Eternal Security

Content of the Gospel — Steve Gregg

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Eternal Security

Content of the GospelSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg explores the topic of eternal security in this thought-provoking discussion. He challenges the common belief among evangelicals that once a person accepts Christ, they are unconditionally secure in their salvation, even if they later reject their faith. Gregg argues that the Bible does not support this view and warns against the acceptance of antinomianism within the church. He emphasizes that true salvation in Christ requires perseverance and the ongoing obedience to God, debunking the notion of unconditional and irrevocable security.

Transcript

What we are discussing is the subject of eternal security. There are different names that are given to this doctrine. Sometimes it's called the perseverance of the saints, although that is only one version of the doctrine of eternal security.

There is another that is held by many Christians. It is sometimes called once saved, always saved. Sometimes it is simply called the security of the believer.

Now, I don't know how I feel about some of those labels. I have no problem saying that I affirm the security of the believer. I define a believer as one who is believing.

If somebody is no longer believing, then they can't very well be called a believer. And therefore, I would not grant security to a former believer. But I certainly believe in the security of the believer.

If you believe the gospel, and if that is a species of faith that grips your heart as it gripped Abraham's heart, as Paul describes in Romans chapter 4, how that he believed against all evidences, against all hope. He held on to that and he began to confess that it was true, even though there was no evidence that it was true. And it was a life-gripping conviction that Abraham had.

Paul says, therefore, it was accounted to him for righteousness. That is, because it was that kind of faith, because it compelled Abraham to change his whole outlook and his whole course of life, because he believed what God said to him, Paul says, because it was that kind of faith, therefore, it, that faith, was accounted to him for righteousness. We are saved by faith in Christ.

We're not really saved by faith. We're saved by Christ. We're saved by God.

But our faith is that which accesses, I believe, the grace of God. Now, not everyone here will share that theological conviction, but then that's true of everything I'm going to say tonight. And not all Christians agree on these subjects exactly alike.

The view I'm really discussing is a view that I don't agree with, and that is, perhaps if I added one word, it would explain it better. I do not believe in the unconditional security of the believer, because I think that would be, the very fact of calling him a believer suggests the condition of believing. I don't believe in unconditional eternal security.

I believe that faith is a condition of salvation. Now, anyone here who is Reformed in their theology will not agree with that, because Reformed theology teaches unconditional election, that God has elected some to be saved from before the foundation of the world, without reference to anything they did or would ever do. It is not based on his foreknowledge of future faith.

It is based on nothing that we can discern. It's simply a sovereign decree of salvation that God has made for some people, and it's unconditional. And obviously, if getting saved in the first place was unconditional, then staying saved is equally unconditional.

That is Reformed theology, and I'm sure that there are several here, probably, who are in that camp. A camp that I'm very familiar with, and that I have a measure of respect for, though I disagree with on several points. But there is another kind of teaching about eternal security that is not Reformed, is not the Reformed view, and that is the view that there's no better word for it than antinomian.

Antinomianism is a heresy from the early church. The epistle of 1 John was written to refute it. Colossians and some of the other epistles, certainly James, had this heresy in mind as something to refute when those epistles were written.

Everything Jesus taught refutes it. And yet it is a very common view among evangelicals today, and it is the view that if you simply believe in Christ once, no matter what you do after that, even if you don't believe later, and you don't believe at the point that you die, you're still saved, because it's an unconditional security. You have to meet the condition once.

You have to believe on one occasion. You have to say the sinner's prayer and meet it once. But after that, you have received an unconditional, permanent possession of eternal life.

And having received it, you can never lose it. Having been born of God, you can never be unborn. And you are kept in God's hand, secure, regardless of whatever else you do.

And on this view, in the more extreme views of it, and I think a few people on the radio that I know actually teach it this way, if you come to believe in Christ early in life, and then you walk away from God and never come back, and you can become a Muslim or a Satanist and die in that condition, you're still saved, because you got saved when you were a kid. I remember the day that Jimi Hendrix died. Some of you youngsters don't know who Jimi Hendrix was, and that's just fine.

But Jimi Hendrix was not a godly man. He died of a drug overdose. He was a rock star when I was young.

And I was in the ministry, and I was driving down the street. Well, I was not driving. I was riding with a guy who was driving.

He was an evangelist. I was a Bible teacher. We were both working in the same ministry, and we heard on the news that Jimi Hendrix had died, and we were both stunned, because he was not an old man at all.

He died quite young. There were rumors that he'd sold his soul to the devil. We don't know if that's true or not, but if so, maybe the devil claimed him early, claimed what he'd bought.

But we were just stunned, because he was a huge icon, a real... he was no idol of mine, but he was to my generation to a large extent. I remember saying to my friend as we drove down the street, I said, you know, it's just hard to believe that just yesterday, this guy was wealthy and famous and the most revered guitar player in the whole world, and today he's burning in hell. My friend said, yeah, wow, that's really something.

Then he said, well, maybe not. He says, maybe when he was a kid, he accepted Jesus. Now, I was only, I think, 17 years old or 18 years old at this time, and I was still fairly fresh out of my Baptist upbringing, and as a Baptist, I believed that if you accept Jesus when you're a little kid, you can be a Satanist when you die and go to heaven.

I would have never put it that way. Of course, no one who teaches this doctrine really wants to put it quite so crassly, but that's essentially what they believe. It doesn't matter what you do after you get the package, it's yours, and you can do anything, the worst of all things, and die in that condition.

The grace of God is so glorious that you're saved anyway. And I still kind of believed that at the time. I remember when my friend said, well, you never know, maybe Jimi Hendrix is in heaven now.

I thought, yeah, wow, isn't that wonderful? What a wonderful thought that is. Maybe there is a rock and roll heaven. But I understand now that I was very naive.

At least that's how my current understanding of Scripture is, that that was a very naive way to look. I don't believe that Jimi Hendrix could possibly be in heaven, unless somehow the media didn't know that he repented and gave his life to Jesus Christ before he died. But if he had gone to a church when he was a kid and gave his life to Christ then, and then walked off and lived for the devil until the day of his death, then the Bible does not teach anywhere that that man would have a hope of salvation, dying in that condition.

There are two views of eternal security. I disagree with both of them, but one of them I disagree with much more emotionally. The one I was just describing is what I call antinomianism.

The idea is it doesn't matter what you do as long as you know the right thing. As long as you have gotten the knowledge. And if it dawned on you when you were a kid that Jesus is Lord, and you said some kind of a prayer that was meaningful, it doesn't matter what you do after that, your works mean nothing whatsoever, don't have any impact on anything, except your rewards.

I should make that very clear. You can lose your rewards, but you can't lose your salvation. That is the antinomian view.

It was taught by the Gnostic heretics in the early church, and as I said, some of the epistles were written against it. That hasn't prevented many evangelicals from believing it and teaching it. Of course, it didn't prevent a lot of Christians from believing it and teaching it back in the days when Gnosticism was infiltrating the church either.

It's just amazing that we don't learn more than we do from history. But there is a much more respectable view of eternal security, and that is the Reformed view, which I also do not hold. It is the view of Augustine, which was made a fairly dominant part of the theology of the Protestant movement in the 16th century by its advocacy by a man named John Calvin, and it is often called Calvinism.

And on this view, if you truly are one of those that God has sovereignly elected, you will persevere to the end. You can't lose your salvation, but it will show. You see, on the first view, you might be saved, but it might not show at all.

You might look to all observers, including those who live with you, like you're a Buddhist. But if you accepted Christ when you were a child, you're saved, invisibly saved. Reformed theology does not believe anyone is invisibly saved.

True salvation produces evidence of salvation. And the doctrine of perseverance of the saints at least does not give anybody the freedom to backslide and still go to heaven. In Reformed theology, if you backslide, you never really were saved, at least if you backslide and die in that condition.

Sometimes the doctrine of perseverance is called the perseverance final of the saints, which means in their final state at the point they die, we sing, Jesus loves me, this I know. And one of the lines was, if I love him when I die, he will take me home on high. Now, that statement can be taken eternal security wise or not.

