Objection: Healing Cannot Be in the Atonement Because Healing Can Be Lost, but Salvation Cannot Be Lost
It is certain that healing and health can be lost, because Jesus told the man at the Pool of Bethesda to sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon him (John 5:14). Peter lost his miracle of walking on water when he started to focus on the natural circumstances instead of the words of Jesus. So you CAN lose something you received from God.
The problem with this objection is that it is based on the faulty premise that salvation cannot be lost. So demonstrating that salvation CAN be lost completely destroys this objection. Many denominational people have clung to the idea of “eternal security” (also phrased as “Once Saved, Always Saved” or OSAS for short). In more recent times, some of them have moved away from that idea, but it is making a resurgence in some Spirit-filled circles! So can salvation be lost?
I think both the OSAS and non-OSAS crowds would agree that you cannot “lose” your salvation as you might “lose” your glasses by accident. No one inadvertently loses his salvation. We often use the word “lost” to mean “misplaced” – “I lost my keys” would almost never mean that your keys were permanently lost; it would really mean “I misplaced my keys.” You can’t misplace salvation. The only way into God’s kingdom is to receive Jesus as Lord. The only way out of God’s kingdom, therefore, must be to reject Jesus as Lord. You cannot become unsaved by accident any more than you can be saved by accident. You cannot “sin your way out of grace” even if you sin a lot. Of course, a person who sins like any worldly sinner without remorse would not be a person who has really received Jesus as Lord. The Bible warns us about such fake brothers and urges us to avoid them.
One old extreme Pentecostal position is that you lose your salvation every time you sin, so you have to confess your sin to get re-saved! That is based on a false interpretation of 1 John 1:9 that holds that you have to be “cleansed from all unrighteousness” all over again every time you sin by “confessing” your sin. If you’ve been taught that, please read What 1 John 1:9 Really Means and get taught better! I would hope that people would see the error in this old position.
This following is a favorite “proof-text” among OSAS adherents:
John 10:28-29:
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.
We have to agree with Jesus that no one could pluck you out of His hand, including people who want to torture you for your faith and try to get you to renounce Him. They cannot make you do it.
However, one would still have to leave open the possibility of you deliberately walking away from Jesus as an act of your own will. Otherwise, it would be tantamount to declaring that you have no more free will to choose to sin or not once you get saved, including the sin of walking away from Jesus.
One particular passage is the subject of debate, as good people have reached opposite conclusions.
Hebrews 10:26:
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
This verse could be argued either way – and it is! The non-OSAS people believe that this shows that you can be saved, then sin WILLFULLY and walk away, at which point there is nothing to save you anymore. The OSAS people reply that this refers to SINNERS who receive a knowledge of the truth and willfully reject it without being saved, in which case there is no other means of salvation available, though they have never lost their salvation.
So let’s skip down a few verses. Because this is still in the same vein as the passage above, it would at least tip the scales (to me) to indicate that the author IS warning about being saved and deliberately giving up your salvation in the verse above, though it’s still not an ironclad proof. But these verses are more explicit on their own:
Hebrews 10:38-39:
Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.
The key phrase there is “unto perdition” – which indicates that it IS possible to be saved and live by faith but then DRAW BACK unto perdition. If you were never saved to begin with, you could not DRAW BACK unto perdition because you never would have DRAWN FORWARD out of perdition!
Things get even more convincing when we consider the verse just before Hebrews 10:26. Hebrews 10:25 urges US as believers not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together in one place, and it is linked to Hebrews 10:26 with the word “for” at the beginning of Hebrews 10:26. Thus, one major purpose of having Christian fellowship is AVOIDING walking away from Christ and thus becoming lost.
So I consider it a given that Hebrews 10:26 refers to believers who fall rather than to unbelievers who never get saved and reject the gospel.
Paul urged the Corinthians to test themselves to see if they were in the faith – which would be completely unnecessary if once you’re in the faith, you can’t get out of the faith. If once saved, always saved, it would be impossible to fail Paul’s test, but he allowed for the possibility of failure (2 Corinthians 13:5). However, a hard-core OSAS adherent would claim that this would only refer to people who gathered with the church at Corinth but weren’t really saved, so we’ll keep going.
