Our Helper, Our Inheritance - Can We Lose Our Salvation? Part 2

Another factor in the study of salvation is God's gift to us in the form of our inheritance, and our Helper. Our Helper is the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Himself said that we are essentially better off having the Spirit than with having Him around in the flesh (He said this immediately before His ascension). Our inheritance is our adoption by Jesus Christ into the family of Almighty God. Ephesians 1 explains all of it clearly: “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself.” In the case of losing our salvation, and therefore losing our sonship with God, it begs the question: Do we somehow thwart God’s plans for us through our apostasy?

The apostle Paul writes that we were predestined for His Glory (vs. 6) and that it was through the consultation of His own Will (vs. 11) that we were chosen for the inheritance. It was for His purpose that He chose us. So how does “falling away” for our own purpose fit in?

God not only foreknew us, He called us to Himself from the beginning. And once we heard the message of the gospel and believed, He put His seal on us in the form of the Holy Spirit.

“In Him you also, after listening to the message of
truth, the gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance.” Ephesians 1:13, 14

The question is: would God break His own seal and take away the Holy Spirit from someone who was not living according to His laws? Would He betray His pledge to us on account of something we did or said to offend Him? Consider Matthew 14:16, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever…” (Emphasis mine)

In fact before we came to Christ we were dead in our sins; spiritually dead, and following the ruler of the present world, Satan. Most of us did what we wanted, any evil thing that our hearts devised, and some of us were at enmity with God, strongly opposed to Him and His message. Yet somehow God, in the richness of His mercy, chose to make us, “alive together with Him.” But that is just the beginning – the scripture also says that He, “raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places.” Why would God choose to do all of this if He knew that we could at any time fall from His grace into death?

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.”

If our salvation was not as a result of works, then what works could we do to undo our salvation? As I said before, the idea of losing one’s salvation raises many concerns, and ultimately calls God’s own character into question. A believer must ask whether God takes back what He has given, or unseals what He has sealed, or disavows His own pledges. This is what really is at issue here. For the one who believes that their salvation can be lost, the answer to these questions must be monumentally unsettling.