faithhopecharity
Member
Justification is more than your narrow definitionThis does not clarify the issue. It confirms it. You are defining salvation as a process in which a man is justified freely, but must afterward preserve himself through works and endurance in order to receive eternal salvation. That makes final salvation depend upon man’s performance.
Your outline begins by inserting meanings into Titus 2:14 that the verse does not give. “Redeem us from all iniquity” is redemption, but “purify unto himself a peculiar people” is not called justification. Justification is God declaring the ungodly righteous through faith in Christ: “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). Good works follow salvation, but they do not complete it.
You quoted 1 John 5:13, but it contradicts your position: “that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” John does not say believers merely have provisional life while waiting to see whether they persevere successfully. Jesus said the believer “hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24).
Endurance is necessary, but true believers endure because God preserves them. They are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation” (1 Peter 1:5). Jesus said, “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish” (John 10:28). Paul said those whom God justified, “them he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). No justified person disappears between justification and glorification.
The warning passages call professing believers to examine themselves and continue in the faith. They do not teach that someone born of God, sealed by the Spirit, and given eternal life can become unborn, unsealed, and finally condemned. Those who permanently abandon Christ reveal what they were: “They went out from us, but they were not of us” (1 John 2:19).
The issue is not whether believers should obey, suffer, endure, and pursue holiness. They should. The issue is what guarantees their final salvation. Your answer is continued human cooperation. Scripture’s answer is Jesus Christ: “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
A long list of verses still does not provide what was requested: one passage teaching that a person truly justified by God and given eternal life can finally perish.
it including sanctifying grace that makes us holy
thks
