Can You Fall off the Stairway to Heaven?

       I have a few questions to ask you this morning. 

       Why do we sing "Rock a bye baby" to put little ones to sleep when the song is about putting your baby in a tree and letting the wind crash the cradle to the ground?

       Do the Alphabet Song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?   

       Why did you just try singing them in your head?

       How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated and not just murdered? 

       It’s only fair that I get to ask you a few hard questions since you’ve asked me some real zingers.  Last fall I asked you to write down questions about the Christian faith for the sermon and small group series during Lent.  That seemed like a great idea last September. 

       But now it’s Lent.  We have to make good on the brash promise of the fall.

       So let’s see what we have.

          (take questions off wall hangers and read)

       Those are good questions.  Is it possible for a Christian to lose his or her salvation?

       There seem to be four reasons people ask this question.      

       First, we've all known people we've wondered about. I remember a girl up in Concord who was heavily into drugs. At one time she had been very active in the church but as she looked back she called that her "Jesus freak stage" -- something she had outgrown like an old pair of shoes.  Or, high schoolers and junior highs, how about that guy who goes forward at camp and makes a big public profession of faith and gets lots of hugs -- and then comes back and raises hell at the high school as if camp never happened?  Is he saved because he said some words that aren’t backed up by his life? 

       If James is right that our faith is shown by our works, then shouldn’t there be at least some evidence of change in people’s lives.  I’m not talking about a strict judgmentalism.  But shouldn’t there be some evidence?  Sometime? 

       Second, we want to be sure that God is fair.  We want to know that that the guy who goes forward at camp to profess faith in Jesus and then lives a degenerate life doesn’t get the exact same reward as a Mother Theresa.

       Third, we are concerned about others – maybe a parent, maybe a child.  Maybe we have children who professed faith and maybe joined this church – but who have moved away and no longer attend.  We want to be sure that our loved ones will be in heaven with us, no matter what.

        Or maybe we wonder about ourselves – “Have I finally blown it badly enough for God to give up on me?”  The quick answer to that one is that if you can care about the answer, you haven’t.

       This issue raises a lot of difficulty for some people. They point at example after example of people who, in their opinion, have decisively fallen away from the faith. It does not seem right to them that God should continue to number them among His people.

       On the other hand, there are those who seem to fall away from the new life in Jesus Christ.  But they may be our own children or maybe our parents.  We desperately want God to still count them as His own. So this becomes a very personal question.

       Is it possible for a Christian to lose his or her salvation?  It's not a question "out there." It's a question "in here. The answer we give goes to the heart of our joy and our security as Christ’s people.  Is the motivation of our Christian lives the fear of Jesus Christ?  Is it guilt?  Or is our motivation gratitude and thankfulness for what He has done for us?

       This issue, which is formally known as "eternal security" is the major historic point of disagreement between the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church  -- although it is not something we sit around and argue about very often.

       The Methodist Church, as it was founded by John Wesley, holds the belief that it is possible for a Christian to fall so far into sin as to lose his or her salvation. This belief is called Arminianism from a Dutch Theologian named Jacob Arminius.

       One of Wesley' support verses for his belief is Philippians 2:12 where Paul writes: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Wesley interpreted this to mean that we can lose our salvation if we don't watch our step -- if we don't continue to grow toward what he called "perfection." I had a Nazarene Pastor, who comes out of the same perfectionist tradition; tell me that a Christian who dies with unconfessed sin in his or her life is lost -- that you are only as secure as your last confession and its completeness.  That’s quite extreme even for a Nazarene.  

       The churches in the tradition of John Calvin however, including our own Presbyterian Church, would interpret Philippians 2:12 as saying that our salvation is something we already have -- as other scriptures say -- but that we were bought with a price and should never treat the gift of God lightly.  “You have salvation but value it.  Be careful what you do with it.”

       There is evidence on both sides.  Neither Wesley nor Calvin was stupid or looking to be unbiblical. 

       There are verses about the need for Christians to stand fast to the end.  But there are also verses about the Lord being able to make His people stand.  

       So who is right, Calvin or Wesley?

       Before we can answer that question, we first need to define salvation.

