The following are brief explanations of some verses that have been distorted to deceive people in believing that salvation can be lost.

Matthew 24:13   But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. Some think this verse means a person will not go to heaven unless he continues to do good until he dies.  They are confused by thinking the word “saved” refers to eternal salvation when actually, it refers to physical deliverance.  The context of chapter 24 clearly refers to people who become believers during the Tribulation and survive up to the end. They will then be physically delivered from the judgment that occurs when the Lord returns so that they can populate the earth during the Millennium. Their deliverance is from the baptism of fire.

James 2:14, 17, 24   What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has no works?  Can that faith save him?  Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone. People quote this verse when trying to prove that good works must be added to faith in order to be saved.  But notice that James is writing to “brethren”, people who are already saved. He was not warning believers that their eternal security was in jeopardy but that they were in danger of an untimely death due to a dead faith that produced no good works. 

Believers who choose to rebel against their heavenly Father by living a fruitless unprincipled life are in danger of an early physical death (sin unto death) Proverbs 11:19 - As righteousness leads to [prolonged] life, so he who pursues evil pursues it to his own death.  God sometimes disciplines an arrogant indifferent believer by taking him out of this world.

The Bible is full of commands to do good works but many believers ignore them because they have no motivation to please neither God nor compassion for their fellow man.  James calls this a “dead faith”.  It cannot cause him to lose his salvation but it can cause him to:  Come under divine discipline to the   point of losing his physical life, Lose rewards in heaven. Have no witness before unbelievers.

The key to understanding what James has written is to recognize that there are two kinds of justification.  One is by faith and the other is by works.  We are justified before God by our faith and we are justified before other people by our works.  We are not justified before God by our faith and our works; that is heresy!

Mark 16:16    He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned. Some think this verse makes water baptism a condition for salvation.   Notice carefully that this verse does not say, “he who does not believe and is not baptized shall be condemned”.  Only unbelief condemns.   No lack of good works, including water baptism, can condemn a person.  The baptism mentioned is not the ritual of water baptism but the Baptism of the Holy Spirit which is a work accomplished by God for us at the moment we accept Christ (I Cor. 12:13) in which God the Holy Spirit permanently identifies us with Jesus Christ by placing us in union with Him.

Hebrews 6:4-6   For it is impossible to renew to repentance those who  . . . have fallen away since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame. Is this saying that a person can lose eternal life and that once he has, it is impossible to get it back?  Absolutely not!  This was written to Jews who had believed in Jesus Christ but continued to sacrifice animals even after Christ was sacrificed on the cross.  It was hard for them to stop observing a ritual that their ancestors had observed for over a thousand years.  So the writer of Hebrews reminded them in Hebrews 10:12. But He, having offered one Sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.                   

These Jewish believers had fallen away from the fundamentals of the Christian faith which they had been taught. Every time they sacrificed an animal they were again crucifying the Son of God and putting Him up to an open shame, as if His sacrifice was not sufficient.  As long as they continued to do this, it was impossible to renew them to “repentance”, which means to “change their mind” to line up with correct fundamental doctrines.

Philippians 2:12-13   Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling . . .Again, this was written to believers who already possessed eternal life. The word “salvation” causes confusion because most people automatically equate it with eternal life. But this is never its meaning in the entire book of Philippians.  It is used to convey the idea of being physically delivered from something.  From what do believers need delivering? 

Before this can be answered, one must first understand that some believers are winners and some are losers.  The winners are obedient to the commands of God such as growing up spiritually by studying the Word (II Tim. 2:15), confessing sins (I John 1:9), unconditionally loving others (John 13:34), and doing good works (Eph.2:10), just to name a few.

 They will receive rewards, decorations, special blessings and privileges that will last for all eternity. Loser believers waste their time on earth by being disobedient and indifferent to God and His Word.  They have bought Satan’s lie that happiness and contentment can be found in money, sex, power, friends, a big house, a different spouse, a fun time, etc. Consequently, they never grow up spiritually and they lose out on the great things that winner believers receive. “Working out your salvation” is a call to be a winner believer.  It is a plea to be delivered from the miserable life and losses of the loser believer.  Fear and trembling are mentioned in this verse to warn believers that losing eternal rewards is no trivial matter.

Galatians 5:4   You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by  the law; you have fallen from grace. There is a big difference between an unbeliever who is condemned for rejecting God’s grace and a believer who has drifted off course by trying to maintain his salvation by works.  The Galatians believers fell for the lies of the Jews that salvation is secured by keeping the Mosaic Law. They fell away from the correct teaching that salvation is obtained and maintained entirely by God’s grace.  The Greek word used for falling away is “ekpipto” which means to drift off course.  Believers drift off course when they exchange grace and freedom for the slavery of legalism and divine discipline.

Hebrews 10:26   For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. All sin is willful in the sense that we sin because we want to.  However the willful sinning here refers to believers who have abandoned the Christian faith.

 They have deliberately ignored the commands (in 10:23 and 10:25) instructing them to, “hold fast the confidence of their hope without wavering” and “forsake not the assembling of ourselves together”. They had trampled under foot the Son of God, regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace (10:29). These apostate believers had abandoned their faith in the only true sacrifice, (Christ’s) and were being reminded that there is no other acceptable sacrifice for sins. They were being warned to expect stinging divine discipline that is compared to the fury of fire that would consume the adversaries of the Christian faith which they had joined.

Hebrews 10:39 sums up this idea by saying, “We are not of those who shrink back to destruction (loss of eternal rewards and severe divine discipline) but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul (a life free from the divine discipline of a premature death).

jrcbdm.com wallpaper -098  1024 x 768 x 25b jpeg

 12/10/06

Copyright ©2003-2007   J. R. Cherreguine Bible Doctrine Ministries