Yes! God will grant you eternal salvation no matter what you have done in the past. You need only ask Him to save you. That is what Believers refer to as the “The Good News”. Besides, every person on earth who breaths was born as a sinner; “for all have sinned and come short of the glory …” Romans 3:23. So, it does not matter how terrible your past may have been because any sin that you might have committed has already been paid for. It has been washed away by the Son of God through His crucifixion on the Cross.
Is it possible that you may have to suffer the consequences here on earth for your past deeds? Yes, its possible that you may suffer discipline in time but if you have placed your faith in Christ as Savior, he will never forsake you. John 10:28-29 and II Tim.2:13 are proof of that promise. Your Salvation will always be assuredbecause that is God’s unwavering and unchanging promise which is yours to claim.
Salvation Also Benefits The Believer In The Here and Now!
Through God’s love He can save you from the power that sin currently has over you in this life. Once you accept Christ, His Spirit indwells you and you are no longer controlled by the sinful nature. This freedom makes it possible for you to say “no” to sin and overcome your enslavement to the sinful desires of the flesh. “You . . . are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you”(Romans 8:9)
In 1 John 5:12 we see that “He who has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God has not life.” The only condition to having salvation is having Jesus Christ, and the only way to have Jesus Christ is to receive Him as your personal Savior. The only way that you can receive Christ as your Savior is to believe in the work that He has accomplished on the cross. He did this on your behalf. There is no other way to salvation. Belief is the only work that God will accept, and it is a non-meritorious act of faith.
You Will Have Eternal Life
In 1 John 5:13 the Bible makes a statement so that you might know that you have salvation: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.” Many people do not know for sure if they are saved. A lot of people hope they are saved. A lot of people are trying to be saved. A lot of people want to be saved, but very few people know that they are saved. You can know it today if you are in Christ. If you are in Christ you are saved; there is no doubt about it. The Bible says it in 1 John 5:13 so you can know it.
Now the question is, once you receive Christ as your Savior, can you lose your salvation? Again, let us take a look at some scripture. In Romans 8:38-39 the Bible says, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depths, nor any other creatures shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God Loves You
The principle here is the love of God. Paul says that “nothing can separate you from the love of God.” Understand that in eternity past God loved you so much that He provided for you a Savior, and that love was expressed in time when Jesus Christ came to earth and went to the cross. God actually has two kinds of love for you. So, if you have made a decision to believe in Christ and His righteousness (+R) has been imputed to you, God loves you, and that love is the basis of knowing that nothing will separate you from Him. Hebrews 13:5 guarantees it: “I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.”
God Gives You Eternal Life
There is more assurance in John 10:28-29: “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My Father’s hand. My Father which gave them to Me is greater than all, and no man can take them out of My Father’s hand.” Again the promise and claim from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, no one can remove you from the Plan of God once you have made a decision to believe in Jesus Christ.
God Will Never Stop Loving You
One of my favorite verses is 2 Timothy 2:13 “Even if we believe not, yet, He abideth faithful; for He cannot deny Himself.” This verse means that there may come a time in your life that you don’t even believe that your salvation still exists. Has God denied you? You are in Christ and in God’s family.
For God to deny you, for God to say no to you means that God would have to say no to Christ. He cannot do that, that is what the verse says. That is a condition that God will not carry out. So by means of your faith, and by means of the imputation of the (+R) of Christ to your life, you know that you have salvation, and you know that nothing can separate you from God. You know that even if you deny that it happened, God will not deny you.
Yes, if you have made a decision to believe in Jesus Christ, it did happen, and you are in the family of God. You have completed phase one of the Christian life, which is salvation.
No matter how often we as Christians fail, we can never lose our salvation. We will always be sons of God and members of God’s Royal Family.
We can never lose our salvation.
But when we as Christians fail God, when we get an “F” for our spiritual life because we have not confessed all sin in our lives (we have not rebounded), we are still saved! We can do nothing to be thrown off of God’s team! We are always members of His family! No matter how often or how badly we fail, we have a secure position with God in Christ. Once we are saved, we are always saved. God says,
“I give to them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand..” (John 10:28).