Paul talked explicitly about being “fallen from grace” in Galatians 5:4: “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” This seems pretty straightforward – the person would seem to have been “in grace” but then have fallen out. Also, Christ isn’t helping the person at all, as opposed to helping the person to a limited degree. This matches Galatians 5:2: “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” But I’ve heard a hard-core OSAS adherent “explain” that you have fallen away from “grace teaching” to try to follow the Law, but you haven’t forfeited your salvation even though you’re missing God on the matter of having to keep the Law. I don’t buy it, but we can keep going with other examples and pile them up quite high.
We’ll start with the possibility that a brother could perish or be destroyed because he gets offended:
1 Corinthians 8:11:
And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?
Romans 14:15:
But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
Paul warned believers that habitual walking in the flesh will lead to death:
Romans 8:13:
For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
What “death” does he mean? It doesn’t seem that he could mean physical death, because every believer will die physically at some point whether he walks in the flesh or in the Spirit! So this seems to be a warning that habitually walking in the flesh could lead to forsaking Christ and thus dying spiritually. This warning could only be to believers because unbelievers are ALREADY spiritually dead – they can’t “die” spiritually in their current lost state.
Paul also mentions people turning aside after Satan:
1 Timothy 5:14-15:
I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.
For some are already turned aside after Satan.
Jesus makes a reference to being blotted out of the Book of Life (Revelation 3:5), which would be impossible if once you were saved (meaning that your name IS written in the Book of Life), your name could never be removed.
That might not be explicit enough to convince you, so consider this:
Revelation 22:19:
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
So it does appear that you can be IN the Book of Life and later be taken out of it.
2 Peter 2:20-21 is even more explicit. These were people who not only had a head knowledge of the plan of salvation but had also actually escaped the pollutions of the world by knowing Jesus. Yet they went back and were “again” entangled. That means clearly that they WERE entangled, then they were NOT entangled (indicating that they were saved), then they were AGAIN entangled (no longer saved). You can’t be “again” entangled without being entangled and then unentangled first!
Peter shows again that he believes that salvation can be lost in 2 Peter 3:16-17. The wicked twist the Scriptures to their own destruction and we are warned not to fall and get their results. Referring to “being led away” and “falling from their own steadfastness” is quite said to believers.
He shows this again in 2 Peter 2:12-15. The people he talks about have forsaken the right way and gone astray, and they will perish in their own corruption.
James 5:19-20 is hard to explain away, too. It speaks of erring FROM the truth (this means someone was IN the truth) and then being saved from death by being converted back.
Hebrews 6:4-6 is also more explicit, though it raises an apparent contradiction. It clearly talks about someone who was a partaker of the Holy Spirit and then FELL AWAY. This person could not be RENEWED unto repentance, indicating that repentance HAD happened originally. So this person was Once Saved, NOT Always Saved. The issue now is how to reconcile this passage with the previous passage in James. If a fallen-away brother CANNOT be brought back, James must be wrong, and if he CAN be brought back, the author of Hebrews must be wrong. Or so it seems on the surface. However, the reprobate person in Hebrews had a real knowledge of the Holy Spirit and His power – that disqualifies MOST Christians from having this apply to them right there! There is a much more pronounced initial knowledge AND deliberate turning away than we see in James with a former brother who has “erred from the truth” without, apparently, having a real knowledge and experience of the Holy Spirit’s power.
In Jesus’ parable of the sower, He mentions that there are some who initially receive the Word with gladness but then FALL AWAY. Luke 8:13: “They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.”
At this point, we seem to be amassing enough evidence for Once Saved, NOT Always Saved, but let’s keep going.
1 Timothy 4:1 is explicit that some will depart from the faith in the last days. You can’t depart from somewhere you haven’t been. If you have never been IN Mountain City, Tennessee, you cannot DEPART from Mountain City, Tennessee.
People having damnation because they cast off their first faith (1 Timothy 5:12) seems too explicit to contradict, too.
Paul allows for the possibility that someone could forget the gospel and have “believed in vain” in 1 Corinthians 15:1-2.
Hebrews 2:1-3 and Hebrews 3:12-14 also talk about believers who fall away, though the OSAS crowd could deny that this means falling away from salvation, referring instead to those who hear the gospel but are never saved. However, in the second case, how would you “depart” from the living God if you were never with Him to begin with? Hebrews 4:11 warns us against FALLING due to unbelief, the context being that the Israelites were saved from Egypt but then fell due to unbelief. 1 Corinthians 10:12 tells those who stand to take heed lest they fall.
