Once Saved, Always Saved?

The central purpose of our lives is to focus on the Son, Jesus Christ. In doing so, we please God the Father. God wants us to celebrate His Sons life. Sadly, often we get to self-consumed that it's nearly impossible to get Christians to talk about anything other than our sins. We can get so focused on our struggles that we become convinced that our sins are different - that somehow God has not forgiven them. As we wallow in our failures, we miss the privilege of celebrating.

Jesus Christ so thoroughly obliterated our deserved punishment for sins that God will never refer to our sins again after we are saved. We nod our heads in agreement that Jesus died for our sins and took them away, but soon afterward we find ourselves buying into the idea [lie] that we will be judged for our sins when Jesus returns to earth. How could we be judged for our sins if He has taken them away? How could we be punished for our sins when He remembers them no longer? The only worthy punishment for sin is death, and death is precisely what Jesus experienced on all of our behalf. Read the words of two Jewish writers who express excitement about Jesus and the effects of His life sacrifice: "Christ, having been offered ONCE to bear sins of many, will appear a second time WITHOUT REFERENCE TO SIN (Hebrews 9:28)."He is the one who turns aside God’s wrath, taking away the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). We will continue to sin, don't be fooled, but God will not turn His face from us.

John 10:28, 29 is a wonderful scripture to keep in mind if you're every struggling with security issues: "And I gave them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand." Notice here that it does not say we will never perish . . . unless we do this or that or this or especially that. We are eternally secured! Disappointments and dangers come to every life. Disasters can destroy your home; disease can take away your loved one's health, death can separate you from your family while here on earth, but the love of God makes you immovable from His grip. In Romans 8:35-39 Paul gives us an extensive list of calamities that may threaten your life. But his conclusion will warm your soul: "Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

If we miss this message the Gospel holds, it has no power to alter mind-sets that control us. Partial forgiveness provides partial relief from guilt but breeds an unhealthy fear of judgment. Real forgiveness means that the sin issue is over. Real forgiveness means that there's no present or future punishment for sins. Jesus' death satisfied God forever. Jesus said, "It is finished." And with that, He bowed His head and gave up His spirit (John 19:30).

To further illustrate this fact, let's look back at the Jewish temple. A chair was forbidden inside the temple. Why you ask? Imagine for a moment that you're an average citizen of Israel. You enter the temple and are greeted by a priest lounging in a La-Z-Boy. This would communicate to you that he must have nothing left to do. To avoid this false impression, God forbade priests to sit down on the job so that the image of unfinished business would be imprinted on their consciences. The book of Hebrews contrasts the constant standing and ongoing religious duties of the priests with our seated Savior: "Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Jesus had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, HE SAT DOWN at the right hand of God (Hebrews 10:11, 12)!

Grasping this truth can revolutionize our understanding of how pure and clean we are to God. The work is completed, and we're now forgiven for all time. Our past, present, and future sins were dealt with simultaneously through the cross. God wants us to know that real forgiveness has been accomplished on our behalf. It's ours to enjoy. Freedom from guilt is our daily destiny as believers in Jesus!

Numerous Bible passes refer to our forgiveness as a completed act. Ex: "When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:13, 14). "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you (Ephesians 4:32).” Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. And where these have been forgotten, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary (Hebrews 10:17, 18). "He that hears my word, and trusts on Him that sent me, HAS everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (1 John 5:24).

Today I don't see us making it a big deal that Christ died only once. It seems to be a rather insignificant point. But to the Jewish mindset, it was extremely important. The book of Hebrews goes to great lengths to emphasize that Christ only died once: "Nor did He enter Heaven to offer Himself AGAIN AND AGAIN. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But He has appeared ONCE FOR ALL at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Hebrews 9:25, 26). When Christ says we must be born again He doesn’t say we must be born again and again and again. Jesus shed His blood, and this brought forgiveness. Since He doesn't die daily, our forgiveness is not to be issued daily. Salvation is not a matter of believers trying to confess of every sin they commit before they die. Ephesians 3:30 tells us that believers are "sealed for the day of redemption." If believers did not have eternal security, the sealing could not truly be unto the day of redemption, but only to the next time we commit a sin. The eternal security of the believer has nothing to do with the individual effort of the believer, but instead on the preserving grace of God (Titus 3:5). "To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy" (Jude 24-25). God's power is able to keep the believer from falling. It is up to Him, not us, to present us before His glorious presence. Our eternal security is a result of God keeping us, not us maintaining our own salvation (thank goodness, eh?!)

