So, as I understand it, your position is that Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 early on, as an example. were never truly saved? I run into that a lot and given the existence of foreknowing and predestination it is a defensible standpoint.
No, I don’t have that thinking at all.
Why would God remove those who are not His?
No, they lied to the Holy Spirit and the church. To demonstrate such was not to be taken as a minor but a huge issue, God took them from enjoyment of what they conspired. Remember the parable of the man who said he was wealthy having his barns full, and God took him that very night? The Lord ask, “then whose shall those things be?”
No, I hold them as saved, but greedy and coveted what they promised to deliver.
What gets me are scriptures like Psalm 51:11, which make me believe an impartial God plays no favorites and takes away the Holy Spirit. I mean, I feel like I still have a choice to commit grave sin like fornication for instance and assuming I do not repent of such before I die, I know I go to hell.
Be careful with OT passages, because the Holy Spirit was taken from some as Saul, and David prayed the Spirit remain.
However, the NT presents that we are “new creation” and as such, God doesn’t waste what he creates.
I will direct you to Romans 8 for the answer to one who dies with unconfessed sin.
1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
2For the law of the Spirit of life has set you
b free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit....
31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be
i against us?
32He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
33Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
34Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
36As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37No,
in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38For I am sure
that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now if you can find an exclusion clause of one who is redeemed being un-redeemed then your a better reader then me.
God both preserves the saints and causes them to persevere no matter.
Do not allow the enemy to implant some thought of despair and doubt concerning this matter.
God gives life, eternal life to believers, and such are not condemned. That is the teaching from John 3.
John also writes that should we sin (and all sin or we make God a liar) that there is that advocacy. For we are His adopted child.
He doesn’t un-adopt the believer.
Paul remarked, “Do we then sin that Grace abound?” No!
That thinking God will forbid, and as the Corinthians found caused some to be taken from them.
