“Can the Found be Lost Again?”
(Message #1 on Perseverance of Saints)
Steve Hanchett, pastor
Berry Road Baptist Church
“And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from me.” -Jeremiah 32:40-
During my years as a pastor no question has been asked more often, in one way or another, than “can a person who has been saved be lost again?” I think I can discern three primary reasons why people ask this question. All three of them are good reasons and I hope over the next few weeks we can make some headway in sufficiently answering the question. Last fall we studied what the Scripture had to say about worship. This fall I want us to consider the subject of the security of the believer. This morning we are going to do some ground-work and give you an introduction to the issue. I hope that you will make it a point to be here over the next few weeks as we look deeper into this. I hope I will be able to answer your questions with biblical truth.
I don’t want to be like the girl who, when shown a picture of the flag, was asked what it was, she said, “That is the flag of our country.” “Good,” the teacher said. “And what is the name of our country?” “Tis of thee,” the girl said confidently.
The first reason people ask whether the saved can be lost again is because of personal apprehension. They want to know for themselves where they stand with the Lord. Sometimes that is an issue because they have backslidden and sin has taken root again in their lives and they wonder if they really do have a saving relationship with Christ. Have they lost it? Are they still saved? Were they ever saved to begin with? These are the kinds of questions they are asking. For other people it is not a question of backsliding, but simply a desire for assurance and a longing for security. They know the weakness of their own flesh and the sins that lurk around the door of their heart, and they wonder if these things will overtake them and ruin their spiritual life. So many times when someone asks, “can the saved be lost again?” they are asking that question because they have personal apprehesnions. So as we think about the security of the believer we are thinking about some very serious, personal spiritual issues.
The second reason people ask if the saved can be lost again is because of personal experiences. We all know people who profess a faith in Christ but we look at their lives and we don’t see anything that indicates that Christ really matters to them. And we can’t help but asking if they are really Christians? Were they ever really saved? If they were did they lose that salvation? Often our personal experiences make us question whether or not a person can be saved and then lose their salvation.
Many of us have been to those funerals where we are shocked to hear that the person being eulogized is said to have been a Christian. We wonder how could that be? We knew that man or woman and we never saw anything that indicated a faith in Christ. Could they really have been saved?
Probably most troubling in all of our experiences is when we watch someone sincerely pray to receive Christ and seem to make a change, but then we watch as they drift back into their old life, their old habits, their old language, and we wonder. . . . Are they saved? Were they ever saved? Were they saved and then lost that salvation?
People also ask if a person who is saved could be lost again for a third reason - they ask in a quest for personal understanding. They simply want to know what the Bible teaches about our security in Christ. For us, as Baptists, there really is no more important approach to take. The Bible, not the church, is the final authority on matters of our faith. The real question for us is not what do Baptists believe, but what does the Bible teach?
These are the three reasons that I can discern why people wrestle with this issue. Now, for most people it is just one of these reasons but rather a combination of reasons why they struggle with this issue. They are trying to understand what they see around them, they wonder about themselves and they are trying to understand all of this from a Biblical perspective.
Over the next few weeks I hope we will try to help you with some of the issues that surround this question of the security of the believer. I’m not going to try and give you a bunch of bumper sticker slogans and trite answers. I want to really challenge each of us at the deepest levels of our faith. I’m not trying to give you ammunition to win an arguments with someone from another denomination. I want you to develop firm convictions that will draw you closer to Christ.
Most of all I will not give false comfort or assurance to those who are living in sin and away from Christ. Can I tell you something now that I hope we will be able to develop in a more clear light over the next few weeks? If you are living in unrepentant sin, if you are not walking with Christ, do not expect to have a deep abiding assurance of salvation. You of all people need to examine yourself to see if you are in the faith.