It could mean, if I love him now, then whatever happens else, when I die, he'll take me home on high. But I take it to mean what it more naturally sounds like. Of course, it's not Scripture, but I agree with it.

If I love him when I die, then he'll take me home on high. If I love him now, but hate him when I die, I don't have a home on high. Now, Arminianism and Calvinism both agree on that point.

Because Calvinism teaches and Arminianism teaches that if you do not love the Lord, if you are not in the faith at the time that you die, then you are lost. Calvinism, Arminianism disagree as to what your earlier state might have been. Because the Arminian view holds that you might well have been saved at an earlier point, but you lost it and gave evidence of having lost it by not being a Christian at the point of your death.

The Calvinists would say, well, it's not that easy. Your earlier evidence of conversion was simply misguided. You weren't really elect at all.

You just seemed to be saved. It doesn't much matter. That's why I don't get emotional about whether people are Calvinist or Arminian.

Because the important thing about both of those doctrines to me is the state when you die is what matters. And since you might die tonight or tomorrow or any given day that you're alive, you might die that day, you'd better be in the right state all the time. And it doesn't matter when a person has died in his sins whether he held to a Calvinist view or an Arminian view.

I don't think it's any comfort to someone in hell to think, well, I was a good Calvinist or I was a good Arminian. It doesn't matter what their theology was. If they died outside of Christ, they're lost.

My main concern is against the antinomian view. And while I do disagree with the perseverance view on some points, the real danger, I believe, to the Christian church, the evangelical church, is this acceptance of antinomianism. The idea that if you just said a sinner's prayer once, you've got it, and it doesn't matter whether you act like it at all.

Works have nothing to do with your salvation. It's all by faith, and you only have faith once. You don't even have to keep the faith.

Because God will keep you even if you don't keep the faith. They love the verse, 2 Timothy 2.13, Though we be faithless, He abides faithful. In other words, if I lose the faith, God's still faithful.

And they interpret that to mean I'm still saved. I'm not sure why God being faithful translates into you being saved. Since God is faithful, and a whole bunch of people aren't saved.

The world's full of people who aren't saved, but God's still faithful. So, I'm not sure why it would be to say that God is faithful says anything about my salvation. If I'm faithless, then I'm lost.

God is still faithful. It's not He who has dropped the ball, it's me. Let God be true, and every man a liar.

But certainly there's nothing in the Bible that teaches, and this is what I'd like to deal with tonight, that you can depart from the faith, walk away from Christ, live in sin after some genuine conversion, and go to heaven when you die, if you die in your sin. Now, whenever I treat a subject that has as many adherents to the point opposite to my own as this, I like to first of all give the arguments in favor of the opposing view. Because I assume there may be in the audience some who hold the opposing view and would think these arguments are so compelling that they might not think anything about the validity of the arguments from my side.

I know how the mind works. If I'm convinced of a certain view, and for instance I'm an all-millennialist, as some of you know, if I go and sit under a dispensationalist giving a lecture, everything that he gives as an argument just goes right off me like water off a duck's back. One of the reasons is because I used to use those arguments when I was a dispensationalist.

But take some other issue that I never was one. If I believe, well, I know what my arguments are for my view, and I know my view is right because I have these arguments, it doesn't matter what he says, even if it sounds good, it can't be right because my view has all these arguments in its favor. So what I want to do first of all is take a look at the arguments for the unconditional eternal security position just to see whether it does have something in its favor.

But before we do, I'd like to give you a positive teaching of what I believe the Bible teaches about security, the believer's security, and then we'll look at the arguments for the view I don't agree with, and then I'll present some arguments for the view that I do agree with. That's the way I want to go tonight. First of all, would you turn to Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 9, please.

And we read, picking up in the middle of the sentence actually, we read, Now, I just want to call your attention to the term eternal salvation. Do I believe in eternal salvation? Sometimes people ask me that. They mean eternal security, but the way they phrase it is, do you believe in eternal salvation? Well, I should say I do.

I absolutely believe in eternal salvation. I believe that the salvation I have received is eternal. And I believe that nothing is able to take it from me.

And I believe that God who gave me this salvation will honor what He has given. And that I will be ten billion years from this day as saved as I am right now. I am eternally secure, but not unconditionally.

Even this verse doesn't say anything about unconditional eternal salvation. It says, He became the author of eternal salvation to those who obey Him. Now, the word is in the present tense, not the past tense.

It doesn't say He became the author of eternal salvation to those who obeyed Him. Like sometime earlier in their life they obeyed Him, and now they have eternal salvation because they used to believe or used to obey. It is to those who currently, who presently, who in an ongoing sense, at any given moment in their life you can say to them, they are obeying Him, they are believing in Him.

Now, I don't want you to get the impression that I think we are saved by words. But this is a biblical writer who said this. He became the author of eternal salvation to those who obey Him.

But it's not obedience that saves. Obedience is the evidence of salvation. Salvation is through faith, but faith produces the evidence of obedience.

And those who are obeying Him are given the evidence that they in fact possess this eternal salvation. And if they obey Him and continue to possess this salvation until the day they die, and beyond, it's forever. Now, I want to say this so that we can start out in a position that I think we can all agree on.

Salvation is eternal. And those who reject the doctrine of unconditional eternal security are not themselves eternally insecure. And there are some who teach eternal security who would use that term for those who don't agree with them.

They'd say of someone like myself, who holds views like mine, they'd say, well, you must be eternally insecure. No, I'm not insecure eternally or at all, not even at the moment. I'm not even insecure right now, much less forever.

I was listening to a tape that somebody sent me. Someone on the East Coast heard a guy. This guy actually was focused on the family, but not giving this particular message.

This guy gave his testimony on focus on the family. A friend of mine back East heard it and called their ministry and asked for some of their tapes. And he got one by the same guy on eternal security.

The man believed in the unconditional eternal security doctrine. And I listened. It was two tapes long.

I listened to both of them. I don't know if he could have done better if he'd had a different audience. He was addressing a bunch of high school age kids, so he might have kept it more simple and less technical than I would have preferred.

But he said, you know, he basically gave some of the scriptures we'll look at tonight. And actually, much he gave much less scripture in favor of his view than I'm going to present in favor of his view tonight. I have more scriptures in favor of his view than he had.

But in the end of it, he says, you might say, well, what's it matter if you believe in eternal security or not? And he says, I'll tell you what it matters. The man happened to be Jewish, converted to Christianity late in life, I guess. And he said he said he was at a family gathering of his Jewish family.

And there was a rabbi there. I think it was a funeral. And he was talking to the rabbi and the rabbi said, so you became a Christian, did you? And he said, yes.

And he said, well, why? Why did you become a Christian? He said, well, because, you know, I believe Christianity is the truth and it's what we all need and so forth. And the rabbi said, well, my Judaism provides me with everything your Christianity provides you with. And he said, really? And he said to the rabbi, he says, do you know for sure, rabbi, that if you die today, you know beyond a shadow of doubt you'd go to heaven and live there forever? And the rabbi said, no, no one can know that until they die.

And he said, well, then, he says, that's what my Christianity has done for me. I do know that if I died today, I'd go to heaven. And then he said, after telling this story, he said to the audience, and that's what this belief in eternal security does for me.

It gives me the assurance that if I die today, I'll go to heaven. I thought, wait a minute. What does that have to do with the doctrine of eternal security? I know that if I die today, I'll go to heaven too and I don't believe in eternal security.

How can it be that believing in eternal security somehow confers this assurance that if you die today, you'll go to heaven? Eternal security is about whether you, you know, if you die next week, you'll go to heaven. Or next year, or ten or twenty or thirty years from now. All Christians believe, I hope, regardless of their view on this particular subject, all Christians believe that if they die today, they'll go to heaven.

I know I'm going to heaven. If I die on my way home to Idaho, I'm going to go to heaven. I'll be glad to be there too.

