Can Christians Lose Their Salvation?

You are listening to Shameless Popery with Joe Heschmeyer, a production of Catholic Answers.

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. Today I want to explore an important question, can you, as a Christian, lose your salvation?

The folks who say no, there’s different names for this idea. Sometimes it’s called eternal security, other times it’s called once saved, always saved, other times it’s called Perseverance of the Saints, and different people have different kind of roots to getting to the conclusion that you can’t lose your salvation.

I’m going to call it eternal security, and it’s easy to imagine this is just a Catholics say one thing, Protestants say another kind of issue, there are a lot of those. But no, this is an issue in which Protestants disagree, one with another.

So for instance, in Article 12 of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutherans condemned the Anabaptists for believing in eternal security. And so, some Protestants think you can lose your salvation, some Protestants think you can’t.

And it’d be easy to give just a list of Bible verses as to why you can lose your salvation, or why you can’t, because I’ll just tell you as we enter into this, one of the reasons this is so contentious among Christians, that there’s a lot of Bible verses seem to point in one direction, and then a lot of Bible verses that seem to point in the other direction.

So rather than just giving you one side of the case, I’m’ going to try to give you where both sides are coming from, and how each side makes sense of, if you will, the other side’s evidence before showing why I think the case is much stronger that you can, in fact, lose your salvation.

So as we go, three things. Number one, what are some red flags to look for warning against in terms of our personal interpretation of Scripture?

Number two, how strong is the case for eternal security, and how do opponents of that view make sense of that case? And then number three, how strong is the case against eternal security, and again, how do opponents of that view make sense of that case?

So, let’s start with the things that are red flags. Now, at the onset, in saying red flags, I don’t mean these are automatic defeaters. I mean these are things that should give us some internal caution.

Here’s the kind of thing I mean, the first red flag, Saint Paul actually is hard to understand, and if you think he’s not, you’re wrong. How do I know that? Because Scripture says so.

In Second Peter 3, you get into verse 15, Saint Peter mentions Paul in his writings and says, “There are some things in them hard to understand.”

Okay, that’s just a true fact you have to recognize. He then says that the ignorant and the unstable twist those things to their own destruction. So, there’s three things to recognize.

First, Paul actually is hard to understand at times, and so if you think he’s not, you’re not reading him correctly. Second, if you are reading him incorrectly, it might be because you’re ignorant, or it might be because you’re unstable, that you actually have a bad theology, or you just have theological [inaudible 00:03:07].

But nevertheless, this is a twisting unto your own destruction, so that’s just something to watch out for, right?

The second flag, we need to watch out for what we might call too good to be true novelties, and Saint Paul says as much. He says, “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myth.”

Now, there’s two things to note there. First, he’s warning against theological novelties, he’s warning against positions that don’t exist yet but will exist, at what is for Paul, in the future. The time is coming.

And second, in addition to being new teachings, these teachings will tell people what they want to hear. Now, those two things are important to keep in view.

Obviously, the good news is good news, and so the mere fact that something is pleasing to hear doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but if something is both a new teaching and sounds really nice, well, that sounds like the kind of thing Saint Paul warned against, and that applies in this context.

So, Loraine Boettner who is a early 20th Century Presbyterian theologian, he has an entire book arguing for the Reformed doctrine of Predestination.

He believes in eternal security, nevertheless, he acknowledges that this view is a novelty. He acknowledges that you’re not going to find it in the first 300 years or so of Christianity.

He says, “The early church fathers-” And he means here before the end of the Fourth Century, with [inaudible 00:04:46], “Place chief emphasis on good works such as faith, repentance, alms giving, prayers, submission to baptism, etc, as a basis of salvation. They, of course, taught that salvation was through Christ, yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel.

Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized, yet alongside of those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will.

So, just to be clear, this is something where if you believe in eternal security, and particularly if you believe in kind of the Calvinist predestination route to get there, the P in the TULIP, if you’re familiar with the Synod of Dort, Perseverance of the saints.

If none of that made sense to you, don’t worry about it, I’m speaking to the Calvinists here, just know that this view is not just unheard of in early Christianity, it is directly refuted numerous times because the Greeks, like the Pagans of the day, believed, in many cases, in an immutable fate.

The early Christians spoke against that and denied that there was this kind of strong predestination. For instance, in about 160, Saint Justin Martyr, [inaudible 00:05:56] he talks about this.

He says, “We’ve learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true that punishments and chastisements, and good reward are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions.”

[inaudible 00:06:07] if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our own power, right? If everything is predestined in such a way you have no free will in the matter, you’re not responsible for that.

You aren’t held responsible for something you have no free will over, and Calvinists as well as non-Calvinists have an intuitive sense of this.

If a woman is raped, we don’t treat her as an adulteress because in the case of adultery, there’s an act of the will. In the case of rape, there’s not. It’s pretty intuitive, but Justin is making this point that there’s not this belief that you have no will in the role of salvation.

And explicitly about 10 years about that, about 150, in a dialogue with Trypho, he says that those who’ve confessed and known Jesus to be Christ, yet have gone back into legalism and have denied that Jesus is Christ, and have not repented before death shall by no means be saved.

So he clearly believes, and you’ll find this throughout the early Christians, that it is possible to be saved, and then to be unsaved, and then to go to hell. That’s the thing that eternal security folks don’t believe is even possible.

So just know this easy novelty eternal security is, a novelty that is contradicted by the earliest Christians, and a novelty that sounds suspiciously too good to be true doesn’t immediately disprove it, fair enough, but it should be a red flag.

