Can you lose your salvation on this edition of Truth and Love?

I'm Heath Lambert, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the problems that people face.

One problem that so many Christians struggle with is dealing with this question, can I lose my salvation?

Or have I lost my salvation? We could talk about it in the category of the assurance of salvation.

And many people struggle with assurance. It causes a great deal of despair, heartache, pain

in the lives of so many people. And so we want to talk about that in very practical terms

on the podcast this week. And to help us with that is our guest, Dr. Bill Shannon. He is a fellow with the Association of

Certified Biblical Counselors, and he is the pastor of discipleship at Grace Community Church

in Sun Valley, California. Dr. Shannon, we're glad you're with us, and the first question

right out of the gate is, is it true? Can you lose your salvation? Well, I think if we look at the

scriptures and when Jesus Christ invites to eternal salvation, eternal actually means eternal,

and that no, you cannot lose your salvation. There are many people that have had friends that

have walked away from the faith and they wonder, what happened to my friend?

Did he lose his salvation?

And my answer to that would be is that he never really had his salvation.

He never really knew Jesus Christ.

I think 1 John 219 is the scripture that would point to that.

They went out from us because they did not really know us,

and they went out from us just to show us that they never really knew Christ. And I think that's the

definitive scripture for that. When we look at salvation, it is assured. Frankly, it's assured by the

character of God. If God is faithful, then he's going to continue to keep that faithfulness with us

in that salvation that he has promised to us.

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