ONCE SAVED - FROM WHAT?

“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins”, Mat 1:21 

I have been following some discussions on this issue "Once saved, always saved". It is true that salvation can be eternal; it is true that it comes from Jesus; it is true that it is to be ascribed to grace; but, it is not true, nor Scriptural that it means it is something which crowns us only after death (physical death). Now, all arguments whether one loses salvation or not, whether it comes to stay or not, assume that salvation is the experiencing of Life after death and the hereafter living with God. It is not true. If one grasps that, there will be no more reasons to discuss and to fuss in matters people do not understand properly.

Let’s differentiate between the two (Life after death and salvation from sin).

We read from Scripture that Eternal Life starts right here and goes through to eternity – in fact, it is the experiencing of that Life in flooding measures that is able to keep us all from stumbling ever again, "Christ in you, the hope of Glory...", (for it is said that He is able to keep us from stumbling and He is Life, Jude 24 – Jesus is the Life that is able to keep us from stumbling, if He is life now to us at all). We read from Paul as well in the letter to Timothy about the "Life that NOW is" and, in Deut. Moses saying "the days of heaven upon the earth"; I could even mention the words "On earth as in heaven" as well from the Lord's prayer, but I will stick to these for now. Even if eternal life and salvation were the same thing, one cannot assume that this Life is not to be experienced right here and right now, for if you don't live with it now, you will not have it either in ages to come.

Eternal Life is to know Jesus as He is and never as He is supposed to be. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent", John 17:3. To know Christ means that you experience, live and abide in Him AS HE IS. And it may not be a belief thing, even though faith brings it about, or Life brings faith about (which thing is first, the egg or the chicken?) It must be real, flooding your whole being and it must maintain all the holy characteristics it does never abdicate from; it must maintain you in Him and Him in you, for you cannot be self-sustained anymore if you really have Him, not in Him at least. If one of these essentials is lacking, it may not be life at all – it might be a falsity of some kind. It is acquired from God who gives unto such as seek to have it with all their heart and for all their life – not only for happiness' sake while living a worldly kind of life, enjoying such things which are not pleasant unto God (even if they may be not considered sin by many).

The point is: salvation is not LIFE itself, for it is what LIFE grants now, a promise that Father has made to so many – if you do not believe it is an earthly and mundane experience or that is does not concern holy living. It must be holy, and it must take place now for real as a heavenly experience on earth, that is, "the days of heaven upon the earth".

But the point of discussion (those for and those against) assumes that salvation is an afterlife issue – which is not true. Salvation is to be freed from all (any kind of) sin and/or sinning – it is to be made free from any practice, desire and thought about whatever God considers to be sin (and never what man may consider or not consider as sin) which, on its turn, brings death along – and to be free INDEED and not just free in belief and doctrine when God tells and shows what is sin. Sin brings inner death about, and life within breeds the opposite of sin. Christ came to distribute that life of total freedom from sinning, and it is not a mere belief of freedom from sin which is not real NOW. Christ is not the one who works unrighteousness, He is not the minister to sin, as Paul puts it in the book of Romans. We are save from sin. We are saved from sin by experiencing eternal life here and now.

Here are some links you may follow as an add to this topic, even though not all things in there are directly related to it. May God bless you richly.

1. CONFESSING TO BE SAVED

2. LIGHT BY CONFESSING

José Mateus