Can Christians Lose their salvation?

This is a difficult question.  Those who do believe it is possible will argue, “If it’s not possible to lose your salvation then one could do whatever they wanted and still be saved.”  A fair point, I mean one could do drugs and be immoral and kill a bunch of people and still be saved.  They could curse God and say, “Do not send me to heaven! I don’t want to be anywhere near you!” or totally forget about him and no longer believe in him–but no matter what, they still could not lose their salvation.  Something just doesn’t seem right about that.

Of course, those who don’t believe it is possible to lose one’s salvation could retort, “Anyone who behaved in such ways clearly never actually became a true Christian.”  This is also a fair point.  I guess the premise is that once someone becomes a true Christian, somehow the Holy Spirit keeps them from committing truly heinous sins, or perhaps the transformation one goes through when becoming a Christian just naturally keeps them from ever doing really bad things or rejecting their salvation.

Still, life is long, and if one becomes a Christian early in life, they might live another 70 or 80 years during which a lot can happen.  Perhaps war will occur where they live and they’ll have to endure terrible atrocities like their loved ones being tortured and killed.  One could plausibly begin to question God and gradually change to not believe in Him at all.  Would the Holy Spirit really keep someone from walking away from God?  Wouldn’t one’s free will have to remain in effect after becoming a Christian, thus allowing them to walk away from God if they chose to do so?

Two passages commonly used to develop theology about this topic are found in the book of Hebrews.  These verses do seem to clearly state that one can “fall away”, a term which seems to indicate they have left God and are no longer saved.  Of course, as is the purpose of this blog, I will apply textual context and some cultural  context to see if this really holds true.

Consider Hebrews 6:4-6:

4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6 if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. (NIV 1984)

Verses 4 and 5 are clearly talking about someone who is a Christian and therefore has the indwelling Holy Spirit. Verse 6 seems to clearly indicate they can leave God.  What’s worse is the passage seems to state that once someone has done this, that’s it–there’s no chance of becoming saved again!  As I mentioned above, life is long.  Just as it might be years after one becomes a Christian that events cause them to decide to leave God, so after more years or decades, perhaps maturity and more experiences might cause them to want to return to God.  It seems cruel for God to say, “Nope! You had your chance!” However one could see when he talks about the fact that they crucified Jesus again that God might take this harsh stance.

I’ve heard some say God could even harden their hearts like Pharaoh so that they’ll never have the heart to return to them.  It would seem the prodigal son can only mess up once and expect the father to run out and greet him.  If he’s foolish enough to leave and squander his inheritance again, then even if he tries to return home, he’ll find the the door locked!

The second passage in Hebrews is 10:26-27:

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

Like the first, this passage seems to be clear and scary.  If we keep on deliberately sinning after we’ve become Christians then there will be no sacrifice for our sins, meaning our sins are no longer forgiven, right?

I’ve offered the face-value interpretation that most read in these two passages, but I believe this interpretation isn’t quite right.

I agree the passages are describing bona fide Christians leaving God, but it’s the part that they can never return to him that is in error.  Remember that the book of Hebrews is speaking to Jewish people that are trying to keep one foot in the Old Covenant (OC) and one foot in the New Covenant, and that some are even considering going back to the OC altogether.  With that in mind, all Heb 6:4-6 is saying is these Jews cannot be brought back to repentance because the OC is done.  Here’s the only cultural context I’ll use: “repentance” is Jewish lingo for “stop breaking the Law, atone yourself, and get back to following it.”  Like in Mat 4:17 where Jesus says, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near”, and in Acts 2:36, where Peter says “repent and be baptized.”  It doesn’t mean “stop all your sinning” like many believe. (Of course no one in their right mind would say “all your sinning”; instead they soften it to “do your best” or “the major sins”.  See What is a covenant?)

The OC ended when Jesus died on the cross, therefore the Jews cannot return to the OC simply because it no longer exists.  Sure they can try, but even though the Jews continued to perform the OC rituals at the Temple they ceased to have meaning.  God made this fact clear when he tore the curtain separating the Ark of the Covenant from the outside world in two.  This literally ended the OC (i.e. it wasn’t just some symbolic gesture).  He also provided several other signs between Christ’s death and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD to communicate to the Jews that the OC was over (I’ll go into more detail in a future post).

This is why the first passage says, “they are crucifying the Son of God again” and the second says, “no sacrifice for sins is left”, because sacrificing animals anymore to atone for their disobedience to the OC was rendered moot when Jesus made himself the final perfect sacrifice.  To sacrifice animals for atonement clearly revealed one’s faith that they did not believe Jesus was the Lamb of God. Hebrews 8 and 9 describe the end of the OC beautifully.  Heb 8:13 says, “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete”.

Therefore do I believe someone in modern times can fall away and lose their salvation, but probably not because they return to sacrificing animals or even because their sin surpasses some egregious level–but rather because one loses their faith.  The point however is there isn’t some magical thing one can do whereas they can never again be saved–not the “sin of blasphemy” (I’ll explain in further detail in the next post) and not the act of falling away.  If one loses their faith altogether, in whatever form that comes, then the Spirit must depart from them, as it remains there because of one’s faith.  I don’t think one goes in and out of salvation on a daily basis, but more likely on a much longer time period.  That is to say, just because one day you have some doubts about God, it doesn’t mean you fell away.  I believe losing one’s faith is a process over time, taking contributions from sin, lies from Satan, misinformation from the church, a lack of understanding the Gospel, and a lack of openness about one’s true heart and feelings.

One falling away today in modern times may not be done in order to return to sacrificing animals, but you can see how when those early Jewish Christians returned to it, it exposed that they had lost their faith that Jesus was the final sacrifice.  In our case it may not be so evident. The evidence may come in the form of returning to a sinful life, but I want to caution those who are quick to judge people who have left their church, were caught in terrible sins, stopped sharing their faith, etc., that these people have fallen away.  One could say that “only God knows”, but next to that, it would seem the individuals themselves are the ones best equipped to know about their own faith.

 P.S.  I wasn’t initially going to add this because I didn’t want to create any confusion, but, as mentioned on Douglas Jacoby’s website here, there are two different Greek words, piptein and skandalidzesthai, often translated in English translations as “fall away”. piptein is the word found in Heb 6 and 10, and is correctly translated to fall away.  skandalidzesthai (e.g. Mat 13:21), according to Douglas, is better translated to stumble.  I can also add the Greek words planao, to stumble (e.g. James 5:19), and ptaio, to stumble (e.g. James 3:2). Douglas’ point is there are varying degrees of a person’s spiritual heart, which I agree with. But I strongly disagree with his point that once they piptein it’s over. If the passages in Hebrews are correctly and contextually interpreted, there is no need to make such distinctions about the different Greek words.