Can I Lose My Salvation? (Crucial Questions, #22)

by R.C. Sproul

As we struggle through the Christian life, we sometimes wrestle with our security in Christ. We want to be safe, to feel secure, and we need assurance that our security will last. The key question here is, “Can a person who is truly and soundly converted to Christ lose his or her salvation?” Or, more personally, “Can I lose my salvation?” This gets at the issue of the doctrine of eternal security, also known as the perseverance of the saints,

In the Bible itself, there are many passages that strongly suggest that people can indeed lose their salvation (e.g., Heb. 6:4–6; 2 Peter 2:20–22). And yet, on the other side, there are also many passages that seem to be promises that God will preserve His people to the end. In the latter category, for instance, there is Paul’s statement that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

Clearly, there are those who seem to make a credible profession of faith and then later repudiate that profession of faith. I think that anyone who has been a Christian for more than a year knows people like that, people who, to all outward appearances, seem to have been dedicated to Christianity and then later left the faith or left the church. And so we have to ask the question: How is that possible, if we are to maintain the idea that one who was once in grace will remain in grace?

Each and every Christian is subject to the possibility of a serious fall. But is someone who commits a serious fall eternally lost—making it a total fall—or is the fall a temporary condition that will be remedied by his restoration?

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.

Why would sinning against the second person of the Trinity be forgivable but a particular sin against the third person not be forgivable? There is a somewhat simple solution to this dilemma. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that it’s any sin against the Holy Spirit that is unforgivable. We sin against the Holy Spirit all the time. In fact, every sin that we commit as Christians is an offense to the Spirit of holiness who dwells within us to work for our sanctification. And if every sin against the Holy Spirit were unforgivable, none of us could ever be forgiven. So, Jesus is being very narrow and specific here about a particular kind of sin, one that He defines as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

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.

To people who fear that they may have committed the unforgivable sin, I often say that had they actually committed it, in all likelihood they would not be disturbed by it. Their hearts would have already become so recalcitrant and hardened that they would not be struggling and wrestling with it. People who commit such sin don’t care about it, and the very fact that these people are wrestling with the fear that perhaps they have offended God in this way gives significant evidence to the reality that they are not in such a state.

The Bible describes three groups of people with respect to the church, the visible covenant community. Outside the church, there are unbelievers; inside the church, there are believers (those who have been truly converted) and there are also some unbelievers. Can we say of members of this third group—unbelievers inside the church—that they have been enlightened? Yes, to the extent that they have heard the gospel; they have heard the preaching of the Word. They are not in some remote area where special revelation has never penetrated. They’ve had the benefit of light when it comes to hearing the Word of God. To say that someone has been enlightened is not necessarily to say that they have been converted.

What about sharing in the Holy Spirit? That sounds a little bit more difficult, because we think of sharing in the Holy Spirit as being an experience that only comes to those who have been regenerated and filled by the Holy Spirit. Such an interpretation would be the prima facie reading of that text. But in a broader sense, anyone who’s in the middle of the life of the church in a loose sense partakes of the benefits of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit dwells and works in the church. Such a person has not necessarily received one specific work of the Holy Spirit—namely, regeneration—but has tasted the good Word of God.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Let go and let God”? In one sense, that’s a perfectly good phrase, because sometimes we rely on ourselves so much that we fail to find rest in God. But the phrase can become a kind of license for what we call “quietism.” This is a view that says, “If God wants to change me and if God wants me to grow spiritually, it’s His job to do it, and I’m only as strong spiritually as God makes me.” A person who thinks this way rewrites the apostolic admonition: “It is God who works in me, both to will and to work—so I don’t have to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.” 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.

Here, Paul speaks of confidence, saying he is “sure of this.” What is it that provokes this confidence in the Apostle Paul? He doesn’t leave it unnamed. He goes on to say that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Therein lies our confidence and our security: the God who has initiated a person’s salvation is not going to allow that redemptive work to be an exercise in futility. God finishes what He starts in His redemptive work in us by preserving those whom He redeems. That’s where Paul gains his confidence, and I think that should also be the primary basis for our confidence.

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 idea of a carnal Christian in the sense of one who is totally carnal is an oxymoron. There is no totally carnal Christian, just as there is no totally spiritual Christian.

I wish I could point to an easy way to move from infancy in the faith to adulthood. The Apostle Paul speaks of our need to be nourished and nurtured. He also uses the image of babies as requiring a milk diet because they aren’t yet ready to eat solid food. It takes time to reach spiritual maturity. But what’s scary is when we hear of people who have been in the faith for ten years or fifteen years and they’re still drinking milk. That was what was distressing the Apostle here in his letter to the Corinthians. The time for their infancy was long past, and he was calling them now to a solid diet of the things of God, to chewing on the meat of the gospel, which is part of the whole life of persevering in Christ.

Our greatest consolation when it comes to our eternal security comes from the full assurance of the present work of Christ on our behalf. When Jesus died on the cross, He cried out, “It is finished” (John 19:30). His atoning death purchased redemption for His people, but Christ’s redemptive work didn’t end on the cross. After His death, He was raised for our justification. Then He ascended into heaven, where He sat down at the right hand of God. There He rules as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, governing the universe and ruling over His church. All this comes under the heading of the finished work of Christ.