I apologize for taking so long to continue on this topic. In any case :) here we go...
I do not believe either the calvinist "perseverence of the saints" or "once saved always saved" (OSAS) to be true. I believe they both contradict the clear teaching of scripture, and since I have rediscovered the historic teachings of the church, I have found that neither of them is supported by the orthodox teachings of the church. (although admitedly there is much more precedent for the Calvinist position, particularly in Thomist theology of medieval scholasticism).
I don't like to use the phrase "lose salvation" as I think it creates a wrong mental image. I don't think salvation is something you misplace like you might your keys, or your sunglasses. However, I do believe the bible clearly teaches that you can reject salvation by rejecting faith in God.
On most issues of doctrie you will find the church splits itself into extreme camps. The opposite extreme of the eternal salvation camp is that section of the church often referred to as legalistic, which tends to teach that if you sin, you will lose your salvation. To hear some you would almost think that you must be re-saved after every time you sin. This is no better than the extremes of eternal salvation. As in so many cases, it is an issue where balance is crucial. We must never give in to condemnation, but we must always be open to conviction.
In order to explain my own views I must begin at the beginning.
In western protestant christianity the fall of man, and the redemption of Christ has been reduced down to a simply transaction of legal justification. Man broke the law and thus earned a death sentence. God had mercy and sent Jesus Christ to take the sentence himself, thus we are free and forgiven. This is true, but it is vastly over simplified, and incomplete. It is not the whole truth.
The over simplification of this view has lead to much of the doctrinal error which is now present in protestant theology regarding redemption and christian living.
First, when adam and eve sinned, they broke no law. There was no law to break. I was always puzzled by this before I rediscovered the historic teaching on this issue. In the bible it clearly says that law did not come until long after Adam and Eve. The first law given at all was in the covenant God made with Noah. The Law of God usually referred to in the bible was not given until Moses. Whats more, the bible clearly says that there was no law prior to this.
This is one of the reasons that Cain was not put to death for murdering his brother.. there was no law by which to condemn him.
Romans 5:13-14 says "13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses..."
This verse tells us two things, #1 there was no law till Moses. #2 sin existed before law.
If sin existed before law, then sin can not merely be the breaking of a law. The law was given for the express purpose of REVEALING the sin that was already there.
Now, undoubtedly some are thinking "the law was not given, but God's very nature is the law.. so man may not have known the law, but the law existed".
Essentially this is correct, but if you begin to consider the implications of this, you will see that we are moving out of the realm of mere legal issues for sin and redemption.
What Adam and Eve, and all the people till Moses violated was not an external code of laws which existed apart from and outside of God.. but rather the very nature of God himself.
God is utterly and completely holy. Every christian knows this, but do you know what holy means? Holy means sacred, sanctified, set apart. God is totally and completely set apart. What does this mean? What it means is something akin to what we might call "homogeneous". It means essentially that God can not tolerate the presense of anything that is other than himself, or contrary to himself. Only that which is like God can exist within God, or in God's presense.
Now, when we go back to the fact that the actions of Adam and Eve were violations of God's very nature, they, fundamentally rejected God's will and elevated their own will over God. They decided that they would be their own gods. The inevitable result and conclusion is that Adam and Eve (and in them all humanity) were necessarily seperated from God.
In that seperation Adam and Eve died as God had fortold "the day you eat of the fruit of the tree you shall die". Many people question this part of the story because Adam and Eve didn't die physically at that time. They did die immediately in that moment, however. The death spoken of is spiritual in nature. God is the source of life and to be seperated from him is to be seperated from life. So Adam and Eve immediately died when they seperated themselves from God. Their spirits ceased to have life.
The spiritual is the foundation of the physical and the two are irrevocably tied together, thus physical death became inevitable for the spiritually dead as well.
At this point God faced a choice. His presense would utterly destroy Adam and Eve in their state of seperation from him. Were he to inhabit the world the way he had prior to this, it would destroy Adam and Eve. Thus Paul tells us in Roman's chapter 8 that God subjected the entire creation, and everything in it to vanity, corruption, or "emptiness" because it was only through this act that hope remained for the redemption of man. Man's sin soiled the entire creation as well as himself. The result was that God removed himself and set a barrier between himself and the creation and man, so that his holiness would not destroy them.
Everything from that point on in scripture is the story of God revealing himself to man, and showing mankind what sin is, and how to be free from sin.
Sin is not merely the breaking of a law which earns us a punnishment (though it is that), it is that which seperates us from God, that which makes us contrary to God, that which makes us opposed to God.
The ultimate revelation of God came in the form of Jesus Christ, God in flesh. Jesus did so much more for us than merely satisfy the law (though he did that completely). The first profound truth of Jesus Christ is the incarnation. The fact that in Jesus Christ, God became a man. In Jesus Christ God permanently united humanity itself to Himself. This is one of the many reasons that being aware of the dual nature of Christ is so important. Jesus Christ was and is to this day fully God, and fully human. In Jesus Christ humanity has been exalted and sits at the right hand of God the Father.
It is through this union of God and man accomplished in the being of Jesus Christ that we can be redeemed. Our debt to the law must be payed, and it has been, but more than that, we must be restored to communion with God.. we must be restored to life.
Paul always referred to this as the great mystery of the faith, but we in the protestant west have lost sight of the mystery. That in Jesus Christ the life of God was restored to humanity and that we, when were baptized into Jesus Christ were joined with him. We were mysticly made one with him. We joined him in his death, and we join him in the life of God that is in him.
