CAN BELIEVERS LOSE THEIR SALVATION? (2 of 3)

Unchanging Faith ❧ Part 16

Selected Passages ❧ Pastor, Dr. John Denney

One of the often hidden and deeply troubling struggles many believers wrestle with is: “Am I really saved? I believe in Jesus, I go to church, I pray, I read my Bible, but I still feel uneasy. There is a haunting question in the back of my mind, am I really right with God?”  If you look through the Bible, you’ll find that you are in good company. Some of the greatest heroes of faith were also some the greatest doubters at one time or another. Take for instance – Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Jacob, David, Peter, Thomas; all of them wrestled severely with doubt and often more than once. Do you know what their biggest hurdle of doubt was? Taking God at His Word.  When God made the miracle-sized promise to Abraham that he’d be the father of many; that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore, Abraham found himself struggling to believe God could keep His promise.  God said, “Abraham, you can fully trust Me to keep My promise.”  But Abraham let his doubts get in the way.  He put a question mark where God had put a period.  “God, are You sure I can fully trust You to keep Your promise?”  We do the same thing when we doubt God.  God promises us in His Word, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).  But we edit God’s Word with our doubts changing His clear promise into a doubt-filled question, Will I really be saved if I believe in the Lord Jesus?  Don’t put a question mark where God has placed a period.  

We have a lot to cover this morning, so I’m going to jump right in.  We’re going to look at the assurance of the believer.  Does God want us to be assured of our salvation? Can we face each day with the confidence we’re really saved?Or does God want us to constantly be weighed down in our hearts, constantly troubled with fear and uncertainty? 1 John tells us: These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13, NAS).  John doesn’t say, “That you may possibly know.” But that you may know.  There’s no question of uncertainty whatsoever. The word “know” is in the perfect tense meaning there is zero doubt. There’s no wiggle room for worry. You can bet your life on it.  God is saying, “I want you to have complete confidence in My promise – if you believe in My Son, you have eternal live – period. No question marks.”  5 Common Hinderances to Our Assurance 

1. I don’t feel saved. Being saved is not about how I feel, but what I believe. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1, NAS).  Faith is not a feeling; it is a choice despite my feelings.  I have peace with God because I’m resting in my choice to trust Christ – that’s called faith.  Where we get ourselves into trouble is when we base our peace with God on our feelings.  That’s when we become like Peter walking on the water towards Jesus.  The moment he took his eyes off of Jesus and began looking at the tossing waves around him, his feelings took over and he panicked.  Suddenly, all the confidence and peace he had to step out of the boat left him. He no longer felt safe. Peter quickly learned when you put your confidence in your feelings, that’s when you begin to sink! You can’t trust your feelings, but you can always trust God’s Word.       

1. I’m not sure my faith is real. If faith is not a feeling but a choice, then we’ll know whether our faith is real or not by our choices.We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. And he did rescue us from mortal danger, and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us(2 Corinthians 1:8-10, NLT). We’re not asked to trust ourselves, but God. Real faith is making a choice to completely rely on God.  

1. I’m not sure my faith is strong enough to be saved. This is close to the first hinderance to our assurance: I don’t feel saved.  The difference here is when we try to muster up our faith through our feelings trying to make it stronger.  It’s not the strength of your faith that saves you.  It is the object of your faith that saves you.  Jesus’ disciples thought something similar to this once.  The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you (Luke 17:5-6, NAS). Jesus said faith the size of even a small mustard seed can do phenomenally great things. Jesus’ point is the smallest faith; even the weakest faith saves. 

I read about a man who was visiting in a hospital when a nurse pointing to a bed surrounded by curtains whispered, “That poor man is dying. The priest has been here and administered the last sacrament. He cannot live long.”  The man asked permission to visit with the dying man. Given the okay, he stepped inside the curtains. He saw that the man who was dying was young.  On his chest rested a crucifix.  Leaning over, the man picked it up.  The sick man lifted his eyes and looked distressed. “Put it back,” he whispered, “I want to die with it on my chest.”  The visitor pointed to the figure pictured on the cross and said with deep conviction and compassion, “He’s the wonderful Savior!”  “Yes, yes, I love the crucifix.  Put it back, please.  I hope it will help me die well.”  “Not the crucifix,” the visitor replied, “but the One who died on the cross, the Lord Jesus, He died to save you.”  The dying man looked bewildered, then his face brightened: “Oh, I see, not the crucifix, but the One who died.  He died for me.  I see, sir, I see. I never understood it before.”  Suddenly, the young man’s faith came to life.  The visitor prayed briefly with him and shortly after that the young man died.  It’s not the strength of your faith that matters but the object of your faith that saves you.  The more you know Jesus, the stronger your faith will become. 