The third red flag, we should watch out for explanations that rely heavily on theological jargon and presuppositions, and I’m going to illustrate what I mean by this by looking at the way eternal security is often argued for.

I’m going to look specifically at the work of John Piper. Now, Piper is coming from more of a Calvinistic perspective. So, some people believe in eternal security, might arrive there a little bit different of a route, but this is, I think, a pretty standard sort of explanation in which we’re going to see all three of the red flags I mentioned. So, here’s Piper’s explanation.

Pastor John, this is a question we get almost every day via email, can a born again Christian lose his or her salvation?

The answer to that question Biblically is a resounding, clear, emphatic, joyful, glorious no. A born again person cannot become dead, cannot be unborn again because…

And I’ll give some Biblical thinking here, try to be as textual as possible, not just theological.

Now, before we even get into how he’s going to build that case, you should note a few things. First, he’s claiming that the teaching here is really clear, and he’s going to turn this on his reading of Saint Paul. That’s a red flag right there.

Second, he talks about how not just resounding, and clear, and emphatic it is, notices people are writing to him as Pastor John regularly, almost daily, and not seeing this in their Scripture.

So if he’s saying, “Oh, yeah. This thing is resounding, it’s clear and emphatic but you’re not seeing it?” That sh%ould be setting off some alarm bells, maybe it’s not as resounding, clear, and emphatic as he’s claiming.

But the joyful and glorious is no less kind of alarming because here’s this thing that he’s trying to sell you on how clear it is in Scripture because it really appeals to you. You really want this to be true.

Again, it doesn’t automatically disprove that it is true. It’s possible for something you want to be true to be true, but you should at least be more self critical, you should at least be more self aware that maybe I’m interpreting the evidence in the way I’m wanting to be true, rather than the way that actually is, and is a good Scriptural basis to be cautious of teachers selling you the kind of stuff you really want to hear.

Okay. I’m going to turn it back to Piper so he can make his case.

The life that is imparted in the new birth is precisely eternal life. This is the testimony that God has given us eternal life.

Has given us, has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son, 1 John 5:11, so He didn’t give us temporary life, he gave us eternal life. We are already participating in the life of the age to come.

I just want to say this is not a good argument, and the reason it’s not a good argument would be like saying, “Oh, of course you can’t drop out of four year college. It’s four year college, four year college.”

The fact that you’re going to a four year college doesn’t mean you can’t drop out, and so there’s nothing logically to say that because you’re partaking of eternal life right now, you can’t drop out.

Now, you might have some theological reasons for believing that’s impossible, but you can’t just argue based on the word eternal any more than you can argue that there’s no such thing as a college dropout by the use of the term four year.

Here’s another crucial word, “Those whom He predestined-” This is Romans 8:30. “Those whom He predestined, He called, and those whom he called, He justified, and those whom He justified, He glorified.”

Okay. Notice there how jargon-y it is. Now, that’s not John Piper’s fault. Saint Paul is using four different theological terms of art, predestined, called, justified, glorified, in the span of a single verse.

And so, if you’re going to understand Paul correctly, you need to have a proper understanding of all four of those categories, and Paul doesn’t give you an explicit definition of any of the four of them, and those are those are going to be hotly debated issues. Each of those four is debated in some way, shape, or form, especially the first three.

Now glorification is the final state of permanent salvation, and this verse says that all the called, with nobody dropping out, are justified, and all the justified, with nobody dropping out, are glorified.

Notice the thing he’s trying to prove isn’t just that the justified are going to be glorified, but that all of the justified, with nobody dropping out, are going to be glorified.

Notice, to get from the called to justified, justified to glorified, with nobody dropping out, he’s adding those words. The, “Nobody is dropping out.” Is John Piper, it’s not Saint Paul.

Now, Piper might be reading Paul correctly, but notice that the critical thing he’s claiming the text says isn’t in the text, it’s in his own interpretation.

You can believe the called are justified, and the justified are glorified, and that you can still leave that process. In other words, someone in who believes in or rejects eternal security still believes in Romans 8:30, they just don’t believe in the words that John Piper added to Roman 8:30, “With nobody dropping out.”

So, the question is, if you’re called, you cannot lose your salvation, and I’m going to argue that being called, and being born again are identical in Biblical categories.

We will be justified, we will be glorified because we have been called, that is, we have been born again.

Okay. Notice again, he’s doing a lot of theological presuppositions. He’s assuming that being called and being born again are identical Biblical categories. He says it. He acknowledges, this is his argument, the text doesn’t say that there’s no Biblical text that equates those two things together.

In fact, as we’re going to see, this is a very bad reading of the text. In John 3:5, being born again, or being born from above is described as happening through water and the Spirit. This was understood for every century, from the First Century forward, as being a reference to water baptism.

That’s different than the references to being called. You might be called to go get baptized, but to just equate calling and born again is not found.

First of all, there’s no reference to being born again in Romans 8:30. Second, he’s just [inaudible 00:14:44]. Just notice that one of the reasons some people read this as proving eternal security is they’re reading into the text things that aren’t there, and Piper’s doing that pretty explicitly. This is going to become even more obvious as we go.

The kind of call that Paul is talking about there is the call of Lazarus by Jesus from the grave. “Lazarus, I know you’re dead. Now, come out.” And the call creates the life, and that’s what happened to everybody who’s a Christian.

