Just saw this, Are you asking this of me? Are you meaning to say I think God saves us and abandons us? Does nothing more? Is that what you mean? Let me know if I understand the question, and I will give you my answer.
It was a response to
@farouk.
Indeed the Holy Spirit works in believers; as quoted above:
Philippians 1.6: "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ".
Eternal security is very assuring; for which there are many Scriptures.
And i agree with eternal security as a doctrine, but the problem is it is not something that can be taught as a doctrine but rather something that must be arrived at by experiencing the full assurance of the faith that comes from Spiritual growth. This is why all the passages are there in scripture about conditional security, and I am sure if you have debated with anyone you know which passages i am speaking of. Coming to the full assurance of the faith must be lived through, The valley of doubt must be traversed before security and assurance of the faith arrived at. To deny a person this experience is to deny them the victory over their doubts which in the end will lead them to falling away from the truth.
With a right understanding of how both conditional security and eternal security play a role in the Christian journey this perceived divide between the two sides comes to a mutual and respectful understanding of One another. Those who do not want this sort of understanding see this as compromise on truth, But in reality it is arriving at the truth. This is what it means to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.... Some verses to consider.
That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord,
so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.(Colossians 2:2-8)
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:22)
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of
his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)
The Point of me bringing up John 15 is because this was the aha moment for me when i fully grasped what is said there. It is the Holy Spirit that yields the fruit of the Spirit in us, all we have to "do" is abide in the vine. The vine brings water (The Holy Ghost) to the branches without which the branch cannot produce fruit. fruit is not our work, but the work of the water, the lifeblood of the branch. Without the lifeblood there is no growth. Once a person begins to produce fruit, that is when a child of God is "pruned" this is the sanctification of the Spirit, that pruning process yields greater and greater fruit in us, and this pruning process is where we come to understand the full assurrance of the faith for we experience the Love of the Father for his sons and daughters as he disciplines and corrects us and we can only cry "Abba, Father"
So for me it is one thing to say we have eternal security, but you MUST live and experience the full assurance of the faith that comes from knowing the Love of God firsthand. It is then that he can begin to perfect his love in us. Until then we are merely teaching the traditions of men as opposed to Christ Jesus.
Just to give an analogy of this, a student can go to med school for eight years and if he has never had his residency he has never fully experienced what it means to operate on someone. He may know all the facts and what to do but he has no experience doing it. The fundamentalist textualist has studied scripture inside and out, and they know what it says, but they have not experienced those teachings.... Now I realize this is a generalization of the symptoms and not all fundamentalists are like this, but you can usually tell by how they respond to you raising a contrarian view on scripture, and you can see it here if you know how to look. What it boils down to is they are exclusivistic, and their camp gets smaller and smaller with each passing day, and Unity of The Spirit is never arrived at, and this is not a problem exclusively with the fundamentalist textualist But with the militant catholic or Calvinist or Methodist or whatever of the thousands of denominations and counting. Do You think this is how the blood bought church is supposed to be? Is she walking in the power of the Spirit or in the pride of man? The Pride of man is what keeps the church divided by claiming exclusivity of Truth, which is contrary to the apostle Paul who i dare say knew more than most yet he said he only knows in part. We as a church need to be more like Paul in this regard, and stop being hardened ground and instead be fertile ground for the seed to take hold and root in and grow.
If You read this, and you conclude that i am preaching legalism then you do not understand what Holiness is. Holiness is abiding in the vine, and letting the Holy Spirit work in you and teach you and thus allowing you to produce the fruit of the Spirit, and as Paul said, "against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-26). This is what it means to be free from sin.
