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If a person professes belief in Jesus Christ then later says they do not believe, were they actually ever Christian? Some protestants think not, and today Joe Heschmeyer dismantles the false doctrine of Eternal Security.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shamless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. Is it possible for a Christian to lose their salvation? Can a Christian forfeit their salvation by returning to a life of serious sin? Can a Christian forfeit their salvation by deciding that they no longer believe in Jesus Christ? This is an important question that is long divided, even different groups of Protestants, if it is possible that Christians can lose their eternal salvation through sin or unbelief, telling them that they can’t, would be like convincing someone standing on the ledge of a bridge that even if they throw themselves off, they’ll survive because they’re immortal. So you might be wondering, how do people who claim this handle the obvious objection that there are a lot of former Christians. I mean, you can see people whether in the public square or perhaps in your own life who have gone from being seemingly devout Christians to rejecting Christianity entirely.
Now, the usual claim here is that these ex Christians must never have really been Christians in the first place. If you’re familiar with the no true Scotsman fallacy, this seems like an obvious version of that. So much so that my Catholic answers colleague Trent Horn calls it the no true proman objection. But I want to propose four reasons to suggest that this idea of one saved, always saved is a dangerous falsehood. And the fourth one in particular is an argument that I suspect you may not have heard before. And by the way, if this is a kind of project that you think is helpful in building up the body of Christ, I’d ask you to consider joining my Patreon over@shamelessjoe.com. It’s a lovely community of both Catholics and Protestants, and I’m loving the conversations over there. I can’t promise you eternal security, but I can promise you my sincere gratitude in my prayers for your direct support. So the idea that you can’t lose your salvation is called different things by different groups of people.
CLIP:
Today we’re going to be talking about eternal security or the concept of once saved, always saved perseverance of the saints. There’s many different ways in which we describe this particular doctrine,
Joe:
But whether you call it perseverance of the saints or one saved, always saved or eternal security, the core idea is the same.
CLIP:
The Bible teaches that once you become a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, it is absolutely impossible for you to lose your salvation.
Joe:
So let’s look now at the four reasons why this can’t be true. Number one, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. What’s the appeal of one saved, always saved? Frankly, we all want it to be true, and the people promoting the idea that you can’t lose your salvation often appeal to this pointing out how psychologically comforting it is to imagine that this is true.
CLIP:
And I think without question, this is the most comforting doctrine in the panoply of salvation doctrines. It is most comforting to me and to you to know that our salvation is forever, that our salvation is a secure salvation. This takes away the fear and brings joy, the believer’s joy, the believer’s comfort, the believer’s sense of wellbeing. Certainly the believer’s hope is anchored to this great security of salvation.
Christians can know for sure if they are saved, and this will lead to a godly peace that can look death in the eyes and smile because they know where they’re going once they breathe their last breath.
This enables us to enjoy being saved. If I thought that I could lose my salvation, I want to tell you I’d be scared to come out of my closet each day. I’d be scared to come out of my bedroom. I would live with such fear and terror that I would somehow, some way do something that would forfeit the saving grace in my life.
Joe:
I was hesitant about using that last clip once I realized that the speaker in question was the disgrace, Steve Lawson, who was caught having a five-year long adulterous relationship with a woman four and a half decades his junior, and who’d been a student at the seminary where he was the dean. But I think it’s worth taking Lawson seriously when he says of the idea of eternal security,
CLIP:
But the fact that I’m eternally secure, you know what that does? It does the very opposite that propels me out into the world.
Joe:
Eternal security is absolutely a comforting thought, but the fact that it’s nice to imagine something doesn’t make it true, and it might even be a dangerous delusion that lowers your guard against sin. In fact, our guard should be up precisely when a doctrine sounds too good to be true. In two Timothy four verses three to four St. Paul warns that the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they’ll accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. Paul is telling us to watch out for doctrines that bear two features. Number one, there are doctrines that at least for Paul in the first century lie sometime in the future. And number two, there are doctrines that people really want to believe. So if you hear someone preaching how comforting a particular teaching is, how to cure your anxiety, and they can’t show you that this is in fact the 2000 year traditional understanding of Christianity going back to the time of St.
