Over the last few weeks, I have presented what I believe is a strong case for the belief that a Christian can never lose his or her salvation. Along the way, I’ve mentioned a few times that there are Christians who disagree with me over this issue, and I’m sure many of you knew that before we ever started this series. People whom I consider brothers and sisters in Christ have come to a different conclusion about this subject, and I think our disagreement is sad and unfortunate, but nevertheless, it is the reality that we face today.
Now, as I’ve mentioned this disagreement, perhaps you’ve thought to yourself, “What’s led to all of this? Why do Christians disagree about whether or not we can lose our salvation?” Well, to put it simply, as we read through the Bible, we encounter verses that seem to give us every reason to believe that our salvation is secure, but we also encounter verses that give us strong warnings about the possibility of losing something through disobedience or unbelief. Let me show you what I mean through the words of a few of the authors of Scripture:
From Jesus
• John 6:37—“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
• John 10:27-28—“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
• John 15:6—“If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
• Matthew 10:33—“Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
From Paul
• Romans 8:38-39—“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor power, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• 1 Corinthians 9:26-27—“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
From Peter
• 1 Peter 1:4-5—“…to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
• 2 Peter 3:17—“You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.”
You can probably see for yourself why there have been disagreements over the question of eternal security. Most of the time, people gravitate toward either the “security” verses or the “loss” verses. We tend to emphasize one set of these verses, and then we try to pretend like the other verses don’t exist because they make us uncomfortable!
Various attempts have been made over the years to reconcile the security verses and the loss verses. On the one hand, some of those who believe that we CAN lose our salvation have said that all of the security verses should be read with an unspoken condition in our minds. That is to say that God will never cast us out of His family unless we choose to leave; then, under that condition, He would choose to cast us out. I said last week, however, that I don’t think an unspoken condition does justice to the security verses because their wording is so emphatic.
On the other hand, some of those who believe we CANNOT lose our salvation have said that the loss verses are merely hypothetical. In other words, God is telling us how terrible it would be if He ever cast us out—even though He will never do it! I can’t agree with that solution, however, because I don’t think it does justice to the loss verses. I think the loss verses are meant to warn us about a real danger, and they would lose their power to motivate us if they were only hypothetical. If I tell my daughter someday that I will hypothetically ground her if she doesn’t listen to me, I don’t think that warning will be very motivating for her!
So how can we reconcile the security verses and the loss verses? It will not do to minimize or ignore one set of verses because they are both in the Bible. So how can we reconcile them? By remembering an easily-forgotten observation from Scripture.
1. There is more to our future destiny than heaven or hell!
So often, when we think about our future destiny, our thoughts turn immediately to heaven and hell. That’s understandable in a way, because we all want to be really, really sure that we don’t go to hell. Once we’re sure that we’re not going to go to hell, we kind of breathe a deep sigh of relief and then forget to ask whether there’s anything more to our destiny than escaping hell and going to heaven.
But when we study Scripture, we find that there is more to our destiny than simply escaping hell and going to heaven. In fact, as believers, there is a period of time that we will all go through before we settle into our eternal home in heaven, and that period of time is known as the Millennium. This is a period of time in which Jesus will return to the earth to set up a kingdom over which He will reign for a thousand years. The Millennium and our eternal home in heaven are both described at the end of the book of Revelation.
Revelation 21-22 describes our eternal home in heaven, but before we arrive there, we as believers will go through the events of Revelation 19-20. Revelation 19 describes an event known as the marriage supper of the Lamb, which will be a celebration of the union between Jesus and Christians, because Christians as a group are described in the New Testament as the bride of Christ.
After this, Revelation 19 says that Jesus will return to the Earth—with all of us in tow—to fight against an alliance of armies that will be gathered against the Jewish people at Jerusalem. This is the battle known as the Battle of Armageddon. Jesus will destroy this alliance of armies, and then according to Revelation 20, He will establish a kingdom on this earth that will last for a thousand years. Other prophetic passages tell us that this kingdom will usher in a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity in the world.
We are also told in other passages that we have the opportunity to serve as officials in Jesus’ government if we are faithful to Him in our lives today. However, we are also warned that we can lose the opportunity to reign with Christ if we are unfaithful to Him. In my opinion, this observation is the key to reconciling the security verses in Scripture and the loss verses in Scripture. I believe these verses are talking about two different aspects of future destiny. The security verses are talking about our eternal home in heaven, because that is a gift from God. He gives us that blessing as a gift when He forgives us, as we learned a few weeks ago. But the loss verses, on the other hand—at least the vast majority of them—are talking about the danger of losing the privilege of reigning with Christ during His earthly kingdom. This privilege is never described as a gift in the Bible—it is always described as a reward for faithfulness, a prize that we can win by living for Christ today.
