like this shirt. Not God would like me in this shirt. I mean, you know, really?

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Do you really think every single? No. We don't. We don't make every single decision that way. We should, but we don't.

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And the reality is we break the first commandment thousands of times a day.

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I mean, let's be honest. We have a problem with pride. The person who says that they do not sin is prideful.

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They're also calling God a liar. We're going to look at that in the next lesson. Well, let's look at this.

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1 John. For everyone who says he's been born of God overcomes the world.

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Okay? So if you're born of God, you overcome the world. And this is the victory of him who's overcome the world, our faith.

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Let's continue in 1 John because I want to deal with something in 1 John, with where I was starting to say.

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And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life. He gave us eternal life.

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And this is in His Son, not in our works. God gave us eternal life in His Son, not works.

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Whoever has the Son has already has life. Whoever does not have the

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Son does not have life. I write these things to you that you, to you who believe in the name of the

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Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. One more.

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So it was verse 12 earlier that I was mentioning. 1 John 5 .20.

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And we know, present tense, that the Son of God has come and given us understanding so that we may know

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Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ.

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He is the true God, the eternal life.

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Okay. 1 John is this book where it says we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

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That if we don't confess our sins, we make Him a liar. What is 1 John written about? Most of the people that think you can lose your salvation, they focus on 1

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John. And yet they don't understand the historical context of why John was writing what he wrote and who he was writing to.

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He was writing to Gnostics. These people that believed that anything, anything physical was bad.

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Anything spiritual was good. And they actually believed that you can go and be with a prostitute and it wouldn't be a sin as long as you didn't give your spirit over to it.

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So if your body did it and it's just your body, well your body's evil and that's what happens. But as long as you don't give your spirit over to it, you're fine.

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That's what they would teach. And so they would practice sin, blatant sin, and not call it sin.

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They would justify it and not call it sin. That's what he's addressing. So when he makes this black and white issue and makes it seem like it's this really black and white thing of if you're either in the light or not in the light, it seems like a really, he seems to say you're not saved at times by your works.

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And what he's saying there in that is he's arguing about these people who are trying to say that they can go and sin any way they want, but it's not going to count.

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That's who he's addressing. So he makes it black and white because he's addressing a certain group of people. But when you look at that passage that I've pointed out to you, he's saying that you already have eternal life.

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That I think he's trying to make really clear for us. So I hope that's kind of clear.

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But, you know, 1 John is the book that so many get confused over because they rip it out of its context.

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So this is the last of the five points. The next class what we're going to do is we're going to look at the human responsibility side.

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Some say that's the Arminian side. It isn't. That's a misnomer. And then we're going to try to reconcile these two.

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I don't believe in one or the other.

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I believe in both. And how do I reconcile them? Next class I hope to be able to do that for you.

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So we're going to do that in the next lesson. If you have any questions, comments, snarks, you can always email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

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You can feel free to join us in our Facebook group, Striving for Eternity Group.

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And you can join us there. We have discussions going on there. I don't always answer right away.

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That's not because I don't have an answer, but because I want there to be good discussion out there. Also, I want to let you know of an upcoming event that we have,

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Jersey Fire. We really want you to get the word out. Please be posting about this, sharing about this.

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You can go to jerseyfire .org and see Phil Johnson talking about the two messages that he's planning to deliver.

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Emile Zwang, I don't know that we have his video up there. But he has two that is going to be on dealing with basically how to make your family last for eternity.

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Eternal teachings for the family and then how to pass on to the next generation, the faith. I'm going to deal with an issue that I dealt with in Ohio in a little bit more detail of same -sex marriage.

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Why is it wrong? Why do Christians miss the way of dealing with this? We are not addressing this issue right.

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We are going to be losing this issue because of the fact that we're not addressing it in a biblical way.

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We're using the world's language to argue for this. This is an area where we really want to get people to be trained how to respond to this biblically.

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We're also going to deal with how many Christians are destroying their marriage. We are hoping that Ryan Muniak would bring

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Witness Radio out to Jersey Fire like he did Ohio Fire. I think it's worth the drive for him and make it out and maybe get some good interviews.

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Bible Thumping Wingnut podcast will be again live from the

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Jersey Fire. That would be cool. I am trying to get in one more special guest.

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We will try to do that. It's going to be

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July 11th and 12th of 2014. That is something we really want to try to get you all to come out to.

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If you haven't been to one before, it's something that so many people say, I never expected anything like this.

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It's really a cool event. We do a lot of things. We try to pack a lot of things into one quick weekend. A lot of good teaching.

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It's something that could, as I found out, I was at Ohio Fire this last year, just a few weeks ago.

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A lady that came out to Jersey Fire five years ago and said it changed her life. I want to encourage you.

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With that, we always have someone we want you to encourage. This week, I really have something a little different that I want to do.

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We do this every once in a while. You could let this person know that you were encouraged to encourage this person here.

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Say, hey, listen, I'm part of the Striving for Eternity Academy. I pay attention whenever.

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Even if you're watching this on YouTube and it's not live, you can go and encourage this person. The person we want you to encourage,

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I mean a lot this week, start today. Encourage your pastor. We do this because your pastor always needs encouragement.

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I don't know who your pastor is. You do. I want to encourage you to encourage him this week in very tangible ways.

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Send your pastor some emails. Maybe you can just email your pastor and say, hey,

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I really appreciate the sermon this week. These are some things that I learned from your sermon or from the

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Sunday School. These are some examples of your life where you've discipled me, you've taught me.

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Try to send him a message, either email, a text. Give him a call. Just say, hey, pastor,

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I just want to encourage you today. I really love the fact that you devote hours to the study of God's Word to teach me because I don't have those hours to devote to it.

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Encourage your pastor maybe with a gift. Think about this this week. Many pastors love books.

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Find a book that your pastor doesn't have in his library. Buy him a book. Maybe say, hey,

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I just want to swing by the office. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, take you out for a bite of lunch?

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I'll tell you, as someone who has been in the trenches, pastors can always use encouragement.

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Make this person a person you decide to encourage every day, all the time.

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So I really want to challenge you. Go out this week and encourage your pastor. Now, I'll even say this, because I know a lot of folks like to publicly encourage someone in the

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Striving for Eternity group. If your pastor is not part of the Striving for Eternity group, then you know what?

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Add him. Invite him to be part of the group, and then you can encourage him that way. I'll tell you why.

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We want to encourage your pastor for keeping up the faithful preaching of the Word as well. Those of us who don't even know him, maybe we can learn about this pastor.

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Maybe we can get to your church website and listen to some of those sermons. And get to listen to someone else.

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Not some of these celebrity pastors, but a pastor who is faithfully in the trenches, serving a local community.

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So I want to encourage you to do that this week. And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.