Can a Born-Again Christian Lose Salvation?
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, this is a question we get almost every day via email.
00:00:09.000 | Can a born-again Christian lose his or her salvation?
00:00:14.000 | The answer to that question, biblically, is a resounding, clear, emphatic, joyful, glorious "no."
00:00:23.000 | A born-again person cannot become dead, cannot be unborn again, because--
00:00:32.000 | and I'll give some biblical thinking here, try to be as textual as possible and not just theological.
00:00:41.000 | The life that is imparted in the new birth is precisely eternal life.
00:00:49.000 | This is the testimony that God has given us eternal life.
00:00:54.000 | Has given us, has given us eternal life.
00:00:57.000 | And this life is in His Son, 1 John 5, 11.
00:01:01.000 | So He didn't give us temporary life, He gave us eternal life.
00:01:05.000 | We are already participating in the life of the age to come.
00:01:10.000 | And then here's another crucial word.
00:01:13.000 | Those whom He predestined--this is Romans 8, 30.
00:01:17.000 | Those whom He predestined, He called.
00:01:20.000 | And those whom He called, He justified.
00:01:22.000 | And those whom He justified, He glorified.
00:01:24.000 | Now, glorification is the final state of permanent salvation.
00:01:30.000 | And this verse says that all the called, with nobody dropping out, are justified.
00:01:38.000 | And all the justified, with nobody dropping out, are glorified.
00:01:43.000 | So the question is, if you're called, you cannot lose your salvation.
00:01:50.000 | And I'm going to argue that being called and being born again are identical in biblical categories.
00:01:59.000 | We will be justified, we will be glorified, because we have been called, that is, we have been born again.
00:02:05.000 | The kind of call that Paul is talking about there is the call of Lazarus by Jesus from the grave.
00:02:14.000 | "Lazarus, I know you're dead, now come out."
00:02:18.000 | And the call creates the life.
00:02:21.000 | And that's what happened to everybody who's a Christian.
00:02:24.000 | God's sovereign call created the life.
00:02:29.000 | So that means that there's a promise attaching to the call.
00:02:35.000 | And here's a couple of verses.
00:02:37.000 | 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, "May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely at the coming of the Lord Jesus.
00:02:48.000 | He who calls you is faithful. He will do it."
00:02:55.000 | So the logic there is, if you've been called, God is faithful, you will be kept for the last day.
00:03:02.000 | Or here it is again in 1 Corinthians 1, 8, "Christ will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus.
00:03:10.000 | God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son."
00:03:17.000 | So now you can go back and see why in Romans 8, 30, all the called are justified and all the justified are glorified.
00:03:24.000 | Because God is faithful.
00:03:26.000 | There's nothing automatic.
00:03:27.000 | A lot of people think eternal security is like a vaccination.
00:03:30.000 | Like when I was six, I prayed, "God vaccinated my arm. I can't get the disease of damnation."
00:03:36.000 | That's not the way it is.
00:03:38.000 | Rather, it's more like entering a lifetime therapy with a doctor who says, "You are my patient.
00:03:47.000 | You will do what I say, and I will get you to the end, whole in the last day."
00:03:53.000 | I will make, here's Jeremiah 32, 40, this has got to be one of my favorite all-time yes to my perseverance.
00:04:00.000 | I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them,
00:04:06.000 | and I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me.
00:04:15.000 | So the new covenant that Jesus bought with His blood is a covenant of preservation.
00:04:21.000 | It's not just security in some mechanical way.
00:04:24.000 | It's preservation in an active way.
00:04:26.000 | God is active in my life.
00:04:28.000 | When I ask people, "Tony, how do you know you're going to be a Christian when you wake up in the morning?"
00:04:33.000 | A lot of people are kind of shocked.
00:04:35.000 | Like, "Oh, because, you know, it's like being human."
00:04:38.000 | No, it's not like being human.
00:04:40.000 | You will wake up a Christian tomorrow morning because God is faithful.
00:04:43.000 | God will wake you up and awaken in you His faith.
00:04:50.000 | And a couple more verses.
00:04:52.000 | Philippians 1, 6, "I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion."
00:04:58.000 | The reason Paul talks like that is because of the way God's faithfulness connects to his call, his new birth.
00:05:05.000 | "Now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling."
00:05:08.000 | I preached on this a while back because I was at age 67, just finishing up my pastoral ministry.
00:05:13.000 | I'm overwhelmed by the fact that God kept me.
00:05:16.000 | He kept me.
00:05:17.000 | He didn't let me fall down and bring reproach upon His name and destroy the church.
00:05:22.000 | I don't look back on that and put my thumb in my armpits and say, "What a good boy am I."
00:05:27.000 | I say, "Amazing, amazing."
00:05:29.000 | "Now unto him who kept me and will keep me."
00:05:34.000 | Which only leaves, I think, one key question that people always have and should have.
00:05:40.000 | Well, what about people who are in the church?
00:05:44.000 | They've been deacons or elders.
00:05:47.000 | They look like they got saved in college and here they are five years later and they've thrown it all away.
00:05:53.000 | And some of them die in that condition.
00:05:56.000 | What about them?
00:05:58.000 | And I think there are two key verses that people should think about long and hard.
00:06:04.000 | And one is 1 John 2, 19.
00:06:06.000 | "They went out from us because they were not of us.
00:06:12.000 | For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
00:06:17.000 | But they went out that it may become plain that they were not all of us."
00:06:22.000 | And "of us" in that verse surely means born again with us, grafted into Christ with us.
00:06:32.000 | And they weren't.
00:06:33.000 | They looked like they were.
00:06:35.000 | They said some of the right things.
00:06:37.000 | They had tasted of the powers of the age to come, but they were not born of God.
00:06:42.000 | And one more.
00:06:44.000 | You know, Hebrews 6 is a big stumbling block for people here about the kinds of spiritual experiences a person can have and still be lost.
00:06:55.000 | But Hebrews 3, 14, I think, is an absolute key in the book of Hebrews where it says, "We have become sharers in Christ if we hold our firm confidence to the end."
00:07:13.000 | He doesn't say, "If you hold your confidence firm to the end, you will get a share in Christ."
00:07:22.000 | He says, "We know that we have had from the beginning of our lives with Christ a share in Christ because we endured to the end."
00:07:32.000 | Which means perseverance in faith is the evidence that we've been made part of Christ.
00:07:39.000 | And when that perseverance doesn't hold, then we were never in.
00:07:44.000 | And the assurance, therefore—here's the key—the assurance, therefore, is not automatic.
00:07:50.000 | It's assurance rooted in our confidence in an absolutely sovereign, covenant-keeping God who gave his Son on behalf of sinners,
00:08:00.000 | so that as we look to him, the Holy Spirit testifies to us that we are the children of God.
00:08:08.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:08:10.000 | Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:08:14.000 | At DesiringGod.org, you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper.
00:08:18.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
00:08:20.000 | Tony Reinke, thanks for--
00:08:22.400 | Thanks for watching.