Does God want us to have assurance of our salvation? It is my intention to show clearly from the scriptures that we can and should have certainty that eternal life is truly eternal – that is, that once it is gained, it can never be lost.
It is not God’s desire that we should live in a constant state of anxiety, never knowing whether or not we will inherit His kingdom in the end. I can’t imagine thinking ‘today I believe and I am saved, but who knows about tomorrow?’. Sadly, some people DO live this way. There are, in fact, people who believe that the Bible teaches that it is possible for a person to have salvation and then lose it. More than being an attempt to keep with what scripture says about assurance of salvation, I believe that this is likely an attempt to preserve the notion of libertarian free will. Whatever the reason, I believe it is sad and wrong. If you have ever been persuaded to believe that God is a God of ‘come and go’ salvation – ‘here today, possibly gone tomorrow’, then it would be good to consider the following:
“They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that that none of them belonged to us” 1 John 2:19. It is very difficult if not impossible to argue with the clear meaning here. Those who truly belong will always belong. There may be some who appear to belong at least for a time, and then they ‘walk away from the faith’, so to speak. They were never truly of the faith! Scripture is clear that these people did not lose their salvation – they just never had it to begin with.
Once God adopts you as a son, he will never abandon you as an orphan again. (Romans 8:14-17). The adoption of the believer by God as a son through Christ is of huge significance throughout scripture. How weak and insecure is the adopted child who must constantly fear that he will once again be orphaned? This is NOT what scripture teaches. The adopted child should relish in his adoption, finding great joy in the security that it brings.
“There may be some who appear to belong at least for a time, and then they ‘walk away from the faith’, so to speak. They were never truly of the faith! Scripture is clear that these people did not lose their salvation – they just never had it to begin with.”
When God gives you His Spirit as a guarantee of your inheritance, this is an actual guarantee, not a hypothetical one based on your performance. (Ephesians 1:14). There is a very good reason why God’s promise to His people is an unconditional promise! Simply put, if it were not unconditional, it would require us to do something perfectly, which is impossible for fallen people to accomplish. Thus, we would screw it up every time and the promise would be void! When God promises to give us his Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance (salvation/eternal life), His guarantee does NOT include a clause which says “depending on how well you do at keeping yourself on the straight and narrow”. The guarantee is based on God’s unconditional promise, not on our performance. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pursue righteous living. It means that we shouldn’t have any faith whatsoever in our pursuit of righteous living. Our faith is in God’s promise and His guarantee alone, not in our own abilities.
“This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pursue righteous living. It means that we shouldn’t have any faith whatsoever in our pursuit of righteous living.”
When God says NOTHING will ever separate you from His love, He really does mean nothing. (Romans 8:38-39). He doesn’t say ‘nothing except yourself’. He says nothing, period. (This may be hard to accept for a person who insists on trying to maintain the illusion of absolute, self-determining free will, aka ‘libertarian’ free will. Once you realize that the Bible does in fact teach a measure of free will, but not the measure of a radical, absolute, libertarian free will, the problem dissolves.)
When God says “I will never leave you or forsake you”, He is serious. (Deut 31:8). How could God say this if he abandoned His people when their faith faltered? The entire old testament is a story of how God’s people repeatedly faltered in their faith, and yet God remained faithful to them, always drawing them back to Himself.
When God says no one will snatch His sheep out of His hand, He actually means no one. (John 10:28). He means that it is an utter impossibility. His sheep belong to him. This is why Paul could say “You are not your own, you were bought at a price” in 1 Cor 6:20.
When God says through Paul that ‘those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified”, this should raise serious concerns about the idea that a person can be called and justified and yet not ultimately glorified. (Romans 8:30). Once you are justified, you will never be unjustified. You are as good as glorified, even though the full consummation of the believer’s glorification, bodily and otherwise, does not occur until Christ returns at His second coming. But Paul teaches that our glorification is certain even now. He actually speaks as though it is already done (using the term ‘glorified’ in its past tense).
When God says He who calls you is faithful and will sanctify you completely and keep you blameless, He WILL follow through on His promise. (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24). This is such a wonderful verse for the believer who struggles with sin and ‘actual’ righteousness in this life. We don’t sanctify ourselves. (We may participate in the process – we may understand our sanctification as a synergistic process). If we were required to sanctify ourselves without the ongoing power of the Holy Spirit, the Christian life would be one of constant distress and hopelessness. God sanctifies us by His own power because this is His will. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” 1 Thess 4:3. In Ezekiel chapter 36, when God prophesies of the coming Spirit who will give the believer a new heart, God says “I (God) will cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules” (emphasis mine). God continues to work in the believer, causing growth in holiness, until he is sanctified completely. This is His promise.
