Can We Lose Our Salvation?

7 March, 201531 January, 2018Marissa

The notion that we could lose our salvation is not a popular one among Christians. It is far more comfortable to believe that God will welcome us back with open arms no matter what we do. And yes, we do see that God rejoices over repentant sinners (Luke 15:4-7) and welcomes back prodigal children (Luke 15:11-32). We have all sinned and we’ve all been “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).

But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? (Rom. 5:20-6:2)

Though we are not suddenly incapable of sin once we receive grace, the direction of our lives must be moving away from sin. God’s love covers a multitude of slips and stumbles on our walk with Him, but our hearts must change so we can learn to practice righteousness instead of sinfulness. We could talk about this in theory indefinitely, but let’s go to an example instead.

A Lost Kingdom

We all know about King David, the “man after God’s own heart” who was so faithful that God promised to establish his kingdom forever (1 Kings 9:5), even including him in the genealogy of Messiah (Matt. 1:1). David is an example to a man who sinned, sincerely repented, and received grace so he could continue to walk with God. He was even forgiven for what we think of as Really Big Sins, like committing adultery and then murdering the woman’s husband.

But before David, there was a king who did not measure up. Saul was offered the same promise made to David — that his kingdom would be established forever. He could have been in the line of Messiah. He could have been David, but he lost that opportunity.

And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you. For now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be commander over His people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.” (1 Sam. 13:13-14)

This happened after Saul’s first sin at Gilgal, when he stepped out of line by offering a sacrifice that could only be offered by a priest. On the surface, that doesn’t look as serious as David’s sins, but at it’s core there was a much bigger issue. Saul’s heart was not obedient, and he didn’t change. In fact, he just kept getting worse.

Saul’s second sin at Gilgal was also one of direct disobedience. He was ordered to “utterly destroy” Amalek, but he thought it would be a good idea to spare the king of Amalek’s life and save some of the best livestock. Compounding sin upon sin, Saul insisted that he had “performed the commandment of the Lord” (1 Sam. 15:13). When he was confronted about his disobedience, he kept back-peddling and blaming everyone but himself, insisting he was actually doing what was right because he intended to sacrifice the livestock to God. This is in stark contrast with David’s attitude after being confronted with his sins (2 Sam. 12:7-14; Ps. 51:1-19).

So Samuel said, “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?”

So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.” (1 Sam. 15:17-23)

Saul was rejected because he thought he had a better idea for how to conduct himself than God did. He rejected the leadership of God, and so God said, “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments” (1 Sam. 15:11).

Could that happen to us? could we do something that would make God “regret” choosing us? Are there things we read about in the Bible and rebel against, thinking we could come up with something better than what God commands? How about some of these (just as an example to give us something to think about):

Love your enemies (Matt. 5:43-44)
Don’t seek revenge (Rom. 12:17-19)
Keep the Sabbath (Ex. 20:8-11; Heb. 4:9)
Respect governmental authority (1 Pet. 2:13-16)
Put others before yourself (Phil. 2:3-4)

“I Never Knew You”

Jesus told us that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments (John 14:15). The love comes first — what God is chiefly concerned with is having a relationship with us, like He had with David. But obedience is also essential, and that is something Saul lacked.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. (Heb. 10:23-25)

This is one reason why fellowship and friendship with other believers is so important. We help keep each other on-track and encourage each other to never give up. God gives us these people to help save us.

For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? (Heb. 10:26-29)

Brethren, these are scary scriptures. It’s talking about turning our backs on and actually despising what God has offered us. This is doubly scary when we read Matthew 7:21-23, where Christ says that there will be people who thought they were being faithful but were really “practicing lawlessness.” To them, He will say, “I never knew you; depart from Me.”

Never Let Go

The good news is that this doesn’t have to happen. God is committed to pursuing a real, life-giving relationship with each one of us. He doesn’t just sit around twiddling His thumbs waiting for people to wander towards Him. He is constantly working to develop real relationships that save lives.

The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (2 Pet. 3:9)

God gives us every opportunity to come to Him. We are precious in His sight, and He is pursuing our hearts in the greatest romance ever told (Is. 43:1-7). If we do lose our salvation, it will be because we turned away from Him and walked away, not because He gave up on us.

Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: “For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul. (Heb. 10:35-39)

These are the verses which follow the warning in Hebrews about rejecting Christ’s sacrifice. It’s like the writer is telling us, “Look, you need to know how serious it is to turn away from God. Let that scare you — it should. Now that you know how bad it is to reject the Lord, don’t do it! We’re not that kind of people. We are the ones who can and will continue in the faith with God. Take courage, because the Creator of the whole universe is on your side and He wants you to succeed.”

