meditatio at the water's edge

Someone recently asked me, “Can a person lose their salvation?”

I always wonder what people are asking when they ask that question. Are they really asking, “How much can I get away with and still get into heaven when I die?” Or are they asking, “Will God ever leave me?”

If they are asking the second question, of course the answer is “No.” Of course, that does not ensure that we will never leave God, but even that misses the point.

In regards to the first question, “How much can I get away with…” that question is missing the point right off the bat.

Well then, what is the point? The problem with the question, “Can a person lose their salvation?” is that it assumes an incorrect, or, at least, a partial definition of salvation. Salvation, in most people’s minds is only about what happens to us after we die. The Biblical meaning of salvation, however, has to do with deliverance and being freed from captivity, slavery, and exile in this life (of course this includes our life that continues when we stop breathing).

When we use Israel’s captivity as the controlling image when we think and talk about salvation, it changes the conversation. The first two questions we might now ask are: 1) From what have we been delivered? And 2) Into what have we been delivered?

Passages such as Romans 6:19f, Galatians 4:3f, and Hebrews 2:15 suggest that what we have been delivered from is lives of impurity and the associated fear of death (the obvious result of a life of impurity and “ever-increasing wickedness”). These passages also suggest that we have been delivered into a new kind of life—one in which we live as slaves of righteousness, children of God, and recipients (heirs) of God’s kingdom life.

So with this understanding in mind, we can see clearly that salvation has everything to do with how we live before we stop breathing. We are saved/rescued/delivered into a kind of life where we are free from the power of sin and fear of death—we are rescued into life as sons and daughters of God. Losing one’s salvation, then, would be a matter of going back into slavery to sin and the fear of death.

Can a person lose their salvation?
Why would they want to?