God’s sovereign call created the life, so that means that there’s a promise attaching the call.

But is this actually true? If you want to make sense of what Saint Paul means about God calling us, the best place to look is to Jesus’ call of Lazarus?

I’m going to say no, partly because of the Greek. The Greek there is barely translated as, “He called.” But when you look at the so-called call of Lazarus, that Greek word isn’t there.

In fact, there’s no word for call that’s there. We’re instead told that Jesus cried out, “Lazarus, come forth.” Lazarus is being commanded to come forth, it is clearly a command, but to suggest that Romans 8 is saying the same thing, that the call of God is actually a command we can’t disobey is a misreading of what the word call actually means.

So, it comes from [foreign language 00:16:16], to call, which is regularly translated as invited. So in the KJV, it’s translated 15 times as invited, another time as invited guests, another time as invites.

So, it can mean both called and invited. This is really important because I would suggest if you want to know what the word means, look at some of the other ways the word is used, particularly when it looks like it’s describing the call to heavenly glory.

That’s what Saint Paul is talking about in Romans 8, the call, ultimately, to glorification. In Luke 14, we get a very similar kind of story, that someone cries out to Jesus about, “Blessed is the one called to the banquet.”

And then Jesus give the example of a man preparing a supper that’s a great supper, and He invited many guests, and that word invited is the same word that is translated as called in Romans 8:30.

Now, notice, this changes how we understand the passage. This is about being invited into eternal life rather than commanded. You’ll notice this word is never translated as commanded, it’s called, it’s invited.

That changes how we think about it because you might not be able to say no to a command. Jesus speaks, and then you suddenly go from dead to alive, but you can certainly say no to an invitation, and in fact, that’s the whole point of the parable in Luke 14, which is about salvation, that many of those called don’t say yes to the call.

In fact, jump forward to Luke 14:24, you see the exact same thing, a different variation of the same word, that he says none of those who were initially invited will taste of the supper because they all said no.

Now, that is very hard to square with the Calvinist reading that everyone who is called necessarily experiences glory because Jesus gives an entire parable about those who are called who don’t say yes to the invitation.

How do we make sense of this? I want to offer what we might call a no-security reading of pro-security passages. You’ve got passages like Romans 8:30.

I’m going to add to that, passages like 1 Corinthians 1, beginning in verse 7, where Saint Paul says, “You’re not lacking in any spiritual gift as as you wait for the revealing of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end guiltless in the day of our Lord, Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.”

Look, it’s very easy to see how someone reading that says, “Well, look, Jesus is going to sustain us to the end so obviously I can’t drop out.” It doesn’t say that, but it’s easy to see how they interpret it that way.

Philippians 1:6, Saint Paul also says, “I’m sure that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” That looks even stronger.

I want to say at the outset, I absolutely get how people reading passages like that, particularly if that’s all they’ve read on the subject, imagine that eternal security is true.

What would someone, like me, who denies eternal security say about these kind of passages? Number one, these are establishing God’s faithfulness, not ours. The whole point of them is that God is preparing this good work for you, and He will bring it to completion.

So, if it helps, think about it either as a train going from station, to station, to station, and it will go to the destination you want to go to, or if you prefer, think of it as, like, a washing machine going from pre-wash to wash.

It’ll complete the load, but with the washing machine, or with the train, that fact doesn’t mean you can’t take the clothes out, you can’t get off the train.

You can’t. We’re describing how salvation works, how that train of salvation works. We’re not describing whether people stay on the train or not. So, hopefully that’s clear.

I’m not saying the text automatically proves the opposite. I’m saying knowing the train goes from A to B doesn’t tell me whether people can get on or off the train or not.

Likewise, knowing that salvation goes from calling to glorification doesn’t tell me whether people can get on or off the train. Now, when Jesus tells us some of those called don’t reach glorification, that gives us a pretty good sense that some people don’t make it all the way to the destination.

But Paul, by himself, isn’t answering that question, he’s not trying to answer that question. He doesn’t say anything about me being unable to lose my salvation because that’s just not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about the faithfulness of God not the faithfulness of me to God’s plan for my life.

The second thing, Paul is often focused on external threats to salvation, not internal threats, like spiritual self-destruction. I’ll give you a pretty classic example, also from Romans 8.

Paul says, “I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 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.”

What’s missing from that list? Me? I can separate myself from the love of God in Christ Jesus, but none of these external things can do that. That’s the point Paul is making.

If he meant to say, “None of those things, or you can separate yourself from the love of God” That-‘s a pretty striking kind of omission. If you’re dating someone and you say, “Nothing’s ever going to get between us, baby.” That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to break up with me. Those are two very different ideas.

The fact that you’re not going to let some external thing come in the way doesn’t mean that the other person loses their ability to absent themselves from that relationship. It just doesn’t mean that.

Again, you might have theological reasons for believing it’s impossible to break away, but those theological reasons are not found in Romans 8. It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say you can’t lose your salvation, it doesn’t say you can’t leave the love of God. It just says no external thing is going to get in the way and cause you to leave the love of God.

Likewise, John 10:27-29, Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice. I know them, they follow Me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”

Notice that snatching out of the hand is an external threat. “My Father, who’s given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”

Again, if He means we can’t leave the hand either, He’s not saying that. He’s saying no one’s going to snatch us out of the Father’s hand. It doesn’t mean we can’t just walk out of the hand.

I don’t know how that image works there, but you get the idea. That’s a different kind of thing, and so the pro eternal security crowd is reading into the text something strikingly absent from it.

