If You Could Lose Salvation, You Would Lose It

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Tonight, for just a little bit, if you’ll turn with me to Hebrews chapter 6, and also you might put your bulletin or something at the book of Jude to mark that off as well. We’re going to take just a little bit to look at this last message I’ve prepared on eternal security that I intended to bring this morning. And we are going to look tonight at one of the passages that’s tossed out a lot to try to make the case that you can lose your salvation, but I believe actually teaches the opposite.

Because as we’ve talked about for the last several weeks, we’ve talked about this idea of eternal security. I really haven’t focused so much on giving you ammunition to argue the point. I think most of you, if not all of you, are fairly convinced of this idea.

Otherwise, I would think you’d be at church elsewhere. And my interest in this was not really, as I’ve said many times already, was not really to load up your doctrine gun so you could go blow your friends and neighbors away with it. Although there is something to be said for being trained up and being able to give an answer for what we believe.

But rather than looking at this from the perspective of here are all the arguments, go, I wanted to look at this from the standpoint of here is what Christ did for us. And we need to remember what an incredible thing he’s done for us. And let’s just glorify him for that.

Let’s glorify him for the fact that when he purchased our salvation, he purchased it so thoroughly and so completely that no man can take it away from us. let’s give him the glory that he deserves for that. Well, tonight I want to look at this last little bit.

One argument that says, no, you can lose your salvation. And why I think it says the exact opposite, why it tells us, why it reminds us that our salvation really has nothing to do with our effort. I mean, that’s really the point of all of this.

Everything in the Bible teaches, let me rephrase this, The clear teaching of Scripture is that our salvation has nothing to do with anything that we can earn or deserve. There are always Scriptures that somebody can take out of context and make them to say pretty much whatever you want. But used in context, the clear teaching of Scripture is that our salvation has nothing to do with our ability to earn it or deserve it.

There are some scriptures that people take out of context. They pull them out at random. They say, see, it says this right here.

Well, it’s not so clear that it says you can earn your salvation. And when you pair those verses with the ones that are clear, we see that the ones that are clear on the teaching say you can’t earn your salvation. All we can do is believe and take advantage of the offer Jesus has already made.

He’s already paid it all. He’s already done it. All that’s left for us to do is to believe.

And then we have to figure out what those not so clear passages mean, but we interpret them through the clear ones. I believe the same thing is true of the Bible. There are verses, there are passages of Scripture that do sound like you can lose your salvation.

I almost can understand where other groups come from when they say, oh no, you have to hold on to it. There are some verses that sound like that, but usually they’re not real clear and you’re having to go, what exactly does that mean? The clear teaching of Scripture says to me that we cannot lose our salvation.

It says that all that the Father has given me, none can pluck out of my hand. It says that nothing shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. It talks about everlasting life, eternal life.

It talks about life that goes on forever. These things are pretty clear what Jesus meant about them. So we interpret the not so clear passages in light of the clear passages, and I think we’ve got to come to the conclusion that we can’t lose our salvation because salvation doesn’t have anything to do with us in terms of obtaining it any more than it does in maintaining it.

It’s not something that Jesus paid it all for and says, here, I’ve given it to you once, now it’s yours to work to hold on to. That’s not what Scripture teaches. That’s not what Scripture teaches either.

We’re going to look at this passage in Hebrews chapter 6. And the point of tonight’s message is on this ability. Okay, let’s say for argument’s sake we could lose our salvation.

What happens then? Which I believe is what the writer of Hebrews is talking about when he writes this passage. It says in verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 6, Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms and of laying on of hands and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment.

He says let’s leave behind these elementary principles. There are certain things that we should already have settled in our minds that we shouldn’t have to go over again and again and again. The Bible talks about the milk of the word and the meat of the word.

And at some point, we need to be able to move past the very simple, basic truths. Now, it doesn’t mean they never come back into play again. But it means we should move beyond the milk of the word and be able to cut our teeth on something a little deeper if we’re to grow in Christ. If any of us were still at our ages drinking baby formula, we would not be healthy.

We would not. Mentally or physically. We would not be healthy, full-grown adults.

And there comes a time when you have to be weaned off of the milk and start on the meat. And Paul, well, I say Paul. Some people think Paul wrote Hebrews.

I don’t know that for sure. I’ve always kind of thought it was Barnabas, but that’s just my opinion. Whoever wrote Hebrews.

If I accidentally say tonight, Paul says, and I’m talking about Hebrews, just know I meant whoever wrote it. The writer of Hebrews here is speaking to this Jewish Christian audience and saying, there are some things that we should already have nailed down here so we can move on. You know, when I was teaching this year, we’d work on things in English and trying to deal with punctuation and teaching them about adverbs.