When God says that the good work He began in you, He will carry on to completion, that is exactly what He means. (Phil 1:6). He will carry it on to completion. Simple yet profound. Don’t ever forget this.
There is no works component to being saved and there is no works component to staying saved. We are exhorted and encouraged throughout the scriptures to live in accordance with who God has declared us to be. If you want to think of this in terms of a ‘cooperative’ effort, I have no problem with that way of thinking, although personally I lean much more heavily toward a monergistic view both of salvation and sanctification. When Paul says “work out your salvation” he is not promoting that works will save us or keep us saved. Essentially what he is saying is: “Be who you are!” When we understand the truth of who God says we are in Christ, the way that we live and act and think and make real choices will follow suit with the glorious reality of who we are as children of God. We find much encouragement and exhortation in the Bible that we should, in fact, live out this truth. As Christians, we do make real choices in this life. But there is necessarily something that influences those choices. They are not arbitrary. The Bible teaches that we should renew our minds, because what we believe influences the choices that we make. In sanctification, God is in the process of conforming our will to His. As we are progressively sanctified, we choose to sin less. As Christians, we do not have to sin. We are capable of choosing to not sin. Again, we make real choices. The Bible does not reject that man has a measure of free will. But the choices that people make are congruent with what they believe to be true. The more our choices our influenced by the Truth of God’s Word, and the more our will is conformed to God’s own will through our sanctification, the more we will choose to live in accordance with what is pleasing to Him. This is not a violation of free will. We are free to make choices. Those choices are in fact influenced by something – either the will of God, or the will of the sinful flesh. If we are in Christ, we will ultimately remain in Him (1 John 2:19). This does not mean that we will always make perfect choices. On the one hand, choosing to not sin is our own choice, and on the other hand, it is because of God’s power and influence in the believer through His Word and Truth that we continue to freely choose to walk in Him. In Christ, we have been given the supernatural gift of a new nature and we choose in accordance with our new nature. We are slaves to righteousness. Once we were slaves to sin, and our choices were a reflection of this reality. But we are no longer slaves to sin. We are slaves to Christ, our master, and we choose to obey Him and remain in Him because we love Him (John 14:15). This is our very nature!
When Paul says “work out your salvation” he is not promoting that works will save us or keep us saved. Essentially what he is saying is: “Be who you are!”
My final point is this: we must put our faith in God, not in our faith. If you believe that you can have salvation and then lose it, it is likely because you think along the lines of “I freely chose to put my faith in God and I can freely choose to retract that faith.” But, consider this: all of our strength comes through Christ, from His Spirit that dwells in us. We ‘walk by the Spirit’, so that we will not ‘gratify the desires of the flesh’ (Gal 5:16). If this were not so, if we were charged with ‘keeping the faith’ in our own strength, without the power of the Holy Spirit, not only would it be impossible, it simply wouldn’t fit with what scripture teaches us. God is the One who is faithful, not us. God is our Rock, not our faith. Faith is an interesting concept and potentially misleading if not properly understood. Why do I say this? Because it is easy to mistakenly put our faith in our faith. But our faith by itself is totally impotent. It is the One in whom we place our faith that imparts strength. I can have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, but my faith doesn’t have the power to make the sun rise – God does. I can have faith that all things will work together for the good of those whom God has called, but my faith isn’t causing the outcome – God is. I can have faith that God will save me, but it is God who saves me – not faith. I am saved by the grace of God, through faith. Faith is a conduit, a means that God has chosen to work through to supply His saving grace. Without faith, you cannot be saved – the necessary conduit would not be there. But consider also, that simply having a conduit is useless if there is nothing to flow through it. The conduit is useless on its own, it has no inherent power in itself. We are saved by grace. Salvation is an act of God’s grace. If we have to work to receive or maintain it, then it is no longer grace (Romans 11:6).
“our faith by itself is totally impotent. It is the One in whom we place our faith that imparts strength”
In conclusion, eternal life is, well, eternal. Once you have it, you are eternally secure. Salvation is not temporary – the Bible mentions nothing of temporary adoption, temporary sanctification, or temporary justification. Salvation is eternally secure because God’s promises are unconditional and everlasting. He WILL hold you fast. If you belong to Him today, you will belong to Him for eternity. Praise Jesus for the security that He gives us. It truly is a sad thing to try to live out a life of godliness in our own effort, struggling and striving to keep our faith intact and believing that at any moment we could reject our faith, reject our God, and thus lose our salvation. If you think or have ever thought this way, I pray that the evidence from scripture here outlined will help you put this thinking away once and for all.