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Transcript 197A — Can You Lose Your Salvation?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: My question about salvation is, once you accept Christ, are you saved forever? This question came up in our house. I said that if you blatantly disregarded Christ and went back into the world, and Christ happened to come that day, you were not saved. Was that the correct answer?
HC: Let me ask you a question, to help you think this out. When you talk about being saved, what are we saved from?
CALLER: We are saved from, now, let's see.
HC: What are we saved from? Are we saved from our misery? Are we saved from our loneliness? What are we saved from?
CALLER: Well, not saved from our loneliness. We're saved so that we can be with Christ.
HC: Yes, but we're saved from something. You know, if someone is drowning in the river, and you jump in, and you save that person, you have saved that person from drowning.
CALLER: We're saved from the devil.
HC: We're saved from the devil. Do you really think that that is all we are saved from?
CALLER: Well, I say that we are saved from all the things that are not good for us, that we will go to live with Christ.
HC: All right. Now let's see if we can expand that a little farther. The Bible teaches that "the wages of sin is death." And it's referring to eternal condemnation by God. And the Bible teaches that all of us are sinners.
Now therefore, the wrath of God abides on us before we're saved. We're under the condemnation of God. We are to spend an eternity in hell for our sins. Now this is what we're saved from. We're saved from hell. We're saved from the wrath of God. We're saved from Judgment Day. And of course we're also saved from Satan. But Satan isn't the biggest threat. The biggest threat is the wrath of God that we have to pay for, although how awful that is, we can't really know. The Bible uses some horribly ugly language, to describe how awful this really is.
All right. Now if in order for Christ to save me it was necessary that He take upon Himself all of my sins, and in fact the Bible says He became sin for me, and He was found guilty and He was punished for my sins (the wrath of God came upon Him - that's what happened when He went to the cross ), now all of my sins have been paid for, every one of my sins. When Christ went to the cross, He looked down the corridors of time, and He saw me. And He saw every sin I would ever commit, before I was saved or after I was saved, every single sin. And He took upon Himself all of these sins, and they were all paid for.
CALLER: For the rest of your life?
HC: There is no way that I can ever be threatened by hell. There's no way that I can ever come under condemnation. That's why the Bible says so confidently, in Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Or in John 5:24 it says that "those who hear His words and believe on Him have eternal life, and they do not come into judgment. They have passed from death into life."
If you could think of a sin that I could commit that could make me lose this salvation, then it would mean that God is lying to me. Then it would mean that He didn't really become sin for me. He hadn't really paid for all of my sins, because there was one sin He didn't cover.
CALLER: What is the point in our trying to be like Christ and to live like Christ?
HC: The fact is that when we actually have become born again, we have become a brand new creature in our souls. We have experienced the resurrection of our souls. And in that part of our life, which is as real a part of us as our bodies, we're a new person.
Now in our new soul, we never want to sin again. I John 3:9 teaches that that which is born of God cannot sin. The only reason we still sin as believers is that our body hasn't been saved yet. And that's also a real part of us. But in our soul we never want to sin again.
First of all, there is an ongoing earnest desire, because I have my new soul, to live for Him. This is the desire of my heart, to live for Christ. It's as natural with me now as it was once natural, with every fiber of my body, to want to live in sin.
Now in my soul I want to live for Christ. In my body I still lust after sin. So there's a conflict going on. So what happens? Let's say that I begin to sin. I tell a lie, or I begin to have lustful thoughts, or whatever. Immediately I feel very uncomfortable. In my soul I'm doing what is contrary to my new nature, and there's a struggle that's going on. And I can't stay with this sin very long before I begin to cry out to God, "Oh God, have mercy on me. Father, help me to get victory over this sin. How can I live this way?"
As a born again believer, I don't want to live in sin. More than that, if I would persist in sin, I must remember that God has bought me by the price of His blood. I am His possession, and He indwells me in the Person of the Holy Spirit. And God has something to say about this. And so He would begin to chastise. He'll begin to deal with me, in order that I'll straighten this matter out. It is not God's program that I am to live in sin.
And I don't want to live in sin, either, even though I am troubled by it because I still have a body that lusts after sin.
You see, the Gospel is not one of fear. A lot of people are led to believe, "Now look. You' re saved. But you watch out now. You be sure that you keep all the commandments, because if you don't keep all the commandments, you're going to lose your salvation." Now that isn't what the Bible teaches. We aren't under fear. We're not under duress. We keep the commandments because we love to keep the commandments, because we belong to Christ.
We read the Bible, as a born again believer, if we've really become born again, and it's not a threat to us. We read it knowing that it reveals sin in our lives, and we'll never be perfect. But we're glad that it does. And we have a real desire to be obedient to it as we read it.
CALLER: In other words, what you're saying is that when we really accept Christ, we want to do right, and we can't lose. And if we just blatantly go on, we have just never really accepted Christ.
HC: It means we've never become born again. You see, the language of "accepting Christ" is not really Biblical language. Nowhere does it talk about accepting Christ. It talks about believing in Him. That means trusting Him with our whole life, so that He is Lord of our life, so that He is King over our life, and we trust Him that all of our sins have been forgiven. Our will has become surrendered to Him.
CALLER: Thank you very much.
HC: I hope this will help a little bit.
CALLER: It will help, and with all the passages I'm reading, I'm certain to get a real clear understanding of this. I thank you very much.
HC: You're welcome. Good night.