Opinion column

Can you ever lose your salvation?

Regular columnist James Knight takes a look at the age-old question of whether our salvation is permanent once we are saved.

A long-standing question debated in Christianity is whether someone, once saved, can ever lose their salvation? I feel fairly convinced that the answer is no, we can’t lose our salvation.
 
Here’s why: I believe that the power of having the Holy Spirit gives us a certainty of a relationship with God from which, once we know it, we can never go back. In other words, if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and saviour, and as a consequence you have the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:31; Ephesians1:13–14, Ephesians 2:8–9) the Holy Spirit will never leave or forsake you, and you will not be able to be anything other than a Christian.
 
A Christian is someone who has accepted that they have been saved by the free gift of grace - they are now a ‘new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). We cannot be separated from God’s love once we are saved (Romans 8:38–39), nor can we be taken from God’s hand (John 10:28–29), and in Christ we are kept from falling (Jude 24–25).
 
The Bible, coupled with my own experience, seems fairly clear to me that we cannot lose our salvation. But yet I’m sure many of us know people who used to call themselves ‘Christian’ but who have walked away from the faith, and claim to no longer believe.
 
If I’m right that a Christian cannot lose their salvation, then this leaves only two possibilities:
1) They were never a Christian in the first place, or
2) They still are a Christian and haven’t really walked away.
 
With regard to the first group, St. John seems to confirm this is true for some people, when in 1 John 2:19 he says of dubious believers “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us”. That’s about as comprehensive as it gets. And I think we see this quite a lot in the modern era regarding those who have walked away. It’s quite possible, it seems, to claim to be a Christian, to be active in church, to say some of the things Christians say, and act out a faith that resembles belief in Christ, but yet not be a Christian ‘new creation’ who accepts Jesus as his Lord and Saviour.
 
With regard to the second group, it is also possible, I think, that many people who seem to have walked away from the faith were, and are, actually Christians, who are going through a tough time in their faith, and will return to the fold when the time is right.
 
Of course, it should go without saying, that I’m making no personal judgements on either group – only God knows their heart. But I think the likelihood that we cannot lose our salvation leaves us Christians with two important considerations:
 
One is how much we should rejoice in the fact that God has guaranteed our salvation, based on His grace and love for us, and that that guarantee is a perfect springboard from which we can go on to fulfil our potential in Him.
 
And the second is that, when we meet people who appear to have fallen away from the faith, whichever of the two above groups they are in, there is plenty for us to do in being good witnesses. If they never did know Christ, then we have the opportunity to help them see how amazing it is to be in a relationship with Him. And if they do know Christ, but have temporarily stumbled, then we have an opportunity to help them get back on their feet in their walk with God. Either way, I’m fairly sure that nobody has ever been a Christian and then lost their salvation.

The image is courtesy of pixabay.com

James Knight is a local government officer based in Norwich, and is a regular columnist for Christian community websites Network Norfolk and Network Ipswich. He also blogs regularly as ‘The Philosophical Muser’, and contributes articles to UK think tanks The Adam Smith Institute and The Institute of Economic Affairs, as well as the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). 

The views carried here are those of the author, not necessarily those of Network Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users.