All I Ask Of You

2 March, 20151 March, 2015Marissa

I’ve been reading Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge (or rather, re-reading, though it’s been 6 or 7 years and I only realized I read it once before when I recognized passages that spoke to my heart the first time). One of the main themes, and the one that left an impression on me from my first reading, is how much God wants me. He truly longs for a relationship with each of us, and it goes far beyond what we often mean when we say “God loves me.” God loves everyone. He has to, right? But when God tells us He loves us, He doesn’t mean an automatic benevolence that happens just because “God is love.” He means a real, passionate desire to be in relationship with you.

To be spiritual is to be in Romance with God. The desire to be romanced lies deep in the heart of every woman. It is for such that you were made. And you are romanced, and ever will be.” – from Captivating

This is speaking directly to women, so perhaps it won’t resonate so much with my guy readers. But God’s longing to be in relationship with us applies to both men and women in His church. Perhaps a glimpse of how being romanced by God looks to a woman will give you gentlemen some insight into what it means when Christ calls the Church His bride.

Almost 10 years ago, I started collecting favorite quotes in a notebook. One of the very first things I wrote down were the lyrics to “All I Ask Of You” from The Phantom of the Opera. On the opposite page, I lined it up with scriptures that spoke about the love between us and Jesus. Years later, I turned that into a video I never shared. For today’s post, I went back and updated that video with a few new scriptures. I think perhaps this is the best way to share what I’m trying to say today. Enjoy 🙂

Feeling After The Lord

7 February, 20156 February, 2015Marissa

It seems that Christians are often suspicious of feelings. And why shouldn’t we be? After all, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). We can’t understand our own hearts, so how can we trust anything they tell us?

I’ve suspected for some time that our feelings may be more important to our relationship with God than some people like to admit, but I wondered if my own tendency to favor intuition and feelings in decision-making was coloring my thinking. Then I noticed a verse in my King James study Bible that talked about people seeking the Lord “if haply they might feel after Him” (Acts. 17:27). When you look at the Greek this doesn’t really havemuch to do with emotions, but it did prompt a more in-depth study about how much we can trust our hearts and feelings.

New Hearts

When we talk about our “hearts” in the Bible, the Hebrew word is lebab (H3824). The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament by Harris, Gleason, and Waltke describes this word as “the richest Biblical term for the totality of man’s inner or immaterial nature.” It refers to someone’s personality, and primarily includes their emotions, thoughts, and will. Any sort of feeling — positive and negative — can be attributed to the heart.

The passage in Jeremiah 17 which tells us our hearts are deceitful and wicked also tells us that the Lord is able to know, search, and try our hearts (Jer. 17:9-10). As the only one Who can really understand what’s going on in our innermost self, God is also able to effect changes inside us at a heart-level.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. (Ezk. 36:26-27)

Our hearts can be changed. They don’t have to stay wicked and untrustworthy. That doesn’t, however, mean we can follow our hearts all the time once we’re in a relationship with God. David walked “in integrity of heart” and God called him “a man after My own heart, who will do all My will” (1 Kings 9:4; Acts 13:22), yet he still sinned by acting on his feelings for Bathsheba.

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. (Prov. 4:23)

Even when God is working with our hearts, we still have an obligation to keep and guard our inner selves. We have the Holy Spirit in us, but we’re also still human. While our gut instincts and feelings are more likely to be right when we’re in covenant with God, we could still be deceived by our hearts.

Reach Out

Let’s go back to that verse I mentioned in Acts. It’s part of Paul’s sermon in Athens.

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ (Acts 17:26-28)

In the Greek, the phrase “grope for” (NKJV) or “feel after” (KJV) is translated from the word pselaphao (G5584). This word is derived from a root that means “to touch lightly,” and here in Acts if means to feel or touch and object. The picture it paints is of us reaching out, searching for God like someone feeling around in the dark to find another person.

By night on my bed I sought the one I love; I sought him, but I did not find him. “I will rise now,” I said, “And go about the city; in the streets and in the squares I will seek the one I love.” I sought him, but I did not find him.” (Song 3:1-2)

Since we’re not going to find God by waving our hands around and reaching for something physically tangible, I imagine this “feeling after” God takes place in our hearts. This brings us right back to the idea of emotions, thoughts, and the immaterial parts of us.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a friend some years ago about what role emotions have in our faith. One of the questions that came up was, “What does the Holy Spirit in us feel like, if it’s not a feeling?” It’s an appeal to probability fallacy to , but it illustrates a point — we instinctively sense that the immaterial part of us will be involved in noticing the immaterial Spirit of God.