Paul, watch out. Now of course, the fact that a doctrine sounds too good to be true, while it’s good reason to be skeptical, it doesn’t automatically disprove it. After all, it could have good biblical support. So does it. Number two, the Bible never teaches assurance of salvation. If you ask people to show where assurance of salvation is in scripture, there are largely two places I don’t want to claim there are only those two places. I’ve actually got a much longer video going into much more of the weeds on this, and I’ll link to that at the end of this video. But there are two major areas that I find people going. The first are passages that talk about how external threat can separate us from the love of God. A classic one is Romans eight, verses 38 to 39, where St. 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 in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
But obviously what Paul doesn’t say is that we can’t separate ourselves. If you tell your beloved nobody’s ever going to come between me and you, you’re hopefully not saying you’re never allowed to leave. So if St. Paul meant to say that we can’t separate ourselves from the love of God, it’s kind of striking that he forgot to mention that or even give a clear hint of it. But there’s another place people often turn and it’s a verse that I think gets badly misused. Now, before I get to it, I want to propose a question to you. It’s an easy one. In Matthew 13, three, Jesus says that a sower went out to sow. Does this mean that if I learned that someone else went out, that they must also have gone out to sow? Of course not. Right. Good. Remember that because the verse that gets badly proof texted by the assurance of salvation crowd is first John chapter two verse 19, where St.
John describing some people he calls antichrist, meaning in his terminology, people who deny the incarnation. And he says of them, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they’d been of us, they would’ve continued with us, but they went out that it might be plain that they all are not of us. Now, look, it is really clear that the reason these people who are probably early gnostics left the Christian fold is because their beliefs were never orthodox Christianity in the first place, but saying they went out for that reason. Therefore, everybody who leaves goes out for that reason is as obviously false is saying everyone who goes out goes out to sow. So it should be a red flag when people claim a doctrine is biblical. But when you ask them to support it, the most commonly cited passages seem not to actually be teaching the thing that they’re claiming.
But in fact, the Bible does have a lot to say on the topic of eternal security, just not what these people want you to believe. Number three, the Bible actively teaches against one saved, always saved. There are actually several places in the New Testament that explicitly talk about people who get saved than wander from the path of salvation and end up worse off than before. I’m going to give you just a handful, but there are more to start with. You have Hebrews chapter six, verses four to six. It warns about those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, but then reject Christ and commit apostasy. So that thing that the eternal security crowd claims never happens. Hebrews six says that it does in no uncertain terms, four chapters later, Hebrews 10 addresses the problem of a Christian who returns to a life of deliberate sin. Now, according to Protestants in the eternal security crowd, people like Dr. Charles Stanley Christians who do that will lose some of their heavenly reward, but they won’t lose their salvation and Dr. Stanley’s words.
CLIP:
And so we’re talking about a person you say, who just goes back into a life of sin? Do they lose their salvation for all eternity? And the answer is no.
Joe:
Now in contrast, let’s hear how the Bible answers the same question Hebrews 10 says, for 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. So either Dr. Stanley is right that a Christian who turns back to a life of sin is fine. They’re guaranteed to go to heaven, just won’t get quite as many heavenly rewards. Or Hebrews 10 is right, that such a person is no longer saved by Christ’s sacrifice and is now facing judgment and hell fire. But I don’t see how you can say it as both. Let’s turn now from Hebrews to second Peter. In fact, the entire second chapter of second Peter is about those who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
Did you catch that? These folks were rancid by Christ, but then they deny him and they bring upon themselves swift destruction. And in verse four, Peter compares them to the fallen angels. Angels were made to be God’s messengers. That’s what the term angel means. They were in the company of God, but they rebelled against him and were sent to hell. They didn’t have eternal security and nobody says they must never have been angels in the first place. No, they lost their salvation. In Peter’s point is that’s also true a view if you follow heretics at the end of the chapter. Peter then says, for if after they’ve 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. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness.
