SALVATION FROM A TO Z
Bob Marcaurelle
freesermons@homeorchurchbiblestudy.com
Website: Yahoo search homeorchurchbiblestudy.com bob marcaurelle
Copyright 2005 by Bob Marcaurelle
2014 Revision by Bob Marcaurelle
Messages 6 (Two Parts)
ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED
(ETERNAL SECURITY
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-28)
“They went away from us because they were not really one of us. If they were really one of us they would have stayed with us. Their leaving showed that none of them were one of us.” (1 John 2:19)
THE NAMES
Most Baptists and Presbyterians believe that once a person is truly saved, he is forever saved. It is called eternal security because God protects us and keeps us from falling away. Noah and his family were secure in the ark because God designed it and built it to stand against the storm. Just so, are we secure in Jesus. Jesus said, “Nothing can take us from his hands and the hands of God.”
It is also called the perseverance of the saints because it means our new birth has so change our character and desires and fears and loves that we will always hate sin, fear God, love righteousness and be repentant believes. The Bible says, “The righteous holds to his way.” (Job 17:9)
THE NATURE
1. A Powerful Change from God
Jesus says those who will “never perish” that is, go to hell (Jn. 3:16), have a “sheep nature” and follow Him (John 10: 27-28). Our wolf nature has been changed in the new birth. We become repentant believers. That is we hate sin, fight sin, are punished for our sins, and come to God for forgiveness and the power to overcome sin.
A Christian can backslide into sin like David did into adultery and murder. But even in sin, his new nature makes him act like a believer. Ps. 32 and 51 show David’s pain and shame and penitent return. And 2 Sam 12 tells us David’s life was about to be taken by God as further punishment for his sins. Anyone who goes off into sin and does not suffer, and does not come back, and is not taken to heaven early, we believe, was never truly born again to begin with. First John says plainly:
“They went away from us because they were not really one of us. If they were really one of us they would have stayed with us. Their leaving showed that none of them were one of us.” (1 John 2:19)
2. The Promises of God
Jesus says,
“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.”
(Jn. 10)
1) The promise of permanent life.
This one sentence is contains two promises that should give us peace. I ask you- how long is eternal? It our new live of repentance and faith lasts only 8 days; it is not eternal. If it lasts only 8 billion years, it is not eternal. What we have is ours forever.
2) The promise of protection.
No power in heaven or hell, says Jesus, can snatch us from his hands, and the Father’s hands.
Peter says, We are guarded by God’s power until the
salvation comes that is to be revealed”( 1Pet. 1:5).
Jude says,
“God is able to keep you from falling and present you faultless before His presence (Jude 24).
The devil is strong and his temptations are terrifying. The world never stops trying to pull us away from godliness. We are like doves flying over a field full of hunters. We are like babies adrift on the ocean.
All around us we see evil powers stronger than us. If our child dies or our health fails; we fear we will turn our backs on God. We fear we will listen to the “Job’s wives” of our world and “curse God and die”? Who of us is strong enough to say we would not do so?
Our trust is in God. Paul was strong but he said, “When I am weak, He is strong.” (2 Cor. 12:9) And he said, “The Lord. . .will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim. 4:18). Spurgeon loved the hymn,
“If ever it should come to pass
That sheep of Christ could fall away
My feeble, fickle soul, alas
Would fall a thousand times a day.
“Ah, Lord, with such a heart as mine
Unless Thou hold me fast
I feel I must, I shall decline
And prove like them at last.”
He said we are so dependant on the grace and power of God that without it, at the very door of heaven we would turn around and head for hell.
If I have to cross a busy four lane highway with my two year old daughter, do I hold out my finger and tell her to hold on? Of course I don’t. That would mean the only thing between her and the cars would be the strength in her little grip. I would hold her so the power between her and the cars would be my strength.
3. The promise of a presence.
Jesus says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5) This is a strong, triple negative in the Greek; and it means, “I will never no never no never forsake you.” One young preacher told his congregation this and a lady coming out of church said, “Young man, God may have to tell you preachers something three times for you to believe it, but He only has to tell me once.”
We may leave the Lord for awhile. Every relationship has its ups and downs, even ours with God. But we cannot stay away because he is there with us to love us back.
Adrian Rogers told his wife Joyce that it would never do her any good to leave him, because if she did, he was going with her. True Christians who leave the Lord for awhile are like the little boy who ran away from home, leaving this note.
