Today, my unriddling comes from a controversial topic amongst Christians: “Can you lose your salvation?”
If salvation is a gift, can or will God decide that you are actually not worthy enough for it (no, duh) and take back His gift? Or is it more of a question if we can return that gift? Can our own actions and messed up theology actually trump the power that God gives us to overcome them? Can someone who has authentically met God and received His Spirit forever turn their back on Him and denounce His existence? Once again, I took my questions to God and shortly thereafter found myself in the shower-still rinsing soap suds out of my hair-feeling total clarity on the matter. Does God ALWAYS speak to anyone else in the shower?? If only I could bring my journal in there. It was 11:00 pm, so I hurried out, threw my robe on, tiptoed out of the bedroom where Mike and our puppy were sleeping peacefully, and proceeded to sit at my kitchen island journaling like a crazy person until 1:00 am. Ha!
Romans 6:23 says “The wages of sin is death, but the GIFT of God is eternal life IN Christ Jesus our Lord.” I do not believe in a God who would snatch the gift back, based on how we live our lives. That would be tragically inconsistent with the Gospel, which revolves around grace. If our gift of salvation can be lost, then why the heck did Jesus even die?? Rewind back a little to Romans 5. And please don’t go on autopilot when you come to scripture in the middle of something like a devotional or blog post. I’m embarrassed to say that I often do that! I feel like I’ve already read it, so I know the gist of it. Eew.
Read carefully: Verse 15 says “The GIFT is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of one man, (Adam) how much more did God’s grace and the GIFT that came by the grace of one Man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!!! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin (wooaahh). The judgement followed one sin (Adam and Eve) and brought condemnation, but the GIFT followed many sins and brought justification! For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s {abundant provision of grace!} and of the GIFT of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!”
Whew! Paul was so right on! I’ll say all of that again in modern day words. You can not compare the gift of God to the curse of our sin. They are not remotely alike. They do not have the same amount of power. Evil is not stronger than Good. We all know this. The sin of Adam caused the entire human race to be condemned, but the grace of God, and the GIFT that came by that grace wiped out that curse like a tidal wave hitting a twig on the ground! If the power of sin can be strong enough separate all of humanity from their Creator, sentencing us to a life filled with hopelessness, searching, despair, and fear… we must know the GIFT of God is immeasurably stronger! How much more will those who have authentically received that GIFT of grace “reign in life” as Paul says! We are given the gift of reigning in life, like a boss, watching our enemy try to defeat us as we see him for the pathetic thing he really is. And it’s not *us* that are actually doing anything. We didn’t earn grace in the first place, and we certainly don’t possess power over sin in our own strength! The only way we reign in life is “through righteousness to bring eternal life (there’s that GIFT again!) through Jesus Christ.” That GIFT is a new identity. We give up our own identity and become hidden in Christ.
If I believed that I can “lose” my salvation, that it would be out of my control and God would take that gift back because of my sin, it would instill a terrible sense of dread and fear in me. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it forever: Dread and anxiety are NOT fruits of the Spirit. They are fruits of the enemy and his lies. The doctrine that you can keep your salvation based on your actions or thoughts, is LEGALISM at its core. Legalism drives you towards God using fear and shame as motivators and I loathe it! So hopefully I’ve made a good enough case against God taking our salvation away from us.
Next question: Can we give it back? Is this a returnable gift? Can an authentic believer be led far enough astray that they actually end up abandoning their faith completely? I have personally known people who seemed like they were on fire for God, immersed themselves in reading Scripture, could preach like Billy Graham and led hundreds of people to Christ. They died of a drug overdose 3 years later. Or how about that one friend who used to be in church every Sunday raising their hands in worship, and now identifies as an atheist?
Need we fear becoming like these people? Oooh there’s that word fear again, so I’ll tell you the answer. NO. In 2 Timothy 3, Paul was giving Timothy some smart tools to identify whether or not someone is an authentic believer. He describes people who I would have normally associated as “lost people.” He says these people will be lovers of themselves, greedy, proud, ABUSIVE, disobedient, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, liars, without self-control, brutal, hating what is good, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…GEEZ! What a nasty group of people, right? But the next words are staggering. “Having a form of godliness, but denying its power. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by evil desires, always learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Nothing has ever described my old pastor as well as those words.
Paul was saying that this can be tricky. There will be people who come along in the church who seem to have it all together. They have every appearance of holiness. I have even known many church kids who grew up and suddenly realized their faith had not been authentic their whole lives. They knew every Bible verse, every great Biblical answer to the world’s questions, even had led many others to Christ, but they had not one shred of Power in their lives, or really cared about God at all when they really examined their hearts. When they looked at what they really desired, it wasn’t God. This is sadly so common. And you can’t make yourself desire more of God by trying to desire Him…it’s an authentic response that comes from an authentic experience.