I’ll give you a few examples. Sam Storms, in his book, Chosen For Life: The Case for Divine Election, says, “When Jesus says, “No one,” That surely includes you and me ourselves.”

It doesn’t sure include them. Jesus does not say, “No one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand, oh, that is, except for every one of the sheep.” He does not say, “No one, except for the person himself.”

Look, if you leave, you’re not snatching somebody out of the hand of God, you’re simply leaving the hand of God. So, the language about no external threats snatching you out of the hand of God says nothing about how you also can’t.

You’ll notice that he’s just saying, “Well, He doesn’t say us, so we can just read ourselves into the text.” Well, that’s bad exegesis. He doesn’t have to say, “No one except for the person himself.” Because you’re not an external threat to yourself, and the passage is about external threats to your salvation.

And then he says, “Well, if Jesus wanted to teach eternal security, how could He have done it better, or more explicitly than the way He does it here?”

I’ll answer that. He could do it by mentioning you can’t leave the hand of the Father. He doesn’t say that. He says no one else is going to snatch you out of the Father’s hand. That’s a very different thing.

So, it’s reading into the text about external threats, the prohibition against internal threats, which is completely unfounded exegesis.

The third way that those of us who don’t believe in eternal security read these texts is by recognizing that they’re implicitly conditional, meaning even when a text doesn’t say so, it includes the possibility that you can forfeit the good thing God promises you, or turn away from the bad thing God threatens you with, and this is made explicit in Scripture.

It does not need to be included every time, that implicit conditionality. In Jeremiah Chapter 18, God addresses this directly. Beginning in verse 5, He uses the language, “Oh, House of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O, House of Israel.”

It’s fascinating because this is often a passage used to show, “Oh, look, you have no more free will than the clay in the hand of a potter. He’s just going to make you as a vessel for destruction, or for glory, and so you get no free will in the matter.”

If you read Jeremiah 18, it’s saying exactly the opposite of that, that is not what the potter and the clay means. It is not affirming the double predestination view of Calvinism because God goes on to say that, “Any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom to pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if this nation concerning which I’ve spoken turns from its evil, I will repent of evil that I intended to do to it. And then likewise, if God promises to build up and plant, and then the recipient of that blessing instead does evil in My sight, not listening to My voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it.”

So, the fact that God is promising you salvation does not mean it’s unconditional kind of election. It’s explicitly conditional here in Jeremiah 18, even if those conditions are not always put in place.

And so, for instance, in Jeremiah 18, there’s the threat to Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that God is planning evil against them.

Now, that doesn’t mean God is sinning against them, it means bad things are coming their way, and so we’re told, “Repent, everyone, from it’s evil way, and amend your ways and your doing.”

So look, if you’re a parent, I think you’ll understand this immediately. When you tell your kid, “I’m going to count to three and you’re going to time out,” Or whatever punishment, there is implicit, “Unless you stop changing your behavior and do the opposite, or unless you start doing the thing I’m telling you to do.”

You don’t have to say that part every time because both you and the other person understand that. I can, to my toddler, just start counting to three, and they get the rest of the context.

Well, likewise, this is how it works in the Bible. Jonah goes and preaches, “Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” There’s no, “Unless you repent.” Explicitly spelled out in the prophet’s message, but the people of Nineveh believe that bad things are coming their way, and they repent, and God doesn’t punish them. That’s what I mean by implicit conditionality, that when something good, or something bad is promised to you that’s based on how you’re living, and so if you start to go the opposite direction, and you start acting unsaved, well, yeah, the fact that you’re promised salvation when you’re saved doesn’t mean that those promises still apply to you because you’ve rejected them by your behavior.

That’s implicit conditionality, but in this case, it’s just conditionality is pretty explicit. The point is, even as in Saint Paul frequently, those conditions are not spelled out for you. You should be able to understand those are there.

That’s why I don’t think the case for eternal security is particularly a strong one, because I think it’s ignoring some basic hermeneutical issues, I think it’s reading into the text things that just aren’t there. What’s the case against eternal security?

Four major points I’m going to make. First, Scripture speaks of the necessity of Perseverance. It doesn’t just take for granted that because you have the faith now, that’s going to be good enough. You’re told you have to persevere in the faith.

Second, speaks of deadly sin, that there is a kind of behavior that can cause spiritual death. Third, we do, in fact, see clear examples of disciples falling away in the Bible.

This isn’t just a hypothetical discussion. We can point to concrete cases and say, “This person was saved, clearly, and then just as clearly is no longer saved.” That should be game, set, match because the eternal security crowd denies that those people could exist, and we can name them.

Fourth, the Epistle to the Hebrews actually names two types of sin that can destroy your salvation, and it is incredibly clear about this.

Now, before I go further, I want to do the same thing I did to the other side and say, “Well, what would the pro security crowd say about these no security passages?”

There’s a lot that could be said here. I’m going to give one common answer, and that’s anyone who you see who appears to fall away was never really a Christian in the first place.

If you see someone who looked like they were saved, and then looks like they’re not saved, there’s two possibilities. Either this is a temporary kind of falling away, where it’s not a permanent thing, they’re going to turn back because they’re one of the elect, or they aren’t one of the elect and they never were.

For that second kind of reading, the go-to passage is almost invariably 1 John, 2:19, in which Saint John says a certain group that he calls anti-Christs, they went out from us but they were not of us, for if they’d been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might be plain that they all are not of us.”

