Storms Kept for Jesus

What the New Testament Really Teaches about Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Security
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4335-4205-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Can Christians lose their salvation? This question has perplexed-and, at times, distressed-believers for centuries, and it is still often asked today. When faced with their sin and shortcomings, many Christians are tempted to conclude that they've strayed too far and that God no longer loves them. In Kept for Jesus, pastor Sam Storms addresses common concerns that Christians have related to their eternal security, offering hope and assurance from the Bible. Examining every New Testament passage that speaks to this important issue, this book charts a biblical course between those who say that Christians can lose their salvation and those who carelessly declare, 'Once saved, always saved.' This pastoral book will equip pastors, church leaders, and laypeople with biblical answers for anyone questioning their salvation.

Sam Storms (PhD, University of Texas at Dallas) is the founder and president of Enjoying God Ministries and serves on the council of the Gospel Coalition. Sam served as visiting associate professor of theology at Wheaton College and is a past president of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is the author or editor of 37 books and blogs regularly at SamStorms.org. Sam and his wife, Ann, are the parents of two daughters and grandparents of four.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Storms, Sam

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

Meet Charley. On second thought, you probably already know him—or someone whose life bears a striking resemblance. Perhaps Charlene would be a more suitable name for some of you. In any case, his (her?) life will pose for us a painful and difficult dilemma. Let me explain.

Charley was born into a Christian family. His parents were devout followers of Jesus, and both of his siblings, an older brother and a younger sister, came to faith in Christ and remained vibrant and deeply committed to him throughout their lives.

Charley was raised in the church and was usually present whenever the doors were open, whether at a Sunday service, a youth meeting, special events throughout the week, or a summer retreat. When he turned twelve, he professed faith in Jesus, largely through the influence of his parents and older brother. He was baptized soon thereafter and was discipled by his youth pastor over the course of the next few years. Charley’s faith appeared to be quite vibrant and joyful. He endured the same trials and temptations as do virtually all teenaged boys, but he never wandered far or failed to repent when he sinned. He prayed every day and read his Bible and was growing in his understanding of God.

Following graduation from high school, he fell in with a different group of friends at college. They challenged his faith and insisted that he was being naïve to believe in Jesus. The arguments they regularly threw in his face were fairly typical:

Only ignorant and uneducated people believe that Jesus was really born of a virgin and rose physically from the dead.

Evolution is a proven scientific fact and makes the existence of God unnecessary.

If there is really an all-powerful and good God in charge of the universe, why is there so much evil and injustice?

If you keep this “faith” that you obviously inherited from your parents, you’ll never be able to drink and sleep around and experience the really fun stuff in life.

It wasn’t long before Charley stopped attending church and eventually declared himself to be an atheist. He grew increasingly angry at the institutional church and nurtured a deep resentment toward those who influenced him while growing up, having become convinced that they hid the truth from him and only wanted to control his life.

Charley is now thirty, already twice divorced, an alcoholic, and painfully bitter and unpleasant to be around. He wants nothing ever again to do with Christianity.

So what’s up with Charley? What happened? Without getting too technical, it’s important that you understand how Christians from various traditions and denominations explain this.

The majority of those who identify with the Nazarene, Methodist, Assembly of God, Church of Christ, and Free-Will Baptist traditions, among others, insist that Charley was, in all likelihood, genuinely born again at the age of twelve. He truly trusted Christ and was truly saved. He was justified or declared righteous in the sight of God. He became an adopted son of God and was forgiven all his sins. The Holy Spirit came to indwell Charley and to empower him for godly living. But through a variety of factors and for a whole host of reasons, Charley willfully repudiated everything he once affirmed, denied his faith, and apostatized. Notwithstanding all that friends, family, and even God himself could do to persuade him to stay true to Christ, he walked away in denial of the Lord he once embraced. Charley forfeited his salvation. He is now, at the age of thirty, a child of the Devil and headed for eternal condemnation, cut off from Christ.

Although no one really likes to be labeled, we will call people who embrace this view “Arminians,” named after the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Dutch theologian James Arminius. Be it noted, however, that not all Arminians deny the eternal security of the believer.1 More on this later.

