Hi, from the Salvation Army, you're listening to Words of Life. These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. Well hello everyone, we're back.
It's Bill and Diane and Ken and Vern. And we've had- We never leave, we're just always here. Sorry, you were hoping for a new episode. Here we are again. We've had four discussions with you. We hope that you are with us in mind and spirit as we're discussing these questions. We want to go back and kind of take a leap off of the third question we discussed, which was can an entirely sanctified person sin? And the answer to that was yes, certainly an entirely sanctified person still has the ability to turn away and to sin. The question we're going to now ask is can an entirely sanctified person even fall away from the faith?
And that is a very heavy question. We want to be faithful to God's Word. We were just sharing implicit in much of the New Testament, certainly the Old Testament story, which is the foundation.
It's the same God in both Testaments. And in the New Testament, we are cautioned over and over again that we need to be faithful. We need to seek Him. There is danger in this world.
And we have seen, all of us I think, people who we would have to say have fallen away from the faith. God, we need you. Guide us, inspire us, convict us, show us your way. May we live a life that reflects who you are to the world around us. In Jesus name. Amen.
Amen. We're told, be careful. The world is a dangerous place. The evil one is there.
We live in a world that he is in control of in many ways. So how do we talk about this danger of falling away after we've come to know, even to be a holy saint? Thanks for throwing it our way, Vern.
I have to start so I can throw it. I love the way that John Wesley approached it. He said, you know, this issue about losing your salvation, this is an opinion. It's not a doctrine.
Nobody in church history has ever been able to say, you know, we know for sure exactly what's going on. You're talking about the sovereign omnipotent God and us little created beings. You're in a whole new place.
So be very careful. And I think he was. What he sensed though in his day, and I think we sense in our day too, is this push toward, I'm always going to be a sinner. So it's got to be sort of God does something at me. I'm never changed. And he said the result of that is no holiness.
So if you take it a step farther, you're saying, well, wait a second. He doesn't just zap me. I am a person he has saved and he sanctified. That means there's been a process of his grace, a crisis of justification, a process toward sanctification, a crisis of entire sanctification, possibly in people's lives. I think it would in most people's lives, something like that. And then a process afterwards, which means you're always personally relating to a personal God. If you ever treat him like divine stuff imposed upon you, you've missed him and you've missed the nature of who you are as a person. So the implication of that is you can lose something you're not invested in.
He will not force you to be in love with him. If you choose to not access the means of grace, not grow, you will atrophy and you will eventually die just by the logic of that. Now, nobody likes to talk about losing salvation, losing Jesus, but I think that's the natural end of that whole discussion. I think in human terms, we know how you cultivate a relationship with a person. Exactly. And it's time, it's intentionality, it's a love, it's giving grace.
But for us as humans, it can atrophy as well. If you're not giving attention to it, you're allowing it to fade away. Maybe the analogy might break down a little bit, but it can be a way in which we can start to understand that we can choose the absence of God's presence. We speak in the Salvation Army often about continued obedience and faith.
Exactly. And it's a life. Salvation is a life and sanctification is a life as it's not an it, as Diane reminded us.
And I think the danger is real and we need to caution each other. You just can't read the New Testament without having that sense that if you want to be my disciple, then you pick up your cross and follow me. And you have to keep following in order to stay in right relationship with God.
I have to always remind myself the same thing, like a broken record, but salvation is not an experience that happened to me. It's partly that, but primarily salvation is Jesus Christ. He is our salvation. He is God who reached into the demise of our separation from God, our emptiness of God. And he is fully God. He's fully human. He literally took our broken, despairing, helpless race, our nature.
He took it into himself. That's who Jesus is. He healed our separation from God. He is God and he is human. He is our healing of our separation from God. That's who Jesus is. So if you reject Jesus, if you say, I don't need Jesus, how can you be saved? He is our salvation.