Then after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them, it has happened to them. According to the true proverb, the dog returns back to his own vomit and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire. So these are people who were once saved, who really had escaped the defilement of the world, who really had been washed, who were on the way of righteousness, who then turned back, who go back to their old way of life of filth. And Peter says, they’re actually worse off now than before they got saved. Now, in case you think this is just a hypothetical of a thing that would never really happen, the Bible gives us concrete cases. For instance, Simon Magus in Acts chapter eight in verse 13, he believes and is baptized. It doesn’t say that he pretended to believe or pretended to get baptized.
He believes and is baptized. This is the formula for how you get saved in Mark chapter 16. But then he sends gravely by trying to buy the sacramental power of the laying on of hands in verse 18. And St. Peter rebukes him and warns him that he now has neither part nor lot in this matter. For your heart is not right before God. Repent thereof of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. So there’s someone who very clearly got saved and yet just as clearly returned to the bond of iniquity for even people claiming eternal security aren’t really assured of their ultimate salvation. Now, as I said at the start of the episode, I think one of the promises of eternal security is this idea that you’ve got an unshakable assurance that you are going to be saved no matter what. That then leaves this serious problem. What about all of those ex Christians who were once assured that they too were saved no matter what. Take the case of Charles Templeton, the influential preacher who co-founded Youths for Christ with Billy Graham after preaching Jesus Christ. Huge crowds of people, almost certainly leading to the salvation of many, many people. Templeton himself had a crisis of faith and left Christianity. As John MacArthur puts it,
CLIP:
He abandoned all Christianity and all biblical truth Became a journalist in Canada in 1999. He wrote a memoir on his life titled Farewell to God. And in it he listed his reasons for rejecting Christianity and becoming an atheist. He left all ministry at that point. In 1957, returned to Canada, stepped into eternal blackness and apostasy, blasphemed Christ for his remaining years and died in utter unbelief.
Joe:
Now that’s a problem for eternal security. How can someone like Templeton die in apostasy? And I know that the standard answer to offered here is that Templeton must never have really been a Christian. But such an answer beggar’s belief when you consider just how much time and effort the young Templeton spent in trying to bring people to Jesus Christ. At the very least, we must say that Templeton thought he was a Christian, thought he was saved and was thought by the Christians around him to be saved. In 1946, the National Association of Evangelicals published the portraits of the Evangelicals best used by God. Charles Templeton made the cut. Billy Graham did not. So this was not somebody who seemed to either himself or others to be just a nominal or lukewarm Christian. This is such an obvious problem for the doctrine of eternal security that the Protestant reformer, John Calvin, was forced to invent another doctrine called Evanescent Grace to try to explain it away.
According to Calvin, God sometimes gives people that he’s not planning to save a confused sense of grace, leading them to think that their sins are forgiven and that they have the faith when in reality they’ve been damned the whole time. Now, that solves the Charles Templeton problem in one way. No wonder Charles Templeton could appear so sincere, he was just being tricked by God. But even leaving aside what this says about Calvin’s vision of God’s goodness, the idea that maybe God is just tricking some of us into thinking that we’re saved when we’re not. Well, surely that undermines the whole promise of assurance of salvation and eternal security. After all of the symptoms of being saved appear to be the same as the symptoms of being tricked into thinking you’ve been saved. Whatever it is that you would describe that makes you confident that you’re never going to fall away.
You can find numerous people like Charles Templeton who would’ve claimed the same about themselves, but then did fall away. So where does that leave us? Well, hopefully a bit chase it with a sense that our salvation is a gift, but it’s a gift that we can lose through our deliberate turning away from God, the gift giver. We would do well to remember the words of St. Paul and one of his epistles. You can guess which one He addresses. All the saints in Christ Jesus, who at Philippi, and even though he calls them saints, his words to them are simple. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Apparently nobody told St. Paul that the saints can’t lose their salvation or that there’s no room for Christians to treat eternal life with fear and trembling because then they’re going to go hide in the closet. If you enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe and consider joining over on Patreon for Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.