Once Saved, Always Saved?

What is meant by 'Once Saved, Always Saved'?

The basic idea being expressed by this statement is obvious enough, i.e. that if anyone has found salvation in Jesus Christ at any time in their life, then they are assured that they are saved for eternity no matter what may happen or what they may, or may not, do.

Why Is It Controversial?

While there are those who believe that, once a commitment has been made to follow Christ, eternal salvation is assured from that moment on, there are others who would argue that such assurance is only given to those who maintain their relationship with Christ and live out a life of discipleship.

My understanding is that the primary reason for people believing that salvation cannot be lost is based on the doctrinal position known as Calvinism.

In the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic church had reached a low point in its drift away from the truth of the Gospel and into the perilous waters of worldliness. For Martin Luther, the German monk, priest, and theologian, the camel’s back was broken by the policy of selling indulgences to replete the Vatican’s coffers.

Catholic tradition held that the Pope had the authority to grant an ‘indulgence’, which would reduce the length of time that a deceased person would have to spend in Purgatory before being transferred either to Heaven or to Hell.

In 1516, a Dominican friar called Johann Tetzel was despatched by the Pope to sell indulgences in order to raise funds for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Luther was strongly opposed to this policy and, in protest, published a treatise which came to be known as ‘the Ninety-Five Theses’. In doing so, he became the unwitting and reluctant initiator of what would develop into the Protestant Reformation.

Some twenty years later, a French theologian by the name of Jean Cauvin, whose Latin nom de plume was Calvinus, and who is known in the English speaking world as John Calvin, developed a doctrinal position which came to be known as ‘Calvinism’, which can be summarised in five points, using the acrostic TULIP as a memory aid:

• T = Total Depravity: because of Original Sin, every human being is congenitally incapable of doing anything that is not sinful.

• U = Unconditional Election: Since it is clear that all men are not saved and, because of Total Depravity, no-one can choose to be saved, God must have predestined, or elected, some to be saved and the remainder not to be saved.

• L = Limited Atonement: Since God has elected some to be saved and the remainder not to be saved, Christ’s atonement through the Cross must be limited to those who are counted among the elect.

• I = Irresistible Grace: Since, on account of Total Depravity, even the elect are only ever disposed to resist God’s grace, God must overcome the totally depraved will of the elect in order to make His grace effective in their lives.

• P = Persistence of the Saints: Since the work of salvation is entirely the work of God, it is not possible for that work to be hindered or frustrated by the sinful will of man, therefore if anyone is saved at all, they must be saved entirely and eternally, as the alternative would be a failure on the part of Almighty God.

The last of these five points – Persistence of the Saints – is known more commonly by the slogan, ‘once saved, always saved’.

It is important to recognise that if Calivin’s understanding of Total Depravity is NOT correct, and that men and women do have the capacity to choose what is right as well as what is wrong, then his other four points are undermined, and the whole edifice collapses.

I have already argued that there is no good reason to believe in Original Sin, which means that there is also no good reason to believe in Calvin’s Total Depravity, which is, if I may put it crudely, Original Sin on steroids.

I think it worthwhile to note in passing that Martin Luther did not agree with Calvin on all of these points, and, with particular reference to the fifth point, was of the view that a Christian might fall away through either serious sin or lack of faith.

Another leading Reformer, the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, taught that men are free to accept or refuse God’s grace, and can be assured of eternal salvation only by continuing in a life of devoted discipleship to Christ. This position was shared by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, in the eighteenth century and is widely held today in other protestant denominations and movements, such as the Pentecostals.

It is worth bearing in mind that the Reformation came about as the result of a protest against the doctrine of salvation by works, and so its emphasis was on salvation by grace acting through faith, with the result that any human participation in the process was either belittled or, in Calvin’s case, excluded.

My understanding is that Luther referred to the epistle of James as ‘an epistle of straw’, because James taught that faith without works is dead (James 2:14-26).

