Anybody who believes you can lose your salvation is unable to find a single statement in the scripture that says that. There is no place in the Bible that says you can lose your salvation. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today, on this Memorial Day in the United States, John is going to break from his regular verse-by-verse teaching for a special Q&A session from his home church in Southern California. He'll answer questions you may have, like how do you confront a believer living in sin? Does the Bible say a believer can lose his salvation? And should Christians sue each other? It's a practical time of learning that you don't want to miss, so now take your Bible if you're able and listen along as John MacArthur fields the first question.
Hello, my name's Jerry. I have a question about 1 Corinthians 6, verse 7, which reads, To have lawsuits at all with one another is defeat for you. And I want to know if that has anything to do with whether both parties are Christian or not, and in particular, a manufactured product that's defective and they don't want to do anything about it. Yeah, I think that's precisely what it refers to. Don't take a brother to court. That's all? Yeah. A brother is a Christian or anybody? Right.
Okay, thank you. I think it says that because it says that we are not to take the business of the family of God as it were before pagan courts. In other words, don't let the world judge the church. Don't you know that someday you're going to judge even the angels?
Why should you let the world judge you? So if Christians have a dispute, that dispute should be settled between them without having the world have to render a verdict. And in those days, they were a very litigious group, like people are today. Not like we are, but like people are today. Everybody wanted to sue everybody else.
It was kind of a sport to it in those days also, and it was easy for believers to get involved in that and everybody screaming for his own rights and so forth. Paul says, rather be defrauded. In other words, you just should be defrauded before you would sue a brother because the testimony of the Lord is diminished.
Okay, thank you very much. My name is Tim. Would you agree that when a brother is caught in sin, God's divine plan and purpose for protection and reconciliation for the brother is to confront him personally, and if necessary, bring in two or three witnesses? And any additional witnesses up to that point in any personalized way is perfectly unauthorized counsel?
Now, I'd like to say it again, but I'm trying to make it concise. Okay, someone has sinned, and someone might come up to someone else and say, well, so-and-so personalized his name and everything. I've seen him doing this.
How should I go and approach him or like that? I've seen this happen a lot, and I think it really hurts the unity of the church. In other words, if you know somebody's sins, don't go asking other people about it.
Go confront it yourself. Is that what you're saying? It's unauthorized counsel, in other words, to go to anyone else. Now, what you're saying is rather than tell other people about the sin, go to the individual, give him the chance or the opportunity to repent before you spread it around. Right, and that protects him, and God wants to protect us from our sins. That's exactly what it says in Matthew 18.
I wish more people would think about that. In Matthew 18, it says if a brother is taken in a sin, or if a brother sins, and I don't think it's a sin against you necessarily, and some of the texts say that, but it's really if a brother sins, go to him. That is the only direction we have. Go to him. And then if he doesn't hear you, then take two or three witnesses, and they aren't two or three witnesses that you have drummed up, they are two or three witnesses to the same sin. In other words, if he doesn't respond to me, I'm not going to go find two or three people and say, hey, you know what, he did this, and they say, oh, we'll go with you. If he denies the thing, then you need to confirm it in two or three witnesses mouths who have actual knowledge of that sin. And then if he doesn't hear you, tell it to the church. And the church, I believe, is duly constituted in the leadership of the church. So, I agree with that. Because it says if you go to him one on one, and he hears you, you have gained your brother.
What reason to tell anybody about it? Okay? Hi, John.
My name is Flor. I have a question that my sister wants some answers to, and I think you'll do a better job. She's a brand new Christian, and we come from a Catholic background. And she's having a little bit of difficulty with the fact that you do not lose your salvation even if you do backslide. So, can you elaborate on that? So, just to help you understand why you don't lose your salvation?
Okay. There are lots of reasons, by the way. The primary one being that the Bible does not indicate that you can lose your salvation. Anybody who believes you can lose your salvation is unable to find a single statement in the Scripture that says that.
