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I pray this study has been of benefit to you in your
desire to learn of God and His will for your life. In this
study we've considered His love for us, and how that love is not the
warm emotion most religious people today claim it to be. His
love led Him to do what we could not do for ourselves, but what was
absolutely essential for our salvation. We've studied His
grace, and learned that it is through faith that we gain access to
His grace, which is essential for our salvation. We've examined
works and the role they play in our salvation. We understand
that we can never earn salvation, because the value of the work we do
will never equal the value of the salvation we receive from God.
This nullifies the false teaching many proclaim today that works are
not necessary for salvation, since they show our attempt to earn
salvation. Our understanding that we owe God, not that He owes
us, leads us to work with fervent zeal in His kingdom. Our
study of law taught us that we are not under the law of Moses today,
but are under the law of Christ. As does every law, the law of
Christ contains commandments we must obey. When we obey every
commandment Jesus gives us, we are His friend and gain the benefits
of his death (remission of sins). Every human being alive today
has the option to choose to be obedient to Jesus' commandments, or to
be disobedient. His blood is available to wash away the sins of
everyone who chooses obedience. However, should one choose
disobedience, their sins are not remitted and they will suffer
eternal damnation as a consequence.
Throughout this study we have proven the fact that a
child of God can fall from grace and be eternally lost. We
closed our study with a consideration of 3 verses from the New
Testament, each of which proves the fallacy of the doctrine commonly
referred to as "once saved, always saved." We saw how
the vine (Jesus) feeds branches (individual Christians) attached to
Him. These branches may either be fruitful, or unfruitful.
If they are the former, God cleanses them through His word so that
they may be even more fruitful. However, those unfruitful
branches are cut off from the vine, gathered together, and
burned! One cannot be a part of the vine if they have not been
obedient to Jesus' commandments! Therefore, since those who are
cut off from the vine for being unfruitful at one time were obedient
to His commandments, a child of God absolutely may fall from
grace should they return to their former life of sin! Paul
emphasizes this fact again when he tells the Galatian Christians that
those who seek to be justified by the law of Moses have fallen from
grace. The fact these Christians could fall from grace for such
behavior tells us that simply being a Christian does not guarantee
salvation. If it did, then it would have been impossible for
the Galatian Christians to fall from grace no matter how they sought
to be justified. Finally, we considered the apostle Paul and
his struggles with the flesh. He writes of his concern for his
own salvation, despite having preached the word to countless numbers
of his fellow man. He uses forceful language when he speaks of
his struggles with the flesh, telling us that he treats his body as a
slave, beating it black and blue with rigid discipline to bring it
under subjection to his will. We understand that he didn't
literally beat his flesh with a rod or other weapon, but the force of
his will resisting the lusts of his flesh was like the force applied
by a slave master to a rebellious slave. The concern he had for
his eternal salvation should he lighten up on the discipline applied
to his flesh was evident in his first epistle to the Corinthians.
As I close this study I urge each of you (myself
included) to do as the apostle John admonished and "believe not
every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because
many false prophets are gone out into the world." (1
John 4:1) None of us wants to be surprised at the day of
judgment and learn that everything we believed and did while alive on
earth was for nothing. Unfortunately, many people will have
this unhappy experience. God has been so gracious to us in
giving us the guidebook by which we will be judged. We don't
have to grope about in the dark, hoping to stumble across His will by
mere chance! All we have to do is to study His word for
ourselves, determine to be obedient to its teachings until death, and
we are promised an eternal home with Him in heaven. Please do
not let the many false prophets teaching Satan's doctrines today
defraud you of your eternal reward.
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