So it's a relationship. It's what Kevin was just saying. Salvation is not just me making good decisions and giving all of myself. That is included, but it is Jesus himself. And so to learn to cling to him continuously and receive his forgiveness, the power of his death and his blood, not walk away. Paul talks about being a walk.
That's right. And the Greek is putting one foot in front of the other. And so it's a continual, gradual, consistent walk. With Jesus. With Jesus, yes.
Not me reading lots of good books or listening to lots of great podcasts. But with Jesus. Yeah, I feel like many Christians, of course, want to make sure that they're putting God in his proper place. That he is the one who saves. He's the one who's saying, absolutely. But you can go too far there and totally deny the person of us who are involved. And that's where we, in our tradition, say, wait, wait, wait. We accept everything you're saying about sovereignty.
Everything. Except when it eclipses the responsiveness. That ends up being an impersonal reality, which is not biblical.
And of course, you're going to always falter on one side or the other. And that's where Wesley, again, with all of his Calvinistic friends, who were Calvinistic Methodists, they were Methodists who were Calvinistic, said, he said, I just don't see your focus on holiness any longer. If it's all done by sovereign grace, it limits your desire to passionately love him in every area of your life. Because you're saved. You can't lose your salvation.
Well, that's going to affect how you live your life. So how can we invest in people's lives in a way to say, yes, it's all of God. It's all Jesus. Including my loving response to him hour by hour. He wants that.
He's made me for that. He desires that. It's indicative of our need. It's ongoing. It's not, oh, we've established it. It's done.
Let's move on. It's a constant need. Wesley speaks to that as well. Let me just read this passage from Colossians 1. God, in all his fullness, was pleased to live in Christ. And through him God reconciled, brought together, everything to himself.
He made peace, shalom, completeness, wholeness, with everything in heaven and on earth, by means of Christ's blood on the cross. And this includes you, who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he's brought you, it gets better and better, he's brought you into his presence. And that means before his face, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before his face. So it's that intimacy. And then it says this, but you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don't drift away. So it all goes together.
Starts with Jesus. He's rescued us. And what Bill said, you must continue.
It's a relationship. You can't just go your merry way. You have to live in this union. And in practical terms, I've been thinking a lot lately about what I believe is true because of what you just read, that a Christian should not struggle spiritually. We need not to struggle spiritually. We will have all the struggles of life.
We're not exempt from any of those. But what you just described and being entirely sanctified and being in God's grace, sustained by God's grace, living in his grace, we not only are saved by grace, we live by grace, means that we should not struggle spiritually. And I would just say if there's anyone listening that has accepted there's a different understanding that's taught out there, that every Christian will struggle spiritually. If you are struggling spiritually, then that is a big warning sign. We believe that what this entire discussion and wonderful teaching in Scripture and reality and life is about is that we can live by the power of the Spirit and in perfect relationship with God. And we should not be struggling spiritually. I think that's God's gift to the Christian, Luke 11 13.
If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? He's going to keep his word. His word is going to be true and we can rest on it. We can lean on it.
We can depend on it. And he is the one who keeps us. Jesus is our keeper. He's the keeper of our life. He's the lover of our soul. We don't have to walk around in fear thinking we've lost something.
No, we haven't. He keeps us. And if we're going astray, he speaks to us. And we turn around and we come back. You haven't lost anything. And if you're struggling with doubts and you're having problems with wondering, what do I believe?
I can't go there. It's like, you know what? I love your doubts. I love your brains. I made you this way. That is your relationship with me. That's how we're relating right now. Just keep coming to me.
Don't go to some book with your doubts. Come to me. Talk to me with your struggles. And I'm there.
I want to be with you. So he's not leaving us. He never leaves us.
He's for us. That question that we've been talking about, is it possible for an entirely sanctified believer to fall away from his faith, is one that we cannot answer definitively. That's in God's hands. But what you have heard, I think, is a wonderful affirmation of this truth. The believer in Christ, filled with his Spirit, is secure.
God bless you. These are the words. These are the words. These are the words of life. These are the words. These are the words of life. You