Just as our physical father will always be our physical father, even if we are adopted at birth and never see him. Just so our spiritual Father will always be our Father from the moment of salvation through eternity regardless of what we do, even if we deny ever having been saved! Our salvation depends on our perfect Savior, Jesus Christ, not on us.
Too many Christians blaspheme God by thinking that they can cause the loss of their salvation. We did nothing to earn salvation, and we can do nothing to lose it. Salvation is a grace gift from God. God does not take back His gifts!
For by grace are you saved through faith . . . It is the free gift of God. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
God Will NEVER Leave You … No Matter What!
The Lord says in Hebrews 13:5b,
I will never leave you or forsake you.
But, you say, what if I have stopped believing? Or what if I doubt that I was ever saved? Or what if I have done something so terrible that I do not think I can still be saved? Our salvation depends on God, not on us, and God says that “He will never leave you nor forsake you.”Never means never! We cannot do anything to lose our salvation.
God’s faithfulness is so complete that even if we deny that He exists, even if we deny that we are saved, even if we (Christians) become faithless, yet God remains faithful because He cannot deny Himself. (2 Timothy 2:13)
For God the Father to deny us, members of His Royal Family, He would have to deny Christ. He cannot do it! He will not do it! The minute God places us in His Royal Family through faith in Jesus Christ, our position is secure and eternal based on His faithfulness.
Do you know why you sin? It is because you have an old sin nature. You got it from Adam.
All humans have an old sin nature. When you were born, you were born physically alive. You were given a body and you were given a soul. When you made a decision to believe in Jesus Christ, you still had your body, you still had your soul, but then you received a human spirit. This is what we call being a trichotomous person (body, soul and spirit).
You have a human spirit, and in that human spirit God the Holy Spirit has come and indwelt you. God the Father, God the Son, all Members of the Trinity indwell every believer of the Lord Jesus Christ. This sets up a tremendous battle because as a Christian, you have God the Holy Spirit residing in you, versus that old sin nature still residing in you. This is a battle that every Christian goes through.
As a new Christian, I didn’t know what to do. I did not realize that there was a problem solving device with regard to my sin nature. I did not even understand that I had a sin nature.
Romans 8:8 says, “They that are in the flesh cannot please God.”
Romans 13:14 commands, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”
Romans 6:12 tells us, “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it and the lusts thereof.”
The Bible talks about the flesh, the flesh, the flesh.
Galatians 5:17 says, “The flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary one to the other that you cannot do the things that you should.”
Galatians 5:16 tells us, “This I say then, walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.”
Then we have the mandate from God in Ephesians 5:18 that every Christian should understand: “Be filled with the Spirit, do not be drunk with wine.” In other words, if you want to be excessive about something, get excessive about the Holy Spirit in your life.
This sets up a critical question for the believer: “How do I control my old sin nature and keep the Holy Spirit in control of my life?”
The answer is the use of two of God’s problem solving devices. Before I give them to you, I want you to understand that as a Christian you still have an old sin nature that hasn’t been taken away. You will lose it when you die, go to heaven, and get a resurrection body without a sin nature. You must not be ignorant of this or Satan will use it to discourage you and make you feel guilty.
Satan will say to you, “You are a sinner, you are a slob, you are no good. See what you did? If you were a Christian, you wouldn’t do that, so why don’t you just stop this Christian routine.” This type of thinking is ridiculous because all Christians sin. So how can you control this desire to sin? How can you control this sin nature when it tempts you to sin? You must learn Psalm 32:5 and 1 John 1:9.
Prayer is a wonderful gift from God but one of the misused things in Christianity. There is no doubt that God wants you to pray. The Bible even says in 1 Thess. 5:17 that we are to pray without ceasing. This means we are to be consistent in our prayers and consider God’s will in all we do.
