OSAS, When does salvation take place?
- Thread starter Drich
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Brother Drich,
This is well said, and I want to add to it, because the objection so many have "we already know Jesus, we're saved forever" is exactly the objection Jesus Himself answers in Matthew 7 — the very people He turns away say "Lord, Lord." They are not strangers to the name. They prophesied in it, cast out devils in it, did wonders in it. If simply knowing and confessing the name secured them, this passage could not exist. Christ's own words close that door: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 7:21).
So the question isn't whether a man once believed, prayed, or was baptized. The question Christ keeps putting in front of us is whether we endure. He says it plainly: "But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (Matthew 24:13). Not "he that began." Not "he that once confessed." He that endures. That word assumes a course to be run, and assumes the course can be left unfinished.
Christ makes the same distinction again in the Parable of the Sower it is worth worth placing beside Mathew 7 because it shows this is not a stray thought of His but a running theme. Some seed springs up with joy and believes for a while, "and in time of temptation fall away" (Luke 8:13). Belief is there. Joy is there. And still falls away.
John, one of the Twelve who leaned on Christ's own breast, records Jesus saying the same thing of the vine: "Abide in me, and I in you... If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered" (John 15:4,6). Abiding is not a work added on top of grace. It is the shape a living relationship with Christ takes, and its absence is what proves the branch is no longer joined to the root, however green it once looked.
And John says it again, plainly, of men who had actually walked among believers and then left: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that it might be made manifest that they were not all of us" (1 John 2:19). Their leaving is the proof, after the fact and not their earlier presence among the brethren.
Then there is Revelation, which is Christ speaking directly, in His own words, to His own churches and He returns to this theme again and again, always with the same word: overcometh, always tied to the end.
"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Revelation 2:10).
"He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations" (Revelation 2:26).
"Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown" (Revelation 3:11).
"He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life" (Revelation 3:5).
That last one should stop anyone cold who thinks a name in the book of life can never be touched again. Christ Himself, to a real church, ties the not blotting out of a name to overcoming which only makes sense if the name could, in principle, be blotted out of one who does not overcome. He would not warn a church about a danger that cannot exist.
Ezekiel already gave the principle behind all of this, centuries before: "But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity... in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die" (Ezekiel 18:24). God does not grade a man's life by its beginning. He is explicit that a righteous man's righteousness "shall not be mentioned" if he turns from it.
None of this makes salvation a wage instead of a gift, and that's the point in your original post worth protecting most carefully. Loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, the answer Jesus gave the lawyer in Luke 10, is not a transaction we complete to purchase heaven. It's what a saved heart does, and what an unsaved heart eventually stops doing. Abiding, enduring, overcoming unto the end, these are not extra requirements bolted onto grace. They are what a real, living connection to Christ looks like from the outside, all the way to judgement day, when He alone declares who was ever truly known by Him at all.
Blessings
So, are you planning to teach unsaved persons how to be saved? Or are you going to teach saved persons something?
I plan on being able to answer a question when asked, and subsequently teach others to be able to answer said question.
I do not plan on gatekeeping the answer to this question by only proving the answer to someone if they are saved or unsaved.
I have a few questions.
If salvation can be lost, does that mean our eternal destination is in our hands?
When does one lose their salvation?
Can one be saved again?
Do you know of a person who has lost their salvation?
If salvation can be lost, does that mean our eternal destination is in our hands?
When does one lose their salvation?
Can one be saved again?
Do you know of a person who has lost their salvation?
By that point you'd be in the Kingdom having left earth to go be there
Those teaching the fake gospel of once saved always saved do so because they want cover for their sin.
Jesus is going to removed workers of iniquity from His Kingdom:
John 8:34,35
Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever.
Matthew 13:41,42
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
John 15:1-2
I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit
2 Corinthians 11:2-3
For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Well of course. These people are why there's so much false doctrine being taught.
They are taught false doctrine at bible colleges and seminaries.