If you would like to read my views on religion and how we got started with the ministry, you can read this.
Because the Christian is uniquely born again of God’s imperishable spiritual seed, sealed with holy spirit, and therefore guaranteed salvation, the very presence of holy spirit permanently born in us gives us a divine nature, as Scripture verifies:
2 Peter 1:4 (KJV) [6]
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature,…”
At the risk of seeming repetitious, no one in the Old Testament, Gospels, or Revelation is ever said to receive, or “partake of,” a divine nature, not even the prophets, who had God’s gift of holy spirit upon them. By the way, because Christians have both a new, divine nature and an old, sin nature, these antithetical natures struggle against each other within us. Only in Scripture addressed to the Church does the Bible say that the sin nature (or “flesh”) and the divine nature (or “spirit”) “are in conflict with each other,” (Gal. 5:17).
Because we have a divine nature, the Bible refers to all Christians as “saints,” although a better translation would be “holy ones” (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2; Eph. 1:1). A quick study of the Greek and Hebrew words translated “saints” will show that “holy ones,” God’s holy people, are all through the Bible (cp. Ps. 16:3; Dan. 7:18; Rev. 13:7). However, from what God says about what makes one “holy,” believers in the Old Testament, Gospels, and Revelation were holy only if they obeyed God. In contrast, the Church Epistles make it clear that anyone who is a Christian is holy because of the divine nature within him.
God created His nature in us, so we are new creations in Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
The phrase “new creations” is literal, and is 100% accurate because the new nature, our holy spirit, was created in us by God. Although some translations say “new creatures,” the Greek word is “creations.” Our first birth was not a creation, but our new birth is, because when we believed, God “created” new life within us. People in the Old Testament and Gospels believed God, but they were never “created” anew. When Abraham believed, God considered him righteous, but he was never “created” anew and given a divine nature, nor was anyone else before the Church began on the Day of Pentecost. Other verses, such as Colossians 3:10, also indicate we are new creations. [For further study read Righteousness – Every Christian’s Gift from God.]
Christians not only become new creations individually, but also collectively, as part of a spiritual body called, “the Body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12:27; cp. Rom. 12:4,5; 1 Cor. 10:16; 12:12-20; Eph. 1:23; 3:6; 4:4; Col. 1:18; 3:15). Like our physical body, this spiritual body is comprised of many members, and Jesus Christ is its head (Eph. 5:23).
There are some important things to consider about the Body of Christ. First, it is unique to the Grace Administration, not mentioned before or after it. Second, it is made up of all those who believe, no matter what their gender or nationality. Galatians 3:28 makes it clear that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female in Christ. This is a shift from the Old Testament, Gospels, and Revelation in which the people of God are distinctly counted as being either a Jew or a Gentile. Even after the Church is taken from the earth at the Rapture, God again separates the Jewish believer from the Gentile believer (Rev. 7:1-17).
The truth about the “Body of Christ” is important to the study of our guaranteed salvation because to lose our guarantee of salvation would be tantamount to being dismembered from the Body of Christ, and there is simply no evidence in Scripture that can happen.
Before we were born again and given a new, divine nature, we had only our old sin nature and were destined to the Second Death, so God referred to us as “dead in your transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1). When we got born again, we were given spiritual life, but along with that God also promised that He would raise us from physical death.
Our being raised from the dead (or changed from mortal to immortal at the Rapture) is so certain, so secure, that God refers to it with the idiom that linguists refer to as the “prophetic perfect.” The prophetic perfect is used to emphasize the certainty of a future event by speaking of it as if it has already happened. [To read an article on the Prophetic Perfect, click here. To watch a video teaching on it, click here.] Thus, even though dead Christians are still physically dead, God says they have already been raised to life (Eph. 2:6). This promise of resurrection to everlasting life is worded without the idiom in Romans 6:5 by using the future tense, will: “…we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.”
If we are new people, newly born again and created, and partakers of the divine nature, we should have a new language, a language unique to the Administration of Grace. We do have such a language, and the Bible refers to it as “speaking in tongues.” Speaking in tongues first happened on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4), and it will cease to exist after the Rapture of the Church (1 Cor. 13:8). In the meantime, speaking in tongues is prayer and praise, it edifies the one speaking, and what God says about it is very clear: “I would like every one of you to speak in tongues….” (1 Cor. 14:5).