Now, I want to just point out what I hope is obvious, which is the passage, once again, doesn’t say the thing the eternal security crowd are saying it says.

It doesn’t say anyone who goes out from us was not of us, it says they, the particular group that left went out because they were not of us. So, that is hopefully clear, that you can’t just say, “Well, because this group left because they were fake Christians, or whatever, therefor anyone who leaves was a fake Christian.” It doesn’t follow logically at all.

If I say, “They left to go get lunch” It doesn’t mean everyone who leaves leaves to go get lunch. So, it’s a misuse of the passage. He’s trying to make it say something it doesn’t say.

That doesn’t disprove, and maybe everyone who’s ever left Christianity was a fake Christian, but if you’re going to prove that, you need a better Bible verse than this one, especially when that’s going to be contradicted all over the place.

Now, let’s get into the four points, and you’ll see where this contradiction is. One of the reasons I gave you this answer before is because as we go, I’m going to be pointing out, “Look, these are people who the Bible treats as real Christians, not phony Christians, and these real Christians are losing their salvation.” We’ll see that as we go.

But first, Scripture speaks of the necessity of Perseverance. Jesus talks about sending the disciples forth, and talks about how brother will deliver up brother to death and the like, and he says, “But he who endures to the end will be saved.” Matthew 10:22.

Jump forward to the parable of the sower. I’m rushing through this part because I think most people realize that there’s a bunch of New Testament passages about Perseverance, and this is already going to be a long episode.

Matthew 13, the sower and the seed. This is a really important parable because there’s different groups of those who receive the word, and the group that matters for our sake are those where the seed is sown on rocky ground.

Jesus, in verse 20 to 21, explains that this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Notice, not a fake Christian. He’s actually received the word, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for awhile, and when tribulation and persecution arises on account of the word, immediately, he falls away.

So, he has some endurance, he has some Perseverance, but not ’til the end, not what we call final Perseverance, and so, that’s not a fake Christian.

This is someone who received the word, had some measure of Perseverance, and then actually fell away. How do we know he fell away? Because Jesus says he fell away.

Likewise, Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, compares his spiritual life to a race, in which all the runners compete, and they’re, you know, competing to receive a perishable crown, we for an imperishable one.

Then Saint Paul says, “I pummel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.” So, Saint Paul takes seriously the idea that he himself could lose his salvation.

Unless you’re ready to say Saint Paul is a fake Christian, which I don’t think anybody’s ready to say, then you can’t use the, “Well, it’s just fake Christians who fall away.” Kind of passage as an explanation because Paul treats seriously the idea that he himself could fall away. That’s 1 Corinthians 9.

1 Corinthians 10, he gives concrete spiritual examples of the Israelites in the Exodus, how despite having been led by Moses out of the place of slavery toward the Promised Land, many of them put the Lord to the test.

Some of them were destroyed by serpents. They grumbled and were destroyed by the destroyer, and Paul says, “These things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction.” Why?

“Because-” He says, “Therefor let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall.” In other words, don’t think you’re going to be treated spiritually than the desert if you fall into this doubt of God, if you fall into this disobedience towards God, if you start putting Him to the test, and complain, and grumble, and then the rest.

And so, if the Israelites could lose their salvation, they were brought out of Egypt for salvation to the Promised Land but lost it along the way by their disobedience to God, so Saint Paul seems pretty clearly to be saying the same is true in the spiritual life for you.

You’ve been saved, you’ve been brought out of the place of sin towards the Promised Land, but if along the way, in this life, you fall into disobedience, you can also lose your salvation.

Saint Paul, in Romans 11, is very explicit about this. He talks about the branches, “Part of the covenant, that were broken off so that I might be grafted in as a Gentile.”

Not him, he’s a Jew, but as a Gentile Christian, he says, “That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast only through faith. So, do not become proud, but stand in awe, for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you. Note then, the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in His kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off.”

I don’t know how much clearer that could be. There are people who are in right relationship, they’re part of the tree, and then because of infidelity, they don’t continue in the kindness of God, and they’re broken off.

He doesn’t say, “Oh, any branch that isn’t on the tree was never part of the tree to begin with.” No, He says the exact opposite, that, “They’re natural branches that were on the tree and were broken off. You’ve been grafted onto the tree and stand there by faith, but you too will be cut off if you don’t continue in God’s kindness.”

This is meaningless if eternal security is true. If there’s no way for a grafted in branch to fall off, what in the world is Paul talking about? He’s warning you about an impossible threat.

And so, Saint Paul also mentions that God has the power to graft in those branches that have fallen off. So, you can go from being part of the tree to not part of the tree, and vice versa more than once. You can be on the tree, cut off, and then grafted back on again.

We see this in several places, but I’m going to get to one really clear place in the Prodigal Son. Before I get there, I want to mention the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6.

“We pray, forgive us our debts as we’ve also forgiven our debtors.” And Jesus comments on this passage in Matthew 6:14, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father also will forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

So, you, as a Christian, praying the Lord’s Prayer, as a son or daughter of God, able to address God as Father, you are still acknowledging, if Matthew 6:14-15 is correct, that if you are not forgiving others, you won’t be given your trespasses.

If you’re not forgiven your trespasses, can you be saved? Of course not. All those passages speak to the necessity of endurance in the Christian life, that’s the first part.

The second is that Scripture speaks of deadly sin, this is kind of the flip side to that last point. You see this beginning in the very beginning of Genesis.

God tells Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die. Now, Adam doesn’t physically die the day the day that he eats of the tree.

