1 Consequences of the Teaching “Once Saved, Always Saved”

“Once saved, always saved”—a teach­ing that is increas­ing­ly com­mon these days despite many clear pas­sages in the New Tes­ta­ment which teach to the con­trary that it is pos­si­ble for a Chris­t­ian to fall away from God.

This mat­ter has far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for many ques­tions of Chris­t­ian life, for the teach­ing about God, about man, and about sal­va­tion. It is our inten­tion to exam­ine this top­ic and to explain why deny­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of apos­ta­sy is not in line with sound doc­trine. Denial of apos­ta­sy fun­da­men­tal­ly chal­lenges God’s love and the free­dom and nature of man who is cre­at­ed in God’s like­ness. It makes peo­ple dis­re­gard the grav­i­ty of sin and the impor­tance of fight­ing against sin and lose respect for God’s grace and holi­ness, which lead us to repen­tance and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. So it is vital for every Chris­t­ian to make the effort to find a clear answer to this ques­tion.

More­over, it is our aim to show that apos­ta­sy does not only occur when a per­son open­ly and con­scious­ly renounces faith in God, but is also a result of per­sis­tent, long-term sin­ning. We hope that this arti­cle will strength­en peo­ple in the truth and warn them of this decep­tive false teach­ing.

Take care, broth­ers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbe­liev­ing heart, lead­ing you to fall away from the liv­ing God. (Hebrews 3:12)

2 Our Relationship with God

The liv­ing God wants a liv­ing rela­tion­ship with us. He cre­at­ed us in his image: as free per­sons and real reflec­tion of his own being. Act­ing always in accor­dance with love, which is the essence of his nature, God does not treat us as if we were pup­pets but he respects our deci­sions, he accepts that they have an impact on us and bring about con­se­quences.

A liv­ing rela­tion­ship can devel­op only on the basis of a free deci­sion. Yet, just as we can freely decide for a life with God, we can also decide to turn away from him. The New Tes­ta­ment clear­ly speaks of the dan­ger of falling short of the great grace of sal­va­tion through the trick­ery of sin and of end­ing up in blind­ness and darkness—being lost.

So, we under­stand apos­ta­sy as the loss, or rejec­tion, of rela­tion­ship with God.

3 What Does the New Testament Say?

3.1 The Image of the Vine

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dress­er. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spo­ken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch can­not bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, nei­ther can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branch­es. Who­ev­er abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do noth­ing. If any­one does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and with­ers; and the branch­es are gath­ered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15:1–6)

Every branch that bears no fruit will be cut off and burnt in the fire. A branch can bear fruit only if it remains, in the vine, which means when it is one with it. A branch has a liv­ing con­nec­tion to the vine. Jesus spoke about peo­ple who have a rela­tion­ship to him. Who­ev­er does not remain in the rela­tion­ship with him becomes fruit­less and, fig­u­ra­tive­ly speak­ing, will be cut off and burned.

The words of Jesus here make clear that it is pos­si­ble to lose one’s rela­tion­ship with him.…

3.2 The Letter to the Hebrews

For it is impos­si­ble, in the case of those who have once been enlight­ened, who have tast­ed the heav­en­ly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spir­it, and have tast­ed the good­ness of the word of God and the pow­ers of the age to come, and then have fall­en away, to restore them again to repen­tance, since they are cru­ci­fy­ing once again the Son of God to their own harm and hold­ing him up to con­tempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and pro­duces a crop use­ful to those for whose sake it is cul­ti­vat­ed, receives a bless­ing from God. But if it bears thorns and this­tles, it is worth­less and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. (Hebrews 6:4–8)

When peo­ple who once repent­ed, had been enlight­ened and shared in the Holy Spir­it fall back into a life of sin, they nail the Son of God—in fig­u­ra­tive sense—to the cross all over again and expose him to mock­ery. Such peo­ple deny the pow­er of sal­va­tion in Jesus because sal­va­tion leads believ­ers to free­dom from sins. Such peo­ple can no longer repent from the hard­en­ing and blind­ness they chose of their own accord.