Here’s how you use a colon. Here’s how you use a semicolon. here’s what an adverb is, here’s what it changes, here’s what it modifies, here’s what an adjective does.

And some of them could not to save their life figure out the difference between an adjective and an adverb. And it drove me nuts. Anyway, we were able to work on those things.

We were able to move on to those things and say, what is a compound sentence? What is a dependent clause? What are these things?

And work on these things in English that are more difficult because somebody years ago taught them the alphabet. I should not, in teaching sixth or seventh grade English, have to go back and teach them the alphabet. Should I?

That should already be done. There are some things that should be nailed down, rock solid, so we can move on to something more substantial. That’s exactly what he’s saying here. He’s not saying that these things are unimportant.

They provide the foundation for everything else, but he’s saying we’ve already discussed those. We visit those all the time so we can move on to something more substantial. He says, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ. Folks, the doctrine of Christ is central to everything that we believe. The doctrine of Christ is the clear teaching of scripture about who he is, why he came, and what he accomplished at the cross.

Now, I would submit to you, there’s not anything that is any more important in our belief system than the doctrine of Christ. So he’s not saying, let’s not ever talk about this again, but he’s saying if we have to come back again every few weeks and help you figure out all over again who Christ is, then we’ve not done something right. He says, but no, we should have understood the doctrine of Christ and then move on and build on it. He says, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works.

We could go through what all of these are, but we’re not going to tonight for time’s sake. Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms and of laying on of hands and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. In all of these, he’s talking about some element of our faith that is held in common by Judaism and Christianity.

Because all of these things are things that we believe in that were also practiced by some among the Jews. That played some role in their worship as well. Of course, they believe in, or at least were taught to believe, in repentance from dead works.

Judaism taught. Judaism taught that it was not works that saved you, it was faith. Now, that teaching had been corrupted and many people were believing that they were saved by their good works.

They were saved by their adherence to the law. They were saved by their DNA. When, as I said this morning, going back to everything was, if you want to wrap yourself in Abraham, at least get right that the reason Abraham was saved is because he believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

So the faith of Abraham had nothing to do with his works, except for them being the manifestation, the proof of his faith. Okay, so they believed in repentance from dead works, Faith toward God, obviously. Everything about Judaism is faith toward God.

The doctrine of baptisms, there was some history of baptism in Judaism. The laying on of hands, they had their religious rituals. Resurrection of the dead, all but the Sadducees believed in the resurrection of the dead.

And of eternal judgment, again, they believed that they would stand before God and have to give an answer every man for the things that he had done. He said these are elementary things. These are things that as you have come to Christ, we’ve already talked about, the role that they play in your Christian faith.

These are things that, whereas we might come into it, in our world, in our context today, we might come into it and somebody might have really no understanding of eternal judgment or the final resurrection or what baptism really means or that works are not the basis for salvation. They might have never been taught all of that before and just be coming to Christ with basic understanding of he died to pay for my sins. And now we’ve got to build this foundation.

They should have already had this foundation. And he says, once we’ve laid the basic framework here, we shouldn’t have to spend all this time on it forever and go over it again. Can we move on and talk about the adverbs and not have to remind you of the alphabet order constantly?

What he’s saying here. And this we will do if God permit. he says let’s talk about something a little more substantial for it is impossible it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the holy ghost and have tasted the good word of god and the powers of the world to come if they shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance and some will look at that and say well here he’s setting up, if they fall away, it’s possible that you can fall away from the faith.

Okay, let’s talk about what he’s really, what’s going on in context here. He’s laid the foundation of saying, do we have to go back? Do we have to go back to your old way of thinking all the time?

Are we not done discussing this? Are we not done with the idea that you can get to heaven by your works? Are we not done with the idea that you can get to heaven by your rituals, we should have already gotten that nailed down again.

And some of them, ladies and gentlemen, some of the early Christians who came from a Jewish background were wavering with the idea, as Paul expressed in other letters, were wavering and flirting with the idea, well maybe we could return back to the rituals and laws of Judaism and maybe it’s Christ plus the law. And Paul made it very clear in other places that if it plus the law, it was not really Christ. If you add Christ plus anything, it’s not really grace. If you add Christ plus the law, it’s really the law that you’re focused in on.

And some were wanting to draw back and others were worried, well, if we fall away from our salvation, are we really saved? If they draw back, if they fall away, can you lose the salvation? It’s a question that people still deal with today.