God will not be manipulated by our prayers. Repeated prayer for the wrong thing will go unanswered. The Apostle Paul learned this in 2 Cor.12:8-9. His unanswered prayer was a reminder that his problem would be solved by God’s grace provisions and not his repeated prayers. Prayer was not designed to solve our problems.
We have wonderful problem solving devices such as the filling of the Holy Spirit and the completed Bible as well as the opportunity to exploit our faith (Hebrews 11:6).
Unconfessed sins will hinder your prayers. They quench the Holy Spirit and He cannot intercede for you. All prayer is to be directed to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord under the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you do not follow this protocol, your prayers will be unanswered.
You can pray for others (intercession), pray for yourself (petition) or just offer praise (adoration). This can be done at anytime and any place, even with your eyes open.
In Psalm 32:5 David wrote: “I acknowledge my transgressions to the Lord and my sin I will not hide, I will confess my sin unto the Lord and He will forgive the iniquity of my sin.” There are two points in this verse for you to see.
– Do not ever try to hide from God the fact that you sin. That is what Adam tried to do in the Garden, and it didn’t work. In Genesis 3:9. God said, “Adam, where are you?” God knew where Adam was. Adam said, “In the bushes, God.”
Adam did not want God to know what he had done. And many of you who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, when you make a bad decision and when you commit a sin in your life, you naturally feel bad about it. It is natural to feel ashamed and guilty, but the worst thing to do is to try to hide it. You can hide it from your pastor. You can hide it from your parents. But you can’t hide it from God.
– Admit what you have done to God and be honest about it. That is the first problem solving device. In John 13, Jesus taught Peter a marvelous lesson. He said, Peter, I know you are going to sin. I know that you are going to deny Me three times. I’m going to teach you a marvelous lesson that in spite of your sin, I love you and I will forgive you. Go to your Bible and read John 13:36-38 and John 18:15-27, and you will see that Peter did deny the Lord.
Like Peter, we have a tendency to shock ourselves. We sometimes do what we think we are not capable of doing. You cannot hide your sin from God. You must be willing to admit your weaknesses and confess what you did.
1 John 1: 9 says, “If we acknowledge our sins (or if we confess our sin) He is faithful and righteous with the result that He forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.” Every Christian has to do this every day. You will probably know it before you do it, because all sin begins with a thought and that thought leads to an attitude and that attitude leads to an action.
You will know it is a sin in your thinking process because it is there that your volition will make a decision. Do I want to do it? “Yes.” Do I not want to do it? “No.” Once you decide yes, you want to do it, then you form an attitude about it. Your attitude is good, fun, go for it, and when you go for it, you create the sin.
When you confess your sin, God is not shocked. He knew in eternity past what you would do. God knew what your old sin nature was and God made provisions so that you don’t have to let your old sin nature control your life.
Therefore, He says, if you will admit it and not try to hide it, He is faithful and just to forgive the iniquity of the sin. Basically what happens is represented by a simple drawing of two circles. The top circle represents the believer’s relationship with God which is eternal. You can never get out of the top circle.
The bottom circle represents the believer’s fellowship with God in time. You get out of the bottom circle every time you sin.
The point I am trying to make to you is critical that you understand. When you are in fellowship with God you are controlled by the Holy Spirit, and when you are not in fellowship with God you are controlled by your flesh or your old sin nature. At any point in time in a Christian’s life, he is either in or out of the bottom circle.
As you read this, you are either out of fellowship and controlled by your old sin nature, or you are in fellowship, controlled by the Holy Spirit. You don’t have any middle ground. You are either in fellowship or you are out of fellowship.
If you are out of fellowship, the reason is because of one of the three types of sin under which all sin is categorized.
1. Mental attitude sins are sins you commit with your mind (envy, worry, jealousy, bitterness, etc.);
2. Sins of the tongue are sins you commit with your mouth (lying, gossiping, criticizing, maligning, back-biting, etc.); and
3. Overt sins are sins that you do outwardly (fornication, stealing, murder, etc.).
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