“No body likes me. Everybody picks on me I am running away from home. LOVE, Billy.
In John six, many followers of Jesus, angry over his refusal to become a military king and conquer the Romans walked away from him. When Jesus turned to his close disciples he asked them if they would leave too. They did not say, they hadn’t thought about it. With possible death coming for them, they did not say, they weren’t tempted to leave. What they said, speaks for us all, “Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life”.
4. The promise of perseverance (Ps. 37:23-24; Jer. 32:40)
There are Bible verses that tell us we have to do our part to stay saved. 1 Cor. 15:1-2 says we are saved by faith if we keep holding to it firmly. Jesus says we are saved if we endure to the end (Matt. 24:13). Col. 1:22-23 says Christ will present us in heaven if we continue in our faith. What God requires God gives. We will do all this because it is God who enables us.
5. The promise of punishment. Hebrews 12 says,
“God disciplines those He loves. He punishes everyone he accepts as a child. If you are not disciplined, you are not true children.”
David paid a horrible price for his sin. His baby died and trouble never left his family. God first response to our sin is to woo us with his love. If this does not work he warns us. If this does not work, he whips us. And if this does not work He will take our lives. People at Corinth doing things like getting drunk at the Lord’s supper were getting sick, and some were dying (1 Cor. 11).
David was sick mentally and physically, as Psalms 32 and 51 show, and when his Pastor Nathan came to warn him and he repented, Nathan said, You will not die” (2 Sam. 12:13). Sin will not take a true Christian to hell, but it will sure take him to heaven early.
6. The promise of a permanent gift.
Listen to Romans 11:29 in the Amplified Bible,
“The gifts and call of God are irrevocable (He never withdraws them when once they are given, and He does not change his mind about those to whom he has given his grace or to whom he sends His call)”.
Here is an amazing fact. You will never find in the Bible where someone is born again twice or declared justified twice. God is not an “Indian Giver”.
THE CASE AGAINST IT
Many wonderful and godly people who believe the Scriptures also believe a person can turn back on the Lord and becoming unsaved again. Great Evangelicals like John Wesley do not hold to the foolish teaching of some Pentecostals that we are lost every time we do something wrong.
What they mean is apostasy- renouncing Christianity. They see this in verses like Hebrews 6 and examples like King Solomon, who wrote Bible, and died worshipping pagan gods and building their temples all over Israel. Lets look at their reasons.
1. Security means the Loss of freedom
Not to be able to walk away, critics say, takes away our freedom and makes us no more than puppets on a string. There are two answers to this. First, the new birth makes us where we do not want to walk away even though we are free. I am free to walk away from my wife, daughters and grandchildren, but that’s something I will never want or do. Second. If we must be free, we will be free in heaven and thus we will never be safe. After a million years in heaven we might fall like Satan and go to hell. There is no peace in that.
2. People Do Fall Away.
What about people we know, they say, who were apparently true followers of Christ and fell away into sin or unbelief? We find them in Scripture and in our churches. John says,
“They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us”(1 Jn. 2:19).
Two things must be said:
1) Not all who appear to be lost are lost
King David, while he was having Uriah killed, claiming his wife, and living like nothing was wrong, certainly did not look like a child of God. But Psalms 32 and 51 show he had the inner sufferings of a child of God in sin
Another example is Lot. He went for the money and chose to live in Sodom. And God let sin wreck his life. He lost his wife, got drunk and had children by his own daughters. But Scripture says, “Lot, a righteous man. . .was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard” (2 Pet. 2:7, 8).
2) Not All Who Appear To Be Saved Are Saved (Judas).
Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, gave every indication of being right with God. He preached the gospel and cast our demons with the rest of Apostles (Mt. 10:1). He was trusted with the money (Jn. 13:29). When Jesus, in the upper room, said one of the Twelve would betray Him, not one accusation was made toward Judas, even when he left the room. The only explanation seems to be that Judas was a model Christian, who had everybody fooled but Jesus.
PART TWO
3. Passages about Losing Salvation
As we said earlier, there is no Biblical basis for Tthe belief that a person is lost every time he sins. There’s nothing in God’s Word about anyone being saved and lost and saved and lost and saved and lost, etc. What we do find in Scripture are apostates who turn their backs upon the Lord.
Some turn to unbelief like Solomon and the Gnostics (1 Jn. 2:18) and Galatians (Gal. 1:9; 5:2-4). Some turn to vile wickedness like the folk in 2 Peter and Jude. Peter says they are like dogs eating their own vomit and like hogs wallowing in the mud (2 Pet. 2:22).