So how in the world can we discern whether or not someone as influential as our pastor is a sheep or a wolf in sheep’s clothing??? Or how can we examine our own hearts to see if what we have is experience in our hearts, and not just knowledge in our heads? Holy Spirit! Sorry (not sorry) if I’m bugging you all with so much talk of the Holy Spirit…He gets a bad rep with all the crazies out there claiming that they act a fool because of Him! In reality, the Holy Spirit is the only way we can navigate through life as a Christian! Jesus explained the Spirit’s purpose perfectly in John 14. He is the Spirit of the Living God, teaching us what scripture means, revealing truth to us, and giving us convictions specific to our own lives. Truly, the evidence of salvation is the Holy Spirit.
I think it is possible to be a true believer, and be very poorly trained in regards to that Holy Spirit. I was brought up in an environment that very rarely mentioned it. I knew Christ, had been saved, but never really exhibited any lasting power whatsoever against the things I personally struggle with until very recently. I have absolutely felt the Holy Spirit pierce through my darkest moments in life…but I didn’t know or experience that someone can actually LIVE that way! What changed? I began to finally utilize the Spirit! HE is the only way I have been able to discern Truth against the lies that constantly bombard me. HE is the only way I have been able to understand Scripture that before had seemed to be written in code! I had read Romans through my own lens of fear, and I felt condemnation. I read Psalms sometimes in anger, and it came across as a very human cry for vengeance. I was getting it wrong because I was reading it without asking for the help of my own Guide. It’s kind of disturbing that we can so easily misinterpret Scripture. The Bible only makes sense with the helpful lens of The Spirit! Without it, we simply read it how we are trained to read it, and we regurgitate “isms” that our pastor teaches us…not the Holy Spirit. There’s probably a reason Paul went on and on in his letters about false teachers and the importance of the Holy Spirit.
So, if you are taught to regard everything your pastor, parents, or teachers say as truth, you will be leaving no room for the Spirit to teach you. Many times, these teachers get it right! But unfortunately, many times they get it wrong, and if you’re conditioned to believe they only speak truth, then where does that leave us? It leaves us weak and not exercising our own Spirit that lives in our very midst.
There is one more sign of true salvation, I think, and that is the death of your will. I’m talking about what is the final call at the end of the day…what you really want. When the chips are down, when I really examine my heart, I truly want what God wants for me. That is evidence that my will has died. And once it dies, it does not come back from the dead! Yes, we have moments where we feel conflicted between our flesh and our spirit, but when we follow the flesh, we feel that still small voice of conviction and a better way. Those moments are when we must lean into the Spirit, accept God’s endless grace, and become secure in ourselves as one with Him in Christ.
This brings us back to the main questions. Will God take our salvation away if we deserve it being taken away? Come on, we always deserve it being taken away. We didn’t deserve it in the first place.
Is it possible for us to harden our hearts so much that we eventually starve His Spirit completely and it’s gone? Can we be so led astray by evil that we become deceived and abandon our God? I don’t want to give the generic statement of “If someone does that, they were never saved in the first place.” But, we cannot see into people’s hearts. There is too much in the Bible about “every appearance of holiness, but denying its power” kinds of people. Never assume that just because someone seems to love God fervently, that they do. You will know them by their fruits. That doesn’t mean they will be perfect people, but there will be proof of the Holy Spirit’s power.
For those who do absolutely love Jesus, you know His Spirit is in you, but you fear that one day you may be so deceived that you abandon your faith and “lose your salvation,” listen. I couldn’t walk away from this if I tried. But I have also felt really really lost. I have even had moments of doubt where I had dark thoughts that maybe I’ve bought into something that is merely mind control for weak people. You very well may see people who used to love God and did exhibit His Spirit, but walk away from the faith. Don’t ever assume that is the end of the line for them. People who have been spiritually abused like me, very often do walk away. But when it’s real, God always brings them back. In my questioning, even in my doubt, I always come back to this faith, because my salvation is genuine.
It’s hard to describe how my walk with God has been until now. Conflicted is a good word. Spiritual abuse is a huge part of that. Very poor training in regards to the Holy Spirit is part of it too. I was told in sermon after sermon, that I was a disappointment to God, always would be. Good thing He loved me enough to save me, but He hates my sin, and I will always sin. So I acted like someone who is not fully known and loved by God. I struggled with shame, despair and horrible fear, and I didn’t believe it was possible to live without it. But now…I could fill an entire post describing the victories I’ve experienced lately. I have literally tasted and seen that He is just SO GOOD. Nothing could make me go back to how I used to live, or believe what I used to believe about myself.
I know God will not take my salvation back, and I never ever fear a possible day that I’ll return it to Him willingly. That is the most ludacris thing, because it is so real to me. I will wander off, yes. But I have a Shepherd and there is no distance that He wouldn’t cover over and over to find me and bring me back.
Do not be afraid. Don’t fear that God doesn’t love you. He does.
Don’t fear that He will one day judge and condemn you. There is no condemnation for those in Christ.
Don’t fear that the enemy can deceive you so much as to make you abandon your own salvation. The power of sin cannot compare to the power of Grace.
Search your own heart. Beg God to reveal His Spirit to you. Ask. Seek. Knock. Be secure in what He reveals to you. Believe as children, and enjoy the adventure without fear. Accept your gift, treasure it, and never be afraid of losing it.