ETERNAL SECURITY: To sin or not to sin?

Contrary to other beliefs, salvation is really simple. We just need to follow what the bible says about this. In accepting God's free gift of eternal life, we need to understand our status in the eyes of God. We have to understand that we are sinners, no matter how great or small, we still are. We also have to believe that because of our sins, we are bound to go to hell. This is a place of eternal torment of our souls. It is not an ideal place that we want to go to. This is where we're supposed to go but thanks be to God for His unconditional love towards us that He gave His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die in the cross of calvary to redeem us from our sins. He did this for us for the salvation of our souls. And now, we are heaven bound thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are born again in spirit now which connects us to the Spirit of God. But what if I sin again? Will I lose my salvation? Will I be able to regain it? This may be some of the questions a newly born again christian would ask. So what about it? What happens if we sin again despite the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ paid for our sins? Will this make my salvation void? These will be fully explained further as we read through the paragraphs and understand what it means to have eternal security.

WHAT IF I SIN AGAIN?

One misconception of being a born again christian is that we have already become perfect once we accepted the Lord Jesus as Lord and Saviour. This is wrong. The change that will happen to us is not overnight. This will be a gradual process. We are human whose nature is really corrupt and this makes us susceptible still to sin. We are not sin-proof. We are still able to do things that are not God's will Satan will be tempting us more because he doesns't want us to draw closer to God. Denying this fact is cheating ourselves of the reality which the bible tells us. This was told in the bible in 1 John 1:8 which says, “If we say that we have no sin, we decieve ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” The more we deny that we have no sin, the more we sin because we are denying the truth which is told to us in the bible. That is why it’s really wrong to say that once we become born again, we are perfect and don't sin anymore.

WILL I LOSE MY SALVATION BECAUSE OF MY SINS?

Thanks be to God because no matter what we do, He will not take away our salvation. It would make Him an imperfect God if He does because it would only mean that He made a mistake in giving us eternal life. God is perfect and He makes no mistake. The very fact that He has given us eternal life is proof that it is really for us. When we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, the Holy Spirit is the one who gave us a conviction that's why we confessed our sins and accepted the Lord Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Without the Holy Spirit of God, we wouldn’t accept it because by nature, man is unrighteous. As the bible tells us in Romans 3:10-11, “as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is one that seeketh after God.” No one seeks God according to the bible. We are corrupt and, as a man, we will only do the things that will satisfy our lusts. We won’t want to follow God and we would follow only our worldly lusts. This is why it is called a gift of God because God is the one who initiated it. But eventhough man is like this, God still loves man and whatever sins we do now, God will surely forgive if we only ask for it genuinely. It says in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Once we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, we have already become sons of God (John 1:12). And as a father to his sons, God would forgive our sins even if we sin after accepting salvation.

But this does not give us the right to do sins and to say, “It’s ok to sin because God will forgive me if I confess my sins to Him.” It’s a big mistake to believe that. Since we are sons of God, He disciplines and chastises us when we sin. Hebrews 12:6 says, “for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth very son whom he recieveth.” God is not a compromiser, if we do sin, he will still punish us for the sins that we've done. But we will not be judged anymore for our sins. (Romans 8:1) When God chastises, he does it in three ways: the first one is through preaching. God speaks through the preachers in the pulpit which teaches the bible. God fix the things that are wrong in us. (Luke 11:32) If we do not become convicted with these preachings, God will chastise us next through difficult experiences in our lives. These experiences may be poverty, losing something we value more than God, or much worse, God may even punish the people we love. This doesn’t mean that God is evil. God does these things in order to make us stop doing things that we would regret in the end. If we still do not listen to what God wants us to do, God takes away our life. These are God’s ways of chastising us. As it is said in Hebrews 10:31, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” We must fear God because He is All-powerful and can do anything in our lives. We must always listen to what God wants to tell us. But eventhough God chastens us, He always gives us a lot of second chances. God is also a forgiving God. But as the bible have told us, we must turn away from our sins by the grace of God.

WHAT PROOF IS THERE THAT ETERNAL SECURITY IS TRUE?

The bible says in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” The Lord Jesus assures us that no man can pluck us out of His hand. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who promised this to us. When it is the Lord Jesus who made us the promise, we know that it is real. That is not all what the Lord Jesus Christ told us. He also told us in John 10:29, “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” Once we got saved, it’s not only the Lord Jesus Christ who holds us but also God the Father. That is why we know that we have eternal security because not only the Lord Jesus holds us but also the Father. Lastly, we are not just held by the Father and the Son, but we are also sealed by the Holy Ghost. It says in Ephesians 1:13, “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.” We are sealed by the Holy Ghost. So the God-head is the one who holds us that is why we can truly say that the salvation that we have attained can’t be taken away from us.

The only question now left is: Now that we have understood that we have eternal security, what do we do now? Do we continue to sin despite the consequences that we will receive from God, or do we turn away from sin by God’s grace and live a life pleasing to God? As we all know, Satan can’t take us to hell anymore because the Lord Jesus already paid for our sins and purchased us by His own blood. But if we won’t go to hell anymore, he would take hell to us and make our lives feel like hell. It’s better to turn away from our sin and live a life that is pleasing to God.