My wife and I attended worship this Sunday at a prominent church in Northern California. During the service the pastor tackled a tough doctrinal issue in a question and answer format. The question was this: “Can a Christian lose his salvation?” The pastor briefly made a distinction between Calvinist theologies versus Arminian theology. In short, the pastor explained, he believes we can lose our salvation due to apostasy. The pastor used marriage as an analogy, saying that he could do a lot of bad things to his wife and know that she would continue to stick with him. But it would be foolish to think, he said, that he could do absolutely anything to his wife without her rightly leaving him. He supposed that if he were to cheat on his wife, she would be justified in leaving him, and most likely would. And the same would be true of us and Christ.
My first reaction was to address this analogy, as I believe Jesus speaks specifically to it, and I will also use this rebuttal as a preface for the reader to understand how I will continue my analysis of this question in the future. There is very little that the Bible does not speak to specifically, in some form or another. I believe (and I am not alone) that if we but search the Holy Word, rightly dividing the Word, and rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will find all the answers to our questions. Therefore I pledge that I will stick to the Word as closely as possible when answering this important doctrinal issue.
In the 19th Chapter of Matthew a group of Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce for any reason. Jesus quoted Genesis 2 for His answer, “The two shall become one flesh.” Or in other words; inseparable. But when pressed about why Moses gave certificates of divorce, Jesus tells them plainly, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning, it has not been this way.” Jesus was telling the Pharisees that divorce was a concession to the weakened human spirit, not as something God handed down as law. So to use divorce as analogous to losing your salvation, resulting in a “divorce” from God, does not hold up to His Holy Character. God is not human, and His ways are not our ways. Thus He has no frailty or weakness of character that would permit Him to make a choice to disown us. He is Almighty, infinitely strong, so what could I do to separate what He has deemed inseparable?
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