"Eternal security" refers to the belief that once a person is saved or has a firm relationship with God, their salvation is secure and cannot be lost or taken away. In other words, it is the assurance that their place in heaven is guaranteed forever.
Full definition
I want to give you my beliefs about the issue
of eternal security, and why I believe what I do.
Quite to the contrary, there are numerous reasons to believe and teach the biblical truth
of eternal security, all of which I cover in my online course.
In our day and age, the question
about eternal security and the assurance of salvation is sometimes seen as a divisive issue.
You see, this person doesn't believe in
eternal security because certain people who claim to be Christians certainly don't act like Christians.
I don't agree with Ellul that accepting mediated security is a repudiation of our security in Christ, God often provides for his people indirectly; but I do think that fear / panic at the loss of these means is a repudiation of our trust / faith in God to provide either temporal or
Eternal security for us, whichever he sees fit in his grand scheme of things.
Faith has been redefined as intellectual ascent to a set of propositional truths, and Jesus has been re-cast as a sort of mechanism by
which eternal security can be achieved.
You claim that those who
reject eternal security believe that only sins committed prior to receiving Jesus are forgiven but you also go on to warn that we better be careful or else the next time we sin, Jesus will take eternal life away from us.
Temporary eternal security is like salvation by grace that you have to be good for, or free and only 80 dollars for shipping and handling.
The bottom line truth about
eternal security from the Gospel of John is this: Do we think Jesus was telling the truth or lying?
We can hold to
eternal security while still affirming that most verses that talk about «salvation» affirm a conditional deliverance from some sort of temporal and physical calamity.
Eternal security tells me that God loves me unconditionally, and therefore, I can move forward in my Christian life at breakneck speed.
Donald Cole, who used to host the Open Line Bible Answer Call in Radio Show says that without fail, he receives at least one, sometimes as many as five questions about
eternal security during every single show.
And it is my conviction, it is my observation that those who believe in
eternal security move a lot faster down the road of discipleship than those who are constantly afraid of making mistakes.
His followers were these twelve men called disciples (except for one man named Judas who was an impostor who, being prophesied about, did not have a choice about his
own eternal security).
Since many Christians think that these two terms are synonymous, they don't really see much of a difference
between eternal security and «once saved, always saved.»
If we were to take the time to study the entire book, as I hope to do someday, we would discover that the book of Hebrews teaches the doctrine of
eternal security more than many other books of the Bible!
They are far too late to the party to play the role of an onramp to the chain
of eternal security given that foreknowledge and predestination long precede it, being before the foundation of the world.
Some families look for a church that preaches
against eternal security, while others look for a church that preaches in favor of it.
But some people who
reject eternal security teach that he only died for the sins that were prior to us believing in Jesus.
Yes, I absolutely still hold to and teach the freeness of eternal life, as well
as eternal security.
We must not, we dare not, base our decision
about eternal security on our own experiences or people we know who have claimed to be Christians but have not lived like Christ.
I do believe in
eternal security, so I would say that although we are citizens of the Kingdom of God through faith in Jesus, we can still live according to some of the rules (and consequences) of the Kingdom of Darkness.
I was raised in an evangelical church that never explicitly stated their theology was Calvanism, yet it came through in their teaching; ironically however, when it came to
eternal security they were Arminian (believed you could lose your salvation).
When you are offered the choice of either being Arminian (Lose your salvation) or Calvinist (Sovereignty of God and
Eternal Security) it is a no - brainer.
Quite the contrary, I am convinced that when Scripture is studied in its various contexts,
eternal security is the clear teaching of the Bible.
Read my responses to Craig above and I hope you will at least caution yourself and others to not place blind faith in the doctrine of
eternal security.