Now, it’s true that mortality is tied to the fall, but this seems to be a reference to spiritual death, and we see a bunch of places where those who are in right relationship with God incur spiritual death.

I’ll give a few examples. 1 John, chapter 5, “If you see your brother-” Notice it’s not a non-believer, it’s a brother, “Committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal.” Mortal just means deadly.

John says there is sin which is mortal, “I do not ask that one is to pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal.” So, John is really clear, there’s two types of sin. There’s deadly sin and non-deadly sin, we now call venial sin.

This can impact a brother, that someone who is a Christian can commit mortal sin, deadly sin. It’s not just John who says this. James, chapter 5, he says, “My brethren, if anyone among you-” That is, the Christians, “Wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

Now, if it wasn’t possible for a Christian to incur spiritual death, how would our intervention in the life of fellow Christians save them from death?

It wouldn’t. They’re already saved, nothing is going to happen to them. There is no real risk of them eternally dying. They were either predestined for heaven, or they weren’t, and your intervention after they’ve already come to faith doesn’t do anything.

Even if they wandered from truth, they were not at risk of eternal death. That’s the whole argument the eternal security crowd is making. That argument is directly contradicted by James 5:19-20.

Likewise, 1 Corinthians 11. Saint Paul describes the necessity of recognizing Jesus in the Eucharist, and then says in verse 20 to 30 that because of their failure to do so, this is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”

Now, some people have taken this to be a reference to physical death. I think that’s a misreading. Saint Paul is not saying, “If you receive the Eucharist unworthily, you’re going to drop physically dead on the spot.”

He’s instead referring to spiritual death, that this is one way you can mortally sin against God because, “Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body,” Saint Paul says, “Eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” Judgment here is damnation.

And then, as promised, the parable of the Prodigal Son has a very clear passage about this in Luke, chapter 15, when the Father says to the elder son, “Son, you’re always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad for this, your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.”

Now, notice if you read the parable, the son is in right relationship to the Father at the beginning of the parable, and then is spiritually dead, and then spiritually comes to life again.

It’s not because he’s commanded, “Lazarus, come forth.” That’s not it at all. It’s because of repentance, because he repents of his sinful ways.

Now, that’s not in the parable, but say through grace, this happens, but the point there is someone who was alive becomes dead. In this case, the story ends happily, he’s alive again, but it shows that it’s possible for a son of God, someone in covenant relationship, to fall into a state of spiritual death.

It’s not spiritual death if it’s, “Well, you’re not actually going to die no matter what.” No, that wouldn’t be spiritual death. So, that’s the second point, that there is such a thing as spiritual death, there is such a thing as deadly sin.

To make that more clear, let’s look at some actual cases of people falling away in the Bible, going into spiritual death. We’ll start with John 6:66, “After this meeting, Jesus’s disciples drew back and no longer went about with Him.”

Okay, there’s a concrete group, those who were scandalized by His Eucharistic teaching stopped following him. They were disciples, they are not anymore. It didn’t say they were fake disciples. No, they were disciples, now they aren’t.

Acts, chapter 8, you’ve got Simon. Simon, not one of the good Simons. Simon believes, we’re told in verse 13, and is baptized. Why does this matter? Because it means it’s very hard to say he’s a fake Christian because believing in baptizing is the formula for salvation in places like Mark 16:16.

So, he gets saved, and yet he commits a sin called simony, not coincidentally. He tries to buy spiritual goods, he tries to buy the power of imparting the Holy Spirit.

Peter says to him, “Your silver perish with you. Perish with you. He’s dead. He’s spiritually dead because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. You have neither part nor lot in this matter for your heart is not right before God.”

This is not just like a, “Well, you could really use some amendment.” It’s, “No, no. Repent, therefor, of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you, for I say that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of inequity.”

How much clearer could that be? This is a guy who believed and is baptized, in right relationship with God, and then he went back into the gall of bitterness and the bond of inequity.

We have other examples we can add to Simon. Hymenaeus and Alexander, 1 Timothy, Saint Paul says they made shipwreck of their faith. He doesn’t say they didn’t have a faith, they did. They made shipwreck of it.

2 Peter, we find maybe the clearest extended example of this. As a little bit of context, this letter is addressed, “To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

This is not a letter to fake Christians, this is a letter to those who have the same faith we have. In chapter 2, Peter says that, “As false prophets also rose among the people, there will be false teachers among you-” The saved, right? “Who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them.”

That’s an important passage. These are people who have been ransomed by Christ, they’ve been bought by Christ. The blood of Christ has redeemed them, and then they denied the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

Now, if you say they were fake Christians, and they weren’t actually ransomed by Christ, you’re just denying what the passage says on it’s face.

That’s not it because Peter also warns that many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them, the way of truth will be reviled, and in their greed, they will exploit you with false words.

Remember, who sent you? He’s warning that many, seemingly rom the group he’s writing to, are going to be exploited by, and will follow, these false teachers teaching damnable doctrines.

Peter, he does not pull his punches at all. He says, “From of old, their condemnation has not been idle and their destruction has not been asleep.”

Going a little further down the chapter, he says, “Forsaking the right way, they’ve gone astray.” That’s an important line, right? Because if the eternal salvation view is you’re either always on the right way once you get on it, or if you leave it, you’re necessarily going to go back on it.

That’s not what Peter believes, he believes the opposite. He believes they were on the right way, now they’ve forsaken it, they’ve gone astray, and he warns that for them, the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved.

