A Biblical View on Security/Assurance of Salvation - non-Armenian and non-Calvinist

The following is an email thread based on this blog but it is instructive on a biblical view on the assurance and/or security of salvation. The Calvinist view is "once saved always saved" while the Armenian view tends to suggest you lose your salvation for any willful sin against God. We consider both as extreme views and we explain a significant aspect of it here. The names are anonymous to protect the privacy of the parties involved.

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On Monday, October 21, 2013 7:56 AM, Steve wrote:

My wife, Susan, died in July in a car accident. A truck ran a red light and hit the passenger side of our car killing her instantly. She never even saw it coming.

She had been married a few times before me (she was still young, in her mid-30s, when she died but they were very short). It was my first marriage and we had been married for seven years.

Do you believe she died as an adulteress?

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From: Sola Scriptura
To: Steve 
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 4:41 PM
Subject: Re: Sola Scriptura

Hi Steve ,

Thank you for your candidness. I can sense and am quite sure that you love your wife very much and please accept my sincere condolences as you go through this trying period of grieving and soul searching.

Before I give you my opinion on this case, please be assured that we do have a loving, forgiving and redemptive God. David himself when he sinned by committing murder and committing adultery with Bathsheba appealed to God's steadfast/unfailing love (kheced) and his unswerving faithfulness (emeth). After you read Psalm 51 about his prayer of remorse, confession and repentance and observe how God made him the greatest warrior king of all time (he extended the borders of Israel all the way to the Euphrates (modern Iraq)).

God, however, may curse his own people for their sin and/or allow dire consequences to continue as this is the only way he can truly discipline his own and maintain the "fear of God" in them. I have another blog on this I think where I point out that God unhesitatingly forgives his repentant children but normally does NOT remove the consequences.  For example, a murderer may come to Christ in true repentance and God would forgive BUT that does not necessarily bring the murdered person back to life. Many consequences like this are IRREVERSIBLE. That is why we ought to fear sin because we fear God.

Having said that, I can only give you the biblical foundation to make your own conclusions as I am not God who is omniscient. 

First, God forgives ONLY those sins we confess and repent of. That means that God forgave all our past and present sins when we accepted Him as our Lord and Savior but not our unconfessed sins that we commit after we are saved. Let me clarify two important concepts.

·  Contrary to much teaching in churches today, if one does not accept Christ as Lord when he accepts him as Savior, that salvation is not valid at all. When Christ was asked by the rich young ruler how to have eternal life. Christ clearly stated that he had to sell everything he had, give them to the poor and follow Christ. Accepting Christ as Lord means we are NOT keeping any "baggage" with us and surrendering all to him when we receive him as Lord and Savior. This means that if your wife received Jesus Christ as Savior but UNREPENTANT of her adulterous past, then she may not be truly saved.  However, if she was truly repentant sometime before her demise either upon or after receiving Christ, then ALL her sins are covered by the blood of Christ and TOTALLY forgiven.

·  I personally do not believe and cannot find in Scripture, that Christ forgives our future sins automatically even AFTER being truly saved. [added before publishing: Entrance into the Kingdom of God is the same as salvation by grace through faith upon the blood and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. When one is saved, a King and subject relationship is established as well as a Father and child relationship via (heavenly) adoption. This makes our salvation secure in that small sins or mistakes against God may incur his wrath, discipline and even curse, applicable to the violating child or citizen only in his mortal existence. It may also influence rewards in heaven but there seems to be no further punishment or consequences in heaven mentioned in Scripture. Confessed sins will be forgiven but will still suffer consequences. Unconfessed sin will not be forgiven until confessed. While unforgiven, the citizen of the Kingdom has a broken fellowship with the King, or the unrepentant child will have broken fellowship and priveleges with his Father along with suffering all the consequences. However, the bible does mention that there are cases when one loses salvation and also once it is lost, it may be forever lost and cannot be regained (Hebrews 6:4-8 and 1John 5:16-17). This is analogous to a kingdom citizen who is a traitor to the kingdom and betrays or renounces his citizenship and forever loses it. It is also analogous (and therefore confirmed by law and experience) to a son who shames or dishonors his father or his father's name and is actually disowned by the father, sonship is then forever lost. ] However, the consequences of sin, based on my reading of the Bible, are experienced by his kingdom children ONLY IN THIS LIFE and not in heaven. Forgiven sins will still need to deal with the consequences and the Christian will suffer those but only in this life. Unconfessed and unforgiven sins, on the other hand, will not only have those consequences (many times in worse forms) but the lack of forgiveness will produce a guilty, confused, depressed, defeated, miserable Christian (and some Christian failures have even committed suicide because of this condition, what a tragedy). That means that if your wife became a true Christian, truly repentant of her past, she would have suffered her consequences during her lifetime BUT no longer after death but she would still have experienced victory over her consequences and trials if she had been consistently walking with God through those dark and dry times. If she (theoretically) committed adultery AFTER salvation and did not repent of it, then she would have experienced the defeat and failure I just described above, aside from her consequences.  In either case, despite her adultery, the Bible seems to strongly indicate that she would still go to heaven when she left this life UNLESS she sinned as an act of rebellion against God or if she had publicly shamed or insulted God by her sin. Shaming or insulting the name of Christ or the Holy Spirit after salvation has no forgiveness in this life or in the life to come...this seems to be the unforgiveable sin.

