Hi! I recently discovered your web pages. I have enjoyed your articles and resources, but I had a question. From reading your statement of faith, I am going to guess that you don't believe a Christian can lose their salvation. I was wondering why you believe this. Thanks.
Hey, there! Thanks for the question. I have only come to this conviction about 8 years ago now. Prior to this, from nearly the moment I got saved 18 years ago, I had sadly believed that a Christian could actually lose their salvation. I have since come to believe that this belief in "eternal insecurity" is at the root of most false doctrines and has caused much harm.
Essentially, when you believe that a believer can lose their salvation, you are believing that while we may be saved by grace through faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-10), we are kept saved by our own good works. That is not consistent with the teaching of the whole counsel of Scripture.
This starts you on a vicious cycle, where you promise God to do better, then you work really really hard in your own power (or maybe even in God's power), but when you eventually fail again (as those of us with sin natures are prone to do), you walk away feeling ashamed, unworthy, unloved of God, those verses about people who do "such things" having their part in the lake of fire, and it takes you some time to even come back to the point of speaking with God again. As you walk through your Christian life, you live in fear of a God who walks tall and carries a big stick, ready to whack you over the head for every failure. Yours is an abusive father who disowns you then readopts you for ever infraction (or maybe just the "big infractions"). Paul himself discussed this issue, at length, in Romans 7. Actually, to get the "big picture" start reading in Romans 6 and continue on to Romans 8...as Paul leads us through being dead to sin, dealing with sin in our lives, and then walking in the Spirit.
Some of this may be upbringing, and offers a serious reason for self-examination for me as a momma--showing my children unconditional love while still chastening for wrong behavior. Loving on them unconditionally. Not rejecting them as a person or rejecting them from being my child when they do something stupid, wrong, sinful, etc. I heard in the store a few months ago some mom tell her daughter that if her daughter was going to do that then she didn't love her anymore. I wanted to slap the mom (I didn't. LOL). Some kids are more sensitive to this than others...sometimes you may not mean for it to be taken that way, but it is. I grew up thinking I wasn't loved even when I was told "I love you"...the thing was I didn't feel accepted...and for a long time in my Christian walk, I was trying out different things to make me feel more accepted by God (leading to legalism, false doctrines, participation in "christianized" cults, etc.) So, for some, depending on how you were raised, it may be hard to feel and experience the unconditional love of God, and we work to earn our heavenly father's approval, yet always feeling rejected when we don't meet some perceived criteria.
We, better than anyone else, know the sinfulness and wickedness in our hearts, and how very unworthy we at times may feel of this thing that Christ has done for us--taking our sin (past present and future) upon Him at the Cross. And so the part of us that wants equity, and wants justice screams out about how UNFAIR this arrangement is...we feel like we need to do something more...saved by grace through faith is just too easy.
Maybe, too, this is more true if, saved as an adult or in your later teen years, you now bear in your body and soul the bitter fruits of your life before Christ. I know I do. :( I have health issues that can be traced back to the excesses of the life of a pre-Christian on a secular college campus. As these health issues (and related emotional/spiritual issues) occasionally rear their ugly heads in my life 18 years later, I am reminded again, afresh, of what manner of life Christ saved me from. There have been times when I would feel so unworthy of His love, and feel the need to compensate for that feeling by working harder, or beating myself up even more for what could be considered a small mistake (compared to past sins, anyway)...but when you come to really understand Christ's love, and His grace, you realize that His love is unconditional, and when we are motivated by His unconditional love for us, vs. our guilty feelings of unworthiness, we tend to be better Christians, and we are even able to make peace with ourselves.
When I walk in God's love, I tell others about Jesus because I want them to know His love too. There have been times when I was telling others about Jesus because I read in the Bible that if we don't bear much fruit we are none of His, and I wanted to be His, so I went out and tried to "appease the angry god" so to speak by telling others...then feeling like a failure when this effort proved ineffective. I could use a similar analogy for every area of the Christian life.
When I have talked to others about Christ through personal evangelism, there is a huge (HUGE!!!) segment of the population who "tried Christianity" but it didn't "work for them" or they "couldn't live that life" or whatever other one of a thousand variations they may use. Press further, dig deeper, they couldn't take the cycle of guilt, repentance, work hard till you drop and screw up again, then guilt again...and on and on it goes. That's not salvation by grace. That's getting in the door by Christ's blood but some how thinking we keep ourselves in the kingdom in our own abilities to adhere to Christian principles or stick with a Christian lifestyle.
How many prodigals are that way because they came to the realization that they "couldn't live this life" but instead of falling on God's grace, they instead turned from the One who could help them, thinking He rejects them when they fail?
But, what about those verses that talk about people going to hell as a result of this sin or that one, you may ask? More on that in the next post. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment