Perhaps you are feeling fragile and insecure today. Is it possible your bright hopes could all be dashed? Yesterday you were thrilled and very excited about having your sins forgiven and being eternally saved, but today you have a nagging fear – “Maybe I could lose it all; I don’t feel as happy today.”
You will actually find people out there who believe they can be saved one day and lost tomorrow. There are some people who say you can lose your salvation. So when someone suggests that to you or when you have the same fear yourself, how do you put your mind at ease and get it settled?
If a Christian friend told you not to worry and that you can’t lose your salvation, would that be enough for you to relax and not to fear? Or would you like something more than that?
Thank God instead of another person’s word for it. You have God’s reliable and unchanging Word for it. As important as the advice of good Christian friends is – the Word of God always has to be your solid foundation.
If having our sins forgiven and being saved resulted from something we did, we would be on dangerous ground – skating on very thin ice. Why? Because whatever we do can fall apart; our efforts can be flawed by mistakes, and our best intentions can be marred by sad failures. But our own works had 0% to do with our salvation and becoming a child of God, and being placed in His family. God Himself saved you based on the perfect and fully completed work of Christ on the Cross. The moment you turned to Christ and trusted Him was the moment God Himself saved you and brought you into His family.
Here’s what your Bible says:
Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy, He saved us.” Titus 3:5.
It was not your hard efforts or your good works that saved you – it was because of His love and mercy, He saved you! And when God does the saving, there’s nothing shabby or faulty or iffy about His work. With a long arm and a strong hand, the Almighty God reached down and saved you from perishing. Are you afraid He might drop you now or let you slip through His fingers?
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, gave these very assuring words to His sheep:
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” John 10:28-30
Two sets of hands – the nail-pierced hands of your Saviour and the strong hand of your Heavenly Father. Sounds pretty secure, doesn’t it? It is not conditional on your performance or your ability to bring God pleasure now that you are saved. Your salvation depends totally on God’s ability to save and keep you.
Even though every genuine Christian has an overarching desire to always to please the Lord, there are times when we fail. When we fail or slip, stumble and fall, we do not lose our salvation!
Lesson #2 – “I’ll Cross that Bridge When I Come to It.”
Some ask if there is an unpardonable or an unforgivable sin thinking of Matthew 12:31-32. Jesus had one specific audience in mind when He referred to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The religious leaders alive when He was here on earth claimed that the power Jesus displayed was Satanic in its origin. This sin was a sin specific to that day when they denied they were seeing the power of God at work in mighty signs and miracles.
There is another extraordinary teaching about the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 1:13-14. It is yet another proof of our unshakeable security in Christ, in the family of God. But we must leave that for another day.
Assignment for today
- Underline in your Bible Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8-9 and John 10:28-30.
- Write out John 10:28 and memorize that short verse today.
- Think about the difference between something that is conditional, time-specific, and temporary versus that which is eternal and everlasting. John 3:16, 1John 5:13.
- Start reading the shortest of the four Gospels in the New Testament – The Gospel according to Mark. There are just 16 chapters – so by reading just one chapter a day, you will easily have the Gospel of Mark read in three weeks’ time.
