The fear of losing God's forgiveness

The privelige of Sustaining Grace for those who are obedient to Christ, yet suffer or die a martyr's death.

How many of us will gladly go to our deaths at the stake without the assurance of our eternal salvation?

The fear of losing that which God has wrought in eternity and revealed in our hearts is the doctrine taught by those who know little of the work of Grace Christ fulfilled at Calvary; and further is a means to keep in the ranks and supplying support for the church those who are not called by the Spirit nor led of the Spirit to love the ministry nor the church, such that they must be held in place by fear as well as coerced to support the ministry through fear or promise of future blessing.

Bro. Dallas Eaton

 

In keeping with the title of this topic "the fear of losing God's forgiveness" I have the following question.

How can one lose what one does not have?

You see, the only way one can lose God's forgiveness is to fail to confess one's transgressions to God. God does not arbitrarily forgive those who do not confess what needs forgiveness. The atonement of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world does not equal forgiveness! The atonement is equal to payment for sins, not forgiveness. That which is paid for is no longer held against the one who committed the sin. However that is not forgiveness because the one who sinned has not confessed the sin and therefore remains unforgiven.

Once forgiveness for the confessed transgression has been given by God, He does not remove that forgiveness, so you cannot lose forgiveness given. The transgression that was confessed and forgiven is not held against the transgressor.

If one does not repent from transgressing, then each transgression is a new event that requires confession in order to be forgiven by God. That is why the Apostle John says in 1 John 1:9 "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness"

No, you cannot lose God's forgiveness already given, but if you do not confess your sins, they will not be forgiven.

 

Hi brother Bill;
I've often wondered about the same things and every once in a while have lost sleep over such things. Thinking that since I remembered the incident was I holding on to it. Had I really forgiven them since I remembered.

Maybe having your sin put back on you is possible, but I don't understand how it could be.

When I was saved and had grown a little I realized that my whole life had changed. I'm not saying that I'm perfect but if someone ask me to forgive them, it's a huge tug on my heart. There has been a few times that it actually hurt in a way. Maybe because I was ready to hold a grudge and even wanted to. When they asked me to forgive, I knew I had to forgive. I just couldn't refuse. If I had, the grudge that I would have held, would have destroyed me.

If one could loose there salvation then at what point would you loose it? People have done wrong things to me and sometimes it actually took a while to forgive them. So would you be lost again right away? or would God give you time to make up your mind about forgivness. Somethings that have happened in my life hurt so much that I had to get on my knees and ask God to give me the strength to forgive.

What about the ones who don't ask?. Are we allowed to not forgive the ones who don't ask? Somehow I don't think so because we don't always ask. Sometimes we forget about the things we do. Does God for give the sins we forget about? I think He does when we forgive the ones who don't ask.

Bottom line; The world hates us because to them to be Christian is to be Christ like. What the world doesn't know is none of us are Christ like yet,but we are learning to be. We desire to be. Someday we will be.
May God bless you.

Mike