If a person could lose his guarantee of salvation, he would therefore lose his holy spirit, like King Saul did in the Old Testament. That would mean he could no longer speak in tongues, because holy spirit is what enables him to do so. A good test, then, to see if salvation really is guaranteed, is to ask people who have greatly sinned if they can still speak in tongues. What do we find in Christendom? Some of the most flagrant sinners speak in tongues fluently. Fallen TV evangelists and former Christian “big shots,” Christians in prisons around the globe, Christian homosexuals, fornicators, and adulterers, and Christians who are idolaters, sharing the worship of God with superstition or the recognition of other gods, are known to speak in tongues. In fact, many Christians hide their sin very effectively, going to churches and speaking in tongues in the service, while secretly sinning flagrantly. The fact that these sinners, and the rest of us Christians who also sin, can speak in tongues is exactly what we would expect if, as Scripture declares, the holy spirit is sealed in us and the new birth is permanent.
As new creations, we now belong, not to the earthly realm where our physical body resides, but to God’s heavenly kingdom, and Scripture makes this clear.
Philippians 3:20
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Once again we see the uniqueness of the Christian Church. Many people in the Old Testament and Gospels believed, but none were referred to as citizens of heaven. In contrast, because our salvation is guaranteed, we can legitimately be called citizens of heaven.
When we got saved, we were guaranteed to be in heaven with Christ from the time of the Rapture to the time of our return to earth with Christ, when he fights the Battle of Armageddon. That guarantee is so sure that God says we are seated in heaven.
Ephesians 2:6
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
We are not literally in heaven now. However, our place in heaven is so secure that God uses the idiom of the prophetic perfect to refer to it. As we have already seen, the prophetic perfect is speaking of something that will occur in the future as if it had already happened in order to give the strongest assurance that it will happen.
The bond that exists between parents and their birth children is universal. Parents usually love and support their own seed, no matter what. No matter how a child behaves, somehow the parent loves him. If each Christian is born of God, we should see a shift in how God expresses His love relationship with Christians, as opposed to what he said about Israel in the Old Testament. That shift is clearly recorded in Romans 8:35-39. Those verses express two facts: first, that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39), and second, that this is a change from the Old Testament (Rom. 8:36, 37).
Quite a few Old Testament verses refer to God’s having had enough of “His people,” even to the point of saying, “I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them” (Hos. 1:6), and “…you are not my people, and I am not your God” (Hos. 1:9). Isaiah 50:1 and Jeremiah 3:8 speak of God divorcing Israel and sending her away. There is no such threat to the Church. We are God’s birth children, and even when we behave despicably, He tells us He will always love us. Believers before Pentecost had no such promise, so if they rebelled against God and died in that condition, they were lost. In stark contrast, the Christian is guaranteed everlasting life.
The Grace Administration, with its guarantee of salvation, is glorious in the extreme. The Law was glorious in that it gave light and justice where there had been confusion and darkness, but consider the following verse from the Church Epistles regarding the glory of the Administration of Grace:
2 Corinthians 3:10
For what was glorious [the Law] has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory.
What God has given the Church is so new and so glorious that in comparison to it, the Law of Moses had “no glory.” The Law of Moses was indescribably valuable—it was the very words and laws of God, so for God to say that the Law had “no glory” in comparison to what we now have, we Christians must have something incredibly valuable indeed. We do. After all, what is the worth of a soul? The fact that everyone who gets saved during the Grace Administration is guaranteed everlasting life makes our administration have “surpassing glory.”
Ever notice that Romans 10:9 is in one of the epistles to the Christian Church? It contains simple and straightforward instructions on how to be saved.
Romans 10:9
That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
This verse agrees with the others in the Church Epistles, such as Romans 3:22, Galatians 2:15 and 16, and Ephesians 2:8, which specifically states that salvation is by grace through faith, “not by works.”Faith has always been the way to salvation, but before the Administration of Grace there was no guarantee of salvation, so a person’s works were important to demonstrate his faith, which had to continue throughout his life (Ezek. 33:11-20). That is why Moses said that righteousness came by being careful to obey the Law (Deut. 6:25).
Jesus and the Apostle Paul both taught the way of salvation, and both were asked the basic question, “What must I do to be saved? Jesus answered: “If you want to enter life, obey the commandments” (Matt. 19:17). During the Law of Moses, when Jesus answered the question, there was no guarantee of salvation available, so a person had to maintain his faith and righteousness throughout his life. Thus, Jesus told the man to obey the commandments.
In contrast, Paul answered: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…” (Acts 16:31). Why such a difference? When Paul answered the question, which was after the Administration of Grace had begun, the moment a person believes, he is born again and has a guarantee of everlasting life.
The Administration of Grace began on the Day of Pentecost when Christ poured out the new gift of holy spirit (Acts 2:33) and people were born again. It will end with the Rapture, when dead Christians are raised, living Christians are changed, and both groups are taken to heaven in new bodies that are like Christ’s glorious body (Phil. 3:21; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 1 Cor. 15:51-54). The Rapture is a new concept, occurring only in the Church Epistles. [7] In fact, because the Rapture occurs only in the Church Epistles, many scholars deny that it ever occurs, feeling certain that if it did, it would be spoken of in more than just Corinthians and Thessalonians. That, however, is exactly our point: only Christians are in the Rapture. It is unique to God’s children by birth.