There is a danger, when we are attempting to prove someone else wrong, that we swing the pendulum to the opposite extreme. I believe that this error was made by both Luther and, to a greater extent, Calvin.

The scripture clearly teaches us that grace, faith, obedience, and righteousness are all necessary ingredients in the recipe for salvation.

What Does the Bible Say?

Like ‘Original Sin’, none of the titles of the five points of Calvinism is to be found in the Bible, and this is also true of another term which is relevant to this subject, and that is ‘Assurance of Salvation’.

At first glance, ‘Assurance of Salvation’ and ‘Persistence of the Saints’ sound as if they might be two ways of saying the same thing, but there is an important distinction between them.

A key text relating to Assurance of Salvation is this one:

John assures us that we may know that we have eternal life, but on the basis of fulfilling certain conditions:

• Whoever has the Son has life. What does it mean, ‘to have the Son’? At the very least it means to be in a meaningful, personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, which entails recognising His divine authority and being continuously submissive to Him.

• You who believe in the name of the Son of God have eternal life. What does it mean, ‘to believe’? James says, “even the demons believe – and shudder!” (James 2:19). So it is not enough to believe in the sense of having an opinion. In the New Testament this word is used in the broader and deeper sense of trusting in, being faithful to, having confidence in, or being committed to God and Christ.

• Everyone who is born of God does not keep on sinning. The internal transformation of the New Birth inevitably produces the external demonstration of a righteous life. It is highly unlikely that someone whose lifestyle has not changed for the better has undergone a genuine conversion. They may have enjoyed a religious experience, but if the experience is not life-changing and behaviour-changing, it is not the New Birth.

• We are IN God in Jesus Christ, and eternal life is in Him. Christ’s prayer in John chapter 17 highlights the need for the unity of God and man (John 17:21-24). Living a good life outside of Christ will not result in eternal life. He is the author of life and the source of all life. If I am to have eternal life in me, then He must be in me and I must be in Him.

So, we can rest in the assurance that if the conditions that we see here and elsewhere in scripture are being fulfilled, then we are certain to enjoy eternal life, not only with the Lord, but in Him, as He has promised us.

As the Holy Spirit said to me recently at a communion service: “It is not enough to have Christ within you, but Christ must be manifest through you”.

In light of this, I would suggest that there are two questions that need to be answered:

1. Is it possible to be saved and then lose that salvation?
2. If so, under what circumstances?

To answer those questions, let’s first take a look at some issues around ACCEPTANCE.

Conditions for being Accepted by God

At first sight, this is a somewhat disturbing statement from the Lord, for people who have been engaged in doing the work of the Gospel are being rejected by Christ as being, in His own words, ‘workers of lawlessness’. How are we to understand this?

I believe the key to this is found in these four words in verse 23: “I never knew you”.

This clearly demonstrates Christ’s priority, which is PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP.

All of the good works that these men did, at the end of the day, mean nothing to Him, because they never took the trouble to get to know Him in any meaningful way.

They clearly knew about Him, and even saw themselves as servants of His, performing mighty works in His name, but they were not doing it for Him. They were doing it for themselves, to satisfy their own ambitions, whatever those ambitions might have been. Perhaps they were even using His name as a means of gaining credibility, like the seven sons of Sceva in Acts 19:13-16.

Let's compare this passage with one of Jesus’s most famous parables – the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). In this story, the youngest son demands to be given his inheritance, and then goes off and squanders it on self-indulgence. When he hits rock bottom, he comes to his senses and heads back home to offer himself to his father as a servant, so that at least he can have some decent food to eat.

However, when the father sees him coming, he rushes out to welcome him, hugs and kisses him, brings him into the house, clothes him, puts the family ring on his finger, and orders a celebratory feast.

The father requires nothing of his prodigal son beyond his repentance. As far as he is concerned, his son, who was dead, is alive again, who was lost, has been found.