       Salvation is not sitting in the church. A person doesn't become a Christian by sitting in the church any more than a mouse becomes a cookie by sitting in the cookie jar. Something else has to happen. Salvation is also not just a verbal assent to a system of belief. In the Godfather movies, Michael Corleone professes his faith in Father, Son and Holy Spirit and renounces the works of Satan at the exact moment his men are committing the multiple murders he had ordered.   That’s not salvation.  It’s hypocrisy. 

        Salvation doesn't come from sitting is a church or even from repeating a creed. Salvation comes both by a commitment of the mind -- the will -- and a commitment of the heart. As Paul writes in Romans 10:9: "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For a person believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with the lips and so is saved."  

       Before we can answer the question we also need to grasp what the Bible says is the result of faith.  When we come to faith we enter a relationship. We don’t enter a contract with God. We experience a spiritual makeover.

       A person with saving faith is actually made a new creation.  That’s what the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5.  They are born anew by the Spirit of God.  They are given the Holy Spirit as a seal of God’s presence and promise.  They don’t have to wait or hope for eternal life.  They already have it.  In the words of Colossians 1, “God has transferred them out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of His Son.”

        Now the questions.  If you are born again, can you be unborn again?   If you are sealed in the Spirit, can you be unsealed in the Spirit? Can you be made back into an old creation?   Can you be transferred back to Satan?”

       Wait!  There’s more!  

       What does it mean to be born again as a son or daughter of God?  Are we truly, as Romans 8 tells us, God's sons and daughters through adoption -- joint heirs with Jesus Christ Himself'?

Or are we really God's probationary employees -- watching our step for fear of getting canned?  If we are part of the family, is it possible for a true believer to fall so far as to be actually removed from the family -- unborn again by some sort of a retroactive spiritual abortion?  And if they fall away can they then come back and be born again again?

       Good questions.  What’s the answer?

       Well the person best qualified to speak to this is Jesus. And in John 10:26-30 Jesus tells the Jewish leaders:  "You do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

       Randy Alcorn in his Eternal Perspectives blog points out the impact of what Jesus says here.  He writes:  “In verse 28  Jesus ‘makes three statements which each seem unmistakable in their intent: ‘I give them eternal life’ (what can be lost and ended cannot be eternal life); ‘and they shall never perish’ (‘shall not perish’ would have been very strong; ‘shall never perish’ leaves no room for ambiguity); ‘no one can snatch them out of my hand’ ("no one" means no person, whether human or demonic; Jesus does not cite the person themselves as an exception, and since the Christian himself is a "one," he does not have the ability to snatch himself out of the Father's hand.) Jesus does not qualify the later statement by saying "of course he can always jump from the Father's hand."  Alcorn points out that “any one of the three statements is strong, but cumulatively they are overwhelming.”

        The big problem with the Arminian position is that it really makes salvation up to us.  If we can lose our salvation, we can also keep it by not doing whatever it takes to lose it. This makes it at least partially dependent on our performance – but the Bible say’s it’s not. 

        I like the way the New Living Translation handles Ephesians 2:8-19:  “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.  Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.  For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”

       Is salvation a 50/50 proposition? Is it 10% us and 90% God? 10% God and 90% us?  The Bible is clear that salvation is not earned, it's not a reward—it's a gift, given only by Christ, not earned by us. 

       But what about out questions from the congregation?  What do we make of those who no longer walk with God?   What about the person who once upon a time "confessed Jesus is Lord and used to believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead,” but doesn’t much think about that or do anything with that?  Are they saved?   

       Well, there are two real possibilities.

       The first possibility is that we are dealing with people who were never truly Christians --  who gave lip service without the intention of the heart. We're not talking about any security for them. There is a clear biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints but there is no doctrine of the perseverance of the “aints.” And there are some in the church who aint Christian. Jesus makes that clear in His parable of the Wheat and the Tares.  There Jesus warns us that there will be people who seem to be part of the church who are not Christians at all.   There are also some who seem to show great initial growth in their Christian lives but have no roots.  Jesus talks about this in His Parable of the Sower. 

         The second possibility is a person who has experienced the renewing of God's Spirit -- whose faith was at one time of the heart and of the will and not just of the mouth -- but who, through a variety of reasons, has pulled away from the Christian life and maybe even denied the reality of what he or she had experienced earlier. What about this person?

        Well in the third chapter of 1st Corinthians, Paul gives us an insight: "No one, "Paul writes beginning in verse 11, "can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Paul is saying here that we can't expect to build our Christian life on good works, humanism or any worldly philosophy. The foundation has to be Jesus.