It’s not just, “Well, you’re going to be scolded. You’re backsliding a little bit, but you’re going to come back.” He doesn’t believe that at all. He’s saying they are on the road to damnation, and then if all of that wasn’t clear enough, you get down to verse 20, and he says this, he says, “For if after they’ve escaped the defilements of the world”.

Wait, I thought they were fake Christians. I guess they’re not, they’ve actually escaped the defilements of the world, “Through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered. The last state has become worse for them than the first.”

This passage explicitly says the thing that eternal security people deny. They went from unsaved to knowing our Lord and being saved, to being unsaved.

Peter says, “It would be better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it, to turn back on the Holy Commandment delivered to them.”

Now, you will find people saying, “Oh, they just have head knowledge but not heart knowledge.” This distinction is not found found in the New Testament.

These were people who knew the way of righteousness, who were on the way of righteousness, and turned back, not just had heard it and ignored it.

Go back to the parable of the sower and the seed. There are people who hear the message and ignore it. That’s not who Jesus is talking about, in those who receive it and then endure for awhile and fall away.

There’s a difference between the first and second group in the sower and the seed. Go back and look at the parable and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Likewise, in 2 Peter 2, He’s talking about people who were on the way of righteousness and no longer are, and this becomes even clearer in the last verse of the chapter, in which He uses the proverb against them, the dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed, only to wallow in the mire.

These are washed Christians, these were spiritually reborn Christians who then go back into the filth of their previous way of life, and that’s a problem because they’re now worse off than they were before.

If that wasn’t clear enough, the Epistle to the Hebrews explicitly names two types of sin that can destroy your salvation. The first of them is in Hebrew 6:4-6, is apostacy.

I’m just going to read you the passage because I don’t know how one reads this and says eternal security is true. “For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit.”

That invocation is often understood to be baptism, the Eucharist, and Confirmation. That’s not the point, I’m just saying these are people who’ve certainly been part of the Christian life, have been enlightened.

They’ve tasted the heavenly gift, the Eucharist, they’ve become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the goodness of the Word of God, and the powers of the age to come.

If they then commit apostacy, it is impossible to restore them again to repentance since they crucified the Son of God on their own account and hold them up to contempt.

That’s what the passage says. If you are on the Christian path, and you decide, “I don’t want Christianity anymore.” There’s no hope for you.

Now, that doesn’t mean literally you can’t repent, it just means we know how to evangelize to those who’ve never heard the gospel. What do you do with someone who’s heard the gospel and decided they don’t want it? That’s a pretty hopeless seeming kind of case.

Again, I wouldn’t take that part as a literal it’s actually impossible, but as a recognition that they’ve turned back, they’ve turned away from the only thing that can save them, which is Jesus.

The second way we can fall away is in deliberate sin, Hebrews 10:26-29 talks about this, and this is explicitly to those who are covenant partners in Christianity.

It says, “For if we sin deliberately-” We. If we sin deliberately, “After receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.”

Then Hebrews makes a comparison, “In the Old Covenant, if you violated the law of Moses, you died without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses.”

It says, “how much worse do you think would be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and outrage the spirit of grace?”

Notice, this is someone who very explicitly was a covenant partner, was sanctified by the blood of the covenant, and then profanes it by deciding to turn away from the Christian life into a pattern of deliberate sin.

So, John Piper, who we heard from before, I wanted to hear how would he make sense of a passage like this, that seems so clearly to contradict everything he says about eternal security. Here’s how he approached it.

Right here is where it looks like we can lose our salvation because of the reference to, “By which he was sanctified.” So, you can profane the blood by such a deliberate, continued, settled pattern of sin, you can profane the blood of the covenant by which you were sanctified, which sounds like, “Oh, well, he was saved, and so now he’s beyond forgiveness, and so you can lose your salvation.”

Okay. That’s, I think, a pretty fair treatment of the text. It does appear to be saying that very explicitly, so how does John Piper respond to that?

You might expect him to analyze the text and say, “This passage of Hebrews 10 actually means something different, and here’s why-” But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he just turns our attention away from the passage and looks at other places in Hebrews that he wants to talk about instead. Here he is.

There are two passages in Hebrews that keep me from going there, from saying that his reference to some kind of sanctified condition for the person who is lost means that we can have the full experience of salvation in Christ and be lost, or lose it. There are two passages, Hebrews 10:14 and Hebrews 3:14.

Okay. Let’s look at those two passages because he doesn’t want to talk about the passage that seems to disprove his theory, he wants to talk about Hebrews 10:14, Hebrews 3:14. Let’s see if those passages teach eternal security.

Here’s 10:14, see what you think. “For by a single offering-” That’s the offering of Christ, “God has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” In other words, there is a kind of being sanctified which absolutely guarantees perfection for all time. In other words, nobody is lost who is experiencing this kind of sanctification.

This is a pretty egregious misrepresentation of what Hebrews 10 actually says because notice, if he’s reading it correctly, it means that we’re guaranteed perfection for all time.

Seemingly even now, we are perfect, we don’t sin, but Saint John, in 1 John, says if we say we have no sin, we’re liars, so this can’t be right.

Sure enough, if you read the context, you’ll see he’s taking 10:14 completely out of context. He’s not saying that at all. Hebrews 10, beginning in verse 11, contrasts the Old Testament system in which offering is repeatedly made by the sacrifices which can never take away sin, but Christ has for all time, offered a single sacrifice for sin.