In 1 Timothy 6:10, Paul warns that some lovers of money have “erred from the faith” and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. If it is simply a case of erring with regard to proper teaching, one could see that maybe they would just be sorrowful Christians. However, the only other occurrence of the Greek word translated erred is in Mark 13:22, which talks about signs and wonders done to seduce (same Greek word), if possible, even the elect. So this appears to refer to apostasy and not merely doctrinal error.
It appears that Hymenaeus and Philetus erred concerning the truth and overthrew the faith of some (2 Timothy 2:17-18). What could that mean, other than leading them out of the Kingdom?
Shipwrecked faith (1 Timothy 1:19-20) would seem to be another term describing the “faith” of those who once served Jesus but walked away.
Paul said that some women, who used to be believers based on the context, had “turned aside after Satan” (1 Timothy 5:15). This would seem to be another reference to losing one’s salvation. I can’t make an airtight case for that, but I think you would be hard-pressed to defend any alternative explanation.
One particular statement that Paul made to Timothy would NOT qualify as a salvation-loss Scripture even though it looks like one at first. Paul said that anyone who did not provide for his own had denied the faith and was worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8). On the surface, this makes it look like you could lose your salvation simply by not supporting a family member in need! However, that is clearly not the case because Paul said that such a person was worse than an unbeliever as opposed to being an unbeliever. Such a person could not be worse than an unbeliever if he were already an unbeliever! Paul refers to the person’s abhorrent actions rather than his status of being saved or unsaved.
Peter, who did NOT teach Once Saved, Always Saved (see above), assumed that Simon was LOST even though he had been baptized after the WORD says that he believed (I’m not sure that Peter knew that about him). So Scripture says that he was a believer – at least at that point. However, Peter’s comment, “Your money perish with you,” is not something you would say to a fellow believer, so it’s obvious that Peter considered Simon to be lost at that point. (This whole Simon issue is discussed in more detail elsewhere). We don’t know for sure that Peter knew Simon’s baptismal record, but we do. Thus from our perspective, a once-saved man was now treated as lost.
1 Timothy 6:20-21 is a very relevant passage for today, when a major cause of apostasy is attending a secular college! Students are fed the pig slop known as Darwinism until it comes out their ears (or worse, their mouths), and many of them conclude that the Bible has been disproved and is unscientific, at which point they decide to disbelieve everything else in the Bible, including the plan of salvation. Imagine thinking that the Word of God is less reliable than the word of a pseudo-scientist who once wrote that bears started spending more time in the water and turned into whales!
I could cite quite a few other Scriptures, though many of the ones I’ve seen used to be “refutations” of OSAS really aren’t.
When I was first saved, I attended a Calvinist “Once Saved, Always Saved” church and accepted their word that salvation could never be lost. But one day after I’d been saved a couple years when I was touring in a bus with an evangelist (I was his piano player and occasional singer/preacher), I stumbled across these three verses, which were the ones that dissuaded me from continuing to believe Once Saved, Always Saved:
Matthew 10:22 and Matthew 24:13:
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
Mark 13:13:
And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
I thought, “I was taught that once I’m saved, there is no question about my final destination no matter what. But these verses say the opposite, and Jesus said them Himself. I guess I’d better believe Him instead of the pastor at that church.”
This concept of “enduring to the end” surfaces in many other Scriptures. A couple things are common to all of Jesus’ messages to the pastors of the seven churches in Revelation. One is the necessity of having ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The other is a promise to the person who overcomes. The specified rewards for such people are in heaven. The context is quite clear that Jesus is talking about staying faithful to Him until the end of your life. If it were impossible for a Christian to lose his salvation, the messages to those who overcome in the churches would have been blanket promises to all believers, not just the ones who remain believers. (The references in question are Revelation 2:7, Revelation 2:11, Revelation 2:17, Revelation 2:26, Revelation 3:5, Revelation 3:12 and Revelation 3:21.) Note that in particular Revelation 2:26 equates overcoming with “keeping His works until the end.”
Jesus also said that anyone who does not remain in Him will be cast forth and be burned in fire (John 15:6). This has to refer to someone who was once “in Him” but no longer is.
