ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED (2)
There are those who teach that once a person is saved that it is literally impossible for him, under any circumstances, to be lost.
These people insist that the moment a person becomes a Christian he is saved because in that moment he became united to Jesus by faith. They rightly insist that salvation cannot exist apart from a relationship with Jesus because he and he alone is the Saviour—we do not save ourselves! They insist, of course, that faith is essential to that relationship with Jesus though faith doesn’t earn the relationship; the relationship and the life that comes with it is a free gift of God. So far so good!
Since Jesus alone is the Saviour and true faith is essential to a saving relationship with Christ it follows that if once the person is saved he cannot possibly be lost it must mean he cannot possibly cease to have true faith (ongoing faith) because if true faith doesn’t exist there can be no relationship with the Saviour. [Calvin himself insisted on this in the bluntest fashion.]
So, to be saved one must be saved in relationship with Jesus.
True faith is essential to that saving relationship with Jesus.
So, if once saved it is impossible to be lost, then true faith in Jesus can
never cease to exist because without it you can’t be saved.
To be saved you have to have true faith in Jesus—it is indispensable.
If you are saved you must have true faith in Jesus.
Therefore if you are always saved you must always be a true believer.
This means that “once saved always saved” means “once a true
believer always a true believer”.
Of course this flies in the face not only of texts and sections of scripture but it flies in the face of what we’ve all seen in life when people who were devout Christians turned back to the world and now hold God in contempt and live degenerate lives without apology.
The response to that by the “once saved always saved” school is that such people never truly believed or that that is a passing phase and that they will turn back to God before they die.
But that doesn’t work! Remember that “once saved always saved” requires “once a true believer always a true believer”. To say that someone who was a devout servant of God could later live for years in contempt for God and in degeneracy and still be saved during while living that way would require that he is still a true believer while he impenitently holds God in contempt and rejoices in immorality and cruelty.
No one with a Bible in his hand would say such a thing unless he was married to a theory that demands it of him. [Some consistent Calvinists did and were branded as antinomian heretics for doing it.]
The upshot of the doctrine of “once saved always saved” is that we should be compelled to admit that an outright moral villain is still saved and is still a true believer even while he rejoices in evil and contempt for God and his ways.
There are some who hold the doctrine and see that that won’t work so they plainly tell us that such a person was never saved and was never a true believer to begin with.
This introduces a problem Calvin was never able to solve. Here we have two people, both prayerful, kind, compassionate, generous, patient, forgiving, honest and just, church-attending, family loving and always praising God for his saving grace.
One is said to be a true believer and the other a counterfeit—a fake! And how do you know that? Because one has plainly turned to a life of profound wickedness and unbelief and cannot possibly be saved! But what if he had really been a true believer and under the onslaught of life, ill-health, bereavement and weakness to temptation he turned from faith? We’re told that wouldn’t be possible because a true believer is saved and “once saved always saved”. We’re told that the man never really turned from God because he had never truly turned to God in the first place and when we ask how they know that we’re told once you’re saved you’re always saved and once you’ve truly believed you always truly believe.
This means you wipe out the previous thirty years of devotion, sacrifice, compassion, kindness, patience and fervent prayers of the now fallen-away person and call it all a satanic counterfeit to true faith. It takes nerve to do that when you're preaching week after week after week, year in and year out to people who show absolutely none of the depth of compassion, sacrifice and service in Jesus' name shown in the past by the one who has now fallen away.
But it gets worse! We could tell no difference between the two for both their lives were exemplary and led others to honour God and we were told we only know that one was all along a satanic counterfeit when he folded under great pressure. Had we asked him before he fell-away did he love God and did he seek to please him in all he did, the fallen-away one would gladly swear if needed that that was all he had in his heart. In his joy-filled service for God and his fellow-man he had no idea that one day he would fragment and spiral down to faithlessness.
What then of the one not yet fallen; what of the one who feels as the fallen one felt? Is his faith true? Is he really saved? Is he, unknown to himself, a satanic counterfeit? Even if his life doesn’t descend into open degeneracy—only into a loss of caring, weariness with God’s service, bitterness toward his fellow-Christians—might he not be a counterfeit without his knowing it? His fellow-servant and fellow-worshipper was a fake without his knowing it. All along the now fallen one thought he was saved but all along he was in fact an unbeliever while thinking he was a true believer. How do we know that isn't the case with the one presently still standing?
Calvin admits this is a great problem and is never able to deal with it. In fact, Macleod Campbell, author of the rightly famed The Nature of the Atonement was driven to write his book because of this very problem. His devout parishioners were mortally afraid that while they thought themselves true and saved they might in fact he false and unsaved and they’d never know it and he wrote to console and strengthen them. Yes, but what about how they felt and acted and believed—was that not proof enough that they were saved? Calvin and his followers confessed that the experience of “the apostates” (who in fact all along never belonged to God) was the same as the elect of God so there is no comfort in what your heart and practice told you. You might still have been passed over in God's eternal decrees, you might still be one of those positively destined by God for eternal torment even while you live a lovely life.
How’s it possible that the “once saved always saved” doctrine which was supposed to generate assurance generated so much fear and worry? What led John Piper to say to people that they’re not to worry that God might not love them with saving love because they had no good reason to believe that? He didn’t offer each individual assurance that God loved them because he doesn’t believe there are any such scriptures. The best he could do was to say that they had no good reason to believe God didn't love them. Yes, but neither did the one who fell away after years of devoted service to God.
Piper believes that God eternally purposed to save some humans out of multiplied billions and that he set his love on them and foreordained the rest to eternal torture for no other reason than it pleased him to do it. I’ve met a few“once saved always saved” people who when pressed on how they knew they were part of “the elect” kept saying they just knew. That’s what the young Momon people tell me when I ask them how they know God’s Spirit told them that Mormonism was true. When asked how they know it was God’s Spirit they just keep saying they “just know”.
That’s why people worry that they might not be loved by God no matter how they have responded to the Gospel. Their response might all be satanic delusion as surely as the “fallen away” one's was satanic.
To hold on to a doctrinal system the “once saved always saved” teachers insist that you can live for years in what has all the signs of a gallant obedience of faith and service and it be a satanic con. This school is supposed to proclaim the profound assurance of the true believer when in fact it leaves us unable to know what a true believer is.
How did all this hurtful silliness take hold? It took hold because Augustine had an argument with Pelagius and set the pattern for thought in this area. It took hold because Calvin and Luther followed Augustine when they fought the worst face of Catholicism’s “works” doctrine and because of the Dominican John Tetzel’s blasphemous “indulgence” sales that brought money into the papal treasury.
When the smoke cleared we were saddled with a twisted Reformed doctrine of “election” and the claim that God has made it impossible for true believers to turn away. [The other side of that Reformed coin teaches that God has made it impossible for humans to turn to him unless they’re the ones lucky enough to have been chosen in eternity to be given God’s saving love and grace.]
[To be continued, God enabling.]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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