"“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”"
- Romans 4:7-8
One of the most beautiful truths in the Christian faith is that you cannot earn salvation. This is so beautiful because we receive it in spite of this. Our works cannot save us, because our works are why we need saving to begin with. But praise be to God, what is impossible for us, He can do. Salvation is not a wage we can earn, but a gift we can receive. As God tells us, through Paul, in Ephesians 2:8-10, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
This is a clear and common theme throughout Scripture. Grace, through faith, not works. We are even repeatedly told that this excludes boasting. What is boasting? It's a claim about one's self. "I am this", "I did this" etc. The reality is, the glory for our salvation belongs entirely to Jesus.
In spite of this, there are a shockingly large number of Christians - setting aside heretics who claim one must work to earn salvation - who believe one must work to maintain it. This view, called "Conditional Security", stands in contrast to "Eternal Security", which is often clumsily summarised as "Once Saved, Always Saved" (or "OSAS", as you are likely to find on social media).
Conditional Security holds that a Christian can lose salvation through poor works. It's unclear exactly where the line is, especially given that, when pressed, its proponents will admit to having the same struggle with sin as any other Christian, but the key theme is you must maintain your salvation, or you will lose it.
By contrast, Eternal Security holds that salvation is eternally secure, because it is maintained by the same God who gives it freely. If salvation is by grace, through faith, not of works, then the only way to lose salvation would be to lose faith, regardless of works. We can quibble about whether those who lost faith ever had salvation to lose, but the key point here is it's illogical for salvation to be both by grace, through faith, not of works, and yet also be by faith and works. Since Scripture makes it abundantly clear that the former is the case, it is impossible to sin your way out of salvation.
Thred's Contribution
I asked Thred:
"Can a Christian lose his salvation without losing his faith?"
Thred said no.
The biggest problem when discussing this topic is that it's very rare for proponents of Conditional Security to take the position as it is. When you say "you cannot lose salvation", they hear "I have an unrestricted right to sin like I've never sinned before", and it is this to which they will respond.
This straw man argument is fairly easy to disarm with a simple dilemma: If you believed in Eternal Security, would you sin without hesitation? If they say no, they obliterate the entire objection. If Eternal Security wouldn't drive you to sin if you believed in it, why should it drive me to sin when I do?
If, by contrast, they answer "yes", they're actually revealing their own heart more than yours. How? Because they're admitting their primary motivation for their works isn't to be holy as God is Holy (1 Peter 1:13-16). Ironically, even an atheist can spot this hypocrisy. As Paul Kinsella puts it, "If you need the threat of Hell to be a good person, then you're just a bad person on a leash."
Biblically speaking, although the Bible both speaks and warns of judgment, it makes it abundantly clear that there is far more to it than that. In John 14:15, for example, Jesus tells us "“If you love Me, keep My commandments." What's that? If you want to stay in my good graces? If you're scared of eternal Hellfire? If you're driven entirely by self preservation? No, "“If you love Me, keep My commandments." Throughout this entire passage, Hell is never mentioned. In fact, other than in the beginning where Jesus glosses over the many mansions in Heaven, the majority of the chapter focuses on the present relationship God has with the Apostles. Rather than being motivated by fear, it is driven entirely by love.
That love covers a multitude of sins. All of them, in fact. When Scripture speaks of the cross, it doesn't speak of it as duct tape on a leaky pipe, but as a complete and absolute solution to the problem of sin and death. While the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life in Christ (Romans 6:23). How does God do this? Let's go back to where we began this article. In Romans 4:1-8, we read "What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”"
Here, we have pretty much the full range of faith. In the case of Abraham, he did good by following the command of the Lord. In the case of David, he did evil by murdering a man to cover up his affair with his wife. Paul looks at both of these examples, and between them, he tells us "Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness,...".
But there's actually more to David's example. As often happens in the New Testament, Paul is quoting the Old. Specifically, Psalm 32. In it, after telling us of the blessedness of the man to whom God will not impute iniquity, David tells us "When I kept silent, my bones grew old Through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah" (Psalm 31:3-5).
From this, we see that the objection doesn't hold. Though confident in the Lord as his redeemer, David did not, for one second, believe salvation was an excuse to sin. Rather, his sin ate away at him until he confessed to God Himself. Now of course, one who keeps the whole law and offends only in one point is guilty of all (James 2:10). Thus, it is actually quite damaging to see murdering Uriah as some "huge" sin, while the little white lies we tell are somehow trivial. But we do have that perspective in ourselves. If we look at David, and admit the Biblical truth that God, by His grace, covered that particular sin, and credited David's faith for righteousness, then we must likewise admit that whatever sin a modern Christian commits is covered by the same faith.
We all have a past. In fact, we all have a present, with a likely future (though no one is guaranteed tomorrow). No one converts and instantly becomes Jesus, and according to 1 John 1:8-10, if you say you are without sin, you're self-deluded, and even make God out to be a liar. But praise be to God, if you have placed your faith in Christ, you are the blessed man to whom God will not impute those iniquities. But a proponent of Conditional Security, upon hearing this Gospel, will proceed to charge you with sins you haven't even confessed to! They diagnose you with a heart problem, merely believing in Eternal Security as an excuse to commit sin. Yet, have we not established that the heart problem is on the part of those who require the threat of Hell to avoid living like they're still on the broad road that leads to it?
Scripture makes it clear: He who does not work, yet believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, is credited righteousness through his faith. This does not mean he is too lazy to do good, or so corrupt as to commit evil. However, with Abraham receiving justification prior to his good works, and David receiving mercy in spite of his evil deeds, it's clear that when Romans 4:5 speaks of he who does not work, yet believes, this is intended to cover the entire spectrum of works.
This makes the aforementioned heart problem of Conditional Security even greater. On the one hand, arguing in this manner against Eternal Security effectively confesses to requiring wrath to act saved. On the other hand, it also imputes imaginary sins where God does not even impute actual sins. Thus, depending on exactly how "personal" your opponent is getting, they may actually be trying to take the place of God Himself.
With such things in mind, I can think of no greater way to conclude this article than by simply citing Scripture, specifically Romans 8:31-39.
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
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