Paul mentioned to the Colossians the possibility of not continuing in the faith and being “moved away:”
Colossians 1:21-23:
And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled
In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:
If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;
He told the Romans this:
Romans 11:22:
Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
John implicitly mentions the possibility of a believer not continuing as a believer:
1 John 5:13:
These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
At first this seems a little confusing – why would John write to those believe in order that they might believe, which they already do? The only reasonable conclusion (to me) is that John refers to continuing to believe in the Son of God. (The NKJV adds the words continue to in italics, meaning that they were not in the original Greek but were added for clarity. Several translations duck the issue by just chopping off the rest of the verse after “ye have eternal life,” but this cop-out fails to acknowledge the fact that the phrase that follows IS in the original Greek.) If there were no possibility that someone who believes could ever fail to believe in the future, John’s statement would be meaningless.
John then goes on to discuss a brother who has sinned.
1 John 5:16:
If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.
Here John allows the possibility of a “sin unto death.” John never tells us what this sin is, but he does say that one should not pray for the person in such a case. This would seem to go along with the situation in Hebrews where a former believer who experienced the power of God for himself is now a reprobate who will never come back.
Much silliness has come from speculative interpretations of the verse above. The Bible does NOT teach that there are 7 “deadly sins” and it certainly does not teach that taking communion at a Protestant service is a “venial” (not “mortal”) sin. The clear takeaway from the verse is that a believer could end up not being a believer anymore.
We can see from other verses that John was not an OSAS teacher. He states that continuing in the Son and in the Father depends on letting what you heard from the beginning remain in you.
1 John 2:24:
Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.
Once you start seeing that a believer could fall, many more passages make sense.
Two such passages are Ephesians 5:5-7 and Colossians 3:5-6. Do you believe that Paul is saying that believers (who remain believers) will partake of the wrath of God? That view is difficult in light of Romans 5:9 (“Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him”) as well as 1 Thessalonians 1:10 and 1 Thessalonians 5:9. If you DON’T take that view, though, the only reasonable explanation for why Paul warned believers about partaking of God’s wrath against unbelievers would be that a believer could lose his salvation, which would then qualify him for the wrath from which believers are saved!
Paul had this to say about some of the legalistic Galatians:
Galatians 5:4
Christ is become no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
If Christ is of no effect to you anymore, how could you still be saved? If you are fallen from grace, how can you still be abiding in grace?
Then there is 1 Thessalonians 5:23, which talks about your spirit being kept blameless until Christ’s coming. Most people don’t notice the obvious issue there. Your born-again spirit was “created after God in righteousness and true holiness,” so it is ALREADY blameless before God! There would be no need for Paul to pray to make this be the case for the Thessalonians. The only way their spirits could become anything other than blameless would be if they denied Christ and thus re-died spiritually.
If it were impossible for a being, once spiritually alive, to become spiritually dead, then it would have been impossible for Adam to fall and go from spiritual life to spiritual death! Adam’s example shows the possibility for any other spiritually alive person to become spiritually dead. If it weren’t the case, Jesus, who never sinned, could not have “become sin” and merited punishment so that He could save us!
Let me be clear that you cannot SIN your way out of salvation, unless your sin is the SIN of rejecting Jesus. There is no such thing as a “sin quota” that once you reach it, your salvation is lost. That would be a Galatian-style works gospel that the Bible condemns. You did not get INTO the kingdom of God by NOT sinning, and you cannot LEAVE the kingdom of God by sinning. Your only way out is to reject Jesus as Lord just as deliberately as you received Jesus as Lord. However, sin is deceitful and subtle, and the devil knows that if he can get someone mired in sin, that person can get to the point where he says, “I’d rather have these pleasures of sin than Jesus.”
Paul makes the distinction that if it is just a case of you being faithless, God will still not deny you, but if you deny Him, He will deny you:
2 Timothy 2:11-13:
It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him:
If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:
If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.
That last verse is translated “If we are faithless, yet He abides faithful…” in some Bible versions. Either could be considered correct from a Greek perspective, and I would lean more toward the other Bible versions in this case. “Faith” and “faithfulness” are the same Greek word pistis. But either way – being unbelieving and being unfaithful – it is not grounds for loss of your salvation as long as you don’t DENY the Lord.
