Can You Lose Your Salvation?
Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear
J.D. Greear
4.9 • 624 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2022
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
Show Notes:
* At first glance, Hebrews 6 seems to say that not only can you lose your salvation, but once you do, you can never get it back! So what does it mean?
* This is important: I believe the writer of Hebrews is giving a general, pastoral warning to his congregation rather than attempting to delineate how the processes of regeneration, justification and eternal security work together.
* So, the warning here is a statement to believers and unbelievers alike about the importance of the gospel. Hopefully, it will rouse unbelievers out of their slumber. To the believer, we know that God will use it to keep his believers tethered closely to the gospel. Warnings like this one are one of God’s means of keeping believers awake to the gospel.
* If you persevere to the end, that proves you had the salvation you could never lose. If you don’t, it proves you never had that faith to begin with.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Ask Me Anything where Pastor J.D. Greer gives quick answers to some of your toughest theological, ethical, and leadership questions. I am Matt Love. And today, we have a question that is submitted by one of our listeners. And actually, it is probably our most asked question. We've gotten it from several people over the last few months. |
| 0:38.7 | And so we really wanted to hop in and get you guys an answer to this because so many of you guys |
| 0:42.7 | are wondering. Andy wrote to us and said, very simply, can you lose your salvation? Hebrews 6, |
| 0:49.4 | 4 through 8 is throwing me for loop. So, J.D., what do you think? Andy, you asked a question that is |
| 0:53.7 | close to my heart and one that I wrestled with for many, many years. In fact, I wrote a book on it. I don't use |
| 0:59.5 | this podcast to try to promote books that I've written, but this is one that was so personal to me. |
| 1:04.6 | How do I know that I'm saved? How do I know that you can't lose your salvation? Let me just lay out a little bit of things for you and then maybe point you to some places that you could even go deeper. |
| 1:14.6 | The Bible is clear that salvation is a gift given irrevocably. |
| 1:18.5 | That means once and for all. |
| 1:19.8 | But we prove that we have it by renewing ourselves in repentance and faith continually and by never ceasing to persevere onwards until we get to glory. There's a lot of |
| 1:30.5 | warnings like the one you referenced in Hebrew 6 that almost are like, hey, hey, pay attention. |
| 1:35.3 | If you don't continue on in the faith and if you don't continue on in the grace of God, you're |
| 1:38.7 | going to fall away. Those warnings are one of the means by which God keeps us persevering of the faith. |
| 1:44.9 | And a failure to heed those warnings is evidence that you never possess that faith. |
| 1:49.1 | And I know that's really confusing. |
| 1:50.5 | So let me actually go into the passage itself, the one that Andy mentioned, because it's one of the most notoriously difficult passages on eternal security. |
| 1:58.4 | Let me just read it here, Hebrews, Hebrews 6, for it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted |
| 2:05.1 | the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit, have tasted the goodness of the Word of God |
| 2:09.7 | and the powers of the age to come, if they have fallen away, it is impossible to restore them |
| 2:14.3 | again to repentance because they're crucifying again, the son of God to their own harm and holding him up in holding them again to repentance because they're crucifying again the son of God to their own |
| 2:18.1 | harm and holding him up in holding them up to contempt now you read that and you're like what i mean those |
| 2:24.1 | who were once enlightened you know and then they fall away they're unable to be renewed again to |
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