Once saved always saved? Er, Yes and No

God chose us in him before the creation of the world… In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ… Ephesians 1:4-5

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. Hebrews 6:4-6

The service had just ended and my friend turned to me and asked, pretty much out of the blue, “Where do you stand on the ‘once-saved-always-saved’ question?”

It rather took me aback because it didn’t seem to relate very closely to anything in the service. But I didn’t know him very well so, as they say, hey-ho. In case you’re a bit puzzled by the question, basically what he wanted to know my opinion about was: Is it possible for a person who has truly trusted in Jesus for salvation to lose that salvation? Or are we eternally secure even if we fall away from Christ?

It took me back to my early days as a teenage Christian, when we used to have long, earnest discussions about it, as we did also about matters like election and predestination, or the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or the second coming. Those days are long-gone, and it surprised me that here was someone for whom it was obviously a live issue.

For me, the question boils down to a recognition that the Bible contains strands and themes which seem to contradict one another, or which, at least, are extremely hard to reconcile with one another. Questions to which one is sorely tempted to reply “Er, Yes - and No”.

Take predestination, which means God deciding from all eternity what is going to happen in history – including who is going to be saved. It has a bearing on this theme.

It’s certainly taught in scripture. Ephesians 1:4-5, for example, tells us that God “chose us in Christ before the creation of the world… In love he predestined us…”. Verse 11 tells us that we have “been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything according to the purpose of his will…”. Such verses sound pretty clear; so if indeed God has, so to speak, selected in advance those who are to be his children, it’s hard to imagine that any such person can be finally lost. Can the eternal purposes of God himself be so easily thwarted? Surely not! God is utterly in control! (Romans 8:29-30 is a similar classic text.)

But, on the other hand, the simple call of the gospel (“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved…”, Acts 16:31), clearly implies that all of us, as individuals, have to make a decision to believe, which can only mean exercising our power of choice. And that power of choice presumably is not cancelled out once the gift of salvation has been granted. Paul, in Galatians 5:4, plainly tells his readers that “you have fallen away from grace”. And the writer to the Hebrews states explicitly that if a believer has “fallen away” (he seems to assume that it can happen) then “it is impossible” for them to be restored (Hebrews 6:4-6). That’s pretty severe stuff! His approach seems to turn the debate on its head - not that it is impossible for us to fall away, but that if or when we do, it is impossible for us to come back.

How can we reconcile such passages?

The answer is simple: we can’t, and we shouldn’t try. What we need to grasp is that the Bible is not a text book of pre-packaged doctrine, where everything is cut and dried. Different books were written in different historic contexts and for different reasons; it’s no wonder therefore that different emphases emerge, and even seem sometimes to clash. Paul in both Ephesians 1 and Romans 8 was writing to reassure and uplift faithful believers; in Galatians 5 he was writing to warn, even scold, believers who had turned away from the essence of the gospel. Likewise, the writer of Hebrews 6.

I can’t help feeling both cynical and sad when I think about the millions of hours spent and the gallons of ink spilled by learned and saintly men and women as they have tried to pin this question down and get it sorted once for all. However convincing such solutions are, there will always be equally learned and saintly men and women who respond with “Yes - but…”. We understandably shrink from saying that the Bible contains contradictions, because it is divinely inspired – but there can be no doubt that sometimes it seems to do so! Plain honesty forces us to look that fact right in the eye.

Stopping and thinking about it, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that the whole debate is sterile and pointless anyway. After all, if a person we are concerned about as having fallen away eventually comes back, well, we will rejoice and say, “Great! But then we aren’t really surprised – it just proves that the true believer can never fall away!” But if that person goes further and further away from God, we may well end up saying, “Oh well, it looks as if they were never truly converted in the first place”. And how does that help us? It’s like playing a game of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.

Time spent fruitlessly fretting over the debate would, surely, be better spent positively – praying, or evangelising, or offering pastoral support, or reading scripture, or – well, just getting on with life.

None of us knows for sure the true state of another person’s heart. Only God does. The best thing, therefore, is to be plainly practical: if a true Christian seems to have fallen away, then treat them as a non-believer and work to bring them back. God knows what is needful; can’t we safely leave the outcome to him?

Father, your word contains many wonderful truths and clear-cut teachings; please help me to enjoy them and always cling to them. But it also contains things which are puzzling and hard to understand; give me the humility and honesty to be willing to say “I just don’t know”. Teach me, Lord! Amen.