Again, this is not about works; this is about RELATIONSHIP, because that is what is most important to God.

I think it’s worth noting here that if the Calvinist view of Total Depravity were correct, then the son would have been incapable of coming to his senses, humbling himself, and setting off for home to seek his father’s forgiveness unless the father had sought him out and somehow, through his grace, coerced him into returning with him.

I am not suggesting that grace was not active until the boy came into his father’s line of sight. On the contrary, the father’s grace had always been a factor in the relationship, and it was on the basis of his knowledge of that grace that the son had the confidence to seek forgiveness and salvation.

So, relationship is key, but when it comes to judgement, what is it that will determine whether anyone is received into heaven or abandoned to the flames?

(Some may object that these two judgements are distinct, one being for the saints and the other for those who are not saints, while others may contend that it is the same judgement, but that is not relevant to the argument.)

The issue is that in both instances it is clearly stated that, irrespective of what works the people being judged either have or have not done, they are saved from the flames by having their name in the Book of Life.

Does this mean, then, that salvation is on the basis of relationship alone and that our works, whether good, bad, or indifferent, have no bearing upon our eternal security?

To answer this, let’s begin by considering the words of Paul to his protégé Titus:

Jesus Christ did not die on the cross simply to redeem our souls from the pit and make it possible for us to dwell for eternity in Paradise. His desire is for a people who are eager to do what is right in God’s eyes and who would rather die than do anything that might offend Him.

God permitted Adam and Eve to dwell in Paradise while they remained in their state of innocence, but once their innocence had been lost and they embarked upon lives of sin, He banished them from the Garden of Eden and made them fend for themselves among the thorns and thistles of the world that you and I are familiar with.

The new heavens and new earth that God is going to create are the dwelling-place of righteousness, as Peter tells us, and that must surely mean that they are the dwelling-place of a people who are righteous:

And the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us that Christ died, not to take sinners into Paradise, but to deal with the sin that keeps us separate from God, so that we can dwell with Him in that place of purity and holiness:

What kind of people should we be if we are to take full advantage of what Christ has prepared for us? Should we be satisfied with what seems to us to be a one-way ticket to Heaven that has no expiry date, and while we wait, continue living the way we always did before? Or should we take cognisance of the warnings of scripture to make sure that we are, indeed, still in the queue to board that train?

Can Salvation Be Lost?

One of the most important parables of Jesus is the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-8,18-23; Mark 14:3-8,13-20; Luke 8:4-8,11-15), because He doesn’t just tell us the story, but He also gives us the interpretation.

The seed, which represents the word of God through which we are born again (1 Peter 1:22-25) falls upon four different types of ground.

The first is the path, hardened by the passage of many feet, on which the seed is unable to take root.

The fourth is the good soil, well prepared, which receives the seed, allowing it to take root and produce an abundant harvest.

However, it is the second and third types of ground that we are interested in, because they both are receptive enough to allow the seed to germinate, but neither is able to sustain the crop sufficiently for it to produce a harvest:

In both cases, there is a beginning of new life, but it comes to nothing and dies again.

This would suggest that it is possible for someone to be born again, but fail to ‘endure to the end’ and be saved (Matthew 10:21-22; 24:12-13; Mark 13:12-13).

There is a very sobering passage in the letter to the Hebrews, which indicates strongly that salvation can be lost:

This clearly relates to someone who has been born again, and therefore saved at some time, because they have …

• Been enlightened
• Tasted the heavenly gift
• Shared in the Holy Spirit
• Tasted the goodness of the word of God
• Tasted the powers of the age to come

… but they have then fallen away, to the extent that “they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt”, and the end of anyone who has come to this pass is “to be burned”.

I cannot see how anyone could interpret this passage either to mean that the person in question had never been born again, and therefore never saved, or that their back-sliding was not terminal.