There is no place in the Bible that says you can lose your salvation. On the other hand, everywhere it says your salvation lasts how long? Eternal. How long does it last? Forever.
To me, that is the issue. If the Bible said your salvation lasts as long as you hang on to it, that would be very clear. But it says it lasts forever.
How long is forever? And then people say, well, what about so-and-so, and what about this, and what about that? And then you start bringing in all of these exceptions and all these confusions. They say, well, I had an old aunt, you know, and she used to go to church, and she read her Bible, and all of a sudden she bailed out, and she left the church and didn't walk with the Lord, and she curses and blah, blah. She lost her salvation. But you see, you can't redefine the Bible on the basis of your old aunt.
But that's what people do. If you can't explain your old aunt, don't change Scripture. Define the situation through the Scripture and go to 1 John 2, 19, where it says they went out from us because they were not of us. They went out from us that it might be made manifest they never were of us.
If they had been of us, they would have remained with us. The key thing is you cannot defend that biblically. So it is an extrapolation from experience, the inability to really describe what happens in a person's life, any other way than to say they lost their salvation, when there are other explanations. And the other explanation is that they never were saved to begin with.
Let me take another approach. The Bible says that those who were saved were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, right? So whoever He chose was redeemed because of His sovereign choice. In John 6, Jesus said this, All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me. And I have lost what?
None of them. But I'll raise Him up at the last day. The security of the believer then is bound up in the character of eternal life, which is eternal salvation. And it is bound up in the decree of God.
And that's how it is. So the idea that you can lose your salvation is an accommodation to human misunderstanding. In other words, because people aren't able to figure out what happened in somebody's life, they therefore determine you can lose your salvation.
Now let me give you one other thought. I think the reason people have come up with the doctrine of the fact that you can lose your salvation is because they never had a strong enough salvation to begin with. They let too many people in cheap, and then when they bail out, they question the eternality of salvation rather than questioning the legitimacy of that salvation to start with. You know, in the book of Hebrews it says, it says you'll be saved if you continue. If you continue. If you don't fall away. And that's true, because if you don't fall away, you prove that your salvation was the real thing. But if you fall away, you prove it wasn't real to begin with.
So I think maybe those thoughts can give you some help. Salvation that is genuine results in a new creation. You've been born again unto eternal life, and that's the only way the Bible ever describes it. It's eternal.
Thank you. But it's our weak doctrine of salvation that gets us into trouble with that. My name is Kevin, and I'm a rather young Christian, and I'm confused about one thing.
Okay, Kevin. I'm confused about a lot of things, so you feel right at home. But when we die, do we go directly to be with Christ, or is there a waiting period? And the reason I'm asking is because I know in Philippians 1 21-23, it says to live in Christ is for me to live in Christ, and to die is game.
But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me, and I do not know which to choose. Then he goes on to say, but I am hard pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better. And I just am confused if he means to depart. When he departs, he will then go to be with Christ. What does he say? That's what he says. That's what he said. To depart and be with Christ.
There's nothing in the middle. To depart and hang around and hope to be with Christ? To depart and be with Christ. Have you been asked that question before? Oh, sure. The key verse is 2 Corinthians 5-8.
Look that up. 2 Corinthians 5-8. Paul says this. We are confident, right?
Does your Bible say something like that? We are of good courage. We are what? We are of good courage.
We are of good courage, are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be what? Home of the Lord. Present with the Lord.
That's all you ever have. There is no other place. Absent with the body, present with the Lord.
There's no other way. What did Jesus say on the cross? Father, into thy hands I what? Commit my spirit. You go from here to there. There's nothing else. There's no waiting place. Now, that is the soul, that is the inner man, the spirit.
The body goes into the grave and waits the rapture to be rejoined to that spirit. Okay? That completely answers my question. Thank you. Okay. I got a question concerning the Ten Commandments.
Okay. In Exodus 20, verse 4, it says you shall not make for yourselves an idol or a likeness of what is in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the water under the earth. And it's relatively the same kind of statement of God speaking to Moses concerning the children of Israel about their standards in everyday life.