It is only when some­body has repent­ed that you can say of them that they “have shared in the Holy Spir­it”. More­over, the expres­sion “to restore them again to repen­tance” unam­bigu­ous­ly pre­sup­pos­es that that per­son had already repent­ed once before, and in that way become a Chris­t­ian.

The same is meant by “cru­ci­fy­ing once again¹ the Son of God”, since it implies that the per­son in ques­tion had already received the ben­e­fits of Jesus’ act of sal­va­tion.

“To taste the heav­en­ly gift” does not mean to only get a taste of it, or to try it out as some­thing new and gen­er­al­ly alien, as it is some­times inter­pret­ed. Nobody would claim that because in Hebrews 2:9 it says that Jesus tast­ed death it means he did not real­ly die.

For if we go on sin­ning delib­er­ate­ly after receiv­ing the knowl­edge of the truth, there no longer remains a sac­ri­fice for sins, but a fear­ful expec­ta­tion of judge­ment, and a fury of fire that will con­sume the adver­saries. Any­one who has set aside the law of Moses dies with­out mer­cy on the evi­dence of two or three wit­ness­es. How much worse pun­ish­ment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has pro­faned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanc­ti­fied, and has out­raged the Spir­it of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his peo­ple.” It is a fear­ful thing to fall into the hands of the liv­ing God. (Hebrews 10:26–31)

These vers­es speak again about peo­ple who “received the knowl­edge of the truth”, the author also con­sid­er­ing him­self to be one of them. In the New Tes­ta­ment, receiv­ing the knowl­edge of the truth is a way of say­ing that a per­son becomes a Chris­t­ian. An “expec­ta­tion of judge­ment, and a fury of fire that will con­sume the adver­saries” can only refer to peo­ple who are eter­nal­ly sep­a­rat­ed from God. The expres­sion: “there no longer remains a sac­ri­fice for sins” hints at the fact that the sac­ri­fice of Jesus had already been accept­ed by that per­son, which is also expressed by their hav­ing been sanc­ti­fied by the blood of the covenant.

Accord­ing to this pas­sage, a per­son can lose their sal­va­tion through wil­ful, i.e. con­scious and con­tin­u­al sin­ning. It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the con­scious renun­ci­a­tion of his faith in Jesus as his Sav­iour that caus­es a Chris­t­ian to fall away. Even back­slid­ing grad­u­al­ly into sin can lead to apos­ta­sy. The final state of that per­son is worse than the state of some­one who had nev­er become a Chris­t­ian.

3.3 Hebrews 3:12

The verse quot­ed in the begin­ning of this arti­cle urges the read­ers to be watch­ful over their broth­ers and sis­ters in their com­mu­ni­ty so that nobody has the heart lead­ing them to “fall away from the liv­ing God”. Here, as well as in oth­er pas­sages, we can see that there is a close con­nec­tion between apos­ta­sy and lack of the bib­li­cal com­mit­ment and account­abil­i­ty of believ­ers to each oth­er and to God in com­mu­ni­ty.

From time to time peo­ple raise the objec­tion that the above-men­tioned pas­sages do not refer to Chris­tians. How­ev­er, the let­ter on the whole, and the pas­sages we have exam­ined in par­tic­u­lar, speak to and about broth­ers in faith.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnest­ness to have the full assur­ance of hope until the end, so that you may not be slug­gish, but imi­ta­tors of those who through faith and patience inher­it the promis­es. (Hebrews 6:11–12)

This shows that the peo­ple this let­ter is addressed to are not stand­ing before the deci­sion to turn from being mere lip-wor­ship­pers to becom­ing Chris­tians, but they are encour­aged to endure till the end, being watch­ful not to become lazy on the good way which they had already begun.

The writer of this let­ter address­es his read­ers as broth­ers when he is admon­ish­ing them. He saw some of them were quite weak in faith but yet he assessed them as Chris­tians. From the admo­ni­tions we see that they were in dan­ger of neglect­ing fel­low­ship and of being entan­gled and hard­ened by sin again. As for­mer Jews (hence the title of the let­ter “Hebrews”), they felt strong­ly attract­ed by the tem­ple cult which they had for­mer­ly been involved in. They had for­got­ten the purifi­ca­tion they expe­ri­enced because of their luke­warm­ness and fear of suf­fer­ing (Hebrews 10:23–29)

That is why it is not at all pos­si­ble to derive from the very spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion described in this let­ter that the addressees were not Chris­tians.

