Question:
Can you tell me if some one can lose their salvation, or is your salvation fixed?
What will happen to me if I turn back to the world? Will I be accepted into heaven or rejected?

Answer (by Daryl Wingerd, editorial assistant to Jim Elliff):

Your question is frequently asked. Many Christians struggle with this issue, and it is a very important one.

The Bible addresses the issue in the form of two essential concepts:
1. PRESERVATION by God
2. PERSEVERANCE on the part of the believer in faith, repentance, and holiness

PRESERVATION describes the certainty of God's saving work. All who are truly born again will be preserved for salvation by God.

Consider some passages that clearly affirm the doctrine of preservation:

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand" (John 10:27-29)

Peter wrote that all who are truly in Christ "are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5).

(Also read Romans 8:28-38; John 5:24; John 6:37-39).

Clearly, these passages speak of God preserving all who are truly His. The true Christian is safe in the hand of God.

All too often, however, this doctrine is distorted and trivialized. What I mean is this: There are many who profess to be Christians who do not act or think like Christians, or whose initial faith and obedience to Christ later fades away to nothing. As the last part of your question is worded, they "turn back to the world."

Are such people safe in the hands of God? May a person who professed belief and appeared to be "saved" live out the remainder of his days like an unbeliever, and still rightly see himself as safe in God's hand?

This is where the biblical doctrine of PERSEVERANCE becomes important. Let me allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves:

" . . . by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "A dog returns to its own vomit," and "A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire" (2 Peter 3:19-22).

"Take care, brethren [speaking to professing Jewish Christians], that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called 'Today,' so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end" (Hebrews 3:12-14).

As Jesus said to His disciples, "You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who endures to the end who will be saved" (Matthew 10:22).

These passages, and others (see Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23; Colossians 1:21-23; 1 Corinthians 15:1-2; Hebrews 10:26-31), give sober warnings against falling back into sinful patterns of living, again falling in love with the world, giving up due to persecution, or ceasing to believe the truth after being tempted away by false teaching. The consequences of such falling away are indeed eternal. Those who do fall away, as described above, are not saved.

The question we are left to answer is this: does the Bible contradict itself? Are Christians said, in one place, to be safe and secure—saved and preserved by God—and then, in another place, said to be in perilous danger of losing their salvation if they fail to live up to God's standard?

The answer to that is a resounding "NO!" The Bible does not contradict itself, but rather the biblical writers realized two important things:

1. There are many who profess to know Christ, who actually do not. Jesus said as much in the Sermon on the Mount:

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness'" (Matthew 7:21-23).

2. There are many who profess to know Christ, yet who return to, or never really stop, gratifying their own sinful desires, or who return to, or never really stop, setting their affections on worldly things. Such people may fool others, or even themselves, but they will never deceive God.

Consider 1 John 2:3-4.

"By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him."

and also, 1 John 2:15-16 . . .

"Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world."

Paul said to the Corinthians, people who professed to be Christians, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test" (2 Corinthians 13:5).

Does your faith match the biblical descriptions of saving faith? It does IF it is grounded in the truth contained only in the Bible, and IF:

1. it results in increasing and lasting obedience to Christ
2. it perseveres to the end of your life

To sum up in answer to your question, If you are indeed a child of God, you are safe forever. But a true child of God will be ever growing and ever increasing in the godly characteristics that prove him to be genuine. Life divinely implanted by God can never be taken away, but the sure sign of the presence of that life is perseverance and growth. If a person returns to the love of the world and to worldly ways of living, he will not only be lost, he will prove himself to have never been truly found.

John writes of such people who abandon the faith for sinful living or false doctrine, saying:

"They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us" (1 John 2:19).

Two things to remember when considering the sureness of your own salvation are:

1. All who are truly saved, truly in Christ, will be preserved by the power of God. None of these will be lost.

2. All who are truly saved, truly in Christ, will persevere and grow in faith and godliness until the end of their life. None who do not so persevere were ever truly saved.