I’ve never believed in eternal security. I attended two churches when I was first saved, an all-black Pentecostal Church every other week when my boss, the greatest Christian who ever lived, was preaching, and an almost all-white Assembly of God (Pentecostal lite) church the other weeks. Both believed you can lose your salvation.

After reading the early Christian writings a decade later, I realized that the main concern they had was not losing salvation, but never attaining (cf. Php. 3:8-15, esp. vv. 11-13). to a salvation we do not yet have. There is a judgment coming, and only there will we be able to say we have attained and that we have been saved from wrath by the life of Jesus (Rom. 5:10-11; Eph. 5:5-7).

Almost no one likes that, so I don’t generally get a thorough hearing on the topic (though the pastors of the last 2 evangelical churches I’ve attended have given me a hearing without getting upset at all).

The Bible Warns Us Against Eternal Security

This post isn’t really about that, though. Instead, I want to say that I read a small book arguing eternal security when I was 2 months old in the Lord, and I rejected the idea because I already knew we are warned against eternal security.

First, to address the biggest pushback I’ve received, the Bible never says “go to heaven.” Instead, the apostles say “inherit the kingdom of God” or “inherit eternal life.” If the passages that warn us about not inheriting the kingdom are not warnings about not going to heaven, then someone needs to show me the passages that say, “go to heaven.” Right now, it looks to me that the only way the Bible says, “go to heaven,” is “inherit the kingdom” (e.g. Matt. 25:34).

John, as usual, is the exception, using “resurrection of life” (Jn. 5:28-29) to talk about going to heaven, assuming you have done good.

The Warning Passages

Here’s some of the warnings:

Romans 2:5-8 and Galatians 6:7-9 both say we will be judged by our deeds in very similar wording. Eternal life at the judgment is for those who “patiently continue to do good” or “don’t grow weary in doing good.”

Romans 11:19-22 warns us that if we don’t continue in God’s goodness, we will be cut off the olive tree just like the unbelieving Jews were.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Galatians 5:19-21; and Ephesians 5:5-7. These all tell us that the unrighteous–with a list of what makes us unrighteous–won’t inherit the kingdom of God. One says “Don’t you know?,” one says, “I’ve told you over and over,” and the last says, “Don’t be deceived.”

1 Corinthians 10:1-12: “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” This passage argues that the Israelites were baptized into Moses and drank of the spiritual rock which is Christ, but they died in the wilderness.

Hebrews 6:1-8 warns those of us who have tasted of the heavenly gift and of the power of the age to come that if we fall away we probably can’t repent (“near being cursed,” thank God that James 5:19-20 suggests we can.)

2 Peter 2:20-21 warns us that if we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (cf. 2 Peter 1:4) but are entangled and overcome by that corruption again, we will be worse off than before we knew the truth!!

Revelation 2 and 3 have Jesus writing to 7 churches in Asia Minor. It’s obvious he wasn’t thinking eternal security when he wrote to them.

True Stories About Casually Dismissing Warnings

I remember being in a Sunday school class when “I wore a younger man’s clothes.” The teacher read Galatians 6:7-8 and asked, “Does this mean we can lose our salvation?” He paused for effect, which was indeed effective. I think everyone was holding their breath. Then he said, “No.” Then he moved on to verse 10.

Yes, that really happened.

I wrote him a note saying, “No matter what you believe about eternal security, Galatians 6:7-8 is a warning passage, and you did not pass on the warning.” He gave the note to the pastor, and the pastor called me into his office to ask me why I felt free to correct his Sunday School teachers. (I should point out that this was a uniquely evil pastor, not your average pastor at all. He later kicked that Sunday School teacher out of the church for exposing the funds the pastor purposely left out of the budget.)

I met my wife at that church. After we were married, we went to our first married Sunday School class together. There were just four couples, so we sat around a circular table. They were reading Matthew 6, and they got to verses 14-15:

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

The leader, who was reading  the passage, lifted his head and said, “That’s not true, you know.” (I’m not making this up.)

My wife was Baptist through and through. She was saved, for real saved, and age 7 and has loved and served Jesus since then. Until she met me, she didn’t know there were any Christians anywhere who believed you could lose your salvation. In fact, after she met me, she told me she was reading Galatians and was shocked to read, “You have fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4). She had been told all her life that no one could fall from grace.

Anyway, despite her upbringing, both she and I gasped when he said, “That’s not true.”

We were so shocked we could hardly talk. I suspect, though this was almost 39 years ago and I’m no longer sure, that we both blurted out “What?!” at the same time.

He defended his assertion, choosing to believe Baptist theology over Jesus’ theology, assuring us that all our sins were forgiven at the cross whether we forgave others or not. I do wonder if he also adjusted the Lord’s prayer, which came right before our passage, In fact, Matthew 6:14-15 is Jesus’ explanation of why he put “Forgive us our debts  as we also forgive our debtors” in the Lord’s prayer.

Years later, I heard Charles Stanley explain, on the radio, that we have “judicial” forgiveness because of Jesus’ death, and this will get us into heaven. Matthew 6:14-15 is talking about “parental” forgiveness. If we don’t forgive others, God will chastise us.

Note: I clearly remember Charles Stanley teaching this, but I don’t remember the words I put in quotes, “judicial” and “parental.” ChatGPT told me, “I do think ‘judicial’ and ‘parental’ are the pair you were trying to remember. Those two terms became almost a trademark of Stanley’s preaching.”