Thursday, August 18, 2005
Losing my salvation, part one.
Right now a good friend and I are having a discussion. He is of the view that you can lose your salvation and I am not. Now I think I should warn you in advance that this is a position I am still working through as there are passages of scripture that seem to support both positions, and this discussion will no doubt create much research, study and maybe even a few sermons over the next few months. I read the following in his blog and had to comment about it.
I had a thought on this part of your blog, that I wanted to share.
"3)Unfruitful Christians. Yep, those people that think "Hey I'm in now!" and try to do very little or try to ignore the knife. The unfruitful ones. What's He do with these? The Bible says"Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He cuts off." John15:2a
and then
"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered: and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." John16:6
I think that's pretty obvious, don't you?
"Once saved, always saved." is a lie!Or the Bible is. You decide, but just remember, Jesus is the Word. You deny Him and He will deny you! I personally believe the Word of God.
I'm not going to be a "Hell bound Christian"."
We have a disagreement here. I don't believe once saved always saved is a lie. The way I see it, if we can lose our salvation then our salvation is based on works and we are saved by grace and not by works. The thing about it is this, I would question whether a person who does no works is saved to begin with, but that decision is not up to me.
In the church, we have far too big an emphasis (in my opinion) on getting conversions and nowhere near enough on making disciples. In a lot of cases the reason that there is faith without works is that we get someone to give their heart to Jesus and we jump right away from them to get that next conversion leaving the person to sit there and say okay, now what. The believer's faithlessness is at least partly due to a church that is not following the full spirit of the great commission. We are too busy making mega churches to make disciples.
The other side of all that is this, I don't have time to figure out whether another person is really saved and in the end it is not up to me to judge that anyway. What is up to me is to follow the leading of the holy spirit and to faithfully make DISCIPLES, If we can lose our salvation, how do we lose it? sin. I hope not or try as I might, I'm still damned. lack of fruit? by whose standard. God's plan for each person is different. I remember EV Hill speaking at a promise keepers meeting on night. He's gone to be with the Lord now and if you missed him you missed one of the great preachers I have ever heard, but that particular night EV was really disappointing. He started by talking about all that he accomplished. All the places that he had been and all the millions of people he had spoken before and the tens and hundreds of thousands that came to Christ at his altar calls. Just when I was about to scream it's not about you, he turned it around and became a personal word of prophecy in my life. He said and the pastor that led me to the Lord never spoke to more than 70 people in his whole life. Who gets the credit for all those people. EV or his pastor. Neither, it's Jesus. Each of them was used mightily by God each bore the fruit that was expected of him. Some of use will be great teachers and prophets and others will be begats. The one who gets to measure the fruit is the one who made the tree.
You can disagree with me on this if you want and I won't think any less of you if you do ( hopefully you don't think less of me either. I have been struggling with this issue for a long time, because somehow it doesn't make sense that I could do so much more work than someone else and receive the same reward. On the other hand someone could look at me and say I can't believe he gets the same reward as me after all the bad that he's done. That passage you mentioned is not so much about doing as it is about being. We can't earn it, so we have to abide in him, trust in Him hold on to him and hopefully in all that abiding and holding on and trusting we will follow the spirit into faithful service.
Right now a good friend and I are having a discussion. He is of the view that you can lose your salvation and I am not. Now I think I should warn you in advance that this is a position I am still working through as there are passages of scripture that seem to support both positions, and this discussion will no doubt create much research, study and maybe even a few sermons over the next few months. I read the following in his blog and had to comment about it.
I had a thought on this part of your blog, that I wanted to share.
"3)Unfruitful Christians. Yep, those people that think "Hey I'm in now!" and try to do very little or try to ignore the knife. The unfruitful ones. What's He do with these? The Bible says"Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He cuts off." John15:2a
and then
"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered: and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." John16:6
I think that's pretty obvious, don't you?
"Once saved, always saved." is a lie!Or the Bible is. You decide, but just remember, Jesus is the Word. You deny Him and He will deny you! I personally believe the Word of God.
I'm not going to be a "Hell bound Christian"."
We have a disagreement here. I don't believe once saved always saved is a lie. The way I see it, if we can lose our salvation then our salvation is based on works and we are saved by grace and not by works. The thing about it is this, I would question whether a person who does no works is saved to begin with, but that decision is not up to me.
In the church, we have far too big an emphasis (in my opinion) on getting conversions and nowhere near enough on making disciples. In a lot of cases the reason that there is faith without works is that we get someone to give their heart to Jesus and we jump right away from them to get that next conversion leaving the person to sit there and say okay, now what. The believer's faithlessness is at least partly due to a church that is not following the full spirit of the great commission. We are too busy making mega churches to make disciples.
The other side of all that is this, I don't have time to figure out whether another person is really saved and in the end it is not up to me to judge that anyway. What is up to me is to follow the leading of the holy spirit and to faithfully make DISCIPLES, If we can lose our salvation, how do we lose it? sin. I hope not or try as I might, I'm still damned. lack of fruit? by whose standard. God's plan for each person is different. I remember EV Hill speaking at a promise keepers meeting on night. He's gone to be with the Lord now and if you missed him you missed one of the great preachers I have ever heard, but that particular night EV was really disappointing. He started by talking about all that he accomplished. All the places that he had been and all the millions of people he had spoken before and the tens and hundreds of thousands that came to Christ at his altar calls. Just when I was about to scream it's not about you, he turned it around and became a personal word of prophecy in my life. He said and the pastor that led me to the Lord never spoke to more than 70 people in his whole life. Who gets the credit for all those people. EV or his pastor. Neither, it's Jesus. Each of them was used mightily by God each bore the fruit that was expected of him. Some of use will be great teachers and prophets and others will be begats. The one who gets to measure the fruit is the one who made the tree.
You can disagree with me on this if you want and I won't think any less of you if you do ( hopefully you don't think less of me either. I have been struggling with this issue for a long time, because somehow it doesn't make sense that I could do so much more work than someone else and receive the same reward. On the other hand someone could look at me and say I can't believe he gets the same reward as me after all the bad that he's done. That passage you mentioned is not so much about doing as it is about being. We can't earn it, so we have to abide in him, trust in Him hold on to him and hopefully in all that abiding and holding on and trusting we will follow the spirit into faithful service.
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