It's relatively said the same thing. And then in Exodus 25, 19, they're talking about making the Ark of the Covenant. And it says, and make one cherub at one end and one cherub at the other end. And you shall make a cherubim at one piece and a mercy seat at its two ends.
Well, I take it to be angels with wings, but it's idols. I mean, it seems to clash. Can you clarify it? Well, the point is this. It's the attitude and the purpose. It's the attitude and the purpose.
Okay? Even the Lord told them to make a snake and put it on a stick, right? But at the same time, in Romans 1, God condemns those who worship creeping things. Just because you form something doesn't mean you worship it. They made the Ark of the Covenant, and they put angels on it. Didn't mean they worshiped those angels.
That's the issue. It's when you make an idol to worship it, and you can worship anything. You could worship a rack. You could worship your shoe if you wanted to.
If you really were convinced that your shoe was running the universe. You could worship anything you want. That's the idea. What he's saying there is when you effectively in your mind turn from worshiping the true God to worship a false god and then create an image which you suppose to be that false god and worship that false god. That is condemned. That is not to say that when they made the Ark of the Covenant, which was a piece of furniture, a representative piece of furniture, that they were to worship the angels.
That would have been absolutely blasphemous had they done that. So it was the hard attitude that was the issue. Okay? Thank you.
John, my name is Sherry, and I just visited my parents back in Missouri. They believe that you can lose your salvation. I was trying to witness to them and tell them what I had found out through DE and several other things that I had studied. I came across some scriptures that I did not understand because I haven't read the context.
One is in Hebrews 4-6. It says, For in the case of those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucified to themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame. And I did not understand.
I mean, when I read that, I said, Whoa! It says, fallen away, that it is impossible to be renewed to repentance. And I do not understand what he is saying here.
Okay. And I wanted to ask you how it was in light of, like it also mentions in Galatians. It is in Galatians 5-4. You have been severed from Christ. You who are seeking to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. It mentions that, fallen from grace. Sure. And then in also the parable of the sower, where it talks about the seed who has fallen around the rock, fallen away through temptation. And I did not know what it extends.
Okay, basic question. How long does salvation last? Forever. Okay, so now that we have got that settled. Yeah, I believe that. Okay, now that we have settled that. Right. All we need to do is explain those passages, right?
No problem. See, we do not throw out our whole theology. We do not say, oh, eternal does not mean eternal.
Forever does not mean forever. Oh, no, it does not mean that. You see, I could not explain those passages to my parents.
Right, so that is what I am saying. But you see, the temptation is, oh, I can not explain that passage. Well, throw out that doctrine.
See, and that is what people do. All right, you have fallen from grace. It does not mean you necessarily ever knew grace. It means that you have not, you are not, you have fallen away from grace as a principle.
There is a lot of ways to explain that. But basically what he is saying is if you live by law, you have fallen from the principle of grace. Whether you are a regenerate or unregenerate. If I go out and try to live my Christian life legalistically, I have fallen from the grace principle. Right? That is what I thought. Yeah. So it is just, he is writing to believers and he is saying if you are going to live your life by law, having begun in the spirit of you perfected by the flesh. If you are going to start living by law, you have fallen away from grace as a principle of living.
That is all. You have to see the context there. Now, in the parable of the seed and the sower, the whole point there is that there was only one of the four that was real. Some of them made an initial reaction and an initial response and you see that all the time with people.
And then as soon as something happens, they are gone. But now the key one is Hebrew 6. So this is the one. Everybody goes, you know, takes this big trek to Hebrew 6. I am going to write a commentary on Hebrews and then you can read it. Anyway, why should you read that? You don't read my other books anyway, so why not? No, I am just kidding. You do. I appreciate that. I believe periodically, the book of Hebrews is written to believers.
Okay? But periodically through the book are warnings to unbelievers. Harden not your heart, chapter 4. How shall we escape if we neglect our great salvation, chapter 2. How much more punishment shall those suffer who have trodden underfoot the Son of God and counted the blood and unholy thing, chapter 10.