Although Idaho is closer to it than here. I lived here for sixteen years in Oregon. The issue is not, it's not as if people who don't believe in eternal security aren't secure.

If I'm in a storm and there's lightning flashing and someone, or let's say there's a hurricane, let's take a different example. A tornado is coming. We don't have tornadoes here on the West Coast much, but let's say there's a tornado coming.

And I'm looking around saying, I don't know if I'm going to get killed in this thing or not. And someone says, come down here, and they've got this storm cellar down there, and it's, you know, tornado proof. And so I go down in the tornado storm cellar.

Am I secure then? Well, I guess I am. If the tornado can't get me while I'm in that cellar, I guess I'm secure. Am I eternally secure? Well, if I eternally stay in the storm cellar, I guess I am.

Am I incapable of leaving the storm cellar? Well, no, I could do that. And the issue of whether I could or not has nothing to do with whether I'm secure right now, that I'm in it. As long as I'm in it, I'm secure.

As long as I'm in Christ, I'm secure. And that's what we need to understand. Salvation is not a thing, a commodity.

And people get this wrong so much because they make so much of the issue of it being a gift. The gift of God is eternal life. The gift of God.

Now, there's a few places in the scriptures that speak of salvation as a gift, and those are great passages. We'll probably take a look at some of those today. But it's not the only thing the Bible says about salvation.

But one of the things the Bible says about salvation is it's a gift. And when we think of a gift, we think of Christmas. And we think of packages, and we think of stuff that someone bought at a store and gave us for free.

We say, wow, someone paid for this, and I got it for free. It's a gift, isn't that a wonderful thing? And that is true of salvation, too. Of course, Christ paid for it, and we get it for free.

That's why salvation is like a gift. But we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that salvation is like a gift under the Christmas tree, in that it is stuff. And once someone has given it to us, we own it, and it's ours, and we're going to use it.

And it's ours, and if we never see again the person who gave it to us, we still got it, because they gave it to us. It's something separate from them. It came from their generosity, but once I own it, I don't need them anymore.

I've got it. And many people think that way about salvation, that God gives me eternal life, and once I've got it, it doesn't matter if I stick around Him or not. It doesn't matter if I have any more relationship with Him.

I've got it. I've got the stuff. I've got the commodity.

Now, the Bible doesn't talk about salvation that way. Even though it does use the word gift, it doesn't press the metaphor that far. The Bible says that Jehovah is salvation.

In fact, that's the meaning of the word Jesus. The name Jesus literally means, it's the Greek form of Joshua, which means Jehovah is salvation in Hebrew. And that is the doctrine of salvation.

Christ is our salvation. Jehovah is our salvation. And as long as salvation is in Him, and as I am in Him, I have it.

And as long as I have Him, I have what salvation is, because salvation is Him. So, as long as I am in Christ, as long as I have Christ, I have salvation. But it's not like a Christmas gift that my parents might give me, that even after they move to the other end of the country, and I never speak to them again, but I still have the gift.

The gift of salvation God gives me, and take it away from Him, and still have it. It's in Him. If I don't remain in Him, I don't have it.

But as long as I am in Him, I've got it. Forever. Eternally.

Now, where do I get that? I get it from certain scriptures that I believe teach it, quite plainly. I believe that all the scriptures teach it, but I didn't want to be so, you know, tacky as to say I get it from all the scriptures. There are people who think that the scriptures teach something a little different than that, too.

But let me show you the scriptures that I think bring this out. Some of them. I can't give you all of them.

Too many. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 6. Ephesians 1, verse 6 says, Now, the Beloved is Christ. We are accepted by whom? By God, the Father.

How so? Now, isn't being accepted, isn't that what salvation is? Isn't that what makes me secure or not, is whether God accepts me or not? It seems to me, as I understand salvation, God's acceptance is what it is all about. If on the day of judgment I stand before Him and He says, I don't accept you, then I don't feel very secure in that situation. If He says, I accept you, then nothing can scare me.

I'm as secure as can be because I'm accepted by God. Let all men forsake me. It doesn't matter.

God accepts me. That's all that matters to me. That's what salvation is.

God's acceptance of me. I mean, that's looking at it one way. There's several other ways the Bible talks about it.

But how am I accepted? Am I accepted because I've got a ticket that Jesus gave me? Am I accepted because I've done good works? Am I accepted because I'm in the ministry? Why am I accepted by God? I'm accepted in Christ, in the Beloved. He's the Beloved. As I am in Him, I'm accepted in Him.

Now, I realize that a lot of people, including a lot of Christians, don't quite grasp what Paul talked about a lot in this matter being in Christ. It was a favorite concept of Paul's and he used it a lot. Basically, Paul's concept is this.

Christ isn't just one person. He was. When He walked the earth, you know, in Israel 2,000 years ago, He was just one man.

When He ascended into heaven, God made Him to be the head of a corporate entity and we are it, the body. We are His flesh, we're His bones. The church is the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

We are in Him like the organs of a body are in a body. We are organically joined to Him. So what is true of Him is true, God counts it as being true of us.

Does God accept Christ? Then He accepts me, but He only accepts me in Him. I have organs in my body that are alive because I am alive. If you take these organs out of my body, let's say they're not vital organs, let's say you take one of my kidneys or my appendix or my tonsils, take these out of me and throw them in a garbage can somewhere, they won't be alive anymore, though I will be.

The other organs that are still in me are still alive, but those organs that are no longer in me are not. They don't have life in themselves. They have life in me.

They cease to be in me. They're not alive anymore. But as long as they're in me, they're alive as long as I'm alive.

As long as Christ is accepted and as long as I'm in Him, then I am accepted. Now, Christ is accepted forever. The next question is, am I in Him forever? Well, I think I have something to say about that.

I think the Bible indicates I have something to say about that. I kind of wish I didn't. Some people think that Arminianism is a view that's much more comforting to people.

I don't think so. I'd love to think that God elected me unconditionally and I don't have anything to say about it. But that's not what I read in the Scripture.

That's not the way I read it. Some people do read it that way. Now, being in Christ is where salvation is.

I'm accepted in Him because Christ is accepted. In Him I'm accepted. I have risen in Him.

Why? Because He's risen and I'm in Him. So I'm counted as if I've risen. I've died with Him.

I've risen with Him. I'm seated in Him. In heavenly places, it says in Ephesians 2.6. In Him, all the things that are true of Him are accounted to me as I am in Him.

In 2 Timothy 2 and verse 10, Paul said, Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Now, notice the salvation he wants the elect to come into is the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. That's where salvation is.

It's in Him. Do I want it? Then I have to be in Him because that's where it is. It's not outside of Him.

It's not separate from Him. He doesn't give it to me and I can go away and take it with me. I have to remain in Him if I want to remain saved because salvation is in Him.

That's where it is. In Acts chapter 4 and verse 12, Peter said to the Sanhedrin, Neither is there salvation in any other. He's referring to Christ.

Salvation is in Christ but not in any other. Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved. Under heaven.

So, salvation is in Him. It's not in me. Salvation is not in me.

It's not something that Jesus handed over to me and now it's in me. No, salvation is in Christ and as I am in Him, I am saved in Him. And it's not in me or in someone else.

There's no other person in whom it is. Just in Him. In Philippians chapter 3, certainly one of the aspects of being saved is that God counts us as righteous.

If on the day of judgment God doesn't count me righteous, then I'm not getting in. Righteousness is what God demands. And Paul says this in verses 8 and 9 of Philippians 3. Philippians 3 verses 8, I guess you could say through 10.

Yet indeed I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain salvation. Well, he doesn't say that. He says that I might gain Christ and be found in Him.

Not having my own righteousness which is from the law, that would be in me. But that which is through faith in Christ. The righteousness which is from God by faith, that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death.

Notice, the important thing to me is not all the good works I did before I was a Christian. The only thing that matters is all that's rubbish compared to what I have now. What I have forsaken all that for is to be found in Him.

Why? Because I want to be counted righteous. And that righteousness is through faith and it is in Him. And so in Him I am righteous.

