Can a Christian "give back" salvation?

There are some who teach that a believer is saved but that, if he is not faithful in his life, he can lose his salvation. Now, this amounts to saying that you need two things to be saved: first the work of Christ, and second your own ‘holy’ or ‘faithful’ life. In other words, it amounts to saying that the work of Christ alone is not sufficient. This would be an insult on Christ’s great work on the cross!

If one wants to use verses that speak of God's purpose to deny man's responsibility, or conversely if one over-emphasises man's responsibility at the expense of God's sovereign purpose, there will be problems. We must expound the Word of truth accurately, dividing it precisely (see 2 Tim. 2:15). If we read verses that seem to contradict the assurance of salvation, we must at the same time submit to God's Word as it clearly confirms that one cannot loose his salvation, although one can loose the enjoyment of salvation. Scripture confirms that a believer does not loose his salvation, just like a child never looses the inherited link with his parents.

A believer may, alas, go down into terrible depths of evil, and, for the time being, wreck present happiness and usefulness, as Lot did in Sodom (but see 2 Peter 2:7-8) and Jonah (Jonah 1:2-5; Jonah 2:9) and the fornicator of 1 Corinthians 5 (but see 2 Cor 2:6-8). But there is one thing he cannot do. He cannot, like Judas, absolutely give up Christ. How many weak, yet true believers needlessly worry about the fear of being lost, citing the sin of Judas and his awful end. But reasonings as to Judas, Satan, angels, and Adam falling, overlook the difference made by the "eternal redemption" that is in Christ Jesus for the believer (Heb. 9:12; Heb. 10:39: Rom. 8:34).

Sad to say, many new-but-true believers needlessly worry about being lost. They sometimes use the sin of Judas and his tragic end as an example. Many believers have followed in the steps of Peter in denying that they know Christ. But no true child of God has ever gone, nor can go, in the way of Judas, the apostate, and give up Christ. Backsliding is not renouncing Christianity, but failing in that holy separated walk which God desires of His children for their blessing.

E. But no true believer can be lost for ever.

Then can he be lost? That is, thank God, another question altogether. The salvation of the true believer is not contingent on his faithfulness, but on God’s settled purpose. On the other hand the present peace and comfort of his soul depend entirely on his fidelity to Christ. Relationship is one thing, communion another.

"Will a believer be saved, no matter into what course of sin he may fall, and die in?" A true believer will, infallibly, be saved; but we consider that salvation includes, not only full deliverance from the future consequences of sin, but from the present power and practice thereof. And, hence, if we find a person living in sin, and yet talking about his assurance of salvation, we look upon him as an antinomian and not a saved person at all. "If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth." The believer may fall, but he will be lifted up; he may be overtaken, but he will be restored; he may wander, but he will be brought back because Christ is able to save to the uttermost, and not one of His little ones shall perish.

It is certain that no soul that God has quickened unto life eternal can ever abdicate its title of salvation by a deliberate repudiation of the cross. The power which begets the children is pledged in Christ to their eternal preservation. No sheep of Christ will ever perish, because He is competent to save His flock. Nor is it possible that one alive to God should ever heartily despise His grace. Yet is it well that warning should be added to instruction. For it is thus that our feet keep practically the sure ways of life. No Christian is exempt from the danger of a large departure from the truth of God, although he is kept from drawing back unto perdition by His faithfulness who has otherwise appointed him (1 Thess. 5:9). If faith and patience be not kept in exercise by a continual minding of the things of Christ, it will soon be forgotten by the negligent believer that the friendship of the world is enmity with God. God's Holy Spirit will be grieved in those whom He has sealed, if He be not hearkened to with diligence as the alone Conductor of the children through the present evil world.

The race, then, is the race of Christian life, and the contest that of well-pleasing to the Lord. With Christ as its starting-point, and Christ also as its goal, that race has to be run with patience by a faith which looks off from5 all other objects, to fix its gaze solely upon Him. But just as men did not, at the Grecian games, contend with halters round their necks, so neither is the Christian called to save himself by any effort or endeavour from the wrath to come; for as a sinner he has already fled for refuge to the hope set before him. He has run into the tower of his safety, and is safe.6 It is in his Saviour's name that he appears as a competitor within the lists, and by His Saviour's strength alone that he can hope to win. But there is a prize for those who overcome. And here we should note the contrast between the illustration and the living truth. At the trial of natural ability, all the competitors but one were sure to lose. In Christ, all are already more than conquerors, but such as draw back unto perdition by failing to continue in the grace of God. Yet, though in this sense every real Christian overcomes, there is another sense in which merit will be found and honoured, according to its measure, by the righteous Arbiter of all that has been wrought here in His name; a merit not original or inherent, but of grace. And it is in this latter sense, chiefly, that the apostle speaks of winning in this place.7

There are some other texts, nearly akin to the standard passage in Corinthians, which we may now take up. I believe we shall find, if we have got hold of what has now been before us, that we have already the key to the understanding of these also. In Col. 1:22-23, for example: "To present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight: if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel" or again, in Heb. 3:6: "Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end;" and verse 14: "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end." Addressing a number of professed Christians, these "ifs" had their right and necessary place. Men were giving up faith in Christ, as this epistle to the Hebrews conclusively shows. The warning was perfectly in place. Nor could men be saved while giving up this faith; drawing back from Christ would be drawing back unto perdition. Yet this same apostle could in the selfsame epistle put those who had believed unto salvation in a different class altogether from those who could so apostatize: "We are not of them who draw back unto perdition" — not simply, "who have drawn back," which there could be no need to say, but "who draw back;" we are not the sort of people who do that — "but of them that believe to the saving of the soul;" that is the class to which we belong, and it is a different one to the other.

Most clearly, then, the apostle did not mean that such believers, positively saved ones, could draw back unto perdition. It was needful, on the other hand, to warn professors about it for two reasons at least. First, because the giving up of Christ put outside the possibility of salvation altogether, for none else could save. Secondly, because it was and is important, that men should not rest in a faith they had, or thought they had, in times past, which was not true for the present moment. Faith that I had faith once is not faith in Christ, and may be a dream of my own. Just so, the vain argument that "I was converted once, and therefore" — which is vain because it is a mere belief in what my heart may have deceived me. If I am trusting my conversion or my faith, the result may prove I had neither. If I trust Christ, He cannot deceive, and so I am safe. "Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." (Ps. 2:12.)