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” (John 14:23)

In Acts 17, Paul told those who were “feeling after” God that “He is not far from each one of us.” Here in John, Christ tells us that both He and His Father will dwell with an inside of Their people via the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-18). Talk about being close to someone! We “live and move and have our being” in Them, and They live inside us. That’s the most intimate relationship you’ll ever have with anyone.

For in Him [Jesus] dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. (Col. 2:9-10)

Being in relationship with God makes us complete. He strengthens our weaknesses, makes wise our foolishness, and quiets our anxieties. When we go looking for God and cling tightly to Him, the change He can and will work inside us on a spiritual, emotional, and mental level is astonishing. It transforms us to the core of our being, including our feelings.

God Wants Our Hearts

8 November, 20147 November, 2014Marissa

One of the many points that stood out to me from my study of Hosea was that God is not interested in outward things. A show of being religious does nothing to impress Him. What He’s interested in is the state of our hearts.

O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? O Judah, what shall I do to you? For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew it goes away. (Hos. 6:4)

They did not cry out to Me with their heart when they wailed upon their beds. They assemble together for grain and new wine, they rebel against Me (Hos. 7:14)

This is essentially the same sentiment expressed in Joel — that only genuine repentance is effective. Crying that you’re sorry, and then having all your good intentions evaporate like dew doesn’t count.

“Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm. (Joel 2:12-13)

In order to have a relationship with God, we need to experience a change of heart. Someone can hear about the need for repentance or be scared into it by a trial, and then lose focus when life either takes a turn for the worse or goes smoothly for a while (Matt. 13:18-22). But that’s not a way to have a relationship with God. A relationship requires genuine repentance, understanding, and commitment to following God (Matt. 13:23).

Watching For Purity

After Saul was rejected from serving as king over Israel, God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite as the next king. Jesse had a boatload of sons, but Samuel assumed the first one he met was “surely the Lord’s anointed” based on his impression of how this young man looked. God had a different perspective, though.

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7)

We can be as gorgeous or hideous as all-get-out on the outside and God doesn’t care one bit. He’s not fooled by any shows we put on. Only the Lord “knowest the hearts of all the children of men” (1 Kings 8:39, KJV). People notice if you’re having a bad hair day; God notices if you’re having a bad attitude day. People look at you if you’re pretty; God looks at you if you are humble and in awe of His word (Is. 66:2) He knows us even better than we know ourselves.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. (Jer. 17:9-10)

Our hearts can deceive us, but never God. He understands our thoughts and is acquainted with our mode of living. He hears every word we say, or intend to say (Ps. 139:1-4). And He’s looking for a specific kind of heart, one He can have a relationships with.

So, what does a heart like that look like?

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matt. 5:6)

The word “pure” is katharos (G2513) in the Greek. It means clean or pure an a legal, ceremonial, or spiritual sense. It’s the word Jesus used to refer to His disciples as “clean” after He washed their feet (John 13:10).

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. (Ps. 24:3-5)

Purty is the state God desires in a heart, and it’s clear we don’t get that way on our own. We have to come to God and be changed, so we can have the same kind of pure, meek, and humble heart that Jesus Himself has (Matt 11:29).

Committed Hearts

God has always intended to have a heart-to-heart connection with His people. Way back in the Torah, we see God promising to “circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 30:6). The Old Covenant included physical signs of the Israelites’ participation (like male circumcision), but God’s wok in His peoples’ hearts has always been the priority.

Back in the Old Testament, as we kept seeing in Hosea, God’s desire for a relationship didn’t work out very well with the majority of the people. Individuals had relationships with God (like David, who God described in Acts 13:22 as “a man after My own heart”), but for the most part the people rejected covenant with God. That’s why a New Covenant was needed.

They shall be My people, and I will be their God; then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul. (Jer. 32:38-41)

God promises to change our hearts so that it is possible for us to be in covenant with Him. He wants this relationship so much that He is pouring His whole heart and soul into winning our hearts and souls.

Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord God. (Ezk. 11:19-21)

God’s involvement in shaping our hearts makes a relationship with Him possible, but not mandatory. We still have a choice, and to continue in relationship with God we have to constantly chose to turn our hearts to Him.

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. (Prov. 4:23)

It is Jesus Christ’s sacrifice that cleanses our hearts to make them pure, and it is God’s work in our lives that transforms our hearts so we can know Him. But after that, it is largely up to us.

James 4:8 tells us “purify your hearts.” This is not, however, the same word used in Matthew 5 to refer to a state of cleanness in our hearts, which is a result of Christ’s work in us. This work is hagnizo (G49), and it means to consecrate or purify, as related to committing something for holy use. We need to continually re-commit our hearts and lives for God’s use, choosing to follow Him and have our hearts be made more like His.

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Rom. 10:8-10)