If I am not in Him, then there is no hope of being counted righteous by God. One other verse on this point, and many have heard me use this a lot because generally these are the verses I turn to. This particular verse I'm asking you to turn to now, 1 John chapter 5, is the one I most often turn to when I want to give a short answer to why I don't believe in eternal security.

Or more properly to explain what it is I do believe. Because when people think you don't believe in eternal security, then they think they know what you must believe instead. But usually I find they don't really know what I believe.

And this is the best summary of it I know of in so short a space in any passage of Scripture. 1 John 5, 11 and 12. John says, and this is the testimony that God has given us eternal life.

And this life is where? It's in Jesus. It's in His Son. Jesus is the possessor of eternal life.

He alone possesses immortality, Paul says in another place. This life is in His Son. Now He's given it to us, but He's given it to us in Him.

And then He says, He who has the Son has life. He means eternal life. That's what was introduced in the previous verse.

He who has Christ has eternal life. He who does not have Christ, the Son of God, does not have this eternal life. Now God has given me eternal life, but this life is in Christ, in His Son.

If I have Christ, I have eternal life. If I don't have Christ, I don't. Now of course that doesn't tell us in itself whether it's possible for me to have Christ now and not have Him later.

There are many who feel, the Scripture teaches and affirms strongly, that if you have ever had Christ, you always have Christ. And we're going to look at some of the verses that people think teaches us that. But let's look at what Jesus said on the subject if we could.

In the Gospel of John, let's look at the 15th chapter here. John and Paul both make this same point using very similar illustrations about plants with branches. Jesus uses the illustration of a vine with branches.

Paul uses the illustration of an olive tree with branches, but they make the same point. In John 15 we have Christ's illustration of the vine and the branches. And you know the passage, how He says, I am the true vine and so forth.

And looking in verse 5 and 6, Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Now before we go any further, what does that tell us, this image? What does that image suggest? A vine is not just the stalk, but the branches are part of the organism too. The vine is the whole plant.

We are part of the whole plant. We're like branches in the plant. The branches produce the fruit, or I should say the fruit is produced in the branches.

But the branches produce the fruit because they are participating in the life of the whole plant. Now Christ is the plant. Christ is the vine.

We are branches and what He's teaching here is that if we abide in Him, we'll bring forth much fruit. As He says, He who abides in Me and I in him bears much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me... Now you have to realize the word abide means remain.

This Greek word is used a lot in John's writings. It occurs many times in the Gospel of John. It occurs many times also in the Epistles of John.

It is translated as, let that therefore abide in you which you have heard from the beginning to abide. Sometimes in 1 John the same word appears three times in one verse, amazingly, and it is translated with three different English words in that verse in the King James. It says, let that therefore abide in you which you have heard from the beginning.

If that which you have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, then ye also shall continue in the Father and in the Son. Now, if you want to know how to abide and continue, all English words translate into the same Greek word that appears three times in that verse. The word means to abide, to continue, to remain.

Now, Jesus says in verse 6 of John 15, any branch that doesn't abide, doesn't continue, doesn't remain in Me. Now, we cannot be talking here about somebody who was never attached, or else how could they have been spoken of as a vine? They had never been drawing on the life. How could they have been a branch? What were they? They weren't a branch.

They were something else. They were a dead stick maybe, but they weren't a branch of this vine. Jesus is talking about branches that are actually attached, actually drawing on the life of the vine.

They are actually in the vine. These are people in Christ. But He says, any branch that does not remain in Me, doesn't continue in Me.

Well, what happens then? Do they go to heaven anyway? No. That person is cast out as a branch and is withered. Why? There is no life in him.

He dies and withers up. And they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. Well, once there is no more life in it, it shares the fate of all other dead wood.

And burning, of course, is judgment in Scripture. So, Jesus says that His disciples are branches in Him. And of course, that suggests that they draw on the life that is in Him.

What kind of life is in Him? Eternal life. God has given to us eternal life and this life is in His Son. The vine has eternal life.

The branches that are in the vine also have eternal life. You cut them up though and they don't have eternal life anymore. Why? Because it wasn't eternal? No.

Because it's still eternal, but it's not in them. It's in Him. But they are not in Him anymore.

That's what this teaches, it seems to me. I'm not sure of any other interpretation. Maybe if someone here does, they can tell me in our question and answer period afterwards.

I can't think of any other way to understand this without convoluting the teaching here. Also, I said Paul also gives a similar kind of a teaching. This imagery from Paul in Romans 11 uses the imagery not of a vine but of an olive tree.

He gets this from Jeremiah. Jeremiah referred to Israel as an olive tree. And so Paul picks up that imagery and says, The true Israel of God, those who are saved are like this olive tree.

They have their roots in the fathers, in the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and so forth. And the branches that are attached to this tree are, as Paul puts it, participating in the root and the fatness of the tree. Or the way he actually puts it, if the root is holy, the branches are also holy.

This is holy unto the Lord. This tree is that which belongs to God. It's holy.

It's His. Now, if the root of the tree is holy, all the tree, including all the branches on it, are holy. They're God's.

But some branches don't stay on it. As you read the passage, I won't read the whole thing because it would take us too long tonight, Paul talks about Jewish people who are not on this tree. Because of unbelief, they were cut off.

But he says, but you stand by faith. Your position there is based on the fact that you aren't like them. They didn't believe, so they were cut off.

You do believe, so you're in. You're grafted in. But in verse 22, Paul says, Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God on those who fell.

Severity. But toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness, otherwise you also will be cut off. Now, what does the state of being cut off result in? Well, Jesus said if a branch doesn't abide in Him, it's withered up and gathered up and burned.

Well, the branches that are cut off of this particular tree are, in the illustration so far, many of the Jews have been cut off because they didn't believe. Are these Jews who don't believe in Christ, are they saved? If you say yes, we're not going to get anywhere together here today. Anyone who doesn't believe in Christ, Jew or Gentile, is not saved.

The Pharisees were certainly Jews. But Jesus said they were children of the devil and they could not avoid the damnation of hell. So, I mean, being Jewish doesn't save anybody.

Faith in Christ is what saves people. And there are Jews that were on this tree, but when Christ came, they rejected Him. And because of their lack of faith in Him, they're cut off.

They're not in Israel anymore. They're not in the Israel of God anymore. They're gone.

They're removed because they didn't have faith. And Paul says we Gentiles who had believed have been grafted in and we're part of that now. But he says you can be cut off too.

Well, if I get cut off, where does that put me? In exactly the same place as the Jews who got cut off. Lost. If I am not attached to this tree, then I don't participate in the root and the fatness of the tree.

The root is holy and the branches are holy. That is the branches that are attached. The branches that are cut off, they're just dead wood.

How does one remain attached? By faith. He says they were cut off because of their unbelief. You stand, you remain intact.

They're by faith. But he says be careful. He says God's goodness has been demonstrated toward you if you continue in His goodness.

Otherwise, if you don't continue in it, you'll be cut off too. I don't see how anyone could see it any other way than the way the early church fathers saw this for the first 300 years or 400 before Augustine. They understood this way.

The branches that are on the tree are alive. They are participating in the life of the tree. The root and the fatness of the tree is theirs.

They are holy. But they can get cut off. If they get cut off, they're not participating in the root and the fatness of the tree.

They're not holy. They're not saved anymore. It's just like what Jesus said about the vine and the branches.

Two different illustrations, very similar to each other, making the same point. But the way Jesus put it was, abide in me. Now remember, this life that God has given us is where? In His Son.

We are accepted where? In the Beloved. The salvation we have is where? It's a salvation that is in Christ and in no other. So, where do I have to be in order to be saved and to have eternal life and to be righteous? I have to be found in Him.

I have to be in Him. Am I in Him now? I testify I am in Him. Is it impossible for me to cease to be in Him? Well, both Jesus and Paul indicated that there are some branches that have been cut off.

And He warned those who are in against doing the same thing that would cause them to be cut off too. And no one can say of these branches on the olive tree that get cut off that they were never on. You can't get cut off if you never were on.