And so he says, for those who have gone through this, and I will tell you, there are a couple of different interpretations here that support, that both support the idea of eternal security. One is the idea that it’s not really talking about converted born again believers, that it’s talking about people who have heard the gospel, they’ve heard the teaching of Christ, that they have in their minds agreed with it, but they have not in their heart accepted the message. And I think we know the difference there.

That it has not taken root, they’ve not really believed, they just, oh, that sounds right, that sounds okay, maybe I’ll get around to doing something about that later. And so it’s talking about if they shall fall away, if they draw back, there’s nothing else left to convince them. I don’t have a lot of argument against that interpretation.

But the other interpretation is the one that makes more sense to me in light of the scriptures, that he’s setting up a hypothetical here. He’s saying, okay, let’s just say for the sake of argument you could draw completely back. You could go back to the old way.

Whether that’s the old way of trying to be justified by the law or that’s the old way of living in the flesh, let’s say you could walk away from Christ and draw back and fall away and lose your salvation. Let’s say that you as a born-again believer that that’s possible just for the sake of argument. He says, it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance.

See, because all of the first interpretation says, well, they’ve been enlightened, they’ve tasted of these things, but not really partaken, and so it’s talking about people who have not quite come to faith in Christ. They’ve just, okay, to me, you’ve tasted the Holy Ghost. You know, I don’t see God giving us half the Holy Ghost. I understand this to me, that he is saying here, if you could lose your salvation, there’s no way to get it back. If it were possible, if they should fall away after this, after this, after this, after this, if it were possible for them to fall away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance. It’s impossible to get it back if it’s possible to lose it.

And why is this, he says? Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame. So if you can lose it, if you can lose it, if the sacrifice wasn’t good once for all, if he wasn’t able in one singular act to save to the uttermost, and somehow you could give it up or lose it or walk away or fall away or whatever you want to call it, and you’ve now lost your salvation, you’ve lost all benefit of what Christ did at the cross of Calvary, then there is nothing else that can be done for you because we’d have to put Christ to death all over again.

Folks, his blood was either the covering for all of our sins or it’s not. He’s either able to save to the uttermost, which is a quote from Scripture. He’s either able to save to the uttermost or he’s not.

And so what I believe the writer of Hebrews is saying here, let’s just settle this question. Since there’s all this talk about drawing back, there’s all this talk about going to the old ways of living or the old ways of believing, let’s just say this. If you as a born-again Christian could lose that salvation, there’s no way to get it back.

Now, does that mean people don’t fall away? I do believe people fall away. But I don’t believe genuinely born-again Christians fall away and stay away.

What I mean by that is the Bible talks, and we’ve talked about this recently, the Apostle John wrote about how some would go out from the church. He says, but if they were really of us, they would not have gone out from us. And if they were really of us, they would still be with us.

There are people who for a time call themselves Christians. They profess to be Christians. They look the part, but then they fall away and don’t come back.

And the reason for that is they were among us, but they never were really part of us. And that’s a sad reality. I hate to say that because, I mean, other than the fact it’s true, we all know people who are in that condition.

Now, sometimes Christians will slip and fall from time to time. But genuine believers will always come back to Christ. The power of God just sort of pulls us in. You and I all slip and fall on a daily basis.

We all sin. Do we not feel the unction of the Holy Spirit saying, you’re wrong and you need to get right? Some people, it may take a day or two.

Some people, unfortunately, it may take them years. Now, I have trouble reconciling that in my mind and saying, if you’re a believer, how is the Holy Spirit not bothering you so bad you can’t do anything about it? I yell at other cars in traffic and feel the need to repent almost immediately.

I mean, the Holy Spirit, please understand, I mean this in a reverent way. The Holy Spirit bugs me. I don’t mean like, oh, I can’t stand the Holy Spirit.

I mean, the Holy Spirit will not give me a moment’s peace until I confess and do what I, you know. There’s a lot about that that’s hard to reconcile in my mind. I don’t stand before you this evening and pretend I have all the answers on that.

There are believers. There are believers who for a time fall into sin, I believe. Why else would John have said, when a brother’s overtaken in a fault, pray for him, because there’s a sin that’s not unto death.

We talked about that a few weeks ago in 1 John 5. There are brethren that we have to get a hold of them and say, hey, you’re not right with God, and this is going to kill you. Christians do, sometimes for a time, walk away.

But those who are truly His, those who have truly believed and been converted, been born again, they always come back because the Holy Spirit doesn’t give us peace until we do. And then there are those who appear to be part of us, appear to be among us, and they walk away, and they walk away totally and completely. And I don’t want to say you don’t know until they die whether they’re going to come back or not.

