Expert: Pastor Don Carpenter - 4/23/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi Pastor,

I know that I've sent you a few different emails today, I hope it's not a bother.

I have heard different theories on the once saved always saved idea.  I know that there are some evangelicals who believe that if you denounce your faith you can give up your salvation.  I heard that the Methodists believe this, and possibly the Lutherans, but I'm less sure on what Lutherans believe.  I even once heard a Baptist minister say that he believed that if someone is truly saved he is saved, but if before he dies he renounces his salvation and gives up his faith in Christ, then he can literally give up his salvation.  There are a couple of passages in Hebrews which he said states that if someone does this then they will be psychologically so far gone from the faith that they will never come back and so they will never be forgiven. I've read the passages, they don't exactly say that, but it can be interpreted that way.  

One of the passages is Hebrews 6 : 4 - 6,

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.

The other passage is Hebrews 10 : 26 - 27

For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.

I guess it's like blaspheming the Holy Spirit, but he didn't use that terminology.  

Also in 2 John 1 : 8 it says,

Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward.

What is it that someone can lose in this passage?

Finally in 1 John 5 : 13 it says,

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.

Why would John hope that they "continue to believe" if it was not possible to renounce your salvation?

I think that I might kind of believe what this Baptist minister said.  It just seems to make sense to me. Especially because I know that there are many born again people who seem as though they are truly sincere and devout, yet many of them leave renounce the faith before they die.  He said that the people who believe this are called Armenians (not the ethnic group).  If someone is an theological Armenian are they saved from your perspective, even if they believe it is possible for a believer to denounce and renounce his faith?

I believe that I am born again, I have accepted Jesus as my personal savior, and know that only by his blood can I be saved, not by anything I have done.  I'm not perfect, but I try and I will keep trying, so I believe I am saved.  Nothing in my hand I bring, only to the Cross I cling.  But if I'm a theological Armenian then does it mean I was never saved to begin with?  Do I have to believe in eternal security to be saved?

Thanks - Josh

ANSWER: Hi Josh,

I am sorry but because of the volume of your many questions today, I am not able to respond to each scripture you have cited.  If you post a follow up, I will try to do that.  Let me answer your question:

If someone is an theological Armenian are they saved from your perspective, even if they believe it is possible for a believer to denounce and renounce his faith?


It is faith in Jesus to pay for your sins that saves you.

Acts 16:31
31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

If you realized that you cannot earn heaven, but that Jesus paid your price, and you asked Him to, then it is settled... you are saved.  Now you may not realize just HOW saved you are, but God does.

1 John 3:20
20 For if our heart condemn us,  God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

Salvation never had anything to do with our works, so the security of our salvation also has nothing to do with our works.

Galatians 3:1-3


O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? 2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

I hope that this helps you.

In Christ
Pastor Don

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi,

Sorry for making the question so long. I think you answered it sufficiently.  It's just that I know that there are a lot of evangelical Christians out there who are on fire for God when they begin their Christian walk.  As time goes by many of them begin to wane and do less and less in their Christian walk.  Some even stop attending Church altogether. I know one man who completely stopped going to Church years ago. And some of these same people who were on fire for God at one point in their lives end up becoming atheists, or agnostics, or even join some other Church, like the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Roman Catholic Church.  Some become Neo-pagans.  If someone is so on fire for God at one point, and goes around preaching and teaching about salvation, and acts and says all the right things about being saved, even says that salvation is not of works, and only by the blood of Jesus, and then that same person turns around some years later and completely denounces the faith and ends up dying that way, then how could this person have had eternal security.  I know that the answer is that they were never saved in the first place, but if you listened to that person speak out of the depths of his heart when he thought he was saved you would not have said that.  

Just an observation, and this is one of the main reasons why Armenianism sounds valid to me.  

Josh

Answer
Hi Josh,

Thanks for this follow up.  The Bible is clear that some can look right withi=out being right.

Jude 4
4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

They crept in!  No one recognized them as unsaved or evil.  The same can be said when people leave never to return.

1 John 2:19
19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

I hope that this helps.