He's talking about people who have the life losing it if they don't abide in Christ, in the tree or in the vine as Jesus put it. It's abiding in Him. Look at 1 John 2.24 if you would.

1 John 2 and verse 24. This is the verse I quoted to you a moment ago that has this word abide three times in it. But the word is not always translated with the same English word in the King James.

The New King James actually cleaned it up. If you have the New King James you'll find that three times it's the same English word. Therefore, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning.

That is the truth, the gospel. Your faith in the gospel. Let it stay in you.

If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, it does not sound as if that's a given. He says you should be sure that it does. He wouldn't have to say that if it was a given that it would.

He says let it abide in you. And if it does abide in you, you also will abide in Jesus. In the Son, he says, and in the Father.

Now, does it sound like those who are in the Son inevitably abide in Him? Or does it say you will abide in Him if you let that which you heard from the beginning continue in you? If you do what I'm telling you to do, he says, you will abide, you will remain in Christ. Now, some people say, well, you know, the Bible does have a lot of warnings about falling away and departing from God and so forth. But these warnings are not really to be understood as if they teach that you actually could fall away.

This is how some Calvinists have told it to me. They say, it's not really that you can fall away if you're really safe. But you have to realize that God ordains not only the ends but also the means.

And he works through this strange thing where although he's ordained inevitably that I will be saved because he's preordaining me from the foundation of the world to be saved, it's going to happen inevitably no matter what I do. But I will do the right thing. And the way that God makes me do the right thing is by these warnings and by these exhortations of Scripture.

Now, this seems a strange argument to me because the warnings of Scripture would cease to have any impact on me as soon as I began to believe in Calvinism. It's only if I believe like an Arminian that warnings can give me any motivation. As soon as the reader adopts a Calvinistic view, those warnings cease to have any meaning at all.

Don't fall away. Don't fall away. Oh, I get it.

You're trying to talk as if I could fall away, but I get it now. I've got the revelation I can't fall away. Suddenly, what's the warning going to do for me? Nothing.

The only way that God can motivate me through warnings is if I don't accept Calvinist theology of inevitable perseverance. Because if I do accept it, then the warnings, what can they do to me? Now, they can get me... Well, I can get off on more Calvinist points than I want to get into today. Anyway, the point I want to make here is that salvation is in Christ.

Eternal life, righteousness, acceptance is in Him. If I abide in Him, then I continue to enjoy all these things. And these are what we call salvation.

Righteousness, eternal life, acceptance in the Beloved. They're all in Him if I abide in Him. That is an if in the Scripture.

If you abide. And Jesus commanded us to abide as if there's a possibility that we wouldn't otherwise. Then it seems to me that we must not be overly sure of ourselves.

Now, I can be sure of my salvation because I'm not sure of myself. I'll tell you why in a moment. Some people say, well, how could you possibly know for sure you're going to heaven if you believe you could cease to abide in Christ? Well, the reason I know is because I know that although I could cease to abide, I can also not cease to abide.

I can't abide. It's an option. It's given to me.

Christ commands it. Christ enables me to keep the command if I wish to do so. And it's all of Him.

It's not I who save myself. I am kept by the power of God through faith. And so long as I have that faith, I'm kept by the power of God.

If I decide to be such an idiot as to stop believing, well, then I guess the Bible doesn't say I'll be kept then. I'm kept by the power of God through faith. So long as my faith is present, I abide in Christ.

As long as that which began to abide in me continues to abide in me. If we neglect what we have received and neglect to abide in Christ, the Bible does not give any assurance of ultimate, final salvation to those who do neglect it. We all know the very severe warning of Hebrews 2. I'm sure it's familiar to you.

In verse 3, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? I have usually heard that term used in evangelism, speaking to the unconverted. How will you escape if you neglect to get saved? If you neglect so great salvation. But that's not what it's talking about.

The letter of Hebrews is not written to unsaved people. It's written to believers. It's written to people who have salvation.

And yet they could neglect it. You see, there's a difference between neglect and reject. An unbeliever is in danger of rejecting salvation because he rejects Christ.

You can't neglect something that you don't have. You can reject it and not have it at all, never receive it. But if you've received it, there is the possibility that you'll be negligent of it.

That you won't maintain it. That you'll come to take it for granted. That you'll ignore it.

And the writer of Hebrews is writing to believers who are in the Jewish church. And he says, how will we escape if we neglect this great salvation that we have already? And the implication is that we won't escape from that. There are a number of passages I could turn to and will as we go through.

But I want to just show you one or two others. And then we're going to move along to some of the arguments in favor of eternal security. And then we'll see how they correspond with this teaching in general.

In 1 Corinthians 9, verses 26 and 27, Paul talks about his own Christian life. And he says, therefore I run thus. He means running the race.

Not with uncertainty. He's not insecure. But he's still running.

He's still running. He's not uncertain. He's not afraid to take it to the end.

He's not uncertain. He runs confidently. Thus I fight, not as one who beats the air.

In other words, I'm not fighting a sham opponent. I'm fighting a real opponent. There's a real danger of getting knocked out here.

This is a real fight. But if I keep fighting. If I keep running.

I have confidence that God will give me the victory. If I decide to stop fighting. If I decide to stop running.

He says, I discipline my body and bring it into subjection. Lest, and the word lest means to avoid this result. Lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

The word disqualified here is the Greek word that is elsewhere in Scripture translated reprobate. You know in Romans 1 when Paul says God gives them over to a reprobate mind. The word reprobate is the same Greek word as Paul uses here.

In fact, in 2 Corinthians 13 Paul says to the Corinthians. Do you not know that Christ is in you unless you are reprobate? Same Greek word. Christ is in you unless you're reprobate.

If you're reprobate, He isn't, right? Obviously. Now Paul says, I have preached to others, but I don't want to become reprobate. Well Paul, isn't that kind of in the bag? I mean, what's the deal? What are you so concerned about? Lighten up, man.

You look like you're always knocking yourself out. You're like a boxer. You're like a runner in the race.

You're like a man in training striving for an eternal crown. And you know, striving harder than these people do for a temporal crown. And you're telling me to do the same thing? Why? Why? Because he says, I don't want to become a reprobate.

Well Paul, is that really possible? Well, do you think I'd put so much effort into this if it wasn't? I'd be very interested to see where anyone could show me that Paul believed in unconditional eternal security. Let's turn to that passage that sometimes eternal security advocates like to quote a great deal. It's the one I've heard most frequently recently from people who call me on this.

2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 11 through 13. 1 Timothy 2, verses 11 through 13. This is a faithful saying.

If we died with Him, we shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us.

If we are faithless, He remains faithful. He cannot deny Himself. Now I'll tell you what, that last verse, 13, is the one that they always quote.

I'm not sure why they don't quote the first two. Well actually I do know why they don't quote the first two. It doesn't support their point.

In fact, it demolishes it. But if you just take verse 13 by itself, it says, If we are faithless, that means if I don't have faith, if I don't believe, well, He's still faithful. My salvation, they say, doesn't have anything to do with whether I believe.

It's whether God is faithful or not. God's made promises, unconditional promises, to those who have ever believed in Him. He's going to drag them through the gates of heaven even if they don't believe.

Because He's faithful. He can't deny Himself. Well, He can't deny Himself.

True. But He can deny us. It says, If we deny Him, it says in the previous verse, He will deny us.

Who's us? Who is Paul writing to? Paul is a Christian. He's writing to a Christian man named Timothy. He says us.

Paul and Timothy, us. All of us. If we, that's us, died with Him, then we, us, will live with Him.

Us Christians. If we endure. Jesus said something like that too, didn't He? In Matthew 24, verse 13, He says, He that endures to the end shall be saved.

Well, Paul seemed to agree with Jesus on that. He says, If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. But, He says, if we deny Him, He will deny us.

Us. The same us. Not a different group of people.

Us. If we endure, we will reign. If we don't endure, we won't.

