Can I Lose My Salvation? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

These monuments marked decisive moments in history for all future generations so that when the people of Israel were afraid and needed consolation, they could look and see this reminder that God was with them.

the doctrine of eternal security,

How is that possible, if we are to maintain the idea that one who was once in grace will remain in grace?

If I’m presently in a state of faith, if I’m presently embracing Christ, will that change? Will the status that I enjoy in the presence of God change? Can I lose my salvation?

Paul thus sets before the reader, at least hypothetically, the possibility that he, even as the Apostle to the Gentiles, might become disqualified.

While some will return after a serious fall, some will not, because they never actually had faith.

The challenge, then, is to distinguish between a true believer in the midst of a serious fall (who will at some point in the future be restored) and a person who has made a false profession of faith. We cannot read the hearts of others, so we do not know, when we see a person who has made a profession of faith later repudiate that profession, whether the person may yet be a true convert who is only temporarily abandoning his profession and will return to it.

We don’t know the final outcome of the situation, but God does, and only God can preserve that soul.

The question of whether or not we can fall out of God’s good graces touches us at the core of our faith and our lives.

So, when we call it the “unforgivable sin,” we mean by that that it is a sin that will in fact not be forgiven by God, not because God can’t do it but God won’t do it.

Thus, someone commits the unforgivable sin when he knows for certain through the illumination of the Spirit that Christ is the Son of God, but he comes to the conclusion and makes the statement verbally that Christ was demonic.

Therefore, the distinction between blaspheming the Holy Spirit and blaspheming against Christ falls away once the person knows who Jesus is.

We’re also told in this text that it is impossible for these people to be restored again to repentance.

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

There is no possibility of restoration if you fall away to this degree.

Paul calls the Philippian believers to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). In using this phrase, Paul does not mean to say that we earn our salvation by means of our works, but that our obedience (see his commendation of his readers’ obedience earlier in the verse) plays a role in our sanctification. In turn, our sanctification plays a role in our persevering.

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.

It is from promises such as these that we gain our confidence in God’s gift of perseverance.

there are three kinds of people: unbelievers, baby believers, and mature believers.

Every day, in the presence of the Father, Christ intercedes for His people (Heb. 7:25). “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working,” James tells us (5:16), but no prayer has the same power as the prayers of Christ.

There was no doubt in Jesus’ mind not only that Peter would fall, and fall abysmally, but also that Peter would be restored.

He repented, he was forgiven, he was restored, and he endured to the end.

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.