There are some times that you can look at somebody and they can run so hard and so far and appear not to be bothered at all by what they’ve done. It’s just hard for me to imagine that they’re really a believer. Because this part is just my opinion, but sometimes I look at the way people behave and I think you’re not bothered at all.

And that’s a good sign to me that you’re not where you’re supposed to be, that there’s not a relationship there that they’re supposed to be. But a believer will always come back. Now, does that mean they’re not saved?

No, if they’re a born-again believer, they’re saved. If they were to lose it, there’s no way to get it back. Now, if we find ourselves in that situation, we might need to check and see, well, was I really a believer?

But if we’re believers, those instances too should be few and far between. Because the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is there convicting us if we’re listening. That the moment we sin, we should be, oh, I can’t do anything.

I’ve got to drop everything else until God and I talk about this. Because it ought to bother us. And so he says, it’s impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift.

And were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word of God. And the powers of the world come if they shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance. they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put to Him in open shame.

Folks, that sounds on the surface like it’s saying you can fall away. You look at it a little more clearly. You look at it a little closer.

He’s actually setting up a hypothetical here and saying if it were possible to fall away there’s no other sacrifice for sins. If you’ve exhausted that sacrifice with your sinning boys and girls, that’s all there is. Because the book of Hebrews says that he died once for all.

He died once for all. There’s no other way to renew them to repentance. Turn with me, if you would, for just a moment to Jude chapter.

Well, there’s only one chapter in Jude. Jude chapter 1, starting in verse 24, look at the last two verses of the book. And he’s speaking of Christ here and says, now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

To the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. I’ve already said I don’t believe the passage in Hebrews is saying that we can fall away. That we can fall away in the sense of losing our salvation.

But then that raises the question, why is that possible? Why is that possible? Is it because when we become Christians, we just automatically become so good that it’s impossible for us to fall away?

We just can’t fall away. I know me. I find myself saying that more and more as I go along.

I know myself, and I know that’s not the case. On top of that, from reading God’s word, I know human nature, and know that’s not the case. The fact that there’s not falling away doesn’t mean that we’re not capable of falling away.

The only reason we don’t fall away is because he keeps us from falling. The only reason we don’t fall away is because he upholds us. I told you before, I don’t necessarily agree with everything that he teaches.

Some of you know who John MacArthur is. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he teaches. I think he’s a pretty good teacher, though.

But one of my favorite quotes of his is that if you could lose your salvation, you would lose your salvation. Folks, I know that to be true of me. If it was possible for me to lose it, I would have lost it a long time ago.

I do not have the power, you do not have the power, ladies and gentlemen, to hold on to something like that. With the demands that it would take, if it was possible to lose it, we would lose it. It’s not a question of whether or not we’d lose it.

It’s a question of, okay, how soon after conversion would I lose it? I can’t even keep track of my checkbook. I have been looking for three weeks.

The only reason I haven’t panicked and been down to the bank is because I know it’s somewhere in my house. But I have no idea where my checkbook is. I can’t even keep up with that.

You’ve heard the phrase, you know, you’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on. You don’t have to raise your hand, but I’ll just know by your facial reaction. Do any of you fall in that category?

If not, we all know somebody who does. Folks, that’s sort of where we stand with our salvation. I believe we’d lose it if it wasn’t bolted on.

If it were up to us, we’d lose it and we’d have lost it a long time ago. Just because the Bible isn’t teaching here that we don’t fall away, that we can’t fall away, doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with our ability to uphold ourselves. We need to dispel any notion that, well, my salvation is secure and I can do whatever.

Folks, it is God. It is Jesus Christ who upholds our salvation. I love, and I think I’ve referenced it before.

I love that old sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Again, I don’t agree with all of Jonathan Edwards’ theology. If I did, he’d either be a Baptist or I’d be a Puritan.

But I love that message, and the imagery of it is terrifying but also correct. That speaking of humankind as a whole, at any time, that we’re right in the palm of God’s hand. And at any time, all we have to do, all he has to do is remove his hand and we fall into the fires of hell.

Folks, even in our salvation, I’m not saying that God would ever let go of us, but I’m saying that is the only thing that holds us out of the fires of hell is the grace of God. It’s only God and what Jesus Christ, it’s only what God the Son accomplished, what God the Father promised, and what God the Holy Spirit draws us to that holds us, that upholds us and holds us out of the fires of hell. If we could lose our salvation, If we could lose it, we would lose it.

If it were up to us, we would have lost it a long time ago. But praise God, He is able, as Jude says, to keep us from falling. He upholds us.