The righteous saints of the other administrations will be resurrected in the Resurrection of the Just, also called the “first resurrection” and the “resurrection of life” (Dan. 12:2; Luke 14:14; John 5:29; Acts 24:15; Rev. 20:5). [8] They come out of their graves and live on earth (Ezek. 37:11-14). In contrast, Christians are taken into heaven at the Rapture, and come back down to earth with Christ as part of his army, prepared to fight the Battle of Armageddon (Rev. 19:11-21). The Resurrection of the Just occurs after the Battle of Armageddon, and after the Old Testament believers are raised, both they and Christians will live with Christ in his Millennial Kingdom on earth. [9]
The evidence that Christians are guaranteed everlasting life is overwhelming. Note the things that are unique to the Christian Church: God, our heavenly Father, contributes imperishable spiritual seed by which we are “born again” of God’s spirit. That holy spirit is “sealed” within us, and thus we have a new divine nature. Because every birth is permanent, we also have a guarantee of salvation. Because our birth was an act of creation, we are new creations. As new creations who have God’s holy spirit, we have new, spiritual life. With our new spiritual life comes a new language: speaking in tongues. As God’s children by birth, we are now citizens of His country: heaven. Furthermore, we are already said to be in heaven, an idiomatic promise that we will be there. Since God is now our birth Father, we are told that nothing can separate us from His love. At the Rapture we will be taken with new bodies into heaven. Finally, what we Christians have is so glorious that the administrations before the “Grace Administration” had “no glory” in comparison.
For a Christian to lose his guarantee of salvation, God’s imperishable seed would perish; birth would not be permanent; God’s seal on us would be broken; it would be clear that our “divine nature” was not part of our nature at all; the “guarantee” we had from God guaranteed absolutely nothing; we would have to become uncreated; the member in particular that we are would have to be amputated from the Body of Christ; our new spiritual life would have to be killed; our new language would have to be taken from us; our heavenly citizenship would have to be revoked; God’s promise that we were already with Him in heaven would be shown to be worthless; the “surpassing glory” we are said to have would be shown to be no different from the glory of the Law; and the promise that nothing would separate us from God’s love would be shown to be false at the time we were being thrown into the Lake of Fire.
With all the evidence in the Church Epistles for our guarantee of salvation, why would anyone think a Christian’s salvation was not secure? First, most Christians do not read the Bible enough to recognize the differences between the Church Epistles and the rest of the Bible. A person must be very familiar with any piece of literature before he starts seeing differences from one part to another, and the Bible is no exception.
Second, most Christians are taught to believe and live by “the whole Bible.” They are not taught to discern what applies to Christians and what does not. There are clear verses that salvation is not guaranteed in the Old Testament, Gospels, and Revelation, but these are speaking of Jews and Gentiles, not Christians. Many Christians do realize that there are things in the Old Testament that do not apply to us today, which is why we do not see people sacrificing animals on altars, widows marrying their husband’s brothers (even if they are already married), or believers traveling to Jerusalem three times a year. Those examples prove the fact that people do recognize the different administrations in the Bible, even if they have never been taught what those administrations are and what rules apply to each.
Another reason people do not believe that Christian salvation is guaranteed is that, at the expense of the far greater number of clear verses about salvation being permanent, they cling to the few unclear verses in the Church Epistles that might be interpreted otherwise. Every subject has both clear and unclear verses, and secure salvation is one of them. A cardinal rule of Bible study is that the unclear verses must be interpreted in light of the clear verses.
Another reason people believe that Christians can lose their salvation is because they work hard to live a godly life and are scandalized by the thought that someone who confessed Christ when he was a child, but who is now stealing, lying, dealing drugs, and worse is also going to have everlasting life.
If there is one thing we should learn from Scripture, it is not to let our feelings dictate our theology. Adam and Eve did, and look where we are today. The Pharisees did, and they missed the whole point of the Law. Are we really going to grade people’s sins and keep them from everlasting life because their sins scandalized us? Scripture says we have all sinned. Paul did not ask the jailor at Philippi what kind of man he was—he just said believe in Jesus to have everlasting life. The Bible does say that on the new earth Christians will be rewarded for only those things they have done that are valuable to God (1 Cor. 3:10-17; 2 Cor. 5:10; Col. 3:23-25; 2 John 8), so there will be a great blessing to those who have decided to serve God in their life.
Scripture is clear: If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, by the grace of God you have the guarantee of salvation and will live forever. Amen.
Thanks for reading.
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