This is the Ask Pastor Alex podcast with your host, Pastor Alex.
Alright, welcome back to the podcast.
We’re here with another episode and another question.
The question for this episode is, can Christians lose their salvation?
Good question.
I know that that is one that I personally have wondered, especially early on in my walk
with Christ and shortly after I became a Christian.
I wondered that same thing.
And I know that many Christians today wonder about that question.
They wonder, can I lose my salvation?
And let me just answer this plain and simple.
The answer is no.
Actually, I’d say the answer is an emphatic no.
I imagine if I just ended the episode there, but I’m not going to do that, right?
Let’s do what we always do.
Let’s dig into the Word and see what the Bible has to say about this.
So if you read Hebrews 9-12, it talks about how the blood of bulls and goats that were
offered as sacrifices in the old covenant system, they were not able to actually obtain
salvation for those who were offering the sacrifices.
But it contrasts that by saying that Jesus has offered up His blood.
And here’s what happens, Hebrews 9-12 says that by offering His blood, He secured an
eternal redemption.
Now praise God for that verse, one of my favorite verses in the entire Bible.
Jesus, when He offered His blood for us, secured an eternal redemption.
Notice, that is not a partial redemption.
That is not a temporary redemption.
It means that for any person who has turned from their sins and trusted fully in Jesus
and His atoning work, His sacrifice, you have an eternal redemption because Christ secured
it with His own blood.
Praise God for that.
But not only that, we read Ephesians 1, verses 13-14.
It says, In Him, being Jesus, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of
your salvation, believed in Him and were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the
guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.
So what that passage is saying is, if you are a Christian, you have received the Holy
Spirit as a guarantee, a down payment of that future inheritance.
And notice it says a guarantee.
In other words, that means God does not give His Holy Spirit to people who will not one
day receive the promised inheritance that comes along with the giving of the Holy Spirit.
So the very fact that we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us right now as believers in Christ
guarantees it is a certainty that one day we will have that future inheritance that
God promises to His people.
And there’s even more evidence.
If you go to the book of John, in John chapter 6, there are so many verses in this one chapter
that just back this up.
I mean you begin in John 6 in verse 37.
This is Jesus speaking and He says, all that the Father gives me will come to me.
And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.
So Jesus is saying no one can come to me unless the Father draws me and all that the Father
draws will absolutely, certainly come.
And for everybody who does come, who certainly will come, Jesus will never cast them out.
But notice how He goes on in verses 39 and 40 and He says, and this is the will of Him
who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up
on the last day.
For this is the will of my Father that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should
have eternal life and I will raise Him up on the last day.
So notice how absolutely affirming those verses are about the security of our salvation.
And Jesus is saying this is God’s will and we know the Bible says God’s will will be
done.
Absolutely.
Our God is in the heavens.
He does all that He pleases.
He will have His way.
And Jesus is saying here, here’s the will of my Father that I’m going to lose nothing
of all that He gives me.
And He has given me my people and I will lose none of them.
But not only that, He says that it’s the will of God that everyone who looks on Jesus for
salvation will have eternal life.
And not only that, but Jesus absolutely will raise them up on the last day.
So again, notice the absolute guarantee of this.
If you are a Christian, it means that you have been drawn by the Father to Jesus.
You came because the Father was drawing you.
And the promise that you have is that Jesus will never cast you out.
He will never lose you and that He most certainly, absolutely, 100% will raise you up on the
last day.
In other words too, something to think about here is that if Jesus loses even one of His
people, then He has failed in His mission and He has failed to do the will of God.
And God’s will is not done because Jesus will have lost even one person after the Father
says He will lose none.
So one other passage just related to this.
In Romans chapter 8, there’s this golden chain of salvation.
Romans chapter 8 beginning in verse 29 and continuing to verse 30, this is what we read,
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in
order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.
And those whom He predestined, He also called.
And those whom He called, He also justified.
And those whom He justified, He also glorified.
Now notice the continuation there from one to the other, but right there at the end it’s
incredibly important because He says those whom He has justified, pause for a second,
every person who’s a believer in Christ has been justified.
