I believe that salvation is eternal in the fact that the price was paid through the Blood of Jesus. I believe that God has given man a free will to choose to serve him or not serve him.
I don't believe a person will lose their salvation just because they fail, make mistakes, commits a sin etc with a repentant heart. I also believe that no man can take another persons salvation away from them, yet what happened to the Christians who were brought before Rome and when their life was threatened with martyrdom they denounced Christ. Are we going to say they were still saved? If we do say this then how do we justify the fact that during the end time when
the Anti-Christ wars against the Saints and prevails and many accept the mark the Bible says they will be lost. This is why I have a hard time believing eternal security the way many teach it.
I do believe people get cold and people stray but the majority of them still have a small flame that Jesus said he will not quench. I believe God see the hearts of these people and knows the time of weakness in their hearts but the ones that backslide back into the world and into deep sin with no thought of God and does not have a repentant heart will be lost.
Paul wrote the following:
But some of these branches from Abraham's trees, some of the Jews, have been broken off. And you Gentiles who were branches from a wild olive tree, were grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in God's rich nourishment of his special olive tree. But you must be careful
not to brag about being grafted in to replace the branches that were broken off. Remember, you are just a branch, not the root.
Well, you may say, those brancehs were broken off to make room for me.
Yes, but remember those branches, the Jews, were broken off because they didn't believe God, and you are there because you do believe. Don't think highly of yourself, but FEAR WHAT COULD HAPPEN. FOR IF GOD DID NOT SPARE THE BRANCHES HE PUT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, HE WON'T SPARE YOU EITHER.
NOTICE HOW GOD IS BOTH KIND AND SEVERE. HE IS SEVERE TO THOSE WHO DISOBEYED BUT KIND TO YOU AS YOU CONTINUE TO TRUST IN HIS KINDNESS. BUT IF YOU STOP TRUSTING, YOU ALSO WILL BE CUT OFF.
Romans 11:17-22.
This writing by Paul makes it very clear that these Roman believers or the Gentile believers if they quit trusting in God or Christ they would be cut off. This does not sound like Once Saved Always Saved to me in the light that people talk about. These were believers Paul was talking to and he said to these believers that they needed to fear what could happen to them if they stopped believing.
James wrote: My dear brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back again, you can be sure that the one who brings that person back will save that SINNER FROM DEATH and bring about the forgiveness of many sins. The death James speaks of is spiritual death not physical death.
Peter wrote speaking of people who become false teachers that they wandered off the right road to the road of sin and it would have been better if they had never known the right way to live than to know it and then reject the holy commandments that were given them. If the wandering held no consequences then why did Peter state it would have been better if they had never heard the gospel.
The Apostle John wrote in 1 John 1 that if you do the will of God you will live forever. To me it would seem that if you did not the will of God you would not live forever and what was the will of God showing we belonged to him? John wrote that we obey his commandments.
I hear the scripture used by John that states"These people left our churches because they never really belonged with us, otherwise they would have stayed with us," but if you read the first part of the scripture John was calling these people Anti-Christ and later he said they were Anti-Christ because they denied the Father and the son. They never believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. They never accepted Jesus.
They came to meetings to cause trouble. Peter in his writings spoke of the same group of people.
John was not addressing people who drift away.
John also went on to say, "so you must remain faithful to what you have been taught from the beginning, IF YOU DO, you will continue to live in fellowship with the Son and with the Father, and in this fellowship we enjoy the eternal life he promised us. I think this makes it clear that if we are in fellowship with the Father and son we have eternal life but if not we don't.
I also know that people use what John stated that God's son holds them securely and the evil one cannot get to them to teach eternal security but John was teaching that if we are in Jesus he holds us securely. If we do not live a life of sin he holds us securely.
In 2 John he wrote: "For if you wander beyond the teaching of Christ, you will not have fellowship with God. But if you continue in the teaching of Christ, then you will have fellowship with both the Father and the son which coincides with his teaching in 1 John that this fellowship gives us eternal life. So again if we are not in fellowship with God we do not have eternal life.
We say that God who cut off the true vine Israel for turning away from him and the God who punished angels for turning away from him is not going to do the same to believers who turn away from him. The Bible say he is the Lord and he changeth not.
Jesus in the Book of Revelations said that if anyone adds to or takes away from the prophecy of the Book of Revelation that person will lose their share in the tree of life and the City of God. He was talking to believers.
When Jesus said that no man could remove believers out of his hand it is simple to understand that he was stating that no outside force could take away a believer's salvation. Not man, woman, child, teenager, governments, or Satan himself. No outside force could remove them. Yet, I believe that if a believer turns and rejects Christ and turns back to a unrepentant life of sin he removes himself from Jesus' protection. It isn't God taking away the person's salvation it is that person rejecting God's salvation. God would not be the culprit but the person would cause their own loss of salvation.
As far as sonship goes a son can be punished by a Father. It does not keep him from being a son.
Under the law if a son was rebellious the Father had to stone him to death. The father became the judge, the jury and the executioner. Did this punishment do away with the fact that this was his son? No! The punishment was death. So if God the Father because of one of his sons rebellion against him would cast him into Hell which is the second death, this would not remove his sonship.
I know people will rise up and say that their loving God would not send one of his children to Hell but that is bordering on the same dogma that people say that their loving God would never send anyone to a Hell to try and dismiss any belief in eternal punishment. Paul made it clear that we the clay have no right to argue with God about what God chooses to do. That we have no rights to question if God would openly choose one over the other. God in his sovereignty can do as he chooses and man can say it is unfair all he wants to but it changes nothing.
