I
don't believe a person can lose his salvation. In this series until
now, I've cited verses in the Bible that clearly say that our
spiritual birth is like our physical birth – it is a transforming
event that permanently assigns who we fundamentally are.
Furthermore, once we are saved, God promises to keep us. In light of
these verses, I cannot see how salvation could be temporary or
conditional.
Of
course, other people will cite other verses that seem to suggest that
it is possible to lose our salvation. When confronted with two
passages that seem to present differing ideas, the solution is not to
decide which passages we believe are correct. The reality is that
both verses are correct and the truth lies in a harmony of the two.
In this post, I will discuss some of those passages often cited to
support the idea that a person could lose his salvation.
Some
passages that people cite, seem to include a condition of continuity.
Consider Revelation 3:5:
He
who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not
erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name
before My Father and before His angels.
In
my first post in this series, I quoted a
website that used the analogy of a free car to represent
salvation. That author was full of analogies. When discussing
Revelation, he said this:
Notice
that God's pencil, which wrote your name in the Lamb's book of life,
also has an eraser at the other end. The name can be erased from the
book of life if you don't overcome.
Can
I just say that I find it odd that someone would quote a promise
where Jesus says He will not do something and use it as evidence that
He might do it? Anyway, the author is attempting to highlight the
condition that a person must overcome or else his name will be
erased from the Book of Life. There are other verses that seem to
carry similar conditions:
But
Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if
we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto
the end. (Heb
3:6)
For
we are made partakers of Christ, if
we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
(Heb 3:14)
By
reading just these verses, the implication seems to be that we must
continue professing our faith until the end in order to receive our
reward. But as I've already said, our understanding of any verse
must be tempered with the rest of the Bible. In a previous post, I
cited 1 Corinthians 1:7-8:
Therefore
you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord
Jesus Christ to be revealed. He
will also keep you firm to the end,
so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If
my continuance in the faith rests in my own hands, then my salvation
is in peril. My flesh is weak. My faith wavers. But Jesus has
saved me and He lives to continuously makes intercession for me.
Those verses that talk about salvation being conditional on my
continued faith must be in harmony with the promise that I am kept by
the power of God. I know I will stay fast to the end because He has
promised to keep me firm until the end.
There
are other verses I could cite but I don't want to make this post too
long. In short, it's my opinion that nearly all of the verses
usually cited could be characterized as “negative arguments.”
This is where a verse says one thing and the argument is made about
what would happen if the opposite were true. I can't say I never
make negative arguments but I don't believe negative arguments are
strong arguments. I might say, for example, “I work hard so I can
get ahead.” The opposite would be, if I don't work hard I won't
get ahead. Perhaps I wouldn't, but where in that argument is found
the possibility that I won't continue to work hard? I believe the
same thing is true of the Bible. Perhaps if I stopped believing I
could lose my salvation but that doesn't necessarily mean it is
possible for a truly saved person to stop believing.
Perhaps
the most cited verse to support the possibility of a person losing
his salvation is John 15:1-2:
I
am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every
branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away;
and every branch
that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.
This
is almost cited like a “gotcha” verse. At first reading, this
verse is also a type of condition where God “takes away” any
branch not bearing fruit (“cuts off” in the NIV). In other
words, if a branch doesn't bear fruit, it's cut off. I very, very
seldom appeal to the original language but, in this case especially,
I believe most, mainstream versions of the Bible don't accurately
translate this verse.
The
word being translated is the verb, airw
(airō,
Strong's 142). It is sometimes translated as
“takes” but the primary meaning is “lift up.” Even in verses
where it is translated as “takes,” the meaning is still usually,
“take up” or “pick up.” In the parable of the sower (Mark
4:15), for example, Satan “takes” the word which had been sown;
the picture painted in the parable is of a bird “picking up” the
seed that fell by the way.
In
John 15, Jesus creates the metaphor of the Father as a husbandman.
Every branch that abides in Him will bear fruit. He “lifts up”
the downtrodden branches so that they are able bear fruit and He
prunes the fruitful branches so that they can produce even more
fruit. This is easily understood by anyone who has seen a vineyard.
Even today, branches are still tied and held up from the ground.
Note that in verse 6, it is only those branches that do not abide
in Him (i.e. are not Christians) that are cast into the fire.
I
believe the problem is that we sometimes see instances of people who
profess to be Christians and seem to be saved, but later they reject
Christ and live like they're lost again. They fit the bill of people
who seem to have been saved but did not continue in the faith.
Earlier I used the term, “truly saved.” I chose that
deliberately because I believe many of the verses that seem to talk
about someone losing his salvation are actually talking about people
who were never saved. That will be the subject of my next and final
post in this series.
Read
the entire series
I suppose that part of the problem is that, barring a peek at God's books and being able to see if they change during a convert's lifetime, "apostates and lapsed believers were never true converts" and "salvation can be lost" cannot be distinguished empirically. Indeed, given that God is supposed to dwell and operate outside of time as well as within it, even that might not work.
ReplyDeleteBut there are a lot of passages that, on their face, imply that a convert might not persevere to the end, or might give up the faith. And a lot of passages that seem to argue otherwise can be interpreted as saying something a bit less and a bit different from what you argue. Does 1 Corinthians 1:7-8 mean that God will not permit any convert to apostasize, or does it mean simply that He will keep up His end of the covenant if the believer keeps up his end -- that God will keep the promises He has made, not that there is some subset of True Converts among the larger set of apparent and professing converts who believe themselves Christians?
Likewise, the mainstream translators are presumably aware of the root meaning of airo. They are probably more aware than you (or I, of course) are of how the word is actually used in other Greek texts. If someone tells you he is depressed, you don't assume (simply because that's what the word literally means) that he's actually being pushed down into the ground. If the translators understand "lifted up" to mean "removed from the vine," they may well have good reason to translate it that way.
Birth is irreversible, of course. But birth does not guarantee indefinite survival; it does not even guarantee that you can't be disinherited or transferred to a different family, through, e.g. adoption (now or in the first-century Roman or Jewish worlds. Again, I think you're arguing for the broadest and most absolute meaning of the verses that support your position and the narrowest and most restricted conceivable meaning of the verses that seem to support the contrary position.