Answer to a question posed by a reader in, “the lie of once saved, always saved”.

There were three questions. However, I have chosen to handle one this week, and the others over subsequent weeks.

QUESTION:

Jesus mentioned that God intends to keep us from falling, How? Just how does he plan to keep the believer from falling back to his old life?

Scripture Reading: James 1:21

Lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness the engrafted word of God, which is able to save your souls.

This question is a very important one. To be fully exhaustive in tackling this, I separated the reply into three parts. All three parts are available and are on the blog. The main answer comes in part 3, but I need to work my way to that from here.

PART ONE:

What we are often left with as believers are high standards that are, quite frankly, unattainable by human beings.

Look, even if you were an unbeliever and you don’t believe in God, the mere claim that Jesus Christ was sinless would make you think that He was not human. Either that, or he was not sinless, and Christians/the Bible/the Prophets/the Apostles were all liars.

The things we are called to do as believers are not possible for us to do as human beings. Simple. Don’t be afraid by my directness in using the term, “not possible”, because Jesus Himself was not afraid to tell us that there are things that are genuinely impossible with man. Jesus told us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God! And we are all called to be prosperous under this New Testament doctrine! Through prosperity shall the gospel be shared abroad. We receive riches, honour, power, strength…etc.

It doesn’t matter whether Jesus was talking about a literal needle, or a “needle” thin road, or whatever theologians or scholars want to interpret it as. What matters is that Jesus was simply telling us that some things are genuinely impossible with man.

First, what is salvation? Why are we truly saved?
Let me show you a scripture:

1 Corinthians 6:9–11

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

This is salvation. This is a staple; we know what this is. You are saved because of the sacrifice of Jesus, who died for your sins, and you obtained grace through faith…etc.

But what makes this real? What changed? Did anything change? Is this all “spiritual”? Like, will we remain believers who do wickedness, and we will still be righteous?

I want to be as direct as I can be.

When we were in the world, the biggest challenge was not just that we did not know how to be good, but that we could not even do what we knew was good. Many of us were tossed and thrown by every wind of doctrine, going left and right, sometimes knowing what was right but not being able to do what was right.

The main attraction to Christianity for me was not a pastor, a preacher, a good friend, a righteous leader. The main attraction is the man on the cross. I always wondered to myself, how can I live like that man? How can I stop lying, stop covetousness, stop lustfulness? How can I be good?

The problem with this world, and I wish I could overstate it, is that we talk more than we do.

Sometimes, I feel like never writing another thing about the gospel and righteousness because I feel a need to demonstrate in very clear terms that what we do is more important than what we say.

It is better for your self to do and not know how to say than to say and not know how to do. Knowing how to say it may help others, but knowing how to do it at least helps you.

(However, we thank God we have the Holy Spirit that teaches us how to say and empowers us to do as well).

So, in short, I became a believer because I wanted to be good. I WANT to be good. Which means that I had to acknowledge the fact that I was not good. I wanted to be, but I couldn’t be. I couldn’t but gratify my flesh. It was the only logical thing to do! The only thing that could stop me from doing evil was my defiled conscience and the law of the land.

I call it defiled conscience because I wanted to do and be good, but my definition of goodness was flawed. Many of us know what this means. For instance, you say to yourself, “I don’t want to do things that hurt others. So as far as what I am doing is not hurting others, then it is not bad”. But that is just a lie from seven hells.

Why? Well, isn’t that how addiction starts? And you have to be hoodwinked by the enemy, completely blind if you don’t think addiction is a bad thing.

Yet, we are drawn into it by the deceitfulness of pleasure. The devil convinces you that you are not hurting anybody by what you are doing — be it pornography, sexual sins, drug abuse, and whatever else. And then, when you are too far into it, you will realize that these things are hurting you! But that is why they call it an addiction. Now you know it is not what you thought it was, but how do you stop?

Meanwhile, the Bible had already told us from the very beginning that sin is not only about what you do to others. It is also about what you do to yourself.

1 corinthians 6:18
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

Now, if you are in the world, it will be hard for you to even get to this point of reasoning. Why? Because the world’s standards mostly consider being a sin (crime), the things you do that harm others.

It is lawful for you to watch pornography in most climes. After all, who are you hurting? But if you become an addict, only you will bear your burden of addiction. It is lawful to gratify your flesh and use substances like Alcohol, Cigarettes, and whatnot. They won’t be there for you when you are heartbroken, or when your urges lead you to become a compulsive person. They won’t be there for you when you become a creature of nature, never having any discipline because all you were ever used to was gratifying your pleasures.

The world favours indulgence, without measure. It is only a matter of time before all the things you think should be wrong are declared to be perfectly fine. They are playing checkers. They don’t know better. They think they are being good because they don’t even know what goodness is. They are just trying their best.

However, we are called to play chess.