Boom, boom, boom, boom. You have these shots at the unbelievers in the community that he is writing to among the believers. Here is one of them. And he says, verse 12 of 5, it has to start there. He says, look, some of you know enough to be teachers, but you have to be taught again the very ABCs of the oracles of God. Some of you have been Jews, you have been taught and taught and taught, and he's not talking about Christians here. He's talking to the unbelieving Jew who knows all of the gospel. He's heard it, he's heard it, but he sits on the fence and he won't make a commitment to it. He is restrained by fear of being un-synagogued, excommunicated. He won't make a commitment. He says, now you who should by this time be propagating the gospel need to be taught the ABCs of doctrine.
You need milk, you're unskillful. Now he says in verse 1 of 6, moving down, let's leave the principles of the doctrine of Messiah. Can we go on from this basic thing of over and over, the basics, the basics, the basics. And I think he's primarily talking about their Old Testament understanding of Messiah. Let us go on to perfection. Now the word perfection in Hebrews refers to salvation, and I don't have the time to prove that to you.
When I went through the book of Hebrews, to me it's crystal clear that the word perfection there is not used in a Pauline sense of maturity, but is used of salvation. He said, let's go on to salvation. Let's not go back to dead works, basic faith, doctrines of washings, and by the way, that is not the word for baptism, that is the word translated every single time in the Bible, washing, except here, and somebody translated a baptism and made a Christian passage out of this. Let's not go back to Hebrew washings, you know, of pots and pans and hands and all that, and laying on of hands and basic stuff about resurrection.
Do we have to keep going over all the basics and the primer of the Old Testament all the time? Now, come to verse 4. He says, you know so much that it is impossible for you, who have been so enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift, partaken of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good word of God, the power of the age to come, if you fall away, to renew you to repentance. In other words, with all you know, if you turn your back on this, you can never be saved.
Why? Because if you reject with such full light, how could you ever be saved? You see the point? In other words, if you walk away from this, there's no hope for you, because this is all the revelation you could possibly have.
You ought to be a teacher. I mean, you know everything. And if you turn your back on this, it's hopeless. You're going to go right out and crucify the Son of God, put Him in open shame. The earth drinks in the rain and brings forth herbs. But in verse 8, you're like the thing that happens also when it rains. That which bears thorns and briars is rejected and near unto cursing, and your end is to be burned. You see, the rain of the gospel falls on some people and they bring forth herbs. You're like the people who bring forth bitter thorns.
You don't respond. Now look back in verse 4 for a minute. What does it mean to be enlightened, basically? What is enlightenment?
Intellectual understanding, right? What does it mean to taste the heavenly gift? Who's the heavenly gift? Really, the Holy Spirit. How could these people have tasted the Holy Spirit? If you've ever sat in a church and heard the word of God preached with power, you've tasted the Holy Spirit. If you've ever seen a life change, you've tasted the Holy Spirit. If you ever saw a miracle done by Jesus, you tasted the Spirit, because He did everything by the power of the Spirit, right? And you were a partaker of the Holy Spirit. If you stood on a hillside when Jesus fed 5,000 and ate a fish in a little cracker, you partook of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Let me tell you something. You've tasted the good word of God. Jeremiah said, That words are found and I did eat them. You didn't eat them.
You just got a taste of them. You tasted the power of the age to come, the miracle power of Christ. In other words, what he's saying is you've had intellectual enlightenment, you've been exposed to all of this stuff, and if you fall away with all this information that should render you a teacher instead of a student, you'll never be saved.
Now I want to add a footnote to that. Not one word in verse 4 or 5 is ever used anywhere in the Bible to speak of salvation. Salvation is never called enlightenment. It is never called tasting the Spirit of God. It is never called tasting the powers of the age to come. It is never called tasting the good word of God. Those are references to having an intellectual perception. So, you see, the point there is they weren't even saved.