However, it appears from verses 9 to 12 that the writer does not believe that his audience has come to this place of apostacy, but he does clearly feel that it is incumbent upon him to issue such a severe warning to endeavour to prevent them from continuing on a road that might lead them to such a perilous outcome.

His concern, in fact, is so great that he includes a similar warning in chapter 10:

The warning, here, is against continuing to sin DELIBERATELY after receiving the knowledge of the truth. Apostle John makes that point very strongly:

The Hebrew Christians to whom the anonymous letter was written had been under immense pressure to abandon their faith in Christ and return to Old Testament religious legalism, but by so doing they would be spurning the Son of God, profaning the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, outraging the Spirit of grace, and throwing away their confidence, the result of which would be loss of their reward and, ultimately, rejection by God.

Once again, the good news is that they have not yet come to that place, but they have stepped on to the slippery slope and must be persuaded to change tack immediately in order to ensure that they do not sabotage their salvation.

A different, but equally serious, situation arose in the church in Corinth, which Paul addresses as follows:

The sin that was being committed in this case was so grave that the individual in question was in danger of forfeiting his salvation, and in the attempt to avoid this outcome, Paul’s solution is to ‘deliver the man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh’.

Now, there may be differing views on what Paul actually meant by that, but I would guess that his desired result for this punishment would be that either:

1. His suffering would be such that he would realise his error and come to a place of repentance before he had gone too far, or

2. He might lose his life before he had gone too far, and so still have a chance of scraping into heaven, but as one passing through the fire.

In similar vein, Paul warns the Galatian Christians:

The Christian who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And even the one who sows good seed may not see the harvest, should he give up before the end, for “the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22; 24:13; Mark 13:13).

Summary

We have seen that God’s primary concern is that we should be in fellowship with Him, and this will be the deciding factor on whether or not we are received into glory for eternity.

We have also seen, however, that God’s desire is to be in fellowship with people who are, and intend to remain, righteous. Anyone who has no interest in righteousness will not be in fellowship with God for very long, and will certainly not find a comfortable place in either the new heaven or the new earth, “where righteousness dwells”.

A number of scriptures have been presented which clearly warn us to remain faithful to Christ and true to His word, and to endure to the end, whatever that might entail. These warnings are obviously addressed to Christians, and must therefore be relevant to those who are already saved.

The reasonable conclusion must therefore be that we cannot say ‘once saved, always saved’, but we can say that those who are faithful to Christ and are determined to endure to the end can enjoy assurance of salvation.

Does it Really Matter?

I believe that it does really matter.

It is undoubtedly true that the vast majority of people who surrender their lives to Jesus and take up the mantle of discipleship will be determined to endure to the end and always live to please God, but there are also many who will be faced with such opposition and obstacles to their Christian walk that they will be tempted, like the recipients of the epistle to the Hebrews, to take the easy road and abandon their faith and their Lord. Others, like Demas (2 Timothy 4:10), will be overtaken by such strong desires of flesh and/or mind that they will turn away from the narrow path in order to enjoy the temporal pleasures of the broad road.

Can anyone say for sure that this one will be saved but that one lost?

Judgement belongs to God alone, and He alone knows what will become of this one or that one, but each of us in our own heart knows how close or distant we stand in relation to the Throne of Grace.

If you are among those who have believed that your salvation is assured despite the fact that you have made no attempt to live up to the standard of righteousness, purity, and holiness that Christ requires of His disciples, then now is the time to appeal to His boundless grace and get back into harness with Him (Matthew 11:28-30) and complete your journey in victory, not in failure.

You may find the following model prayer helpful:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, my Lord, my God, and my Saviour,

I confess that I have sinned against You by failing to live as a true disciple, but I repent of that sin and I commit myself, here and now, to being obedient to Your voice and allowing You to dwell within me and Your holiness and Your righteousness to be manifest through me.

I declare that I am not my own, but I have been bought with the price of Your eternal blood (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23), and so from this moment on, in Your name and by Your grace, I will glorify God in my body.

Amen.