Thus, you would have to actively DENY God in order to have God deny you – but the possibility still exists that a believer could do this and become an unbeliever. The “we” in the passage above clearly refers to Christians.
I am convinced that many of the people considered to be “lost again” by the church world are actually just severely backslidden believers. If you are worried that YOU might be one of the “lost again” ones, you aren’t! If you were one of the “lost again” ones, you wouldn’t care! I also think that some of the “lost again” ones had false conversions and were never really saved in the first place. But if that’s you, you CAN be SAVED!
I also need to state that you need to avoid reversing cause and effect with statements like Paul’s that no fornicator, homosexual, extortionist, etc. will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). I know Christians who take these verses to mean, “If you fornicate, you lose your salvation.” But that can’t be what Paul’s saying, because he allowed for the restoration of a fallen (repentant) brother in Galatians 6:1. He doesn’t say that you lose your salvation by sinning – you only lose your salvation if you reject Jesus, whom you formerly received. He’s saying that people who practice these things with no remorse cannot currently be believers. So Paul isn’t saying, “You’ll go to hell BECAUSE you’re a homosexual.” Homosexuals and heterosexuals have this in common – they don’t go to hell because of what they do. They only go to hell because of what they DON’T DO – receive Jesus. If they’d receive Jesus, the sin issue would be dealt with and they could go to heaven. However, what Paul says on the matter is that no unrepentant homosexual has really received Jesus. And let’s make it clear while we’re at it that this concerns people who commit homosexual acts, not people who are simply struggling with lustful temptations, as could be the case for any heterosexual as well.
Finally, you could ask, “Does it even matter? Who cares if Once Saved, Always Saved or not?” I think it DOES matter because a carnal person could conclude, “I can do whatever I want now – get drunk, fornicate, steal, kill, whatever – because I prayed a ‘sinner’s prayer’ and I cannot lose my salvation!” There was a man who committed premeditated murder in the city where I used to get haircuts, and the person who cut my hair was adamant that the man was saved because she had seen the man pray a “sinner’s prayer” at the church they both attended long before he committed the cold-blooded murder. Yet the Bible says that no murderer (that means one who hasn’t repented!) has eternal life (1 John 3:15). Of course, you’d think that a true OSAS person would say that the man had never been saved in the first place, but the haircut person, an OSAS adherent, was convinced of the man’s conversion at the time, along with the idea that once you’re saved, you can do ANYTHING and you’re still saved. That’s a dangerous idea. People would reject Jesus’ lordship, act accordingly, and presume that they are still saved, which would eventually result in a too-late rude awakening in hell.
I for one am not interested in being a “test case” for OSAS. I endeavor to walk with Jesus and shun sinful lusts. I’m not interested in how much sin I can get away with before I’d get to the point where I’d turn away from Jesus. So for me, it doesn’t really matter if “Once Saved, Always Saved.”
I also don’t believe that we need to kill people on the spot who receive Jesus during altar calls to make totally sure they don’t end up in hell after forsaking the Lord later. One could reason that if there is ANY chance that a person could become unsaved, it would be better to kill him the instant that he receives Jesus to ensure that he will go to heaven, because if he continues to live, there is a non-zero chance that he will turn from Jesus and end up in hell. (Actually, the MINORITY of altar call responders in modern meetings continue to walk with Jesus for even the next ten years.) But the Bible clearly does not promote this idea. You can’t share Jesus with other people if you’re not here, and your family would not appreciate your early exit. Another good reason (other than avoiding prison) to not kill people who pray sinner’s prayers is that they might not have been sincere. I know this for a fact because I once repeated a sinner’s prayer word for word just to make the person go away, and I was just as unsaved afterward as I was before because I was parroting words with no heart transaction going on with Jesus.
Jesus is so good, it is hard to imagine that anyone would want to forsake Him and go back to being a miserable sinner. You’ve only fallen if you’ve knowingly rejected Jesus. Part of the benefit of Christian fellowship is having others watch your back. If they really love you, they’ll point out to you if you’re headed down a dangerous road in your Christian walk that could lead to you rejecting Jesus, as mentioned above in Hebrews 10:25 and Hebrews 10:26.
I have proven that you CAN lose your salvation, and in so doing, I have DISPROVED this objection.