by Jordan Barham
How do I get to Heaven? This question has permeated minds ever since Jesus began preaching about Heaven over 2000 years ago and it has a pretty clear answer; trust in Jesus and you will be saved. But the follow up questions come quickly: what if I lose my trust, what if I die while sinning, what if I forget and then come back, what if, what if, what if? Looking at the Bible we can see that even in the earliest days people had questions like this and we can find solace in the apostle’s answers.
Can I Lose My Salvation?
Let’s start simple, when you get saved do you stay saved? While many Christians (like Catholics and Lutherans) split on this, the reformed view is yes and that is called the assurance of salvation or, in other words, the Perseverance of the Saints (that’s the P in TULIP).
Romans 10:9 says that “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Will be saved, not will be saved if you keep from sinning or if you go to church. If you confess and believe, you are going to heaven. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (Jn 10:28). Once we are God’s children, nothing can take us away.
In Philippians 1:6 we see that “he [God] who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” What God has started he is going to finish. You can see it in the very language used to describe the change, Jesus calls it being ‘Born-Again,’ once you are born into God’s love you can’t be unborn. As theologian James Beevers wrote, “There’s no sin a Christian can commit that will revoke God’s decree of election, turn the Father’s heart away from his children, or annul God’s promise to preserve us blameless and pure to the end.”
Once saved you are indeed always saved. But this launches us straight into the next question.
How Do I Know I’m Saved?
Ok, if I am saved, I’m going to heaven. But how do I know If I am saved? Again we can look at Romans 10:9 but now that begs the question how do I know if I am really believing in my heart. Thankfully, the Bible gives us a way to find out. We do this by looking at our fruits and by that we mean our actions and virtues. “Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” Matthew 7:17. A Christian who is in a relationship with God will be noticeably
different from normal people.
But we have to be careful with this as John Piper clarifies, “It is not the fruit that justifies you. The tree of faith is the good tree. The fruit is the evidence that the tree is good.” James 2:17 says that “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” We can see our relationship with Jesus come alive when we serve him wholeheartedly.
What About Those That “Leave the Faith?”
You may be thinking that this all sounds great so far, but what about the metaphorical elephant in the room: those that do abandon Christianity? Are they still going to Heaven even though they only believed in the earlier parts of their life? Did they take the ‘Get out of Hell for free card’ and then go back to their worldly ways? This one is a bit harder to nail down and in the end we can’t be 100% sure. But that being said unless they reconvert later, they probably
aren’t going to end up with Jesus.
Doesn’t this contradict what we said earlier though? To see the truth we must change perspectives. “And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Romans 8:29). This verse connects back to Phil 1:6, both of them saying what God starts he will finish. And those that recant Christianity obviously don’t end up a model believer so that means they must not have been a believer in the first place. Ultimately, someone’s conversion is between him and God and only they can know if he is a true Christian or just going through the motions.
In addition, when God saves us, he creates a bond, a relationship with the person saved that goes beyond simply washing the sins from our outside, he begins to make us more holy from the inside. As pastor Danny Myers writes, “The biblical teaching, however, is that God has done something; God is doing something; and God will do something.” Those that cut their ties with Christianity must never have been adopted, for God won’t let his children be claimed by sin in the end.
What If I Commit the Unforgivable Sin?
But there is one more question I want to clarify. What about the ‘unforgivable sin’, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? If a Christian commits it, is their salvation just ended because they can’t be forgiven?
Jesus teaches about this in the Gospels directly after casting demons out of a man. Watching Pharisees claim that he did it through the power of Satan but Jesus retorts that blaspheming the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, now or ever. So can a Christian do this? Once again there are many differing ideas about this but as we have already established that a Christian cannot lose their salvation this does not make an exception.
According to John Piper, blaspheming the Holy Spirit is, “a willful, determined opposition to the present power of the Holy Spirit,” which is something a Christian, by definition, cannot do. Being a Christian means living in and embracing the Spirit, so a true believer would and could never be both in a relationship with God whilst denying and opposing the Spirit.
Being a Christian means living in and embracing the Spirit, so a true believer would and could never be both in a relationship with God whilst denying and opposing the Spirit.
We can also look at John 3:16 which says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Notice that when it says you will have eternal life; it doesn’t include any buts, maybes or other exceptions. Romans 8:38-39 is pretty clear about this, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Wrapping Up
So now, assured in the security of your salvation, live out your faith. Let your fruits be a testimony of your Savior that the whole world can see. Follow the Great Commission without reserve, after all if no one can separate you from God who do you have to fear? Matthew 10:28 says “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” The only one we should fear is God and God treasures us as sons and daughters. Worship God through your actions and praise him with your works, for
He is coming soon.
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