Once Saved, Always Saved

Once saved, always saved? Can a true believer fall away and be lost?

Christians who agree that salvation is by grace divide sharply over whether it can be lost; the Scriptures speak both of Christ keeping His own and of believers falling away, and every view has to account for both.

The perseverance of the saints

Those whom God has truly born again He keeps to the end; all true believers endure. They can fall into serious sin for a time, but God never lets them fall totally or finally: He renews them to repentance and they persevere in faith, not by their own strength but by His power, Christ's intercession and the Spirit's seal. Reformed churches ground this in God's unchangeable election; many Baptists and others who call it eternal security hold the same. The warnings of Scripture are real, and they are one of the means God uses to keep His own; those who fall away for good show that they were never truly of Christ.

Free Grace: eternal security by faith alone

Everlasting life is given the moment a person believes in Jesus for it, and, as the words say, it can never be lost. Unlike the perseverance view, this does not hold that every believer will go on believing and bearing fruit: a believer can fail badly, and can even stop believing, and still be saved, because salvation rests on Christ's promise, not on continued faith or works. What sin costs a Christian is fellowship, joy, usefulness and reward, together with the Father's discipline in this life; the warning passages are about those things, not about hell.

Security conditional on continuing faith

The believer is truly secure in Christ: no outside power can snatch him from Christ's hand, and God's power keeps him through faith. But that security belongs to those who go on believing. A true Christian can, by unbelief and willful sin, turn away from Christ, fall from grace and be lost; the warnings are addressed to real believers because the danger is real. This is not salvation by works, since faith is the condition, and a believer need not live in fear, because the one who abides in Christ is kept.

What does Christ promise about keeping His own?

Do the warnings speak of believers who fall away?

Is continuing in the faith the condition, or only the evidence?

On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 21

But of two pious men, why to the one should be given perseverance unto the end, and to the other it should not be given, God's judgments are even more unsearchable. Yet to believers it ought to be a most certain fact that the former is of the predestinated, the latter is not.

Augustine teaches that perseverance to the end is itself a gift of God, and that it is "uncertain whether any one has received this gift so long as he is still alive." Unlike later Reformed teaching, he allows that some who truly worshipped God in good faith do not persevere; the difference, he says, lies in God's predestination, and he explains their falling away with 1 John 2:19. Date: the Catholic Encyclopedia ("Semipelagianism") gives 428 or 429.

Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, chapter 24, section 6

What then did our Savior intend to teach us by this prayer, but just to confide, that whenever we are his our eternal salvation is secure?

Calvin grounds the believer's security in election and in Christ's keeping (John 6, John 10, Romans 8:38, Philippians 1:6, and Christ's prayer that Peter's faith fail not). He explains those who seemed to belong to Christ and fell away as people who "never adhered to Christ with that heartfelt confidence" by which election is made sure (section 7). Dated by Calvin's final Latin edition, 1559.

Declaration of Sentiments, on the perseverance of the saints

Though I here openly and ingenuously affirm, I never taught that a true believer can, either totally or finally fall away from the faith, and perish; yet I will not conceal, that there are passages of scripture which seem to me to wear this aspect; and those answers to them which I have been permitted to see, are not of such a kind as to approve themselves on all points to my understanding.

Delivered before the States of Holland at The Hague, 30 October 1608. Arminius affirms that Christ keeps from falling those who are ready for the battle and implore His help, but asks for a diligent inquiry from the Scriptures into whether believers can through negligence desert their life in Christ. He adds that "certain passages are produced for the contrary doctrine [of unconditional perseverance] which are worthy of much consideration." He leaves the question open.

The Five Arminian Articles (the Remonstrance), Article V

But whether they are capable, through negligence, of forsaking again the first beginnings of their life in Christ, of again returning to this present evil world, of turning away from the holy doctrine which was delivered them, of losing a good conscience, of becoming devoid of grace, that must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.

The first half of the article affirms that those incorporated into Christ by true faith are kept from falling, so that they cannot be "plucked out of Christ's hands" (John 10:28), "if only they are ready for the conflict, and desire his help." Whether a believer can fall away is left to be settled from Scripture. (Text and translation from Schaff's Creeds of Christendom.)

Canons of Dort, Fifth Main Point, Article 8

So it is not by their own merits or strength but by God’s undeserved mercy that they neither forfeit faith and grace totally nor remain in their downfalls to the end and are lost. With respect to themselves this not only easily could happen, but also undoubtedly would happen; but with respect to God it cannot possibly happen.

The Synod (Dordrecht, 1618–19) answered the Remonstrance point by point and defined the perseverance of the saints: true believers can fall into grievous sin, but God never lets them lose the grace of adoption; He preserves them by the gospel's "exhortations, threats, and promises" (Article 14). Article 8 adds that "the sealing of the Holy Spirit can neither be invalidated nor wiped out." The Rejection of Errors rejects the teaching that true believers can be lost, citing John 10:28-29 (Rejection III), and grounds assurance in God's promises, citing Romans 8:39 (Rejection V).

Serious Thoughts upon the Perseverance of the Saints, section 27

Therefore, those who are sanctified by the blood of the covenant may yet so fall as to perish everlastingly.

Wesley works through Hebrews 6 and 10, 2 Peter 2, John 15 and other passages to conclude that true saints can fall finally. His answer to "Can a child of God then go to hell?": a true believer, "while he continues a true believer, cannot go to hell"; but one who makes shipwreck of the faith is no longer a child of God. (The linked text is from the Works; the 1751 first printing on the Internet Archive has the same words in eighteenth-century spelling.)

Saving Faith and Apostasy: Do Believers Ever Stop Believing?

While our salvation is guaranteed from the moment we trust in Christ, our faith is not.

The Free Grace form of eternal security: genuine believers can stop believing (Wilkin cites 1 Timothy 1:19-20 and 2 Timothy 2:18) and remain saved, since "It is not eternal faith that appropriates salvation; it is faith that appropriates eternal salvation." This goes beyond Dort, which held that true believers never lose faith totally.

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article V: God's Purpose of Grace

All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.

The form of eternal security confessed in many Baptist churches: election is "consistent with the free agency of man," and every true believer perseveres. Believers may fall into sin and bring "temporal judgments on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." Unlike the Free Grace form (H7, H9), it holds that true believers do endure.

Affirmations of Belief: Eternal Security

We believe that any person who believes in Jesus Christ for eternal life receives that gift which, as the words eternal life suggest, can never be lost.

The same statement says that good works "are not necessary for a person to have assurance of everlasting life," and that a Christian can through sin "lose his fellowship, joy, power, testimony, and reward and incur the Father’s discipline", but never his membership in God's family.

Study

• In John 10:27-29, what do Christ's sheep do, and what does He promise them? Whose power does the passage say cannot take them away?
• List every description in Hebrews 6:4-5 and 10:29 of the people being warned. Where else in the New Testament are those same things said, and of whom?
• In 1 Peter 1:5 believers "by the power of God are guarded through faith". What part does God's power play, and what part does faith play? What happens to the guarding if faith is given up?
• Colossians 1:23 and John 15:6 both speak of continuing, or abiding. Is continuing the condition of the promise, only the evidence that it was received, or both? Read each in its context before deciding.
• In Galatians 5:2-4, what were the Galatians about to do, and what would it cost them? Can someone fall away from grace without ever having stood in it?
• Paul disciplined himself "lest by any means ... I myself should be rejected" (1 Corinthians 9:27), yet wrote Romans 8:38-39. How do assurance and warning belong together in his life?

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