The Nature Of Salvation

It’s vacation time, and you’ve decided to go on a hiking trip through a large national forest.  Many miles into your hike, your GPS goes out and it isn’t long before you realize you’re lost.  Then to make matters worse, you slip while walking along a hillside and take a nasty fall – breaking your leg. 

After serveral days of calling out and hoping for someone to find you, things get only worse.  Your leg is swollen and causing terrible pain, and you’re running low on supplies.  The reality that you are not going to get out of this on your own starts to set in.  If someone doesn’t come along, things are going to get really bad.

You run out of food and water.  Days pass and you drift in and out of consciousness.  You’re running a fever, and your throat is too dry to call out any more.  In your more lucid moments, you realize that you are dying.  This is the end.

Somewhere in a half-dream you hear someone talking to you.  Water is gently being poured down your dry throat.  You feel a new pain in your leg as someone sets the bone and wraps it in a splint.  You realize that at this moment you’ve been saved.  You are not going to die alone and lost in a forest.  And with that thought, you drift back to sleep.

You awaken to find yourself still lying on the forest floor, covered in a blanket.  The smell of food and fire stir new feelings of hunger.  Your leg is throbbing, but the fever is gone.  You manage to sit up, and you see your savior for the first time.  It’s a young man – a fellow hiker – stirring a pot of stew over a campfire.

“Ah, you’re up,” he says. “Feeling better?”

You nod.

“Stew’s ready.  Looks like you could use it.”  He hands you a bowl and you greedily dig in. “Not so fast,” he says. “You haven’t eaten in a while and you need to take it slow.”

The next few days bring major improvement for you.  Under his care, you regain your strength, and he fashions a crutch so that you can walk.

“It’s time to get going,” he says.  “I know the way out of here… just follow me and you’ll be fine.”

***

And this, my friends, is the nature of salvation from God.  You become saved the moment Jesus enters your life as your personal Lord and Savior.  But you can’t stay lost in the woods.  To get out of the mess you’re in, you need to follow Jesus sincerely and whole-heartedly.  If you’re that injured hiker, what if you said “no, I’m just going to stay right here” when you savior said “follow me – I know the way out”?  Your salvation starts to fall into jeopardy.  You may be feeling good again, but you’re still lost in the forest, you still have a broken leg, and you simply are not going to make it out on your own.  You need him to get you out of there.  It may take some effort on your part, but if you follow him, you will make it home.

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. – Isaiah 45:22

Losing Your Religion

Can a Christian lose their faith?  Can they fall out of grace?  Can someone claim to love Jesus and accept him as their personal savior, and then stop believing?  When they die, will they go to Heaven or Hell?

Nothing I’ve read in the New Testament seems to guarantee a free irrevocable pass to people who walk away from God and do their own thing after claiming to be Christian.  Peter tells us quite the opposite:

If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.  It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. – 2 Peter 20, 21

From this, it seems exceedingly clear that a person CAN fall out of faith, with dire consequences.  For anyone saying, “no, no, I believe ‘once saved, always saved’ and I can do whatever I want and God will just forgive me for it.” I am warning that person that they are living their life on a very dangerous and incorrect premise. 

Don’t get me wrong – your own works are not going to save you.  You are saved by grace, but being saved does require that you genuinely accept that salvation and follow Him. 

For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.  For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed of his past sins.  Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure.  For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. – 2 Peter 5 – 11

If you haven’t read 1 Peter and 2 Peter lately, please do so.  These 2 short letters are rich with instructions on how to strengthen your walk with God.