CAN I LOSE MY SALVATION? (# Eternal Security, # Perseverance of the Saints, # Justification by Faith, # substitutionary atonement, # assurance of salvation).
I briefly considered this question in a letter to a dear Christian friend. She wanted my comments on a book which I was unfamiliar with, but weary of, based on some reviews online. Here is my letter:
“You have to be very careful here. It seems that this author may believe that you can lose your salvation. If this is what he believes that is heresy.
My wife Pauline’s conversion from being an Armenian to being a Calvinist was very simple.
“If we have to hold onto God, we can let go, but if he holds on to us, he will never let us go.” She believed this simple truth when she was a young Christian one morning during a worship service.
Or perhaps the author is just talking about the relationship between faith and works.
The Bible itself is crystal clear on this point:
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works. so that no one can boast. 10. For we are God’s handiwork,created in Christ Jesus to dogood works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” EPHESIANS 2:8-10
These verses teach us that works have nothing to do with the means or cause of genuine salvation. Genuine salvation is by God’s Grace‼️ But good works are a inevitable RESULT of genuine salvation ‼️
Dispite this being clear in scripture, Satan has made this a controversy since the fall and even more so since the time of Jesus. This is why it was so necessary for the apostle Paul to write both the book of Romans and the book of Galatians.
I am sure you’ve seen me do “the courtroom of eternity” which is an illustration of justification by faith alone. This was the problem that Martin Luther had until he understood what Romans taught about justification.
The vital question is: “Are we justified (declared righteous) by what we do or by what God has done ?”
There can be no compromise here. We can only be saved by what God has done. Jesus lived a perfect life on earth for 33 1/2 years and the righteousness of this perfect life is credited to our account.
(This is also the basis of “substitutionary atonement”).
Since we are saved based on what Jesus has done, nothing that we do or don’t do can change the perfect record of Jesus credited to our account.
God has therefore preserved our salvation, and only for this reason are we “eternally secure”.
Unless this book is saying this I recommend that you forget about it.
The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century produced five Latin phrases, known as “the solas” that summarized the Reformers’ main Christian teachings:
• Sola scriptura: “Scripture alone”
• Solus Christus: “Christ alone”
• Sola fide: “Faith alone”
• Sola gratia: “Grace alone”
• Soli Deo gloria: “Glory to God alone”
For further information see my blog posts which include two sermons by John Piper:
AND:
Thanks for posting. I really enjoyed reading it, especially because it addressed my problem. It helped me a lot and I hope it will help others too.