That's what He says. If we deny Him, then He'll deny us. If we are faithless, that means, even if we don't believe it, it doesn't change anything.

He's still who He is. Who is He? He's one who will reward endurance and who will punish apostasy. He's that whether we believe it or not.

We don't have to believe any of this, but it doesn't change anything about Him. If we are on the unbelieving side, when Jesus comes or when we die, His faithfulness must condemn us. Because He said He's going to condemn all unbelievers.

But, if we're on the believing side, when He comes or when we die, then He must have necessarily saved us because He has promised to save all those who believe. But, not those who used to believe. Those who deny Him don't believe anymore.

And, He'll deny them. He's not going to take them to heaven. So, there are many warnings in Scripture about this.

Now, let's talk as quickly as I can about some of these arguments for eternal security. Let me go through and give them to you real quickly. I only have these really tiny notes and I'm almost 50 years old.

My eyesight is really bad. So, I picked up this magnifying thing today. And, I might be able to read my own notes.

I'm not sure. Let me run through real quickly the standard arguments for eternal security. I'll be the eternal security advocate for the moment.

Since we're not saved by works, we aren't kept by works. Right? If we began in the Spirit, we're not made perfect in the flesh. Didn't Paul say something like that in Galatians chapter 3? So, how can we be lost? Our works don't save us.

And, if good works didn't save me, then bad works aren't going to lose me. And, endurance isn't about... I mean, being saved isn't about works. So, what could I possibly do that would cause me not to be saved, now that I am saved? This is a very common argument.

We're not saved by works, so we can't be lost by works. Another argument, once you've been born again, and you're a son of God, you can't be unborn. Right? It's obvious.

Also, the Bible teaches in Ephesians 1, 13 and Ephesians 4, also it says that we've been sealed with the Holy Spirit. The seal is God's mark of ownership. And, this seal of the Holy Spirit is said to be the earnest, or the guarantee of the inheritance, until He comes to take the purchased possession to Himself.

Now, if the Holy Spirit is in me, and I'm sealed, and that's the guarantee of my ultimate salvation, does guarantee mean nothing? How could I ever, in the future, come to a state of not being saved? If that's the case, then having the Holy Spirit now doesn't guarantee a thing. But the Holy Spirit is the guarantee that I will be saved. Also, we are not kept by our own strength.

In order for me to be lost, I would have to cease to be kept by God. The way one author wrote, I'm going to debate him in the fall, three debates on this subject, but it's going to be in Moscow, Idaho. But he wrote a couple of books on this subject, and in one of his books he said, It's not a question of whether you can lose your salvation, it's whether God can lose a Christian.

Jesus said that we're in the Father's hand, and no one can pluck us out of the Father's hand. The Father who gave them to me is greater than all, Jesus said, and no one can pluck them out of my Father's hand. We are being kept, not by human power, not by our own willpower, we're kept by the power of God.

Peter says that in 1 Peter 1, 5, We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. How could anyone who is kept by the power of God cease to be saved? The power of God is greater than any other power. What power in the universe could possibly rip us out of that hand? Jesus himself says none can.

How about this one? Jesus said, or actually God said, the writer of Hebrews quotes him in Hebrews 13, 5, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. Jesus is in me. I have his promise that he will never leave me, nor forsake me.

We also have this phenomenon that the Bible says that God has given us eternal life. Now, how could I have eternal life today, and tomorrow not have eternal life? If I don't have it tomorrow, then it wasn't eternal. Right? I mean, everything that says, Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life, is saying that it's everlasting, it's eternal.

If I have it and it's eternal, how could I ever not have it? Another common argument for eternal security. Then there's a series of verses I'd like you to look at. These are often brought up, and they're very important verses.

To my mind, very significant to this subject, and maybe some of the strongest sounding verses I know of for eternal security in the Bible. In John, there are several of these in the Gospel of John, and they're very similar to each other in the sentence structure, and in what it is they seem to promise. In John chapter 10, and verse 28, Jesus is talking about his sheep.

And he says, And I give them, he's talking about his sheep, and he's talking about his sheep. And he says, And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.

We have a much more familiar verse that says the same thing. John 3, 16. Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

If it is said of me, I who believe in him, I whom is sheep, that I will never perish. Is that like a promise? I mean, is there anything that could counter that as a means of suggesting I have an unconditional warrant that I will be saved to the end? Because Jesus made the comment, those who are his sheep, those who believe in him, will not perish. In John 5, 24, we have another similar verse to this.

John 5, 24. Most assuredly I say to you, Jesus said, He who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death unto life. The person who believes in him has passed from death unto life and they will not.

That's talking about the future. They will not come into judgment. Isn't that a guarantee of eternal security? How about this one? John 4. I'm talking to the woman at the well.

In verse 14, he said, But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. So there's promises Jesus made of those who believe in him, those who drink of the water he gives, those who are his sheep. What? They'll never perish.

They'll never come into condemnation. They'll never thirst again. These verses.

Chapter 6 also, there's a similar verse. In John 6, it talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in that verse. In verse 35, Jesus says, I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me shall never hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst. He who believes in me shall never hunger.

He who believes in me shall never thirst. Okay, I've come to him. I believe in him.

He said, I will never thirst. I will never hunger. I'll never perish.

Isn't that a promise of eternal security? Those strike me as some of the best arguments for a general affirmation that people who are saved will never be lost. Now, these arguments work equally well whether you have the Calvinistic view of eternal security or the more antinomian view. Now, I'm not saying that you'll never perish if you're a Christian and that you'll never lose your salvation.

It's just that one says, you won't lose your salvation even if you fall away. The other says, you won't lose your salvation because you won't fall away. But both of them agree, you won't lose your salvation and these verses all seem to say that.

Now, I'd like to get, if I have time tonight, into the specific passages that support each of these other two branches of this document. Let me talk about these first of all. Formidable enough for us to consider at the moment.

What was that first argument? Oh yeah, we weren't saved by works, so we're not kept by works, nor will we be lost by works. This is probably true. It is true that we were not saved by works.

And it is also true that we're not kept by works. I'm not sure if it's true that we can't be lost by works because there are certain things that the Bible says that if you do these, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. Some of these things are things that Christians are capable of doing and some Christians have done.

You can read the list, if you'd like, in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9 through 11. And in Galatians chapter 5, where Paul gives a list of the works of the flesh, in both cases he gives a list of certain activities. He says, those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

That strikes me as saying they're not saved. The things he lists are things that Christians can do. And if they don't repent, can get ensnared in.

And I have known some Christians who have. And Paul knew some too. Paul knew one of his companions, Demas, had forsaken him.

Having loved this present world, he got ensnared in the things of the world. It can happen. But the point I want to make is it may be true that you can go to hell because of your works.

After all, there are some things that if you do these things, the Bible says, Paul said, he's the great grace teacher, isn't he? He said, you won't inherit the kingdom of God if you're doing these things. But let's take for the sake of argument the point that the eternal security advocate is saying. Let's say it's true.

You can't be lost by doing any particular works. So what? That doesn't impact this argument at all. Nobody is saying that you are kept by works or that you are lost by works.

This argument would only make sense if there was one camp saying, we're kept apart from our works. Another camp was saying, we're kept by our works. And then this verse or this argument would work for these people, not for these people.

But those who believe the position I'm taking, and that was basically all the church fathers until Augustine, who was the first to 400 AD, believed the position I'm arguing. You can read their writings for yourself if you're curious. But it's, to my mind, the plain teaching of scripture.

And it's not surprising they believed it for the first 400 years of the church until Augustine brought in platonic dualism into the church and brought in a whole bunch of rather strange Greek ideas that the early Christians hadn't believed. But I believe that I'm saved by faith. I'm not saved by works.

I'm not lost at some future time, which by the way, I'm not going to be. Because God is able to keep me from falling and I'm determined to cooperate with Him on that. But if I were to come to a state of not being saved in the future, it would not be for any works that I'm doing or for lack of any good works.

It would be for lack of faith. Faith is the issue. We are justified by faith.

