Let us not
confuse the issue. Let us be clear in our minds the bone of contention. I believe
we are saved by faith, like most believers (Ephesians 2:8-9). We are on the
same turf on that matter. What I disagree is this—when someone tells me that there is
eternal security for believers ie. once saved always saved (OSAS).
Just by
considering Jude 1:5 and 1
Corinthians 10:1-11 (please see below), we can reject straightaway OSAS.
If you subscribe to OSAS, you will have to take a pair of scissors and cut out Jude 1:5
and 1 Corinthians 10:1-11 from your Bible. And what is the consequence
for tampering with God’s word (Rev 22:18,19)?
Paul states that the lessons from Israel’s history * is to warn us; it is for our admonition. It is not something irrelevant to us as we are apt to think—just because
it happened during Old Testament times.
If the above references are not sufficient for us to reject OSAS,
then we should also consider the following: 2 Peter 2:20-22; 2
Timothy 2: 11-13 and Matthew 24:9-13.
I believe that the above references are one of the biggest
bugbears for those who believe in OSAS. They are like thorns in the side for
them.
To be complacent and rest on our spiritual laurels—to believe in OSAS—is dangerous as we may
reap grave eternal consequences.
* Lessons from Israel’s history—saved but later
destroyed
“I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers
and sisters, about our ancestors in the
wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of
them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. In the cloud and in the sea, all of them
were baptized as followers of Moses. All
of them ate the same spiritual food, and
all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual
rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of
them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
These things happened as a warning to us,
so that we would not crave evil things as they did, or worship idols as some of them did.
As the Scriptures say, “The people celebrated with feasting and drinking, and
they indulged in pagan revelry.” And we must not engage in sexual immorality as some of them did,
causing 23,000 of them to die in one day.
Nor should we put Christ to
the test, as some of them did and then died from snakebites. And don’t grumble as some of them did,
and then were destroyed by the angel of death. These things happened to them as
examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the
age” (1 Corinthians 10:1-11).
“Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it,
that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed
those who did not believe” (Jude 1:5).
Eternal Security or
Deliverance from slavery in Egypt in a great exodus is a TYPE of salvation, which is a deliverance from enslavement to sin.
ReplyDeleteThe apostle Paul used the moral failure of the exodus generation to warn modern-day believers of the danger of falling away (1 Cor. 10:1-12).