Some thoughts on Perseverance

it is a strong testament to scripture that stubborn people (such as myself) could be convinced of my erroneous position and change my mind. Your comments reflect things I've said in my own life- but how wonderful it is when you discover the truth!

 

Matt 18 shows "forgiveness revoked".

Ezekiel 18 shows "forgiveness revoked"

Hebrews 6 shows "salvation denied"

Galatians 5 shows "falling from Grace"

Genesis 3 shows "falling from eternal life" as does the fall of Lucifer.

And the Bible speaks of our receiving eternal life here by faith and points us to the promise that "in the age to come" - we receive Eternal life.

At the New Birth we enter into eternal life by faith -- but are never (ever) in all of scripture declared to be "immortal" until the 2nd coming (see 1Cor 15).

And this does not even begin to address the many many statements in the NT text about the fact that we are destined for that eternal life "IF we remain faithful" "IF we persevere FIRM UNTIL the end".

(and obviously - to "persevere in staying lost" is not what is being argued. It is argued that we must Persevere IN THE SAVED state)

Every aspect of the argument that once you are saved you can not choose rebellion and the loss of the saved walk with Christ - has been refuted.

The Arminian model stands validated as "the Bible model".

In Christ,

Bob

 

Icthus, very well said. To add to that the Bible refers to salvation as God's, not ours (Revelation 7:10, 19:1), even though we refer to it as ours. How can we lose something that doesn't actually belong to us?

Salvation is also mentioned as our "inheritance" (Ephesians 1:4, Hebrews 9:15, Revelation 21:7). How is it possible to lose an inheritance until you physically receive it? My parents are leaving me an inheritance, but I have to wait until they die to receive it, then I could lose it. We will receive our inheritance once we die, and at that point it will be too late to lose it, thankfully.

 

I have not found that to be true at all.

Further - the principle is not correct. I the Bible few concepts are "exhaustively stated" rather we observe them in the form of their "boundaries". This is how for example we find the truth about the Trinity without actually having "a Trinity" statement.

So as soon as the Bible shows us that "forgiveness revoked is real" it is impossible to argue "OHHH no it is not!".

And then "prop up that argument" by saying I have found some interesting ways to speculate about implications of "other texts" so as to get them to oppose the idea stated clearly AND explicitly in Matt 18, Ezek 18, Heb 6.

In other words you have a "set of texts" whose SUBJECT is the DANGER and REALITY of falling from grace and losing forgiveness.

You have another set of texts that speak to our having "eternal life" but NOT directly addressing the issue of "our being incapable of falling" or "no possibility of forgiveness revoked" - rather we choose to "infer" that idea from the strong statements about "eternal life" and what "that must surely mean". The text (in those specific cases) is never (even remotely) discussing "forgiveness revoked" and declaring it to be "an impossible idea".

The fact that scripture explicitly DEALS WITH the very concept that is MOST DENIED by OSAS - can not be ignored as if "more texts piled on top of it will eventually silence the doctrine".

It just does not work that way.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Notice the method that must be employed to get this text to perfectly contradict Christ's illustration in Matt 18?

It is to "see how much we can infer" from the explict teaching on our assurance and security in Christ. If we have eternal life does that mean we lost our ability to choose and that forgiveness revoked is no longer a valid concept? (an extreme inference at a level that some would like to extract from this text ) -- or IS the EXPLICIT focus of the text on the reality of the gift AND NOT addressing AT ALL our loss of free will OR the ability to choose rebellion OR the consequence of failing to endure (i.e. all the other subjects EXPLICITLY addressed in scripture).

When the text is bent to say "more than it actually does" then it is no wonder that this can be made to oppose even the "explicit" texts that actually deal with the subject that "inserted" into texts on eternal life.

The principle I am describing here gets used on a great many subjects not just the denial of perseverance and the need to warn people about "remaining faithful to the end".

THink about it - how often does Christ use the argument "IF you don't forgive neither will my Father forgive you"? How can that be a valid argument ONCE a person is saved -- if you ever talk yourself into loading up the "eternal life" texts with all the inference material that people seek to pile in there?

In Christ,

Bob

 

It is a circular argument. The saints are those who persevere.

 

Rev 14:12

Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.

 

When you affirm one side of this question, you have to deal with the other side's verses.

Building a case for either side is a snap; a high-school-age preacher boy could rattle the verses off in his sleep. I think that the real question is how satisfactorily you can deal with the other side's verses.

In my own experience, I found that I could affirm one position--let's call it Position One--and easily explain the other side's verses with a little study and rethinking. On the other hand, I found that affirming Position Two and trying to deal with Position One's verses was much more difficult. I had to mangle them all out of shape to make them fit in with Position Two.

So now I boldly, unashamedly proclaim my adherence to Position One, and I encourage the rest of you to do likewise.

 

Been there. Done that.

But instead of finding Bible-vs-antiBible what I found was "agreement" when taking all the texts as boundary conditions where ALL have to be true. It works if you don't force one text to say MORE than it actually says.

I notice that the OSAS guys get stuck in pushing their texts right off a cliff - inferring far more than the text actually explicitly addresses - only to find themselves in the direct path of an oncoming text from "the other side".

They could avoid the problem if they did not eisegete so much.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Nah, I got 450 years of history that says it wouldn't help a bit.

 

Bob, I agree that your approach is very helpful. It may be another way of saying the same thing I said.

It is truly a mystery to me that people can disagree over doctrine, even though they show every evidence of intelligence, education, good will, and spiritual anointing. I'm tempted to say that God doesn't want us all to agree, lest we unite into an unweildy bureaucracy. But that theory of mine would make God the author of confusion, so I'm trying to come up with a modified version of it before I die.

But if I have to go to Heaven to find out, I'll see if I can't get word back and explain it to where y'all can quit disagreeing over it.

 

God makes a point of emphasizing "unity" and not division in the NT. So I would argue that the differences in doctrine between Christians are not "of God" at all.

In 1Tim 1 we see that "doctrinal error" was springing up like weeds in the church at Ephesus and this was the reason for leaving Timothy at that church. That error was not "of God" either, but it demonstrates the human tendancy to introduce error into a pristine error-free system.

As to why people are drawn to error - It has a lot to do with bias, and pride and man-made-tradition and the way that it clouds objective Bible study in this realm of sinful humanity.

I find it very interesting that even when confronted with such a devastating case against one's own tradition where "no answer is even possible" - yet STILL I see people "cling to tradition anyway"...

It is the human condition.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Thank God those things aren't true about me!

(I'll pray for those of you who are in error.)

 

I think scripture cautions us to let others persist in their "weaker" opinions and still tolerate them, in order to preserve unity. So those of you who believe you can lose your salvation go right on letting that fear keep you saved and those of us who believe we prove we were really saved by perservering will prove we are really saved by perservering.

Hmmm. If it weren't for the spin you put on the resulting action, how could you possibly tell the difference between the two approaches?

Self, be quiet, next thing you'll be saying is the whole thing is much ado about nothing.

 

If it were not possible to lose one's salvation:

Why are there so many WARNINGS in scripture about it happening.

Why is there so much emphasis on Perseverence?

Why are we commanded to "keep the faith, baby"?

 

Matt 18 must have been spoken by a "weaker Jesus" who actually believed and taught "Forgiveness revoked".

I guess this is true of the Holy Spirit in Ezek 18 as well - as it teaches "forgiveness revoked".

And then there is Heb 6:1-8 and all the others.

That "weaker Holy Spirit" gets around - eh?

There is no Bible basis for saying that God is the author of "weaker doctrine" - though some "like to see it that way".

In Christ,

Bob