Then in verse 9 he says, But, Beloved, and he goes right back to the original audience, and he says, We are persuaded of better things of you, even things that accompany salvation. See. I explained that to them as what I had come to know as the 18 inch miss. As what?
The 18 inch miss. Yeah. From the head knowledge to the heart knowledge. Right. Good. People had seemed to have known about Jesus Christ. Oh. Had known, you know, intellectually the Bible.
Right. And all the principles. And had also been exposed to the teaching. But had only accepted it in the head.
See, it's. It was a head acceptance, not a heart. It's Hebrews 2, 3, and 4. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation which was spoken unto us by those that heard the Lord and confirmed unto us by signs and wonders and mighty deeds. And signs and wonders and gifts of the Holy Spirit. See, they saw the signs. They saw the wonders. The miracles.
Remember, the 12 were sent out. The ability to do miracles, raise the dead, and all that. They saw that. They saw the power of the Spirit, the power of the age to come. And they didn't believe.
And he says, How are you going to escape? It's impossible. That's how I explained it. I just wanted to know if I explained it right. Right on target.
Yes. My name is Carl Freeman. And the question I have deals with Jehovah's Witness. I write the RTD about three times a week. They always come and they talk to me and we always have a great big conversation.
The bus comes and. And John one, it says in the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. And the Jehovah's Witness, they say in the beginning was the word and the word was God.
And the word was a God. To you, what is the difference there between what the Scripture says and what Jehovah's Witness says? To me, the difference isn't even in 1 John. I mean in John 1. I believe that anybody who can read the Bible from Matthew to Revelation and come up with a fact that Jesus is not God proves that He is isolated, cut off, shut off totally from God. It is absolutely obvious who Christ is.
And the battle doesn't even occur at John 1, 1. That is a silly little ploy used by the JW's to defend a system that is rotten from top to bottom. Simply stated, as I said before, anybody that can read the New Testament from beginning to end and not be convinced Jesus is God is totally blind. And they give evidence that the God of this world has blinded their minds. And what you're dealing with with the Jehovah's Witness is not can you convince them of the meaning of John 1, 1. The thing is can you convince them that they're damned and on their way to hell and their sin is unforgiving and they need Christ?
I think I would approach, my usual approach with the cults is the wrath of God. My approach is did you know that the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and righteousness of man? Do you know that if you're wrong, you're doomed forever to hell? So you better be sure you're right.
Because if you're wrong, the price is infinite. Do you have freedom from your sin? Do you have victory over your sin? Do you have complete rest and peace in your heart from guilt? Do you know without a shadow of doubt that you're forgiven? Do you know the blood of Jesus Christ has been applied to your sin? Because if you don't, maybe it hasn't.
And if it hasn't, you'll die in your sins and Jesus said where he goes, you'll never come. I would rather approach them that way than to fiddle around in John 1, thank you. You've been listening to John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, both in the Los Angeles area. Today on Grace to You, John did things a little bit differently. He didn't preach a message, but instead fielded some challenging Bible questions from members of his home church. As you listen today, perhaps you thought of a friend or a family member who would benefit from this Q&A. Maybe John answered a question you know they've been struggling with, and you'd like them to hear this answer.
So remember, what you just heard is free to download in MP3 and transcript format at our website, gty.org. It's a great resource to point others to and for yourself to listen to again at your own pace. And another resource that I want to highlight, there's John's booklet titled, God's Sufficient Word. It will help you transform your study of God's Word by showing you how biblical truth applies to every situation in your life. To get your free copy of John's booklet, God's Sufficient Word, contact us today. Our number here, 800-55-GRACE, and our web address, gty.org.
God's Sufficient Word also helps give a helpful defense of the Bible's reliability from the Bible itself. Again, God's Sufficient Word is our gift to you. Just call 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org.
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That's a big help, and so thanks for doing that. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Be here again tomorrow as John pulls back the curtain on his pastoral ministry. That may just give you a new perspective on what your pastor does week in and week out. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