        Paul then continues in verse 12: "Now if any person build upon the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each person's work will become evident; for the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire; and the fire itself will test the quality of each person's work. If anyone's work which he built upon it remains, he shall receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire."

         The person Paul is describing here, the one whose work is burned up is the one who has taken a genuine foundation of the Christian life and built upon it with inferior materials -- or maybe even covered it with a pile of garbage.

       What happens to you if you do that?

       You will be saved, Paul says, because of the foundation of the cross.

       On this basis, the belief of the Presbyterian Church is "once saved, always saved." As the Westminster Confession of Faith declares: "They whom God has accepted in His Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved."

        As J. I. Packer writes in Knowing God: "What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it -- that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters. There is unspeakable comfort in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.” 

       Now comes the main point.  Packer continues:   “There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me."

        The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints really needs to be renamed. It is actually the doctrine of the perseverance of God with the saints. Our confidence is not in our love for God, which is faint, fickle and faltering, but in His love for us which is steadfast, faithful and persevering. The key for my hope is not how well I hold on to God but how well God holds on to me. God’s love will never let us go because it is committed to bringing us safe home in the end.

       You will be saved, Paul says.  But he then goes on to say that it will be with the smell of smoke on your clothes. If you build poorly on the foundation you will come to stand before the judgment seat of Christ with the knowledge that you have simply wasted much of your life -- a life you were called to live according to the will of God and in the abundance of God. The person whose work stands the test will receive a reward. But if you build with inferior materials, you will miss some of the rewards – the opportunities we will have for service in addition to salvation.   Jesus talks about this in the Parable of the Talents.  Check it out on our web site.

        Paul and Jesus both make it clear that there are eternal consequences to our actions.  It matters how a person lives.  There needs to be fruit in a Christian's life.  It is not enough just to have prayed a prayer, repeated some words from a booklet, or walked up an aisle.  God calls you to much more.

       As a Christian you have a secure anchor in Christ.  Ephesians 2 says that we are saved by grace through faith.  But Ephesians then goes on to tell us that we are saved for good words.  There is a goal to our salvation.

       What is your life going to be built on? What is your life going to count for? Those are the questions. Every one of us here is investing his or her life in something. You cannot live without making an investment. What is it in? Will it be permanent? Will it stand the test? In the great day when all the universe sees things the way they are, will you be filled with joy that your life was invested in what stood the test and contributed to the glory of the Lord Himself? Or will you be ashamed that you wasted all these years making an impression on people and teaching and influencing others to do so, and it was all burned up in the fire -- saved, but as though you had to run through the flames, gasping for air?

       I know there are people who do not like this kind of preaching. They say we ought to all preach the grace of God.  KGRACE -- “all grace, all the time.” But the Scriptures teach us that our beliefs and our behaviors matter. Are our lives going to be lived on the basis of gold, silver and precious stones, growing out of that revelation of God in the cross of Christ? Or will our lives reflect the empty, vain philosophies and speculations of the world around so that we live only for pleasure, fame and power instead of being an instrument of the living God?

       I firmly believe in the eternal security of the believer. I don’t believe it because I’m a Presbyterian.  I am a Presbyterian, at least in part, because I believe that the Presbyterian Church teaches what the Bible says. 

       I also believe that it is not presumptuous for you to say, "I’m saved and I know it." You should know it. 1 John 5:13 says that we can know that we have eternal life – not that we might eventually receive it.  I will be glad to discuss this question with any of you any place, any time because it is so important for the joy and freedom of your Christian life.

        But at the same time, I must also point out again that this is no excuse for laziness. If you think "well I'm saved so I don't have to do anything about it or I can live any way I want," I encourage you to evaluate whether you have ever come to true saving faith. Because it's not the attitude a person with a genuine walk with Jesus Christ should have. If you think that way, there may be a connection loose. I’d be glad to talk with you about that as well and help you get hooked up right.   Paul tells us in Ephesians that we are not saved by good works. But we are saved for good works. The purpose of the vine is to bear fruit. Let’s not forget it.

     It matters what you believe. It also matters how you live what you believe.  It matters to your confidence. It matters to your joy. It matters to your future. It matters to the people here around you right now.  It matters to the world.  It matters to your God.