Once saved, always saved???

Greetings!!

I wasn't sure what I would write about today when I got up earlier but God has really laid this on my heart.  Many churches today preach the thought or theory of "Once saved, always saved."  But I find basically nothing that supports that theory.  Oh, sure if you do everything you are suppose to do and live a perfect life, yes, you are saved once and for all.  We are not saved by works alone. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus the Christ.  However, just because you stand up in some church and say you believe in Jesus, that does not mean that's it and that is all you have to do!!

That is indeed the first step.  You must confess your faith and confess your sins to the Heavenly Father first.  But then you are required to do certain things to keep that salvation.  Will you fail from time to time?  Yes!!  Failing by accident or by ignorance is forgivable.  But the person who believes they can do whatever they want and it does not matter because they are saved is sadly mistaken!  I have gotten into many debates over the years with this very topic.

Before we get into some scripture, let me give you an example.  Let's say you are a Christian, you have your salvation.  You go to church and you try to live a good life.  But then one day, someone wrongs you in a really bad way.  You have some choices to make.  You can do as Jesus taught and turn the other cheek, or you can plan a way to get revenge, even though the bible tells you, "vengeance is mine, says the Lord".  You know murder is a sin but this person hurt you so bad you want to kill them.  You know how you would do it and not get caught.  The Holy Spirit starts to convict you, reminding you that murder is a sin.  But you think, big deal, I am saved, God will forgive me, I am going to heaven even if I kill this person.  And so you kill him/her knowing before hand that it is a sin.

You have done a couple of things besides murdering someone.  You turned your back on the convictions of the Holy Spirit.  That is blaspheming the spirit which is the one thing the bible says IS unforgivable.  You took God's forgiveness for granted, again blaspheming God.  Blaspheming is not just using the Lord's name in vain, it is putting yourself above the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it is also turning your back on them to do what you want to do.  Sorry folks, but committing an intentional sin after you know better is not necessarily going to be forgiven.  God knows what is in your heart, you might be able to hide from other humans but you can not hide your guilt from God.  Pre-meditating a sin, any sin, is not going to be acceptable.

Turn with me to Matthew 5:31-46.  This particular scripture talks about the final judgment day.  Jesus separates the sheep, from the goats.  The sheep being the believers who followed in His footsteps and lived life as He has told us to.  The goats are also believers but they did not follow in His footsteps and went about life as usual believing they could pretty much do whatever they wanted.  Jesus talks about feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, clothing the naked and giving drink to the thirsty.

Basically I believe Jesus is saying if you don't walk the walk along with talking the talk, you are not doing what you are called to do as a servant of mine and therefore condemned to hell.  But I put the scripture in here because I want you to read it for yourself.  Go from there and you will find other scripture in the bible that shows "once saved, always saved" is a bad theory.

Being a Christian and truly trying to walk the walk is not easy and it is not meant to be easy.  Do you think what Jesus went through was easy?  The bible says the road to heaven is narrow, winding and not the easy path but the road to hell is wide and easy to travel.  In other words, it is going to take work to get down the path to heaven, and once you are saved you must take that harder path to get there.

Truly trying to live a full Christian life the way Jesus taught will bring persecution and ridicule from people but keep this scripture in mind when someone judges you falsely or persecutes you falsely.  Matthew 5:10  says, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven"  KJV  other versions say, persecuted for my name's sake and Jesus is speaking.  If you are persecuted for doing what Jesus has taught you to do, yours is the kingdom of heaven.  Stop and grasp that a minute.  The rewards in heaven are much greater than anything you can possess on earth.  I would much rather worry about what I will have in heaven for all eternity than for what I might gain on this earth for just a mere few years in comparison.  Wouldn't you??

Additional scripture for you to read.  Matthew 7:13-29  Matthew 5:1-12  This will give you a good start, then you can also do a search for other scriptures that support these.

Until next time,,,,,,,,,Blessings!