If we abide in the faith, if we abide in the truth, if we abide in the truth, and we don't depart from the faith, then we abide in Christ. It's not about works, it's about faith. Now, faith does produce works.

We know that Paul teaches that, and James teaches that, and the whole Bible teaches that. If you have the kind of faith that saves a person, it changes the way you live too. And your works will show if you have faith or not.

And we can certainly say that we have all known some people whose works would have advertised them as having faith and their works advertise them as not having faith. Now, whether they were truly saved or not in the earlier state, I leave to God to know. I don't know.

But works certainly demonstrate something, but they don't determine your salvation. Your salvation is determined by faith or lack thereof. So the argument, we're not saved by works so we can't be lost by works, is irrelevant.

No one is saying that we're lost by works. A person who is lost is lost because he doesn't have faith. The question is whether a person can have faith at one point in their life and not at another time.

Jesus said that is possible. In the parable of the sower, in Luke's version of it, in Luke chapter 8, He said those that fell on the stony ground are those who believed for a while and then fell away. So they did have faith, but then they didn't.

That's what determines whether you're saved or not, is faith, not works. What about this business, you can't be unborn once you've been born? You can't be unborn once you've been born? Or you can't change your birth, because if you're born of God, you're always born of God. Well, I'm not sure that that isn't pressing the metaphor of birth a lot further than it's intended to be pressed.

After all, there are people who are not Christians, and the Bible says they're sons of the devil, but I think they can change their birth. They can become sons of God. Can they not? Weren't you a child of the devil at one time? Are you a child of God now? It sounds like you can change your birth.

It depends on your faith, does it not? If you're a child of God, and you put your faith in Christ, don't you become a child of God? Well, what happens if you're a child of God, and you put your faith in the devil, or in something other than Christ? I mean, of course, my view is that you cease to be a Christian, and you cease to be saved. But the point I'm making is, you can't press the analogy of birth to every little detail that we might like to prove a point. I can say this, though.

If somebody says, well, once you've been born of God, you can't be unborn, can you? Well, you might say, I don't know, maybe not. But let's ask a different question. Can a person who's been born die? Can a person who's been born commit suicide? Yes.

We all have known of people who've committed suicide, and we have all known people who died. All these people were once born. They were born and came into this world as human beings, but they died.

The fact that somebody has obtained life through birth does not guarantee that they will never cease to live. Now, I just mean from the analogy of birth. Now, there may be some promises of Scripture that some would say that Christians will never cease to live.

But I'm talking about, if we're going to press the analogy of birth, we say, well, if you're born, you can't be unborn. That's pressing the analogy of birth. I say, even if we use the analogy, a person who's alive because they've been born can cease to be alive at a later date if they die or commit suicide.

And that can happen spiritually, I believe. The Bible teaches you can do that by defecting from the faith. The Galatians, by the way, were Christians at one time, and Paul told them they had fallen from grace because they were not trusting in Christ anymore.

They were trusting in the law. They weren't believers anymore. And they'd fallen from grace.

And Paul was trying to get them to come back. He wrote a whole book to try to get them to come back. How about this one? We've been sealed with the Holy Spirit.

Well, that's true. The Holy Spirit is the earnest or the guarantee of God's ownership until he comes and claims the purchased possession. This was also true.

What is the purchased possession? The Church is the body of Christ. The people of God, the community of saints is the purchased possession. The Church.

Jesus purchased the Church and he gave his spirit to the Church and the Church has the seal of God upon it as a truly divine organism. The life of God is in the Church, in the Holy Spirit. And in possessing the Holy Spirit, the Church has the seal of God that it is the true Church and the true body of Christ.

And a guarantee that God will not abandon the Church and the Church will eventually be saved. But that doesn't mean some particular Church and it doesn't mean any particular Christians. The Church is a global phenomenon.

All people who are followers of Jesus Christ and who believe in Him are in it. That Church has the Holy Spirit. Do I? Well, if I'm in Christ, if I'm in His body, in His Church, then yes, I do.

But if I abandon His body? Well, that's where the Spirit is in His Church, in His body. If I defect, if I renounce Christ, if I don't abide in Him, the Church still has the Holy Spirit. I just don't because I'm not in the Church anymore.

I'm not in that organism anymore because I'm like a branch that has not abode in the vine. Or like a branch that has not stuck it out in the olive tree. That's at least my understanding of what the Bible teaches on that subject.

We are kept by the power of God. True enough. We are kept by the power of God.

And no one can pluck us out of His hand. But that doesn't mean that we have no ability to make the wrong decision. The idea that no one can pluck God's sheep out of His hand doesn't mean that His sheep have never wandered off.

If it comes to a confrontation, a tug of war between Him and the devil, God's got the devil beat every time. But if the sheep wander off on their own... Now, can God's sheep wander off? Is that a possibility? Is there anything in the Bible that indicates one way or the other whether sheep of God can wander away? I believe there is. Isaiah 53, 6 would be a good example.

All we like sheep. Who's we? The nation of Israel. That's what Isaiah is talking about.

All we like sheep. Throughout Isaiah and the rest of the prophets, Israel is God's flock. And Isaiah says of His people, All of us, all of Israel, even the remnant, even the believers, have at one point wandered off.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to His own way. These are God's sheep that wandered off.

What if they don't come back? Well, they're lost. Because being wandered off from Him is not a safe place to be. It's only in Him that they're secure.

God's sheep can wander. No one can wrestle them out of His hand. But God has never yet, to my knowledge, said anything about canceling out my ability to choose what I will do with reference to moral or spiritual things.

Now, I realize that true Calvinism teaches I never had a choice in the first place about even getting saved. And therefore, all this business of talking about I can choose to not be saved, just doesn't make sense with the premises they start with. But if a person is not unduly tied to the paradigm of the Augustinian Calvinist soteriology, we can acknowledge that the Bible everywhere says that if we repent, we'll be saved.

If we believe, we'll be saved. It sounds like something we do has something to do with it. I realize that Calvinists turn all of these verses around and say, no, it really means if you are saved, you will repent.

If you are elect, you will believe. But, interestingly, the Scripture never says it that way. Scripture always says it the other way.

If you believe, if you repent, if you do this, if you do that, then there's a promise that you'll be saved. And so, it does seem like there is a condition of something we do. And I believe, I mean, I don't intend to convince everyone with a few statements that this is so if they believe another doctrine, but my understanding is that I did make a decision.

And my decision had something to do with me becoming a Christian. It didn't have everything to do with it. And, by the way, I couldn't have made this decision if God hadn't already been pounding on me before I ever thought about making that decision.

Because Jesus said, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him. And that drawing, the Greek word for drawing is drag. God has to really exert a lot of pressure on us to get us to move that direction because we are naturally inclined another way.

But we still, I believe, the Bible indicates, have the final decision to make whether we will resist Him or not. And if we have decided, I think I will put my trust in Jesus Christ, then I believe, there's nothing in the Bible that says I've come to a place where I can't choose not to. Now, I realize there is a doctrine common in many Protestant churches that says I can't choose not to.

I'm just not aware of anything in the Bible about it. There's a difference between traditional doctrine, which has become entrenched, on one hand, and Scripture, on the other. And that's what I'm always interested in, in Scripture.

It kind of alienates me from a lot of people who might otherwise like me, but I'm just kind of, my conscience is captive to the Scripture. And I'm not impressed when someone says, or Augustine said, or Calvin said, or Luther said, or I don't care who said it. I don't even care if someone who agrees with me said something.

Who are they? They're men. What did God say? That's what I want to know. And I don't know of anything in the Bible that says that a sheep can't wander off.

We are kept by the power of God, and the next phrase is, through faith. Okay, who provides the power? God does. Who comes up with the faith? Well, some say that's a gift from God too.

There's no clear statement of Scripture that says it. In fact, that wasn't even decided by Augustine until late in his life. That came up in his disputes with Pelagius late in his life.

He finally decided. People asked him, well, does the faith come from God too? Is that a gift too? And he finally decided, yeah, the answer is yes. And he has about two or three verses that some people point to that sometimes are thought to maybe teach that.

