“Can I lose my salvation.”

Steve Brown:
Can I lose my salvation? The answer to that, and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you think laughter isn’t spiritual or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes, then this program probably isn’t for you, but if you’re looking for honest, Biblical answers to honest questions, welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author, and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com.

Steve Brown:
Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. Happy Friday.

Steve Brown:
You can probably lose your salvation, I can’t lose mine.

Pete Alwinson:
The interesting question that we’ll have to explore.

Steve Brown:
That’s what I said to Dr. Kinlaw, who was then the president of Asbury College and they believe you can lose your salvation, but not easy. I said to him, Dr. Kinlaw, you believe that you can lose your salvation, but you don’t believe you can lose yours. And he laughed and he said, that’s right. That’s Pete Alwinson, check out ForgeTruth.com and if you live in the Central Florida area, there are a number of different venues for you to be involved. If you’re a guy, you might want to check out that website to see. Great video, great audio, and there is a podcast there that is dynamite. And you will enjoy that too. Pete, as you know, comes in and we answer questions and we love your questions. You can ask your question by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, and record your question, and often your voice will be on the air. Or you can send it to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and we love getting your questions and we love trying to answer them. And if you can help us financially, please do. We’re a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Both of those organizations make sure that we’re ethical in our financial practices. And we are and we always have been. We squeeze every dime for the glory of God. So, if you can help do, if you can’t we understand, say a prayer for the ministry. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s great. Father, we do come into your presence today. It’s Friday, and Lord, we thank you that we get to look forward to being with your people this weekend in church and what a joy that is. But Lord, thank you for being who you are for us and for your glory all week long. You have been there for us because you are the sovereign God of heaven and earth. And we bow before you now, we thank you that you’ve watched over us, you’ve protected us, that you’ve held us close, even when our attitudes were bad and our hearts were hard. We thank you that you keep drawing us back to you. Holy Spirit, thank you that you’re near us and in us as your people. And Lord Jesus, we pray that you would continue to conform us to your image as we focus upon your powerful gospel of Christ. And so, Lord, thank you for Key Life and the ministry, we pray for Steve, pray for all those that do so much behind the scenes. And we just ask that you would bless this ministry. Thank you for our contributors, our givers, and how they keep this ministry and make it possible. And so, now we commit our time of Q&A to you, and we pray that you would receive honor and glory. In your holy name, we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. All right, let’s go to the phone lines.

Caller 1:
Does it say something in the Bible somewhere that you can lose your salvation?

Steve Brown:
Well, you’re asking the wrong people. No, it does not. And anybody who tells you that it does is probably not saved. How’s that for arrogance and self-righteousness? No, there are passages of Scripture that lend themselves to different kinds of interpretation. Pete and I, and I’m assuming you agree, don’t believe that you can lose your salvation. If you’re saved, it happened 2000 years ago and it’s settled and it’ll never change. And you’re stuck. You know, there are times when I think, you know, I haven’t forgotten how much fun it was to be a pagan, but I can’t go there. It just doesn’t work anymore. So, we don’t believe you can lose your salvation, but let me say something and then Pete, I want you to address it. But, the people that we know and love and there are Christians who believe you can lose your salvation, do not believe that when you tell a lie that you lose your salvation or that if you got drunk, you lose your salvation. They’re not that shallow, they believe in order to lose your salvation, you have to really stomp on the face of Jesus. and intentionally, and I mean, intentionally walk away and tell him to leave you alone. And, I just don’t believe a Christian will do that because of perseverance. But some do, and you need to know that. And, but we don’t believe the Bible teaches that at all. The Bible teaches eternal security, best called Perseverance of the Saints.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. No, well said, you know, there are, even an Armenian, who would say, I believe you could lose your salvation, would still say, I John 1:9 says

That if we confess our sins, he’ll forgive us.

And so, they run back to Jesus, just like we do. And so, there’s got to be a real open rebellion in their mind. Now we, the reason we don’t is even though in Hebrews, there’s a couple of passages in Hebrews 6 that help us, whoa, they were, we believe people can get awfully close to the truth, even experience the benefits of being around the people of God and the joy of the gospel and reject it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And it seems like there’s a change in their life, but there really isn’t. They walk away, John says, cause they were never of us to begin with. But Paul’s very clear that we were sealed, the Ephesians were sealed until the day of redemption.