1. I’m not sure I love God enough to be saved. None of us love God as we should.  Sometimes our hearts overflow with love for God and at others our hearts are a dry barren desert.  We can no more trust our love for God than we can trust our feelings for Him.  Our love for God grows and deepens from knowing His great love for us. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).  Our love for God comes from God. Paul tells us the fruit of the Spirit is love (Gal. 5:22).  Our love for God is supernatural.  Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians: Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day (2 Corinthians 4:16, NLT).Through His love, God is renewing us day by day.  Our love for God doesn’t come from within in us, but God.  H. A. Ironside, Looking into your own heart for a ground of confidence is like casting the anchor in the hold of a ship. Cast it outside and let it go down, down, down into the great, tossing ocean of strife and trouble, until it grips the Rock itself. Christ alone is the Rock, and He is the manifestation of the infinite love of God for sinners.

1. Do I need to be baptized to be saved? The short answer is – No.  We’re not baptized to be saved but to be a witness that we’re saved.  I once had a conversation about this with a man who became very upset.  He insisted no one could be saved unless they were baptized.  When I pointed to Ephesians 2 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it(Ephesians 2:8-9, NLT).  He would have none of it.  So I took him to Luke 23 and asked about the thief on the cross. The thief wasn’t baptized and yet Jesus told him,Today you will be with Me in paradise(Luke 23:43).How could this man be saved if he wasn’t baptized?  The man responded, “That was before the New Covenant began.”  When did the New Covenant begin? When Jesus died (Lk. 22:20; Heb. 9:16).  Jesus shed blood on the cross initiated the New Covenant God promised in the OT.  If that is the case, then according to this man, the thief on the cross would have had to have died before Jesus since it was Jesus’ death that started the New Covenant.  But the thief didn’t die before Jesus.  He died after Jesus (John 19:30, 33).  Meaning the thief died in the New Covenant not the Old. If it were necessary to be baptized in order to be saved Jesus would not have told the dying man, he would be in paradise with Jesus that very day.  Baptism is not essential to being saved.  

This is the pattern all through the New Testament.  In Acts 16 when the prison guard asked,“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30-31). Baptism followed salvation.  Do we need to be baptized to be saved? No.  

God wants us to live with confident assurance of our salvation.  That means not letting our doubts edit God’s promises with question marks where He has placed a period.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this.  

This past week Pastor Danny stepped into my office and gave me a letter he’d received in the mail. It came from the office of Christian apologist Gregory Koukl, the founder of Stand to Reason: Clear-Thinking Christianity.  For the past 32 years he has sought to help Christians think more clearly about their faith and defend it in a “gracious and compelling manner.”  Like so many, he recognizes we live in a day where the Bible is taking the backseat as the final authority for the life and faith of the followers of Jesus.  His letter is both a timely and needed warning. 

If you want to quickly spot any form of “Christianity” gone south, watch for three specific telltale signs – hat-trick of errors that, in whole or part, characterize virtually every single Christian-sounding group that is off the reservation.  When you encounter a group you suspect may be theologically questionable, find out their answers to this trio of key questions.  First, “Who or what is their spiritual authority? Second, “Who is Jesus?” Third, “What must I do to be saved?”  The answers to these questions separate the wheat from the chaff, theologically.  Invariably, aberrant groups falter on either their ultimate source of authority, or the Person of Christ, of the work of Christ.  Usually, they err on all three. 

The first pitfall – adding some additional authority to the Word of God – this is the most important since mistakes about revelation compromise the foundation, frequently leading to the next two theological failures (and a host of others).  He warns that many who use the name Christian don’t necessarily believe the Bible is the final authority for faith and life.  When someone adds other authorities that are on par with Scripture it is a clear indication there is trouble ahead.  Serious errors gain a foothold.  Some are obvious and have been known for a long time.  Others, he warns are popping up closer to home.  One such group he says is: the presence of “apostles” or “prophets” peddling divine pronouncements and exercising ultimate authority in a local church…The so-called New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)… is thick with spiritual idiosyncrasies and theological error. Protestants keen on “hearing from God” stumble here…often embarking on destructive forays in both practice and theology, convinced God has spoken to them. 

The second question: “Who is Jesus?” are filled with theological mischief that’s completely at odds with Scripture. 

The third question: “What must I do to be saved?” Gregory points out though they often claim the name Christian, they deny that Jesus’ death on the cross fully atones for all our sins. According to them, we must save ourselves in some way or other. Gregory closes: Stay on the alert for these three telltale signs of doctrinal danger.   

These folks specialize in subtly editing God’s Word with a poisoned pen of dangerous lies.  If you’re battling doubt, you’re not alone.  So did the greats.  I want to encourage you to stay grounded in God’s Word, stay true to God’s Son, and stay close to God’s people.