Bible Q&A 09

I admit that I am confused about Hebrews 6:4-6. but I believe in once saved always saved. I believe that if you were truly sincere when you receive Christ that he will bring you back to him but that you are always saved. The only sin that can separate you from Christ is totally denying him until your dying day. If you do not believe in once saved always saved, how do you explain the verse that says I will never leave you nor forsake you?

Yes, I agree with you that Heb.6:4-6 is hard to put into an understanding of the grace of God. What I do, is recognize that the text doesn't say that it is impossible for these people who lost their faith to come back to God. It says that is impossible for us to renew them. If you have ever tried to get one who has disowned Christ to come back to his faith you can understand what he is talking about. God will forgive if this person forsakes his sins and confesses them (1Jno.1:9) but people in this condition seldom if ever come back. It's never a question of whether or not God will forgive, but whether or not we will return to him and repent.

You said, "the only sin that can separate you from Christ is totally denying him until your dying day." How then can you hold that this person cannot ever be lost? If once saved - always saved, then this person will also be saved despite all that he denies.

2Tim.2:11-13 says that we can have a life in Christ and suffer for his sake, but if we deny him, he also will deny us. If we quit believing, he will not forsake his promise to us; he cannot deny himself. So it is true that God will never leave us or forsake us, but it is WE who can and do break the relationship with God and go back into the world. He abides faithful, it wasn't he who forsook us, but a person can forsake Christ. And if he does then Christ will deny him before the father.

Why else would you have the warnings to forsake sin and keep our faith strong practically on every page of the NT scriptures? God will guard us and preserve us to the coming of Christ, but we stand by faith. If we lose our faith then we are lost. That's why Satan is trying always to undermine our faith and tempt us into sin that hardens our hearts and eats away at our faith.

Paul says in Romans 8 that nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God. Everything he mentions is external to ourselves. We can turn to our own lusts and gratify the flesh and follow a path to do so, that takes us away from God. The flesh wants a perfect freedom from God to satisfy itself, but that perfect freedom is a separation from God, which is death.

That's why you have all the warnings to mortify the members of the body and live in the spirit and walk in the spirit. The choice is ours. We must live and walk by faith.

Hope this helps.
Larry White