We are going to be talking about a number of very significant truths. A lot of issues need to be dealt with if we are going to come to a solid understanding of what the Scripture teaches about this. For example, the very nature of our salvation is at the heart of this question. If we can come to understand what a Christian is it will help us to understand why a Christian is secure. What about assurance? Can we give assurance to anyone about their relationship to Christ? What about those who fall away. Were they ever really saved? What about the warnings in the Bible about falling away? Is there any way we can no for sure that we are saved? These are the kinds of questions that must be dealt with.
There are basically three views concerning the security of the believer. First, some people believe that you can genuinely be a Christian and then, either through sin or unbelief, fall away from grace. For example, the Free Will Baptist Treatise of Faith states in chapter 13: ‘There are strong grounds to hope that the truly regenerate will persevere unto the end, and be saved, through the power of divine grace which is pledged for their support; but their future obedience and final salvation are neither determined nor certain, since through infirmity and manifold temptations they are in danger of falling and they ought, therefore, to watch and pray lest they make shipwreck of their faith and be lost.”
Robert Shank in his book Life in the Son, states that “the sole peril is that we may fail to listen to (Christ’s) voice and to follow him. We may fail to abide in him and thus fail to continue to share his life and victory.” (p.208).
Todd Tomasella uses much stronger language in an article entitled “Can a Man Lose His Salvation?” He states, “Salvation is not merely a one-time experience although it starts that way. One must continue to choose God and His Word - to the end to be continuously washed and saved eternally. . . it doesn’t matter who is teaching ‘once saved always saved’ it is still a lie and always will be in God’s book! No honest-hearted, truth-seeking disciple of Jesus Christ can believe this unfounded lie after he carefully and thoroughly studies holy Scripture. It is a doctrine of men and not a Biblical doctrine whatsoever. God will judge all who teach this doctrine, for it is a doctrine of Satan. . .As he did in the garden, Satan is still using the most ‘subtle’ messengers to teach the original lie. He is using ministers, many who are very popular, but dead wrong, pawns of the evil one.”
Second, some hold to the position that is most commonly referred to as “once-saved-always-saved.” You know that I have said several times that, while I don’t have a problem with those words in themselves, I do object to some of what those words can imply and often what is taught related to them. Some who use that terminology say that a person can believe one moment and even if they fall into complete unbelief the next moment they are still secure in their salvation. I do not agree. And I will tell you why over the next few weeks.
In a book of one of the most popular teachers of this view the author gives an illustration of salvation and security to demonstrate his view on the subject. In this illustration he compares salvation to receiving a tattoo. He says that a person could receive a tattoo and immediately change their mind about it. They might even wish they hadn’t gotten one. But nevertheless they still have the tattoo. There is nothing they can do to change that. He seems to say that in the same way a person can believe in Christ and immediately wish they hadn’t, but there is nothing they can do about it. They are saved and as much as they might wish they hadn’t been there is nothing they can do.
I don’t think the author intended to imply that coming to know Christ was as trivial as getting a tattoo. I want to be clear on that. But I do think that the illustration points out the fallacy in this view. It teaches that salvation is only a decision we make. It seems to miss the fact that coming to Christ is not just a decision it is a miraculous work of God whereby those who do trust Christ alone for salvation are radically changed people. We will talk more about the nature of that change that takes place later. But for right now we need to be clear that becoming a Christian is more that just a casual decision made at a point in time and God is bound to honor that decision no matter what we do after that point.
No doubt that those who hold this view also believe that a person could make a profession of faith and not really be a Christian. But their problem becomes they have no reasonable explanation for that event. To put it in the form of a question: If becoming a Christian is only making a decision for Christ and a person make a decision at some time in the past, why are they not saved? They have to resort to saying the person must not have been sincere enough, or they didn’t really mean it when it happened, or they didn’t know what they were doing.
