Once Saved Always Saved?

My Testimony

Up until 2005, I considered myself a good Roman Catholic. I was born into the faith so to speak. I was baptized when I was a baby. I then received the sacrament of confirmation which perfects my baptism in my Christian faith at Grade 6. I received the sacrament of holy communion at Grade 2 which allowed me to partake of the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ shortly after I received the sacrament of penance or confession which was a prerequisite to holy communion. The way I remember I was brought up, my parents and my teachers (in catechism) didn’t spend a whole lot of time talking about soteriology (or the doctrine of salvation). The reason I believe is that from their perspective we have already received that gift when we got baptized at a young age. By the time I was an adult, I had become a practicing Catholic. That meant going to church on Sundays and receiving holy communion and getting penance for confessed sins. It had become my purpose to follow Lord Jesus. That was all I cared about because if I wasn’t following Jesus I was then sinning my way to hell. I always felt guilty for not being able to match up to Jesus’ standards. I cursed, I thought bad thoughts, I was proud, my life matched up Romans 1 (not point for point though). I was living a guilty life (let’s call this my pendulum swing to the left) and I’ve already forgotten that I’ve been forgiven. This because I’ve never heard of salvation again until 2005, when I heard a Christian preacher on the Sunday of an Amway business convention, no less, and he preached about repentance, about God’s love and His free gift of salvation. Like many people that day, I responded to the altar call, cried like a baby, “repented”, received Jesus, and got saved (from hell) and was born again. In 2006 we moved to Canada and I associated with the Baptist church that my wife's cousin went to and started going regularly to Bible study.
I wrapped the word “repented” earlier in double quotes, because my understanding of repentance was to outwardly turn away from my sins (which is the OT definition of repentance up to John the Baptist). I know I was saved – sometimes, not all the time. My thought was that if every time I sinned my salvation was at stake. Somehow, I had to pray hard to Saviour Jesus to save me. And so I went back to this endless cycle of thinking I am saved this time and not saved the next. Blessings come when I perform. Curses follow when I don’t. It wasn’t so much guilt that I was struggling with (like I did before 2005) but it was the mental and emotional fear of losing my salvation (let’s call this my pendulum swing to the right).
Now comes 2013, I came across a preaching about Law and Grace that I’ve never heard before. The preacher explained soteriology by polarizing Law on one side and Grace on the other and there’s no bridge between the two. He preached Paul’s complete gospel on repentance, atonement and resurrection – Saviour Jesus, Lord Jesus. This saved-by-Jesus and follow-Jesus events were not a two-step long process but IS an almost single event. In physical time maybe there’s a chronology to these events. But in spiritual time, they are one event. His preaching on repentance is inward repentance – the changing of the mind from self-occupation to Jesus-occupation (which is the NT definition of repentance).
And so I believe my pendulum is swinging less and less to the sides and becoming more centered now. I can rest on the reality that my salvation is 100% secure that Savior Jesus purchased for me on the cross and have the strength of his righteousness that Lord Jesus imputed in me when he rose from the dead. So now as a consequence, I am a Jesus follower and I have both these weapons in my armor.

Settling in the middle

My point to this testimony is to offer an opinion that I think that evangelical Christians who received Jesus (on the promise of once-saved always-saved) and then only to totally flake out from living the Christian life believing that they can just relax their way into heaven, just needs a jolt of true gospel electricity to jumpstart their faith again. And the same thing is needed for our guilt-laden non-evangelical brothers and sisters who insist that the grace of God must be earned by good works.
I am excited to see that many non-denominational Christian churches (the megachurches whose congregants are mostly younger people and couples) are moving away from the extreme left and right sides of the pendulum and instead are settling in the middle. At the same time, I am saddened by their persecution and dismissal from traditional and North American evangelical denominations as mere prosperity preachers. If you listen closely to their messages, they are not denying that Christians are going to suffer in this world. They are not saying that material prosperity is God’s promise alone. They are shouting that biblical prosperity is multi-layered and multi-dimensional and despite suffering and mortal death, Jesus promises an abundant life on earth (a life full of faith, hope, and love that leads to service to others) rather than abundant living (material wealth, health, and comfort that are self-serving).

The gospel of grace

These non-denominational churches’ halleluiah call to the gospel seems to be:

1. God loves you (and He does)
2. He saved you and made you right (and He did at the cross and at His resurrection)
3. He empowers you to be His image-bearer (through His Spirit) and
4. He delivers you from suffering, persecution, and death (because He is the first of the resurrected)
5. And the only true obedience is to this faith. 

And you know what? These churches are the ones proclaiming Jesus in underground communities in North Korea, Middle East, and China under the constant threat of death.

Preaching that One Can Lose Salvation versus Once Saved Always Saved

To me a doctrine that teaches that a believer can lose his/her salvation has the tendency in believers who are struggling in life to spiral deeper into guilt and depression for not being able to match up to Jesus’ standards. How can Jesus lead someone to kingdom living if there’s a hurt that needs to be healed first? Do we say, “too bad, you’re not like Jesus enough?”
Whereas, an always-saved doctrine that teaches that through the pains of suffering in a believer's life, produces a real hope and a resting peace beyond what the world offers and only Jesus can give. For no matter the circumstances from the very good to the very bad, someone can hang on to that salvation promise.
I propose, let’s not worry and judge about what people might do or won’t do with this divine assurance only that when it comes time to go through the fire of testing, this assurance of Jesus’ finished work of salvation will be wrapped around us so protectively that we’ll come out of the furnace un-singed like Shadrack, Meshach, and Abed-Nego when Nebuchadnezzar ordered them burned (Daniel 1-3).

My Take on the Once Saved Always Saved Doctrine

I find myself leaning towards the reformed arminian argument for conditional salvation based on faith in Jesus and not on sinning within a person's life. I mean the action of sinning does not risk a person's salvation. Surely, a person who's aware and consciously sinning has clearly abandoned his/her faith. This is very different from a person who's struggling with temptations that occasionally leads to sinning. The key word there is "struggling". In a sense wrestling with the faith. I'd like to think that there's biblical hope, which is a certainty, that a sincere believer who follows Jesus but is otherwise struggling with sinning has an iron-clad security with Jesus.

What does James have to say?

My pastor started a preaching series on the book of James. I used to believe that James was advocating works to attain God's grace. I was wrong. James' letter was addressed to Jewish Christians who were scattered throughout the Roman world. They were already Christians and had already received God's saving grace. James was merely giving them a jolt of electricity that their faith needed. James in essence wasn't preaching about salvation in his letter but rather he was preaching about what happens after one gets saved. James was talking to believers and not just to everybody in general.
Certainly, a dead religion isn't God's will for his Church here on earth who are already Kingdom citizens. He wants an active church who cares and loves people in practice and not just in thought. He wants a church who attracts sinners, who when are shown in physical terms what love really looks like, are then called to repentance and a renewal and by the grace of God bear fruit. The same way that the Word became flesh, our salvation through the power of the Spirit, must somehow translate and transform into the good works our God has willed on every believer. Hallelujah!

Reflection

Every Christian needs a dose of reminding that the relationship we have with Jesus isn't one that is stale or has gone stale. For sure, we think and feel sometimes in our own walk that nothing we want to do for Jesus gets done until it gets done. And so we must do something about it.
We don't want to stand in front of Jesus our Lord at the end and say to Him, "I hid your gift and didn't use it because I thought you meant to have it back at least in the original amount than for it to be returned zero." What would Jesus say to us then? Answer: Matthew 25:14-30