Can I Lose My Salvation? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

The Italian Reformed scholar Girolamo Zanchi once made the distinction between a serious fall and a total fall. He argued that the Bible is replete with examples of true believers who truly fall away, who fall into gross sin and, on some occasions, protracted periods of impenitence. This is a serious fall. An example is David, who remained impenitent regarding his sin with Bathsheba for more than a year before he was brought back to repentance and renewal of his faith. So, the question is not “Do people fall?” They do fall. Each and every Christian is subject to the possibility of a serious fall.

church discipline attempts to keep a serious fall from turning into a total fall.

While some will return after a serious fall, some will not, because they never actually had faith. They made a false profession of faith; they did not possess what they professed. When the heat comes, such a person will flee from his original profession, resulting in a total fall. In cases like this, the conversion was not genuine in the first place.

To say that someone has been enlightened is not necessarily to say that they have been converted.

A heavenly gift can be given to both believers and unbelievers.

Augustine taught that the only way anyone ever perseveres to the end after beginning the Christian life is by virtue of the grace of God. Since that time, perseverance has been understood as a gift of divine grace.

God preserves His own. If I look to myself, I can have no confidence in my ability to continue on to glory once I begin my Christian walk because, as we have noted, the Christian life is a struggle. Paul articulated this in terms of spiritual warfare: the beginning of the Christian life involves liberation from the bondage to the flesh, and we are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit; once we become Christians, we embark upon a whole new life in which we’re engaged in the pursuit of our sanctification (Rom. 6:17–19). But that life, as Paul said, is marked by an ongoing battle between the new man and the old man, between the spiritual self and the sinful flesh that still retains power in our lives (7:13–25). But now we have something added as a gift, namely, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Jonathan Edwards once said in a sermon that seeking the kingdom of God should be the urgent, primary business of the Christian. We are called to work as hard as we can to persevere.

This is a distortion—the passage calls us to labor because God is working in us and with us; thus, the whole process of persevering is a synergistic action, not a monergistic one. I am called to work, and God is working as well. In the final analysis, whether my labor becomes fruitful depends on the donum perseverantiae, that is, on the gift of perseverance on God’s part to preserve me to the end.

But if we mean people who have received Christ as their Savior but not as their Lord, where the self still dominates and rules the life, who are we describing? We’re describing the unconverted person, the person who’s in the church and around the fellowship of Christ, the person who is professing Jesus Christ, but is really not a Christian at all.

The intercession of our Great High Priest is the foundation for our confidence when it comes to our perseverance.

Notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t simply hope that Peter will be able to resist Satan, or that he will return, or that he will be able to strengthen the brothers. He expresses certainty that Peter will do these things. There was no doubt in Jesus’ mind not only that Peter would fall, and fall abysmally, but also that Peter would be restored.

Judas’ fall was final. He was a true apostate, one who made a profession of faith though he was never really converted. He was the son of perdition from the beginning. Peter, on the other hand, was not lost. He turned again and was restored. Christ’s intercessory prayers upheld him.

The whole point of Jesus’ prayer is that none whom the Father has given to the Son are lost. No one, He said, can snatch them out of His hand (John 10:28). We persevere because we are preserved, and we are preserved because of the intercession of our Great High Priest. This is our greatest consolation and our greatest source of confidence that we will persevere in the Christian life.