It means that we have been declared righteous in the eyes of God, not because we are righteous,
but because the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to us through faith.
So submit a question, ask about justification, we’ll have a whole episode on that.
But anyways, back to the point here, if you’re a Christian, you’ve been justified, and the
Bible says those whom He justified, He also glorified.
But hold on a second, we know that glorification doesn’t come until glory, until Jesus returns
and we have the resurrected bodies and we enter into Him to that eternal, glorious eternal
state.
And so how can the Bible say that we have already been glorified when we haven’t?
Well here’s what’s happening.
Our future glorification is so certain and guaranteed in the mind of God that it can
be said that we are already glorified now.
That’s how guaranteed and certain that it is, is that God can even say right now we
are glorified because it is guaranteed to happen.
So the other important point on this that I want you to understand is that we remain
Christians not because of how great we are or how faithful we are, but because of how
great God is.
We remain Christians because of God.
The Bible says in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 5 that we are kept by the power of God for
this salvation that’s going to be revealed in the last day.
So notice it is God the one who is keeping us.
We are not keeping ourselves Christians, He is keeping us in the faith.
We also know that John chapter 10 says that no one can snatch us from the hands of God,
that no one is going to come and snatch us away.
Well if no one can snatch us away from God’s hands we certainly can’t pull ourselves away
from God’s hands.
He keeps us and protects us so our salvation is secured not because of us but because of
God.
You know it actually reminds me of when my oldest son was when he was little, maybe just
a little over a year old, I would hold him all the time and occasionally we would be
running or jumping or doing stuff while I was holding him and he would get scared that
he was going to fall and so he would grip onto me with like this death grip, as much
as a one year old has a death grip, but he would just cling to me with everything that
he had and he believed that he was secure and safe from falling away because of how
much he was gripping me and how tightly he was holding onto me.
But in reality the reason that he was safe and secure was not because he was holding
onto me, it was because I was holding onto him and I was not going to let anything happen
to him.
He was secure because I was holding him not because he was holding me.
Well the same thing applies with us and God.
We are secure in our salvation and can trust that we will never lose it not because of
how tightly we hold onto it, not because of how faithful we are, but because God holds
onto us.
He keeps us and keeps us from falling away.
So what about Christians who backslide?
Is it possible for Christians to backslide and wander away?
Yeah, absolutely.
That happens from time to time, but they will always come back.
True Christians will never walk away for good.
And then that raises one final question which is just, well what about those who claim to
have been Christians for a time and then deconvert?
You know, we are living in the deconstruction age where people are talking about deconstructing
and deconverting and there is this whole almost glamour behind it right now.
What about those people?
Because they claim to have believed in Jesus and they claim that they were Christians for
a while and they walked away and now they no longer are.
Now I don’t want to just offer my opinion, but biblically speaking the Bible would say
that those people were never actually truly Christians in the first place.
They might have had a lot of spiritual experiences.
They might have had a lot of religious experiences.
They might have had a lot of meaningful experiences.
They could have participated in the work of God.
They could have engaged in missions and efforts and activities and things like that.
But when it comes down to it, the Bible would say that they were never actually truly Christians.
In fact, in 1 John, John talks about people who had gone out from the church.
They had been in the midst of the church.
They were among the church.
They were active in the church and he says they went out from us, but they weren’t actually
of us.
So the Bible says it’s absolutely possible that there are going to be people who will
give Christianity a try and they will even convince themselves that they are true Christians,
but one day they will fall away and it’s because they’ve never actually truly been born again.
They’ve never truly been converted.
They haven’t truly repented of their sins and given themselves to Jesus.
And so the good news here is that if you are a true Christian, you cannot lose your salvation
and praise God for that.
It is secure and you will always remain safe in the arms of God because He holds onto you.
So I hope that encourages you to know that you can’t lose your salvation and secure
not because you’re great or because you’re super faithful, but because God keeps you
and you can trust Him.
So good question.
I appreciate it and I look forward to answering more in the future.