Psalm 103:12 states that when we are saved God removes our sins “as far as the east is from the west.” As the east and west can never meet at one point, but forever be at the same distance from one another, so our sins and their deserved punishment are removed to an eternal distance that they cannot affect us anymore. We will continue to sin, don’t be fooled, but God will not turn His face from us. Now, this does not give us the right to take advantage of that fact and dip into sin all we want. Romans 6:1-2 clearly states this is the wrong mindset. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, all of our sins are forgiven. That includes past, present, and future, big or small. Believers do not have to keep asking for forgiveness or repenting in order to have their sins forgiven.

To further illustrate this fact, let’s say you are a married man. Imagine if every night before you went to sleep, you leaned over to your wife and asked her to marry you. It's just something that would make you feel better - asking her again and again. It's your way of confirming that you're married. This ritual is a bit strange, isn't it? Repeating a question like that over and over might even be insulting. Your wife would never let you get away with something so ridiculous. She would ask you to reconsider your thought processes: "Don't you remember the ceremony? Our vows? I have the photo album right here. It's a past event. We're in a constant state of being married. There is no need to ask me over and over if I will marry you." It's the same way with our forgiven state. Have you thought about how many times the epistles urge us to keep asking God for forgiveness? The answer is zero times. Like the wife's recollection of the wedding, the writers remembered the ceremony of the cross and the vow made by God to remember sins no more.

The reality is that Christians are totally forgiven people. Realizing it allows us to cease our restless activity of trying to 'get right' with God. Realizing it frees us to enjoy life free from guilt, as God intends. The term "fellowship" has evolved into a word that Christians use to talk about feelings of closeness to God at a given time. It's a framework for relating to God that, unfortunately, we tend to develop from our interpersonal relationships. If we've sinned against a friend, family member, or coworker, we feel that our relationship with them is strained until we apologize, are forgiven, and then restored to previous communication. In the Bible, fellowship with God is not described in this way. Instead, a person is either in fellowship with God and therefore saved, or out of fellowship and therefore lost. 

Many people doubt their salvation because of feelings or the lack of them. The Bible has much to say about salvation, but nothing to say about “feeling saved.” We live in a feeling-oriented society and, sadly, that has spilled over into the church. Feelings are unreliable. Emotions are untrustworthy. In fact, the Bible states that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt.” God’s face is always towards us. When we sin, He's there every step of the way. If we buy into the lie that God sits in a swivel chair ready to rotate His face away from us when we sin, then we proclaim a God of conditional love and conditional fellowship. But that is ignoring the work of Jesus, who on the cross cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus was out of fellowship with God the Father at that moment so we would never have to be. Sorrow over a wrongdoing is normal and expected in the Christian life. In fact, I would be very concerned about any person who was not sorry for their sins. There's a Godly sorry or regret over sins that leads a person to desire change (2 Corinthians 7:10). This regret occurs because believers are designed for good works, not sins. When we sin, we're not living out our destiny. When we sin, we won't be content with our choices. We're meant for something greater. We're meant to display the life of Jesus Christ.

No one could woo a sinner like Jesus. The prostitutes, tax collectors, beggars . . . all those that were considered the low-life’s whom everyone shunned were in fact the ones Jesus hung out with the most. The Gospel message clearly proves that it doesn't matter what your past is or how badly you've messed up, because Jesus' love extends beyond measure. In His loving eyes, you are welcomed and accepted without condition. When you are saved, you are saved. Done. When you are saved, you have all of God and not just parts. Done. Too many times do we hear we have 'holes in us' that God needs to fill, and that holding up our hands during service is one way to get that done faster by the said  'Holy Spirit flooding inside.' Believers shouldn't passively sit around waiting to receive something new - more cleansing, more of the Holy Spirit, or more of whatever popular teaching says is lacking in us. We are completely saved and lack nothing. "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Galatians 2:20).

Both Jesus and the Father have us firmly grasped in their hand. Who could possibly separate us from the grip of both the Father and the Son? “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life (Revelation 3:5). When God places our name at salvation into His book, we can never be removed. God’s pencil has no eraser!

. . . . .  "I write these things to you who trust in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:11-13).