There is another view that some of you have never encountered. People who embrace it come from a wide variety of backgrounds, including some Southern Baptists, dispensationalists, and others from so-called independent Bible churches. They insist that once Charley was truly saved, he was forever saved. Even though he walked away from faith and repudiated Jesus, he is still safely secure in the arms of his heavenly Father and will, regardless of how he lives and dies, end up in heaven for eternity. Charley ought to have walked in obedience and faithfulness, and we should encourage him to do so. But he doesn’t have to. If he chooses to live a life in unbelief and immorality, he is still saved.

However, whereas he doesn’t lose his salvation, his denial of Jesus and his sinful behavior will lead to the loss of rewards in heaven. He gains entrance into the eternal kingdom of God, but he will not experience the joy of knowing his heavenly Father’s approval, and he will suffer the loss of rewards that other, more faithful Christians, will receive.

While not affiliated with any particular denomination or tradition, that view has come to be known by many of its critics as “antinomianism.” Now, please understand, those who advocate this view would never call themselves “antinomians.” The term antinomian comes from two Greek words that together mean “against the law.” It has often been used to describe those who say that although you ought to obey the principles and moral laws of the Scriptures, you won’t lose your salvation if you don’t. You’ll only lose your reward. In other words, you should persevere in holiness of life, but if you don’t, you’re still a child of God.

Those whom I’m calling “antinomians” argue that if you are once saved, you are always saved, regardless of how you live or what you believe after you initially come to saving faith in Jesus.

Finally, those who typically come from Presbyterian as well as Southern Baptist and other traditions associated with what is known as “Calvinism” or the “Reformed” faith (because of their close association with the Protestant Reformation and its leaders Martin Luther and John Calvin) look at Charley and draw one of two conclusions.

First, some conclude that if Charley was truly saved at the age of twelve, he is still saved at the age of thirty, and will, by God’s grace and the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, eventually come to his spiritual senses and return to the Lord. This may come only after enduring severe discipline from his heavenly Father, but eventually God will bring him back. In some cases, people like Charley are disciplined straightway into heaven; that is to say, the discipline of the Lord results in their physical death. They die prematurely under the discipline of God, but they are saved eternally.

Second, others conclude that the likely explanation for Charley’s departure from his professed faith in Christ is that he was never genuinely born again. His so-called faith was spurious. His apparent life of obedience was prompted by factors other than a genuine love for Jesus. He was self-deluded and deceived everyone who knew him. If he had been truly born again, he would have persevered in his faith.

As you can see, the Arminian says that Charley was truly saved, apostatized from the faith, and is now lost. The antinomian says that Charley was truly saved, is still truly saved, but will suffer the loss of rewards in the age to come because of his disobedient lifestyle. The Calvinist says Charley may have been truly saved, and if so, he will come under the discipline of the Lord, who will either restore him to his walk with Jesus or take him home to heaven prematurely. Alternatively, says the Calvinist, Charley was never truly saved, and his failure to persevere in a life of obedience is evidence that his profession of faith was just that, a verbal profession, and not the genuine faith that possesses forgiveness of sins.

As you will quickly see, I hold to the Calvinist or Reformed view. I agree with the Arminian when he says that perseverance in faith and holiness is necessary for final salvation, but I disagree with him when he says that a born-again person can fully and finally apostatize from the faith, thereby losing his salvation. Likewise, I agree with the antinomian that all those truly born again are eternally secure in their salvation, but I disagree when he says that a born-again person can live in unrepentant sin throughout the course of his life, be encouraged with the assurance of salvation, and expect to find himself in heaven.

I will strive to be as objective as I can in explaining what others believe, but there is no escaping the fact that I am solidly, energetically, and passionately committed to the view that when a man or woman is born again by the Spirit of God and justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone, he or she will persevere in faith unto life’s end, even though that perseverance may be a bit bumpy and inconsistent along the way. That person, however, will never utterly abandon Christ because the Father has promised never to utterly abandon us but to keep us safe and secure through faith.

WHY DO PEOPLE REJECT THE DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL SECURITY?

Many of you live with deep-seated anxiety about eternity, an anxiety that occasionally degenerates into outright fear. “Am I really saved? I think I’m saved. I hope I’m saved. But these doubts are driving me insane. What if I sin again...