This is not some mere bland forgiving of a debt, it is a mystical communion in which we are literally living in God, and he is literally living in us. It was made possible by the fact that Jesus Christ was both fully man and fully God.
He could pay our debt because he was a man, he could die because he was a man, he could rise again because he was God almighty the source of life itself. He could ransom both us and creation itself back from death and hell because he could die, and because death could not hold him.
So you see that sin is not merely a misdeed which earns you a punnishment. It is an action which is opposed to God himself, it is an act of rebellion against God, it is an act of emnity towards God.
So how does God forgive sin, how do we obtain the life of God?
The answer as I'm sure you all know is faith in Christ Jesus. God uses faith to join us to Christ. When we are in Christ, the old sinful us dies with Christ and is buried with Christ, and we become a new creation, we are born again. This is accomplished in the realm of our spirit. Our spirit is reborn into communion with God. This is how we know God, and know the will of God. As Paul says the natural man does not understand or percieve the things of God, only the spiritual man does.
The story does not end there, however. The issue which caused us to fall in the first place, and the issue which must be overcome in salvation is our will (which is seated in our soul).
In the bible salvation is presented in three tenses, past, present, and future. You have been saved, you are being saved, and you will be saved. These three tenses correspond to the three areas of our being.. the spirit, soul, and body.
when we are baptized into Christ the old spirit dies and is buried with him, and we are made a new creation, a new spirit is born within us from God. This is a moment in time, it happened, we were saved.
The first two aspects of salvation are seen clearly in Titus 3:5 which says
"he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, "
The washing of regeneration refers to the spirit being born again. Regeneration literally means "born again" it means to be created again. To be generated again. It does not mean an old thing which is fixed, it means a completely new thing, just as "new creation".
The renewing of the Holy Spirit refers to the process of renewing our soul by the working of the Holy Spirit. The word renewing here does not mean the same thing as regeneration. It means to take the old broken thing and fix it, to renovate it. It is an ongoing process of restoring the soul. Paul also refrences this as the renewing of our minds.
Our human will is centered in the soul and even after we are born again in spirit that human will within us desires its own exaltation, and desires to rule us. Thus the challenge of the christian life is wether we will live by the spirit God has given us, or by the soul, by our own will.
Undoubtedly some are thinking that I'm preaching works based salvation (and probably will think so no matter what I say). I am not. The work of rebirth and renewal within us is done entirely by God. However, our will must be involved in this sense.. we must choose wether to submit, or not to submit.
This battle of will is what Paul was referring to when he spoke of the war in his members.. "why do I do what I hate, and why do I not do what I want to do.." The soul must be put down and submitted to the spirit. We can not do this in our own strength, we can only do it through the working of the Holy Spirit in us, BUT we must choose wether to allow it or no.
The teaching of Paul is that as long as we live by the spirit, we do not sin, but when we live by the flesh (and the word Paul uses translated flesh here means soul) we sin.
We all face a war within our members determining wether we ultimately will walk in spirit or in soul. Which will will rule you. God's will revealed through your spirit, or your will manifest in your soul.
Earlier I quoted Titus 3:5, now I quote John chapter 3 which contains a parallel to titus 3:5.
Titus says "he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, "
John says "Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."
In order to enter the kingdom of God your spirit must have been reborn through the washing of water and your soul must have been renewed by the work of the Holy Spirit.
You may ask.. how much renewal is enough renewal? doesn't this just turn salvation into a "are you good enough" question?
The answer is no, it doesn't. Proverbs says "a righteous man is he who falls seven times, and seven times gets up..." Its not the falling that makes you rightous.. therefore it must be the getting up.
Even if you have but begun, even taken the first step in the process of renewing your soul it is enough for God. The question is not one of "are you good enough" it is entirely one of "do you have faith".
The problem is that faith CAN NOT be understood as merely mental agreement. If this were the case the devil and all the demons would be saved. Faith must be defined by allegience. It must bear the fruit of action.
It is something of a fine line of understanding we must come to. We must not think that we can earn salvation by deeds... but we must also never think that the fruit we produce, does not matter.
So, we have seen that sin is not merely breaking of a law, earning punnishment, it is that which seperates us from God. It is that which deprives us of life. This is partially, at least, what Paul was talking about when he said "all things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient". We are no longer under law. Therefore, when you commit a sin you do not earn punnishment. Sin is not counted where there is no law.
BUT... All those who lived from Adam to Moses were also not under law, and thus they were not counted guilty of having broke the law, but they were dead none the less. Even if you are not under law, even if there is no punnishment imputed, sin still brings death.
Thus, when you commit a sin, you do not earn the punnishment perscribed by the law. You do not lose your salvation. You do, however, hinder the life giving presense of God in you and you strengthen your will, your soul, in its exaltation of self against God. When you live by your will, you bring death into yourself, when you submit your will to God, you submerge yourself in Life.
The problem here is that while sin does not cause you immediately to lose your salvation, it may, indeed certainly will if indulged, lead to the hardening of your heart. You will become insensitive to your own reborn spirit, by which you know and understand the things of God, as well as the Holy Spirit and his restoring work.
We often tend to think of "sin" as only the really bad things like drunkeness, lust, drugs, theft, hatred, etc. The real definition of sin is when you follow your own will, above and contrary to the will of God. This 'willfulness' is, at its foundation, rebellion. It opens us to deception, and it, if indulged long enough, may result in our ultimate allegience of faith, transfering from God, to self.
In the next post I will simply look specificly at scriptures which contradict the eternal salvation view points.
