Eternal
Security; Gal. 5:4
Galatians 5:4 NASB “You have been severed from Christ, you
who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.”
The issue now is eternal security. “You have been severed from Christ”
has been misunderstood and mistranslated by some and misapplied by others into
teaching that we can lose our salvation. The verse begins with the verb katargeo [katargew], aorist passive
indicative. It means to leave, to occupy, to nullify, to make of no effect. So
Paul is saying, “You have nullified Christ, been severed from Christ, or made
your relationship with Christ of no effect.” The point that he is making is not
that their salvation has disappeared but that all that God has done for them in
salvation is not benefiting them at all in their spiritual lives as long as
they are operating on the principle of legalism. He says in conclusion, “you
have fallen from grace.” There are so many people who take this passage in the
sense of losing their salvation, and what they are doing is making the mistake
of interpreting grace as some sort of status, and if you are in this status of
grace you are saved and that of you fall from grace then you are no longer
saved. That is not what the passage is saying at all. The verb here that is
translated “fallen” is the Greek pipto
[piptw]. It means to fall, to be
removed, and it was a nautical term which means to be driven off course. What
Paul is saying is that they have been driven off course from grace, diverted
from grace by the false teaching of the legalists.
What is the solution? It is through restoration, and restoration comes
through confession of sin. Confession means to acknowledge or to admit your sin
privately to God the Father. 1 John 1:9.
Today when we come to this issue of eternal security we face three
different problems and three different approaches to this doctrine. The first
is what is usually associated with Arminianism. Arminianism is a system, it start
with a definition of the nature of man as being totally free. That is an important
concept, that man is born totally free in the same sense that Adam was free ion
the garden. Adam was created free in the garden because he was created
righteous. He had the perfect righteousness of God because he was created in
the image and likeness of God. So Adam had a sense of freedom that we do not
have. He was created free from sin; he was not in bondage to sin. But the
problem with Arminianism is that it says that every
single person is born in that same condition: that we do not inherit a sin
nature from Adam; that we are sinners because we sin. That is not what the
Bible says. The Bible says we sin because we are sinners; we sin because we are
born with a sin nature we inherit from Adam; that Adam’s original sin was
imputed to that sin nature, and we also commit personal sins. But our
condemnation is based upon Adam’s sin and its imputation to us, and it is not
based upon our individual acts of sin. Arminianism
falls apart here because it puts all the emphasis on human volition and says
every human being is absolutely free and man can choose for God, and when you
trust Christ as saviour that is the issue. They will say that salvation is the
result of faith in Christ but they will also say that God did all he could do
for you at the cross and now the rest is up to you. God is going to save you
but it is up to you to keep that salvation. Therefore any kind of security is
based on your works. Frankly, that is not security at all. You never know if
you are saved.
The second approach is what we call front-loading the gospel with works.
It is not really faith alone in Christ, it is faith plus works. It is works
that keeps you saved. But if you can do something to lose your salvation that
means you had to do something to gain your salvation. A more subtle form today
is what is known as Lordship salvation. It is called that because in its most
extreme form it is saying that the salvation message is that you must believe
Jesus died for you and accept Him as Lord of your
life. Sometimes it defines faith as making a commitment to Jesus. Faith does
not mean to make a commitment. There are more subtle forms of Lordship
salvation. What is inherent in it is the idea that somebody can have faith in
Christ and they say that when you believe and have true “saving faith” it will
necessarily produce works. How do you know you are saved in the Lordship
system? They would say that you can have a faith in Christ that is non-saving.
Their hidden assumption is that something happens at regeneration to limit,
reduce or nullify part of the sin nature so that after salvation you won’t be
as bad as you were before you were saved. Yet regeneration doesn’t say anything
about getting rid of the sin nature and says everything about acquiring a new
nature. But the old sin nature is still there and is just as powerful as it was
before we were saved.
In the Calvinist solution in the Lordship crowd says that you can be
justified by faith alone but “the faith that saves is never alone,” is what
they say. The problem there is the same. You can’t know you are saved until you
die. Think about this: if real saving faith produces works then the only way
you are going to know that you had saving faith instead of having non-saving
faith is if you have works. So the Lordship crowd is not based on the Word of
God, assurance is based on your lifestyle. And you don’t know if you have
persevered in good works until you die. That is heresy. 1 John 5:13 NASB
“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,
so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Paul says in Galatians that
justification is by faith alone—faith plus nothing.
The
doctrine of eternal security
1. Definition: Eternal
security is the work of God which guarantees that God’s free gift of salvation
is eternal and cannot be lost, terminated, abrogated, nullified or reversed by
any thought, act or change of belief in the person saved. It guarantees
something so that we can know with certainty that we have eternal life. God
does not take back what He has once given, so eternal security is an
unbreakable relationship with the integrity of God.
2. God the Father’s
purposes in salvation cannot be overridden. Romans
3. God the Father’s
omnipotence is more powerful than human attempts to negate their salvation.
Therefore He is able to keep the believer secure. Jude
4. God is omniscient;
that means that God knows all the knowable. God is eternal; that means that God
has eternally known all the knowable. Since God has eternally known all the
knowable and since God never changes, God has known all the knowable
simultaneously forever. This is linking together immutability, eternal life and
omniscience. That means that when God planned salvation in eternity past He
knew all the facts. He knew what would happen and he is not surprised, and
because He is omnipotent he was able to devise a plan that was large enough and
complex enough to cover every single contingency and to deal with every single
sin in human history. So there is no sin or evil that we can commit that is too
great for the power and the knowledge of God. He could provide a perfect plan
for us.
5. No one, angelic or
human, can bring a charge or condemn those who are saved. Why is that? a)
Christ’s death paid the penalty for every single sin in human history; b)
Christ’s righteousness was imputed to every believer at the moment of faith
alone in Christ alone. Therefore, because the basis for our acceptance with is
Jesus Christ no charge can be brought against us because the issue is not us,
the issue is Christ and no charge can be brought against Christ. His payment
was sufficient. Now what we can reason is that if any sin can undo a believer’s
salvation then either a) Christ’s death did not pay for that sin, or b)
Christ’s payment was not enough and so we have to add something to it. Both are
blasphemy. Romans
1. To think that you
can help God out is nothing but arrogance. God doesn’t need our help; we need
God’s help. That is the grace policy of God. Man’s character does not cancel
the integrity of God. God’s plan is not based upon our success but upon His
success. Man’s weakness cannot negate God’s strength. Lack of integrity in the
believer cannot nullify the integrity of God. Failure to live out the plan of
God in our life does not cancel our eternal salvation. The problem is we are
more impressed with our failures than with the integrity of God and the grace
of God.