But I believe the Bible indicates that faith is what is required of me. Now you might say, oh, then you're saving yourself? Hardly. Faith is not a meritorious work.

And if God didn't choose to save all who had faith, then I could have all the faith I wanted and it wouldn't save me. God saves me on condition of putting my trust in Him. He even helps me to do that.

He has to work on me to get me inclined to do that. But the question is, after He's done all the work He can on me, do I of necessity have to make that decision to become a Christian? Some say yes. I say, I don't think so.

Jesus complained that He wanted so much to draw the Israelites to Him. He says, how many times I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chickens under a ring, but you wouldn't come. I was drawing, but you weren't coming.

It says in Luke 7.30, it says the Pharisees and the scribes rejected the will of God for themselves in not being baptized by John the Baptist. If words mean anything at all, it means that God wanted them to be baptized by John the Baptist and they rejected God's will for their lives. God wanted them to, but they didn't.

Why? Not because He foreordained that they wouldn't, but because they rejected the will of God for themselves. There is that possibility. And that possibility doesn't disappear once you've stepped over the line into Christianity, according to these verses that I think were warned to abide in Christ.

How about this one? I'll never leave you nor forsake you. Well, He doesn't. You can count on Him.

He's not going to leave you. That doesn't tell me whether you're going to leave Him or not. When I married my first wife, I made a promise to her similar to that, and she made one like that to me.

Forsaking all others, I'll cleave only to you as long as we both shall live. Isn't that sort of like saying, I'll never leave you or forsake you? It's the same thing. I kept my word.

She didn't keep hers. Are we still married? Actually, we're not. Is it because I'm unfaithful? Because I left her? No, it was the other way around.

She was faithless. I was faithful. But it still ended up with the dissolving of a marriage, even though I was faithful.

You see, I didn't leave her. She left me, but the results were the same, ultimately. She is no longer my wife.

She no longer has my name. She no longer has my inheritance. She no longer has my estate.

Not that there's much there to want, but the fact of the matter is, our relationship to God is a covenantal relationship based on faithfulness. His and ours. That's why those who will be with Him at His coming are not only called and chosen.

Remember, many are called and few are chosen. But those who are coming with Him in the end are called, chosen, and faithful. And Jesus calls His church to be faithful, even unto death.

He is faithful. He won't leave us. But some have been known to leave Him.

And once they've left Him, it's all the same. They're still alienation. They're still not there.

This business of, well, if the life that He gave us is eternal, how can we ever lose it? Well, it is eternal. But as I said, it's in Christ. It never goes away.

It's always there where it is now. As long as I'm in Him, I've got it. But I don't have it as something I own.

I have it as something He owns and I own Him. As long as I have Him, I have it. Like the branch on the vine.

As long as the branch is on the vine, it has that life that's in the vine. The branch gets cut off, the life is still there, but not in the branch. It's in the vine.

Yes, He's given me eternal life in His Son. Now, what I want to concentrate on here, I'm going to run out of time before very long here, but I want to concentrate on, in the remaining time, these verses that say they'll never perish, they'll never hunger, they'll never thirst, they'll never come into condemnation. These statements all, to my mind, very strong verses in favor of eternal security seen one way.

But they all have the same sentence structure. It's really interesting. They're all alike in a certain respect.

They all say, in the end of them, such and such people shall never experience something. Perish, hunger, thirst, condemnation. There's something they'll never have.

And it's in the future tense. They shall not ever. Then it's future tense.

They won't have this experience in their future. But who are the people described? The ones described are always described in a present tense. He that hears My Word and believes in Him who sent Me shall not come into condemnation.

He that is My sheep and hears My voice and follows Me, present tense, shall not perish. Whosoever believeth in Him, present tense, shall not perish. John 3.16 says.

He that drinks, present tense, of this water I give, shall not thirst. He that eats of this bread, present tense, shall not hunger. Now I'm going to suggest to you what this sentence structure means.

I'm going to tell you what I believe it means and I'll prove it to you in a moment. I'm going to suggest to you it means this. He that is continuously and presently eating, as long as he is doing that, will never get hungry.

He that is constantly eating, will never get hungry. He that is constantly eating, will satisfy Him as long as he is eating. As long as he is drinking, he's not going to get thirsty.

As long as they are sheep and they're hearing His voice and following Him, they're not going to perish. As long as they are believing, they're not going to come into condemnation. He doesn't say those who used to be My sheep won't perish.

Those who used to eat or once ate or twice drank, those who used to drink or once drank, those who are drinking, the one who is believing, the one who is following, that person who is in that state has this promise that he will never, while in that state, experience the loss of his soul. I said I could prove to you that that sentence meant that. Like I said, all these sentences have the same sentence structure.

I'd like you to see another sentence in John that has the same sentence structure. It's in John chapter 3. It's the last verse in John chapter 3. Verse 36. Jesus said, He who believes in the Son has everlasting life.

He who does not believe, present tense, the Son, shall not see life, future tense. But the wrath of God abides in him. Do you see the same sentence structure? He that in the present tense, X, shall not in the future, Y. Same sentence structure as all these others.

But what does it mean? What's he saying? He who does not believe the Son. Now John wrote this in the first century. There were many people when he wrote that of whom it could be said at that time they did not believe in the Son.

Did some of them later come to believe in the Son? I hope so. He wrote this book so that they might, he says. But there were some reading this when he wrote it who, as it could be said of them in the present tense, you do not believe in the Son.

And you will never see life. What? As long as you're not believing in the Son. To say that he that does not believe shall never see life.

Does that mean that those who don't believe will never come to believe and see life? Well, the statement makes no prediction about that. What it means is, while they are in a state of unbelief, they will never see life. But the state of unbelief is not stated to be unalterable.

And we know very well that many at one point in their life could be described this way. They are in a state of unbelief, but came to believe. Did they see life then? Sure enough.

Take that on the other thing. Whoever believes shall not perish. Well, what if he stops believing? Well, then he is no longer one who believes.

And therefore, it cannot be said of him that he won't perish. That he won't perish, won't be condemned, won't... These things are only true of those who are believing. And that he will never see life is only true of the one who is not believing at the moment.

If he later believes, then that changes. The condition is stated in the present tense. The promise is in the future tense or the threat.

But the condition is not an unalterable condition. If the condition alters, then the threat does not apply. Or the promise does not apply.

If you think about this, I believe that you'll find that this is the only responsible way to exegete this kind of statement. Now, I was actually going to go further on this, but I'm running out of time. I'm going to have to wind this up.

And I want to leave time for questions and answers. What I am leaving out that I was hoping to get in was the specific arguments for the Calvinist view of eternal security and the specific arguments for the other, the antinomian view of eternal security. The fact is that both of these views have their own sets of scriptures beyond the ones we've looked at that seem to them to teach the particulars of what they're saying.

Now, it should be pointed out that these two views cannot both be true. That is, the view of the Calvinist can't be true if the antinomian view is true. Why? Because the antinomian view says you may fall away, but you'll still be saved.

The Calvinist view says you can't fall away if you're really saved. Any view that teaches... These guys, these antinomians, they have some verses that they think say even if you fall away, you're still saved. Well, the Calvinist doesn't believe that.

So those verses, if they were true, would disprove the Calvinist view. The Calvinists have verses that they believe preach that if you are saved now, you will never fall away. But if that is true, then it cancels out this one over here that says even if you do fall away, you're still saved.

Because the Calvinist says, no, if you fall away, you prove from these verses that you weren't saved in the first place. So, the two views of eternal security that are out there are mutually exclusive. So, the person can't say, I believe in both.

No, their affirmations and their implications are mutually exclusive. And what's interesting is that both sides think they have verses in their favor. If this one's verses are correct, then this view must be wrong.

If this view's verses are taken correctly, then this view must be wrong. I'd like to suggest they're both wrong. And they're both taking a few scriptures wrongly.

But I can't prove that to you tonight. I actually hoped I would, but I...