They also have to struggle with questions about the fact that sin and unbelief are not necessarily disqualifications for being a part of the family of God. So they are left with no real way to ever test themselves to see whether they are in the faith? The only thing they can resort to is to look back at the experience of conversion. Therefore they will emphasize whether or not you remember the time and place of your profession of faith. Those who hold this view, to be consistent, must assure a person that they are saved if that person can remember making a profession of faith and if they think they were sincere in it.
This view has some serious implications and even the world outside of Christianity seems to recognize that. Kenneth Woodward, in a Newsweek article that seemed to be mocking the Baptist faith, referred to Bill Clinton’s sexual sins by writing that, “Bill Clinton’s troubled personal life - and his repeated verbal evasions - also bears a distinctive Baptist stamp. Like most Baptists, Clinton was taught that because he had been born again, his salvation is ensured. Sinning - even repeatedly - would not bar his soul from heaven.”
I certainly won’t pretend to know what Bill Clinton really thinks about his relationship with Christ. But I do understand where Woodward is coming from. He is stating what has often been charged: “If you believe that you can be saved and then never be lost again, you have carte blanche to sin all you want. It won’t matter because you are going to get into heaven anyway.” This is a charge that can’t just be sloughed off and ignored. Is Security in Christ a license to sin? This is an issue this second view of “once-saved-always-saved” has to contend with.
The third view, which is the historic Baptist view and a part of the Baptist Faith and Message, and the view I believe is biblical, has usually been referred to as “the perseverance of the saints.” This view agrees with the second in that it teaches that a person who is saved will always be saved. This view includes what the second view leaves out. It teaches that a person that has truly been saved will give evidence of that by his or her perseverance in the faith. It teaches that there are going to be certain changes in his or her life that mark them out as a genuine believer. The text of Jeremiah communicates this truth. God is committed to the believer. And as a part of the commitment He places within their hearts a fear or reverence for Him that prevents them from departing from Him. In other words, when God saves a person He changes them in such a way that they will persevere in their faith.
The Baptist Faith and Message states that, “All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by his Spirit, will never fall away from that state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgments on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.”
Arhtur Custance describes this belief this way: “the security of the believer is bound up in the sovereignty of God, the unchangeableness of His purpose, and the constancy of his good pleasure. It is the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ and not the faithfulness of the believer that guarantees this security.”
John MacArthur said, “the point is not that God guarantees security to everyone who will say he accepts Christ, but rather that those whose faith is genuine will prove their salvation is secure by persevering to the end in the way of righteousness.”
Now, let me close this introduction to this subject by sharing with you three personal convictions that will be the basis for much of what we are going to look at over the next several weeks: 1. A person who has been born again by the Spirit of God can never be lost again. 2. Not everyone who professes to be a Christian is a Christian. 3. The Bible gives us ways to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith and thereby have assurance of our eternal destiny.
In looking at these things we will have the opportunity to examine our own faith, we will see the ways we can experience assurance, and we will come to understand what it means to be a Christian. As I stand here in front of you today I am looking at a group of people who are either saved or lost, you either know God or you don’t, your sins have been forgiven or they have not, you have the Holy Spirit within you or you don’t. There is no middle ground.
Think of it this way. Sin has created a huge gulf, a massive canyon between us and God. And here we stand on one side of that canyon. It is a land of barren waste, of unquenched spiritual thirst, of unrealized joy. It is a land of the dying who are slowly but surely going to a place of eternal torment. There is nothing we can do to escape. We can’t overcome the breach that sin has created between us and God. All seemed hopeless. We stand gazing across to that distant shore that seems to offer joy and peace with God and forgiveness for sin. But we see no way to get there.
Thank God He was not content to let us die hopelessly in our sins. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, into this land of death and sin to die for our sin so that we might be saved. Now the cross spans that gulf like a mighty bridge to provide for us a way to the land of God. By faith in Christ we cross that bridge to the other side.
The cross of Christ is a shelter from the wrath of God that is yet to come.
Christ calls to us to come to Him and in Him we will find life. Real life. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Now and forever more.