He lifts us up and carries us in His hand. And you know what? Those are big hands.

Those are hands that, as Jesus said, no man can pluck us out of. Three things that I want to share with you, and then we’ll be dismissed tonight. I don’t know why these always come in threes, but that’s just how my mind works.

First of all, our spiritual strength is insufficient. Insufficient for what? You name it.

Are we talking about earning our own salvation? It’s definitely insufficient for that. Are we talking about making ourselves grow?

It’s insufficient for that. Are we talking about making ourselves close to God? It’s insufficient for that.

You know, any spiritual strength we have in us that enables any of those things, as far as the spiritual growth and the closeness with God as believers, as people who are already saved, Any spiritual strength there is is what He’s given to us. You know what? We don’t have the strength to save ourselves.

That’s why the cross was necessary. We don’t have the strength to constantly keep ourselves on the straight and narrow. That’s why He gave us the Holy Spirit.

We don’t really, I think, have the strength to grow on our own. That’s why He gave us the Holy Spirit. That’s why He gave us His Word.

You list any good thing, any good spiritual thing we want, and our spiritual strength is insufficient for it. We go back to the beginning of that passage we looked at in Hebrews. He’s talking to believers there and what’s he telling them?

Stop acting like babies. I’m trying to teach you adverbs and you’re wanting to go back and talk about the ABCs. That’s our human nature.

That is just our human nature. We want to go back all the time to what’s easy. And spiritually, we would stay on the milk of the Word if we could.

If it weren’t for the Holy Spirit, if it weren’t for God pulling us forward and saying, no, no, there’s so much more for you here. And so the writer of Hebrews is giving them this warning. Don’t give in to that tendency.

We in our weak, in our spiritual weakness, can’t even handle continually moving forward and growing in Christ, which is why he had to warn them. Let’s move on. Let’s build on, not abandon these foundations, but let’s build on them.

Let’s not go back and have to rebuild this foundation all the time. Folks, if we can’t even handle that, if we can’t even handle a little spiritual growth, it reminds me our spiritual strength is insufficient to get salvation, insufficient to keep salvation. And as I’ve said here and many times before, it’s not up to us.

There’s nothing we can do to obtain it and there’s nothing we can do to maintain it. He gives it to us and he makes sure it stays with us. And of course, Jude points out that it’s him.

He’s the one able to keep us from falling. We don’t have the strength to keep ourselves from falling. Let that be a reminder to us because sometimes we get puffed up in ourselves and we think, well, I’ve been a Christian all these years and I know this and I know that and I’ve done this.

Nothing can touch me. Folks, let’s be reminded our spiritual strength is insufficient for whatever the task is. and the strength that we have access to is the strength that he gives us.

Second of all, God’s grace alone is sufficient to bring us to salvation or to keep us there. And that’s just basic Bible truth right there. God’s grace alone, only God’s grace is sufficient to bring us to salvation.

Only God’s grace is sufficient to keep us there. I didn’t earn my salvation. You didn’t earn your salvation.

As a matter of fact, when we look through verses 4 and 5 of Hebrews chapter 6. He’s talking about all these things that accompany salvation. He’s talking about being enlightened.

You don’t enlighten yourself. If you have to be enlightened, it’s because you’re in the dark. He talks about those who were enlightened, those who tasted of the heavenly gift.

Well, if I just went up into heaven and snatched it myself, it wasn’t really a gift, was it? A heavenly gift is something God gave me. Made partakers of the Holy Ghost. I can’t partake of the Holy Ghost just because I feel like it.

That’s something God gave. Tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, which again we have no power over, no influence over. All of these wonderful things that accompany salvation that he talks about are entirely and completely the work of God given to us by him.

Everything that is, folks, our salvation, our ability to be saved, all the benefits that accompany salvation, it’s all given to us by God. We didn’t earn any of it. We didn’t make any of it, produce any of it.

Throughout the scriptures, we’re taught that salvation is the gift of God. Everything about it is his work from first to last. And in Jude, He’s able to keep us from falling. He’s able to present us faultless before the presence of His own glory with exceeding joy.

He is the wise God, our Savior, excuse me, the only wise God. He has glory and majesty and dominion and power both now and ever. There is a power that upholds us and it’s not our own.

It’s the grace of God. For by grace are you saved through faith. For by grace are you saved through faith.

And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Folks, I don’t think that means just the moment of conversion. Oh, it’s all His grace at the moment of conversion, then I have to hang on to it. No, by grace are ye saved.

The whole thing. God’s grace. For we are His workmanship.

Oh, even after the moment of conversion, He’s still working on us. Still changing