The point isn’t we can never fall away, the point is everyone in need of salvation can look to one sacrifice for all time, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is not a passage about eternal security at all.

That’s saying, “Even if you fall into sin 20 times and have to go back, you don’t need to re-sacrifice lambs and goats, you just keep going back to Jesus Christ because His one sacrifice is all you will ever need.”

That doesn’t teach eternal security. People who deny eternal security believe the exact same thing. You don’t have non-Calvinists going out there and doing animal sacrifices because they think they need some new sacrifice. The text just doesn’t say that at all.

This is actually important context because in Hebrews 10, that’s the passage that then leads into, “Well, what happens if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth?”

In other words, that point that he’s making at the top of Hebrews 10 then leads to, “Well, what happens if we reject this, when we’re rejecting the only sacrifice that could ever save us?” And so then we’re hopeless. That’s what he’s saying.

He’s actually saying the opposite in Hebrews 10 that we’re always going to be perfect because he’s saying there’s one silver bullet sort of cure for sin, which is the death of Christ on the cross.

If you reject that, you’re rejecting the only thing that could possibly save you. This is contrasting the inferiority of the Old Covenant system with the New Covenant system. It’s not teaching eternal security, it is explicitly teaching the opposite of eternal security.

Saying in the Old Covenant, it was pretty bad if you turned away from that imperfect system. In the New Covenant, how much worse is it?” We’re told explicitly in verses 26 through 29.

I was surprised to see him point to Hebrews 10:14 because if you actually read Hebrews 10, you see it’s not saying John Piper’s interpretation of it, but he has another passage.

Here’s the second one, chapter 3, verse 14, “For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”

Now before he interprets it, I want you to just think about that passage. “We’ve come to share in Christ if indeed we hold original confidence firm to the end.”

It sounds like another passage teaching the salvific necessity of perseverance. It sounds like the opposite of what he believes because he believes everyone who’s saved will necessarily persevere. He’s going to interpret this in a pretty wild way, here’s what he says.

Note, it doesn’t say we will come to share in Christ if we hold fast to the end, it says we have come to share in Christ if we hold fast to the end, which means that if we don’t hold fast, like the person in Hebrews 10:26, if we don’t hold fast, then we never had come to share in Christ. That’s the clear teaching of 3:14.

That’s not the clear teaching of 3:14 for a few reasons. First, it doesn’t say anything saying that if you don’t hold fast, then you never had faith in the first place. He’s adding all of that.

Second, if you read Hebrews 3, it begins, “Holy brethren, who share in the heavenly call, consider Jesus.” So it’s addressed to holy brethren who share in the heavenly call.

They’re called. Remember, all that stuff about the importance of being called. Jump down to verse 12 of 3, “Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you fall away from the living God.”

So, it’s possible for someone who’s been called to have an evil, unbelieving heart and fall away from the living call. “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

And then, “Or if we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end, while it is said, “Today, when you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

So if you read the second half of the sentence John Piper quotes, it’s not saying anyone who has faith will necessarily endure to the end, it’s saying if you’re one of the chosen, make sure that when you hear the voice of God, you do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

It’s a reference to Psalm 95. Who is it about? The Israelites, who, having been led out of the Egypt, then turn away from God and lose their salvation and don’t make it into the Promised Land.

The passage is teaching the opposite of what he says that it says, so just something to consider. All that’s to say notice there, he hasn’t actually explained how Hebrews 10 could mean anything other than it says.

Verse 26 to 29 talks about a covenant partner breaking the covenant, and how bad it was in the first covenant, how much worse it is now. The-re’s no way to read that that I’ve found that can be harmonized with the idea of eternal security because it’s making it very clear you can be a part of the new covenant of Christianity and be an actual disciple.

You can be saved, and then break the covenant, turn away from the only one who can save you, and be damned. That is about as clear as it gets. We have actual cases throughout 2 Peter, and there’s various other references, of people who seem to do just that.

There’s a reason why for hundreds of years, no one had ever heard of this idea of eternal security because it’s not what the New Testament actually teaches.

Last point, and this is just food for thought, many of the people who believe in eternal security also believe in the idea of the Great Apostacy, that Jesus founds the church on earth, but it falls into apostacy.

The visible church goes from being a reliable pillar and foundation of truth the Scripture says it is, to being unreliable, teaches some heresy, or maybe a lot of heresy, maybe it’s entirely apostate.

I want to just point out it seems to be completely incoherent to say both no individual Christian can fall into apostacy, and the entire church falls into apostacy.

I don’t know how to harmonize those two beliefs. I don’t believe in either eternal security or a Great Apostacy, but I certainly don’t understand how someone could believe in both, to say nobody can fall into apostacy and everybody did, or lots of people did, seems to be internally incoherent.

I don’t have any more to say about that, I just want to throw that out there and say if you’re someone who believes in those two things, I’d be really curious in hearing how you make sense of those two things both being truth, or if you’ve ever given any serious thought to harmonizing these beliefs.

So, as I said at the start, I absolutely understand how someone could, in good faith, believe in eternal security, especially if they’re taking certain Calvinistic presuppositions about the nature of God, about the nature of salvation, about the nature of free will, and how they could read certain… Especially Pauline texts, but also parts of the Gospel of John, [inaudible 00:59:52].

I get that, but I hope it’s clear how there’s another way of reading those same passages that doesn’t mean that, and there’s a whole bunch of text that point to eternal security not being the Christian teaching.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and for Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.

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