I hope this helps address your issues. If you want biblical support or passages to support what I said, I can give that too. I just wanted to give you quick and concise answers right now as that seems to be your current need.

David, I have assumed in this response that both you and your departed wife are Christians, especially because you have gone through my blog (which is not understandable by non-Christians). If so, may God comfort you during this time but I pray that he will use this experience for you to be drawn closer to Him. Most Christians get defeated because they don't know God that well. God requires only three areas for us to understand (Jeremiah 9:23,24), his unfailing love, his justice and his righteousness and how we as humans should relate to those three. So the whole of Scripture covers mainly those three attributes of God. If you want a quick course, read the life of David in the Samuels, the Chronicles and the Psalms and emulate the way he related to God and that will bring you quite close to where God wants you to be. For your current situation, read those Psalms where David seems to be depressed and highly stressed out and see how he dealt with these (chapters 2 to 22 for example), then switch to those Psalms where he is just praising and pressing into God (chapters 23 to 40 for example). Meditate on those and be conscious of God's presence with you starting when you read the first word of Scripture or utter the first word of prayer.

God bless you.

~Sola Scriptura

PS. If you don't mind, I would like to post your email as an anonymous post in my blog as well as my responses in order to benefit others who might have the same need. Thank you.

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On Monday, October 21, 2013 2:47 PM, Steve wrote:

What worries me is that a couple days before the accident, she was confronted by another church-goer who said that she was an adulteress.

She was very touchy about the subject and got very angry. She stated that she would never worship or love a God who called her marriage adultery. It even came up in conversation when we ate breakfast on the day of her death, and she was still bitter about it during the ride where she was killed, even in the middle of reiterating her above statement when the truck hit.

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On Monday, October 21, 2013 3:27 PM, David wrote:

What do you make of that?

And no, I do not mind. As long as it is anonymous.

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From: Sola Scriptura
To: Steve 
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: Sola Scriptura

I can see where you are bothered.

The crux of the issue centers on whether or not she was truly repentant of her sins. If she  knew that her adultery greatly displeased (and perhaps even angered) God and was truly repentant of it at salvation or after, then that is covered by God's forgiveness. 

On the other hand, If she was not repentant when she received Christ or if in her mind she refuses to admit adultery (which obviously she committed, and you yourself know this), or she thinks adultery is no big deal as most people including Christians in the USA do, the first question boils down to whether or not her salvation is genuine (is Christ her Lord indeed or does she even know the meaning?). If her life showed that Christ was not her Lord, then salvation is highly doubtful.

Your statement, "She stated that she would never worship or love a God who called her marriage adultery", unfortunately shows a lack of remorse or repentance. In fact it is rebellion against God. God will not change his standards just because your wife is angry at him. Nor will he change his standards because you are worried about your wife. Even ignorance of the law does not exempt anyone from the penalty of a violation. God's law is God's law and in Matthew 5:17-20, even keeping it is not enough since we have to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Exceeding the righteousness of the Pharisees is very important. God imputes to us his righteousness (which exceeds that of the Pharisees) only  if our salvation is genuine and genuine salvation like I said previously requires accepting Christ not only as Savior but very importantly as Lord.

Now, assuming that her salvation was genuine (which includes true repentance for her sins) but her anger was simply triggered by the other church-goer re-opening a sore chapter in her life, I do not see anything in Scripture that says we go to hell just because we got angry and her statement or mis-statement was simply said in anger. It is even possible that God took her life before her spiritual condition would get any worse causing her to actually rebel against God.

Again, these are just opinions based on what you have disclosed. There are many possible angles. Only God knows the final outcome because only he can see the heart of the person. We just hope that despite everything, your wife was on the right track and her recent "mistakes" were just because she is human.

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On Monday, October 21, 2013 8:48 PM, Steve wrote:

Where do you think she is, most likely?

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Hi Steve ,

I do not know her personally nor her actual spiritual journey.

Even if I knew her, it is still not for me to judge.

However, from my experience, it is easy to tell, based on how they speak AND live their lives, who has a real relationship with God.

It is harder to determine for those who do not show it or those who give mixed signals.

God bless.