Can a Child of God Be Lost? by Jere Frost (JereFrost@aol.com)
(Reprinted from The Bulletin of The North Courtenay Church of
Christ, Sept. 19, 1999)
THE CHILD OF GOD IS SECURE and could never be lost. If you are really a child of God, really saved, you could never so sin as to be lost." This doctrine is a dangerous and deadly spiritual sedative. It calls for a reality check.
As an exercise in logic, let me reverse the proposition before
we proceed, and we then have the following:
A child of the devil is insecure and could never be saved. If
you are really a child of the devil, really lost, you could never
so reform or obey as to be saved.
Now if either one of these statements is true, preaching is pointless. As for the saved, they need no help in order to be saved; they are already all right. As for the lost, they are beyond help, and there is nothing that can be said that will help them.
The believer is said to be secure because (John 3:36) he "has" everlasting life. But the same passage says the unbeliever shall not see life and the wrath of God "abideth" on him. The argument is that if the believer "has" everlasting life, then it cannot be lost or else it was not everlasting. This is not true logic, but let us accept it for the moment and apply it to the other half of the passage. It would also mean then that the unbeliever cannot ever believe and be saved because the wrath of God "abideth" and he "shall not see life."
It is that simple. If the believer cannot become an unbeliever, and be lost, because he "has" life, then the unbeliever cannot become a believer, and be saved, because God's wrath "abides." The simple truth is that these passages are not saying people cannot change; they are describing the condition of the believer so long as he believes in (trusts in) the Lord, and the unbeliever until such time as he repents and obtains forgiveness.
Now to a few Scriptures on the choice man always has as to what he believes.
Can an unbeliever hear and believe? Certainly. Faith comes by hearing. (Romans 10:17) It happened on Pentecost. They were not believers when Peter began, but they were when he finished. (Acts 2) The Thessalonians became believers upon hearing Paul, and they forsook their idolatry and followed Christ. (I Thess. 1:5-10; 2:13)
Can a believer lose his faith, and become an unbeliever or a denier? Certainly. Paul described a condition in which believers "denied the faith" and had "damnation because they have cast off their first faith." (I Timothy 5:8,12) "Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling" are warned to "take heed, brethren, lest thee be in an of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God." (Hebrews 3:1,13)
The principle of human ability to respond to the gospel is present and obvious in every command to repent. The ability to stumble and come into condemnation is present in every warning. He who repents and is cleansed is likened to a sow being taken from the mire and washed; he who then returns to his sin is likened to the same sow returning to the mire. The possibility is so great and the consequence is so terrible that Peter said that it would be better to never escape the pollutions of sin than, having escaped them, return. (2 Peter 2:20-22)
We are children of God or of the devil by choice. Since it is spiritual and not physical, it is not a fixed and unalterable relationship. You choose. You are the servant of him "to whom you yield yourself to obey." (Romans 6:16) A child of the devil can repent, change and become a child of God and vice versa.
[Editor's Note: Bro. Frost is coming to work with us the week of January 14th, are we making our preparations?]
Is God Fair? (Acts 10:34-35) by Tony Ripley
(http://www.geocities.com/~expository/)
I recently had a discussion with a woman over the phone that used the text for a prop to brace a contemporary belief among many religious people. Many good folks believe that since God is not a respecter of people, that he can not look out into the sea of denominations and pick the one he thinks is best. If people are illustrating lives of reverence for God and good, moral lives, then he simply must accept all of the religious beliefs because he is "no respecter of persons". I thought this was a clever approach, but the unrelenting truth is that no person has ever been accepted in favor with God separate and apart from obedience to the word which he revealed and has commanded man to obey. Cornelius is a perfect example of a person who reverenced God and lived a good, moral life, yet was not saved or accepted into God's favor until he met the conditions of salvation. Erwin Lutzer, in his new book, "Ten Lies About God", mentions that a common thread among religious people today is that if God does not have some special arrangement for non-believers or non-Christians, then he is less loving than humans.
Therefore, if you extend this logic it would only demand that humans have transcended their Creator in character. However, upon this logic, it would demand that since God allows earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, and such like to be a part of natural law coupled with the fact that people die by the masses in such tragedies, that he is just as unloving. And if this is true, then he has always been less loving than humans have because natural disasters have been occurring since the beginning of time. Remember the flood in Genesis? Does the modern logic of men imply that God created man with a superior character since natural disasters have been occurring since the beginning? Dear reader, if there is any common thread at all it leads directly to the spool of humanism! Those who are born into an existence of living in poverty will be justified in complaining of unfairness as long as God is considered to be unfair in some way. And if fairness (man's wisdom), is a criterion for man's direction, then when man arrives at judgment he can reply to God, "My environment was not fair, I did not get a fair shake in life". He may claim that he was abused or born into a penurious home life and never had a fair chance to prove what he could really be. In Matthew 7:21-22 we see an illustration of a judgment scene where people are pleading their cases before the judge. In this example, the pleading and indicting by these people could not sway the mind and justice of the Lord. When men look at this passage and claim the unfair nature of this scene, they are failing to see the irrelevance of whether it is fair in the wisdom of men or not. Call upon your memory of Isaiah 55:8-9, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts". We have never been granted the liberty to become broader minded in our thinking than our Creator is!
Men have for centuries tried every unorthodox method to reach God from the tower of Babel to assembling to babble! I watched with amazement on the television program 20/20, charismatic people who were drinking strychnine, handling snakes and other strange practices in order to create a proper fellowship with the Lord. I wonder if Paul had the same amazement when he entered the city of Athens and viewed the scores of figures representing the concepts of men and even to the point of erecting an image for the primary purpose of reaching a being that transcended all other gods (Acts 17). It is argued in many circles that religion is simply different perspectives of the same reality. In denominationalism, I have no doubt this is true. However, the Lord's church is not a part of man's devise or innovation. It is not part of the big picture, it is the picture! And standing alone amid the sea of religious beliefs, it is ambiguous to many because of their determination to rely on their gods whom they deem fair. Paul told the Athenians that God is not far from us (Acts 17:27).
Yet the more we depend upon our own wisdom, the farther we wander away from Him, the true and living God.
How will God deal with the present religious world? I am convinced that he will handle all things in judgment. Man's flawed attempts to reach God and seek his approval will be made manifest in the day of sentencing. The record bears this out in such passages as 2Corinthians 5:10 and 2Thessalonians 1:7-8. The bottom line to all of this is that man does not decide fairness. The characters in Ezekiel 18 were reminded of this. God is truth and all that are in conflict with him and his divine revelation are in danger of eternal punishment. All of the arguments and complaining of men will not change the absolute precepts of the Holy One. And if God sends people to hell, it will be because people have prepared to go there, not because he is unfair.
THE LAST WORD
Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth. --Richard Whately