Going by the caption of this post -
How does one reconcile “once saved, always saved” with cases where, for example, a pastor, religious leader of some sort or even a layman acquaintance of yours lives in open sin and even claims God sanctioned their ungodly relationship.
Obviously, anyone who could live like the devil or do as you suggest here - has never known God. The Bible teaches OSAS but when you see someone fall away from the faith, it proves their conversion was false. That one deceived themselves.
If a true believer sins, (you suggested err - don't soften sin - sin is sin). This can and does happen because of the sin nature that is still in the flesh. One should guide that believer back into the way. This is not the same thing as apostatizing.
Indeed? How do you know anyone is saved or not just by looking at them and what they're doing or saying? Is it the external by which you judge them, what most call their "fruit"?
In other words, if you see a neighbor who says he was once saved, and then he hits upon a stretch in his life where he "lives like the devil," you can say that you personally know that he was never really saved in the first place?
What about all the rest of his life that you may or may not see, up to the point he takes his last breath? Is that what places the finality upon your judgement of him if he continues in his sinful state up to the point of death?
I'm asking because I've heard all this before and most...they stumble about with justifications for what they could never know, all while avoiding this:
1 Corinthians 3:15
If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
So, that man or woman was saved, and then withdrew...for whatever reason, right up to their last breath, and this verse will likely be absolutely applicable to them, but you...you seem to know something contrary to what this verse and other verses and contexts reject about your stated position. Why is that?
Who have you ever known in your life that you could point your finger at and say to them that, although they thought they were once saved, they were never saved to begin with on the basis of what you personally observed in their lives up to that point?
Who sits on that Judgement Seat of Christ Jesus? Given that we ALL still sin, each and every day, I can say that I'm glad that it's He who is on that Throne, and not some man looking at the externals.
Does that make sense? Does that strike a chord?
Thoughts?
MM