Is it possible to lose salvation?

[amigo de christo]

your right heads i win tales you lose its heads i win good night

The battle of our faith is not over till we draw our last breath or the LORD do come .
It aint heads i win tales you lose
ITS THOSE WHO FOLLOW CHRIST WIN , cause JESUS has already won .
I can see you greatly misunderstand things i say .
But as i wrote , more than once , lets not assume , lets actually
find out . Ask plenty of questions . The answers might suprise you . Dont let
the ol mantra of judge not correct not
make one like me seem as a monster , judger , hater , biggot , extremist , danger to society .
Because lets go ahead and face it
THIS is exactly what men like me who wont conform are gonna be seen as and it will only get worse in this world .
SO BE IT , I GOT THE LORD , men can do as they please to me
But they gonna be greatly angered if they expect me to conform .
May that encourage you my friend .

 

[Kokyu]

In a debate it's up to YOU to defend what you're saying.
It's not up to ME to do the work for you.

I'm not objecting to defending my view. I'm telling you that when you encounter a Scripture reference in my posts rather than the full verse or passage, that the reference is all I'm going to offer. If you want to know what the verse or passage actually says, you can do as I and others commonly do and look it up.

YOU must provide support for your statements...

I do. If you can't see this, I don't think you'll be capable of understanding much of anything I write.

THIS is the THEOLOGY FORUM and in theology one must be scriptural.
Maybe this particular forum does not require this...
but serious conversation does.

Yes, I understand this. And my posts clearly reflect this understanding.

I understand what you're saying very well.

No, as you demonstrate in nearly everything you write in response to my posts, you really don't. Mostly, you appear to be arguing against your imagined and assumed version of what I've been writing rather than my actual views.

And so far, this is a waste of time.
Why not respond to my statements instead of making comments ABOUT them?

Please take your own advice, here.

Agreed.
So why not state this instead of saying that we can choose to disobey God?

And here you demonstrate - again - that you haven't grasped the substance of what I've written. (In particular in the characterization you make in your question.)

Here we go again.

NOW you're stating that we do NOT have to obey God.

No, this is your Strawman version of what I've been writing.

I see no scripture supporting this odd idea that God does not require obedience from us.

And nowhere in my posts have I ever denied that God requires obedience from us. I've only refuted from Scripture the idea that our obedience contributes to, or maintains, our salvation. But, because you don't seem able to comprehend this, you "tilt at windmills" in your replies to me.

If a person is NOT obeying God....he is not a Christian.

Nope. I've already shown comprehensively from the NT that this is patently false. I'm not going to repeat all I've written on this point here, again. Suffice it to say that your repetition of this mistaken claim doesn't make it true and your attached prooftext - like all the others you've supplied - doesn't actually support your statement above.

Here's what John taught:

1 John 3:2-6
3 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.
4 The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;
5 but whoever * keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:
6 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

John also wrote:

1 John 1:8-10
8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

What John DIDN'T write in the passage from 1 John 3 that you offered above - and wouldn't write, given the passage directly above - is anything like "...if we always keep His commandments and never sin, we can know that we know God." As has been pointed out very often about the passage from 1 John 3 that you've quoted, the phrase "does not keep His commandments" (vs. 4) is poorly rendered in older translations of the Bible. Better translations correctly render it as follows:

Everyone who commits sin practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. (CSB)

Every one that practises sin practises also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. (Darby)

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (ESV)

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.(NASB)

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; indeed, sin is lawlessness. (NET)

Anyway, the idea John is communicating about sin in the life of a born-again person is that it ought not to be a common practice of him, or her. Or, as the NASB puts it, "No one in Him sins continually..." (1 Jn. 3:6).

As I've been writing this all out, I realize that you've got the wrong Scripture reference attached to the passage you cited from 1 John 3. It's actually from 1 John 2 that you've drawn the passage, not 1 John 3, as you've got it labeled.

Here's the passage with its correct reference:

1 John 2:1-6
1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;
2 and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
3 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.
4 The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;
5 but whoever follows His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:
6 the one who says that he remains in Him ought, himself also, to walk just as He walked.

I notice that your quotation of this passage leaves out the first verse. Interesting, that. I have my suspicions as to why. Suffice it to say, verse 1 dissolves the idea that Christians don't - or can't - sin. John, in verse 1, plainly indicates the opposite, that they can, and do, sin. In fact, in this regard he includes himself in their company, using the pronoun "we" and "our" in speaking of Christ's advocacy for Christians who sin.

 

[Kokyu]

The same point holds true here as in the passage from 1 John 3, which is that John nowhere makes a person's salvation contingent upon their perfect obedience to God's commands. And, of course, John wouldn't write any such thing in light of what he'd written in the very first chapter of his first letter, which I've already quoted above. Here's verse 8 again:

1 John 1:8
8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

John teaches that:

We have come to know Him IF we keep His commandments.
If we SAY we know Jesus but do NOT keep His commandments, we are a liar.
Whoever KEEPS HIS WORD has the love of God in him.
The one who says he abides in Christ ought to walk in the same way as Jesus walked.

See above.

I see.
So Jesus spend over 3 years teaching how to have FELLOWSHIP with God....
or did Jesus die on that cross to get us to heaven?

False dichotomy. It isn't either-or but both-and. See 1 Corinthians 1:9, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 John 1:3 and Revelation 3:20. Consider Christ's own relationship with the Twelve.

A person CANNOT have fellowship with God unless he OBEYS God.

Obviously.

As to the idea that one was "never saved"....Jesus taught that one could fall away from salvation:

Luke 8:13
13 "Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away.


They hear.
They receive the word with joy.
They believe FOR A WHILE....
and then (due to temptation) they FALL AWAY.

This isn't describing a person who was saved; it just describes the emotional hearer of the Truth. The only one in the parable of the Sower and the Seed who was actually saved was the last "ground" (or person) who received the "seed."

Matthew 13:18-23
18 “Listen then to the parable of the sower.
19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one sown with seed beside the road.

This first hearer of the "word of the kingdom" does not understand that "seed-word" and it is snatched away from him before it can take root and bear fruit in his life. I see nothing in this description that suggests this hearer was born-again.

20 The one sown with seed on the rocky places, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;
21 yet he has no root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution occurs because of the word, immediately he falls away.

This second hearer responds emotionally to the "seed" of the "word of the kingdom" but that seed doesn't "take root" in him and produce fruit and he falls away from his joy in the "word of the kingdom" when antagonism to that "seed" confronts him. Again, I see no description of a saved person here. Lacking both root and fruit, this hearer doesn't properly represent a saved person.

22 And the one sown with seed among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, and the anxiety of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

This third hearer has no "root" or "fruit," either, as a result of receiving the "seed" of the "word of the kingdom." The way Christ described what happened to the "seed" when it fell upon the "thorny" ground of this person's life seems to me to clearly indicate that the seed had no chance to take root in his life. The "thorny weeds" of anxiety and wealth choked out the "seed" so that it could neither take root, nor bear fruit. How does this, then, describe a saved person? I see no reason from this description to make any such assertion about him.

23 But the one sown with seed on the good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces, some a hundred, some sixty, and some thirty times as much.”

This fourth hearer is the only one described as being "good soil," and who actually understands the "seed-word" he has received, and who produces much "fruit" (which means, of course, that the seed "took root" in his life). Given these things, only this hearer warrants being thought of as saved.