Once saved, always saved?

Ephesians 2:8: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Paul teaches us in the Book of Ephesians that we are saved by grace through faith. To understand this we must firstly realize that grace was Jesus freely laying down His life for us on the cross of Calvary, as our worthy near Kinsman and having no sin. God accepted this perfect atonement by the resurrection and glorification of Christ. Faith on the other hand is to have a clear understanding of the revealed Word for the age, which we then willfully obey. In doing this we are accounted just or saved by faith in our accepting and believing in the finished work of God in Christ. It is not that a person becomes saved at that point (because their name was already written on the Book of Life before the foundation of the world), but that they have recognized and gratefully received what Jesus already accomplished in their behalf.

The answer to the question of whether we can be saved and then subsequently lost is made very plain from the Bible. There is absolutely no truth to the doctrine of “once saved, always saved.” A person is not actually sealed into the body of Christ until they are born again (Ephesians 4:30), and only then are they eternally secure. What we learn from this is that eternal security has nothing to do with being saved, but has everything to do with being born again.

It is only the Bride of Christ who cannot lose Her salvation. She is eternally secure because Her name is in the Lamb’s section of the Book and because She received the new birth, having been predestined to it as an eternal attribute of God. The Bride of Christ is made up of God’s sons and daughters, whereas everybody else are but servants of God, doing a work for the Father, but not being of the Father.

As sons and daughters of God, being that we are eternal attributes of God, we come to recognize that we were always saved because we were always a part of God. We often think that when we gave our hearts to Christ here on the earth, that is when we got saved, but that is not so, for as the scriptures open up to us and our spiritual understanding develops, we learn that we received Christ here on the earth because we were always a part of Him in Eternity. This means that we were born saved from our mother’s womb, but that we did not know it yet until we came to Christ here on the earth. When Jesus died on the cross, He did not die for the lost (those who would reject Him), but died only for those whom God foreknew would of their own free will receive His grace.

The Book of Life which we mentioned earlier was compiled before the foundation of the world, and God knew what each name on the Book would do with their freedom of choice when they were born on the earth, whether their names would remain on the Book and be saved, or whether their names would be removed from the Book and be subsequently lost. Those people whose names are struck off the Book is because their souls crossed the line between mercy and judgment, meaning that they have become unsavable, because a name once removed from the Book cannot be added to It again.

This great Book of Life has a special section to It called the Lamb’s Section of the Book. In this section of the Book are the names of God’s sons and daughters; these names can never ever be removed from the Book because each name in that section is an eternal attribute of God, whereas the names in the Book of Life can potentially be removed because they were not a part of God to begin with. Those whose names are in the Book of Life will receive eternal life at the Great White Throne of Judgment, but those names who were struck off the Book or were never on the Book of Life to begin with will be cast into the Lake of Fire. Yes, those whose names were never on the Book of Life to begin with were actually born lost!

A good example of a man who lost his salvation was Judas Iscariot. His name was on the Book of Life (but not the Lamb’s section of the Book), he was chosen and ordained by Jesus as an apostle, and he was justified by faith and baptized in water by John (John 4:1-2). Judas was saved but became lost when he rejected his salvation by betraying Jesus, and did not go to Pentecost to receive the Holy Ghost.

The emphasis is not about being saved, but to be born again “saints” of God, for it is the saints (the Bride of Jesus Christ whose name is in the Lamb’s section of the Book) who shall judge the saved (those whose names remained on the Book of Life) at the Great White Throne of Judgment, and shall judge those whose names were struck off the Book, and those whose names were never on the Book to begin with. Amongst the saved who receive eternal life at the Great White Throne of Judgment are the foolish virgins, the fifth seal Jews, those who did good to the Bride, and those who refuse to worship the Beast and his image in the Great Tribulation.