1. Look first at the troubling people
. Samson lived a life of consistent sin (Judges 13 ff), yet is listed in Hebrew 11 as a man of faith. Was he a Christian? Solomon let his wives turn his heart to other gods and even built their temples in Israel (1 Kn. 11:4).
Was he a true child of God? The tragedy is, we do not know if they were false believers like Judas or tortured believers like David. I don’t know about you, but when I die, I don’t want the preacher who preaches my funeral to stutter and stammer about my eternal soul.
We should all live like the man who was visited by the new preacher in town. He asked him if he was a Christian and the man answered, “Ask my neighbors.”
2. Look second at the troubling passages
Somethat seem to teach apostasy. Galatians 5:3 says some have “fallen from grace.” This referred to the apostasy of those going back to the Jewish idea of salvation through rituals. Paul said they had fallen back to the works way of salvation from the grace way.
Hebrews 6:4-6
“It is impossible to restore to repentance those who have been enlightened; who have tasted the heavenly gift; who have shared with the Holy Spirit; who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the power of the coming age; if they fall away. They cannot be brought back to repentance because they, in themselves, are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace.”
These people were giving up Christianity to go back to Judaism and Paul said, if they did, the awful possibility existed, that they would never again be tempted to embrace Christianity. Nothing in this passage says they were saved. They had been convicted by the Spirit. Under the conviction of the Spirit they had been enlightened to understand Christianity; they had tasted what it is like to be a Christian.
They had been “brought” to the point of repentance and faith. The OT background of this passage and Hebrews 3: 7-16 was the Israelites in the desert who “tasted” the grapes from Caanan, but because of their unbelief, never entered the land (Num. 13: Heb. 3:7-16).
These Church Members had never entered true Christianity. If they left, then 1 Jn. 2:19 says they were never part of the true faith. And this passage itself never says these people were born again or justified. They are like many church members who know all about Christianity in their heads, and who have felt it a few times in their hearts, but have never experienced it in their lives.John says:
Other Passages
There are other passages that seem to teach salvation can be lost. Jn. 15:1-6 says branches that do not remain in Christ are burned.
Rev. 22:19 says those who alter the Bible lose their share in the Book of Life and the heavenly city.
Ezek. 18:24-25 says a righteous man who turns away from his righteousness and lives like the wicked will die and all his righteous deeds will be forgotten.
To be honest all the passages could mean salvation can be lost. The many books I have read on these troublesome passages do not have good answers to verses like this. Think about this: it might just be that God does not want us to be too sure of our salvation, to the point that we see no need for the honest self examination (2 Cor. 13:5), and even feel safe in sin. Too many Baptists, quoting security verses in the place of honest self examination, feel safe in sin and are content to go to heaven as “carnal” Christians (1 Cor. 3:1). This is carnal security.
In 1 Corinthians 9:27 Paul says,
“I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”
One popular evangelical wrote that Paul wasn’t talking here about the loss of salvation because he believed in eternal security. This kind of “verse quoting” creates folk who feel safe in sin. Better is the view of Spurgeon who said, “I believe in eternal security but I don’t believe in MY eternal security enough to feel secure in sin. Charles Hodge, a firm Presbyterian believer in eternal security said,
“What a reproof this is / The reckless Corinthians thought they could safely indulge themselves. . .to sin, while this devoted Apostle considered himself engaged in a life-struggle for his salvation.”
A man asked his pastor, “Does once saved always saved mean I can sin all I want to and still go to heaven?” The pastor answered, “Yes, it does.” Then he said, “How much do you want to sin?” When the man answered, “I don’t want to.” the pastor said, “I don’t either. I sin more than I want to.”
That’s the key. We are free to sin but we don’t want to sin. And the reasons we don’t are that God has changed our nature; we hate sin; we want to go to heaven; and we don’t want to go to hell. It is a mixture of love and fear, but whatever it is, it keeps us saved and safe.
There is very little difference between a Church of God believer and a Baptist believer on this matter of eternal security. The mighty change God works in us at conversion leads us to live a life of continual repentance and faith. First John 1:7-2:3 tells us to keep confessing and forsaking sin, and the true believer wants to do it. The Baptist believes God will always enable us to repent and believe and the Church of God believes he has to keep on repenting and believing. The important thing is that we repent and believe as a habit of life.
