Can I lose my salvation?

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. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Hebrews 6:4-8

If you are a Christian, saved through your faith in Christ, is it possible for you to lose your salvation?

It’s always good, as a preacher, when somebody comes and asks you about something you said. Even if they disagree with you, at least it shows they were listening, and that they were interested enough to take you to task!

This happened to me recently. I wasn’t preaching about the passage above, but I made a passing reference to the danger of Christians “falling away”. The man who questioned me didn’t actually disagree, but he was unsure about what I had said, and wanted a bit of clarification. (No doubt I had expressed myself a little carelessly, and he was quite right to ask – a lesson to me!)

Whoever wrote the Letter to the Hebrews was obviously troubled that his readers – Christians from a Jewish background – might lapse back into Judaism. No disrespect to the Jewish faith, of course, but if Christianity is true then it fulfils Judaism and, so to speak, leaves it behind. There must be no going back.

This worry keeps cropping up throughout the letter – just take a look at chapters 2:1-5 and 3:7-19.

But the really striking verses are here in chapter 6. There’s no way we can, in honesty, tone these words down; they are fiercely uncompromising. The person who falls away cannot be “brought back to repentance”; indeed, they are “crucifying the Son of God all over again”. That sounds pretty solemn…

But surely, we might say, the New Testament as a whole teaches that once we are saved we are for ever saved? In John 10:38-39 Jesus says of his followers, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand…” Paul states that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, and he builds chapter 8 of Romans to a wonderful climax by insisting that nothing – absolutely nothing – “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:1,38-39). Putting it another way, a person who has been “born again”, surely, can’t possibly be “unborn again”!

That seems clear enough, and thank God for such good news. But… Hebrews 6:4-8 is part of God’s word, and it isn’t going to go away! And nor is the reality of stark experience. Anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time will know people who once seemed fine, strong Christians, but who now are far from God.

Of course, we can speculate about what has happened to such people. Either (a) they were never true Christians in the first place, in spite of appearances; or (b) they are true Christians, only temporarily away from God, so it’s just a matter of time before they are restored.

But in practical terms such speculations are a waste of time. It’s a case, quite literally, of “God only knows”, and we might as well leave it there. Our task is to take such people as we find them, and seek to win them back to Christ.

Like many so-called contradictions in the Bible, I think this one has a positive value. The fact is that we need both perspectives if we are not to fall into serious error. If we over-stress the “once-saved-always-saved” line we run the risk of becoming complacent: “I am saved by God’s grace! My eternal destiny is secure! So I can do pretty much what I like…!” (As Paul puts it in Romans 6:1, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound?”)

If, on the other hand, we over-stress the danger of falling away, we run the risk of losing any sense of assurance or confidence in our salvation. It becomes a matter of trusting as fully as we can and then, so to speak, of keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

In a word: Either we become spiritually smug or spiritually insecure; both of which are bad. So the Bible’s two voices have the effect of safeguarding us from both dangers. One day, when my faith has somehow been a bit wobbled, I might need Romans 6:1; another day, when I’m a bit over-confident, even arrogant, I might need Hebrews 6:4-8.

Over the years I have learned to be a little suspicious of Christians who claim to have every area of doctrine cut and dried: every i dotted, every t crossed. The fact is that, to our limited human understanding, truth just isn’t like that. And God, of course, is the ultimate mystery, and he isn’t like that either. So it’s no surprise that the Bible contains things which have us scratching our heads.

The fact is that when he decided to give mankind a written revelation, he chose to give us not an Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology or a Concise Handbook of Religious Truth, but a big, baggy collection of documents which we know as “the Bible”.

Let’s read it with honesty and humility!

Father, thank you for your Word, the Bible. Help me to delight in it when its meaning is clear, to humble myself before it when it is puzzling, and, most of all, to obey it with simple trust and faith. Amen.

If you are interested in following up this question of the “contradictions” of the Bible, look out for Paradoxology, by Krish Kandiah, published by Hodder. It doesn’t answer every question we might want to ask – of course not! – but it takes a refreshing look at the whole question. Well worth a read.