Let me direct your attention to a small set of verses which summarize these two different aspects of our future destiny. Turn with me to 2 Timothy 2:11-13.
2. A summary of the Christian’s life and destiny
Follow with me as I read vv. 8-13 [READ vv. 8-13]. Many translators and interpreters have detected a poetic feel in vv. 11-13 which has led them to believe that these verses may have been part of a hymn that first-century Christians sang, or perhaps some kind of creed that they recited prior to baptism. Whatever they may have been, they give us a concise summary of the Christian’s life and destiny in just four statements.
A. The promise of life with Jesus
The first statement says, “If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” Notice that the words “have died” are in the past tense. They are referring to the spiritual unity that we have with Christ and His death when we accept Him as our Savior. As Colossians 3:3 taught us last week, “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
So our lives are now hidden in Christ, which gives us the assurance that we will live with Him in the future, as this verse says. And notice that the only condition for living with Jesus in the future is dying with Him, which happened to us spiritually when we accepted Christ. So if you have accepted Christ, you have the assurance that you will live with Him. However—notice that there is more to our destiny than just living with Christ!
B. The prize for living for Jesus
The second statement says, “If we endure, we will also reign with him.” In addition to living with Jesus in the future, we have held out to us here the opportunity of reigning with Him in His kingdom on earth. But notice that this privilege will be ours only if we endure, which refers to faithfully living for Jesus through the ups and downs of life. In our lives, we face many difficulties from temptations, the sins of others, and world events in general. Here we have the promise that if we will endure all of these things as faithful representatives of Jesus, then He will allow us to represent Him in His future kingdom as well.
But as you can see, this privilege is conditional, and it is based upon whether or not we are faithful to Christ. So what happens if we are unfaithful to Him? That’s the point of the third statement.
C. The penalty for denying Jesus
The third statement says, “If we deny him, he also will deny us.” At first glance, we might think that “denying Christ” refers to totally rejecting Him. But this word is used in the Gospels in the story of Peter’s denials of Christ, which were not a complete rejection, but unfaithfulness in the face of temptation.
I think that’s what we’re talking about here, especially since this statement is contrasted with the statement about enduring. So if we do not endure, if we don’t remain loyal to Christ in the face of temptation, then the last part of the statement says “he also will deny us.” Here, at first glance, we may ask if this is talking about the loss of our eternal home in heaven, but I think the first statement and the fourth statement prevent us from drawing that conclusion. I think this third statement is just the opposite of the second statement—if we are faithful to Christ, we will be allowed to reign with Christ; if we are not faithful to Him, He will deny us that privilege.
But if we are unfaithful to Him, how will He respond in light of His promises to us? That’s the subject of the fourth statement.
D. The promise of faithfulness from Jesus
The fourth and final statement says, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” The second and third statements have raised the possibility that we may not be faithful to Jesus in our lives in the face of temptation, so what then? Will He back out on His promises to us?
The fourth statement assures us that He never will. He cannot be unfaithful to the promises that He has made to us. We may lose the reward, but we will never lose the gift. The reward is the right to reign with Christ in His earthly kingdom; the gift is the life that we will enjoy with Jesus during His kingdom and on into eternity.
So how are we to deal with the loss verses in the Bible? By remembering that there are two aspects to our destiny—the place that you will spend eternity, and the role that you will play for Christ during His earthly kingdom. In my opinion, this is the only way to make sense of both the security verses and the loss verses. If we try to relate both the security verses and the loss verses to our home in heaven, we will have contradictions in our doctrine that can never be solved. In that case, its no surprise that Christians disagree about this subject, because we’re simply picking sides of a debate that has no solution to it! But if we remember that there are two aspects to our destiny, then as our AWANA theme verse puts it, we can rightly divide the word of truth and thus be a worker who does not need to be ashamed.
Now some people would say that this solution to the subject of eternal security does not do justice to the loss verses that I have mentioned. They would say that the loss being described is far too great to simply be the loss of a privileged role in Christ’s future kingdom. But consider this—when God put human beings on this planet, he put us here to reign! He told Adam and Eve to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Gen. 1:28). We were made to reign over this planet as God’s representatives. Jesus now holds out to us a second chance—an opportunity to share in the authority that He will one day have over this world. But if you and I are unfaithful to Him today, we could miss out on a chance to do the very thing that humanity was created to do. In my opinion, that is a bitter, bitter loss—one that should not be underestimated.
Our life with Jesus is secure, but our role for Jesus is being determined every day with every choice that we make. Don’t let the reward slip out of your grasp!
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