Steve Brown:
And Paul said.

He who began a good work in you will bring it

he also said

Nothing will separate me from him.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And we believe that and all Christians come very close to that kind of statement. So, if you’re worried about losing your salvation, don’t, because you’ve got to do something real. I don’t mean sin bad. You’ve got to consciously turn away from Jesus and tell him to leave you alone. And that’s something we don’t believe any Christian will do.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But there are those who think that some will.

Pete Alwinson:
And we don’t divide fellowship over this one. We have to, we can discuss it with believers that differ with us on it, but we don’t write them off just cause they differ with us on that.

Steve Brown:
No, not at all. This is an e-mail. What do you mean by the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Pete Alwinson:
Ah, well, read I Corinthians 12:13 says.

That when you receive Christ, you’re baptized by the Spirit into Christ or into the Body of Christ, put in union with Jesus and with other Christians.

So, that’s what we, that’s how we understand that.

Steve Brown:
And the Scripture also teaches, there’s one baptism.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But there’s some Christians, and we love them too. And we’re not going to break any fellowship with them, who would see a second working of grace. And I personally think it’s a misnomer, but they call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I would call it the filling of the Holy Spirit and it happens often. But in some circles that is a separate work of God’s Spirit. You’re saved at one time, at another time you’re baptized in the Holy Spirit. And many would say that the sign of that is speaking in tongues.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Right.

Steve Brown:
And I don’t agree with that, but I don’t think it upsets God as much as it does a lot of us theologians. I think God says, that’s not what I meant. But if that makes you feel better, go ahead. You know, it’s not going to take anybody’s salvation away, but we would say that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is when you become a Christian.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And so, you know, we don’t want to begrudge those that differ with us on this point, but they can be manipulative and harsh and a little bit legalistic about that too.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, you can.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, we think that grace doesn’t teach the Bible didn’t teach that perspective.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And that’s, but that’s okay. And if we’ve offended anybody, you asked. And so, we’ll tell you what we think. And we have been wrong, Pete a lot more than me. And could be wrong again. This is interesting, why there’s so many denominations? What about the unity of the church?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, the church is unified and around Jesus, the true church, right? The church universal are those who believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, but the reason why we have divisions within the church is that good people, generally speaking, are trying to figure out what the Bible is saying on all of these theological differences. And with, generally speaking with a good heart, they say we have to be faithful to what we believe is the, what the Scriptures teach. So, that’s how denominations get started.

Steve Brown:
You know, C.S. Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity is an interesting book. And by Mere Christianity, he went back to the early Creeds of the Church, that we all shared before the reformation, Nicene and Constantanople and I think there was one other. And he said, that’s the Christian faith that all Christians are unified on, believe and accept. It’s the difficulties and the details. And the devil is in the details. And, you just, you think God is very upset at denominations?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, I don’t think he is, as long as we don’t fight each other. I mean, he hated, Paul hated the divisions in the Corinthian church because they were around human personalities. As long as we are seeking with our whole hearts to be focused on Jesus, I think we’re okay. And our denomination, which can be to the right of Attila the Hun theologically. Right. Our Book of Church Order says no, we’ve got a lot of room for other denominations. In fact, we believe in other denominations.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. That’s true. And, you know, it shouldn’t be a surprise either, you know, we’re all different. Oh. I mean, you know, I got, there’s some that simply can’t worship with contemporary Christian music. They don’t like it, but they love the liturgy from the book of Common Worship, Presbyterian Book of Common Prayer, Episcopalian. And they’re very comfortable there. That’s cool. And some people say, I fall asleep every time you start using the liturgy, and that’s okay too. And I think if it’s okay with us, it’s okay with God too at that point.

Pete Alwinson:
At that point.

Steve Brown:
I’m seeing if I’ve got any time, you know, we’re getting pretty close here. I’m looking at a bunch of questions, trying to find one you can answer in 30 seconds or less. You can’t answer eschatology in 30 seconds or less.

Pete Alwinson:
No, you can’t.

Steve Brown:
You can’t deal with outside of time and space in 30 seconds. You can’t deal with personal eschatology in 30 seconds.

Pete Alwinson:
So, we’re going to have to come back next week and do it again. Huh?

Steve Brown:
And we’ll do that.

Pete Alwinson:
Alright.

Steve Brown:
But before we go, I must say. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.