Can a Believer Lose Their Salvation? A Red Herring Question?

If you’ve been a Christian for a while, you have probably heard this question many times: “Can a believer lose his or her salvation?” This usually leads to endless debates between well-meaning Christians on both sides of the issue. The “Calvinist” props up John 10:28-30 and the “Arminian” Hebrews 6:4-6.* No one is able to pluck the believer out of Jesus’s hand vs. it is not possible for those who fall away to renew again to repentance.

Okay, round two: Romans 8:28-39: whom God foreknew he also predestined to glory and nothing can separate us from the love of God. But then there’s 2 Peter 2:1-22: false prophets will arise and deny the very Lord who bought (redeemed) them. They turned back from the way of righteousness and the proverb of a dog returning to its vomit and pig to the mire happened to them.

Round three? I think you get the picture! There are formidable arguments on both sides.

But now I’m beginning to wonder if the very question, “Can a believer lose their salvation?” actually turns out to be a Red Herring fallacy, more often than not.

The Red Herring

What’s a red herring? Well, it’s a smelly fish! As the story goes, it originates from hunters wanting to throw a dog off scent from chasing a rabbit. To do so they bring out a red herring (so my google search). A Red Herring fallacy, then, is one in which the argument distracts or misleads a person away from the actual problem or issue at hand.

Although the question, “Can a believer lose their salvation?” is not really an argument itself, it can function in a similar way as a Red Herring. The question often hides or detracts from a bigger and more personal issue at stake.

If we are obsessed with this question, we should first ask ourselves why that is so. Is it that our lifestyle does match our Christian claim? Are we living in sin and want to justify our behavior by claiming that our salvation is eternally secure? Or oppositely, do we feel like such a failure when we fall short that we think God gets tired of forgiving us and one day He’ll get fed up and throw us away?

If you notice, contextually speaking, passages such as Romans 8:28-39 are given to those who are weak, suffering, and afflicted. They need comforting and reassurance. And the many warnings that we find in Scripture are for those who are sluggish, presumptuous, and are playing around with sin and false teachings. They need a little dose of godly fear and should not take their salvation for granted.

The Real Question

Either way, the real question does not turn out to be, “Can a believer lose their salvation?” Rather, the real question is  something like this:

“I’m fed up with sinning, but I keep on sinning. So what can I do to stop sinning?”

Or oppositely, “I’m sinning and don’t care to stop, but I still want to go to heaven, so will God forgive me anyway?”

If you are asking the first question, kudos to you and welcome to the Christian life! You will be struggling with sin throughout your mortal existence. Stay humble, stay close to God, keep in fellowship with other believers, get up when you flop and genuinely ask for forgiveness, and continue fighting the good fight of faith until the end!

If you are asking the second question, you should be told that God is loving and forgiving, but God hates your sin! And if you really love God, you really need to repent, turn away from your vice, and get some help. Don’t let Galatians 5:19-21 or 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 or Matthew 7:21-23, etc., happen to you!

So Can a Believer Lose Their Salvation?

I refuse to answer this question, and that’s not because I don’t have an answer–trust me, I do! (see B. J. Oropeza,  Apostasy in the New Testament Communities, 3 vols.). Rather, I don’t want this post to itself become a Red Herring from the real problem of sin that I’ve posed. What should be said here is that, regardless of whether you lean more on the Calvinist or Arminian side, or are somewhere in between, neither position is endorsing a sinful lifestyle that characterizes one’s behavior.

The Arminian would say that if you are sinning egregiously and denying Christ, then yes, you could lose your salvation, if you haven’t already. The Calvinist would say that if you are doing these things, then these are signs that you really were never truly a believer in the first place. Either way, with either position, the result is the same–there is no salvation for such a person! That is, unless that person repents and turns back to Christ.

Therefore, if you are more of an Arminian, you should be diligent to be faithful to the Lord and strive against sin so as to maintain your salvation. And if you are more of a Calvinist, you should be diligent to be faithful to the Lord and strive against sin so as to show yourself to be a genuine Christian. (If I recall correctly, the late I. Howard Marshall said something like this in his book, Kept by the Power of God.)

Oh, and my apologies to those out there who are solid in their Christian faith and honestly wanted an answer to this question. See my Hebrews 6:4-6 post for that.

Notes

* I put the terms in quotation marks because many laity who argue these points often are not aware of the theological positions and presuppositions that go into their interpretation. These things have been argued for centuries. Others may not feel they line up completely with either position, whereas others claim the positions proudly. On Calvinism and its “five points” click here: TULIP; on Arminianism and its “five points” click here: DAISY.