Besides this, the sub­tle dis­tinc­tion between “mere lip-wor­ship­pers” and Chris­tians can­not be found here, nor in the rest of the New Tes­ta­ment.

3.4 Apostasy and False Teachings

You are sev­ered from Christ, you who would be jus­ti­fied by the law; you have fall­en away from grace. (Gala­tians 5:4)

In the New Tes­ta­ment, the warn­ing against apos­ta­sy is strong­ly con­nect­ed with the appeal to pre­serve the right teach­ing, of which the let­ter to the Gala­tians is a good exam­ple. At the begin­ning of his let­ter, Paul express­es that he is utter­ly alarmed about the Gala­tians because they allowed them­selves to be drawn away to “anoth­er gospel” so eas­i­ly (Gala­tians 1:6–9). It is vis­i­ble from the con­text of the let­ter who the deceivers were: Jews who insist­ed that those from among the Gen­tiles who turned to Chris­tian­i­ty must keep the law of Moses in order to please God.

It was obvi­ous for Paul that turn­ing away from Christ from a liv­ing, spir­it-led life towards for­mal­is­tic rit­u­als means “falling away from grace”. Inas­much as sal­va­tion is giv­en by God’s grace, falling from grace means the loss of salvation—apostasy.…

In Gala­tians 4:11 Paul express­es con­cern and appre­hen­sion about the Gala­tians, whether he had not laboured on them in vain. If apos­ta­sy were at any rate impos­si­ble, such anx­i­ety would be com­plete­ly out of place.

Now the Spir­it express­ly says that in lat­er times some will depart from the faith by devot­ing them­selves to deceit­ful spir­its and teach­ings of demons.… (1 Tim­o­thy 4:1)

As is vis­i­ble from the let­ter to Tim­o­thy, young Chris­tians were con­front­ed with one more dan­ger­ous heresy. An ear­ly form of Gno­sis (1 Tim­o­thy 6:20) had already led some of them to stray from their faith, and made them ship­wreck their belief—as was the case with Hymenaeus and Phile­tus (1 Tim­o­thy 1:18–20, 2 Tim­o­thy 2:17).

Greed and all sorts of desires led some believ­ers away from the faith, too (1 Tim­o­thy 6:6–10, 5:14–15).

3.5 The Letters of John

In some cas­es it might have hap­pened that some who turned away from the faith had­n’t been Chris­tians before.

John writes in his let­ter con­cern­ing sim­i­lar Gnos­tic here­sies:

Chil­dren, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is com­ing, so now many antichrists have come. There­fore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have con­tin­ued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. (1 John 2:18–19)

The con­clu­sion of John that the false teach­ers had nev­er had the Holy Spir­it and as such had nev­er belonged to the com­mu­ni­ty is backed up with the thought that oth­er­wise they would have remained. One could have the impres­sion that John want­ed to express cer­tain reg­u­lar­i­ty, as if try­ing to say that through faith­ful­ness alone it is vis­i­ble who has been a Chris­t­ian and who has not. Yet even the expres­sion “antichrist” shows that the per­sons in ques­tion spread here­sies them­selves and were not mere­ly unfaith­ful believ­ers. Because John (as shown in pas­sages such as the next one) clear­ly assumes that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of falling away from God exists, one can see the above sit­u­a­tion as an excep­tion­al case. Gen­er­al­ly, Gnos­tics in a mis­lead­ing way used terms and expres­sions sim­i­lar to Chris­t­ian ones, which, how­ev­er, they filled with entire­ly dif­fer­ent con­tent. By this it could have been dif­fi­cult for the young Chris­tians, who were not yet firm enough in the right teach­ing, to see through them. That is a high­ly prob­a­ble rea­son why John want­ed to empha­sise: these peo­ple had nev­er real­ly repent­ed.

So, the cir­cum­stances here are entire­ly dif­fer­ent from those in the fol­low­ing pas­sage:

If any­one sees his broth­er com­mit­ting a sin not lead­ing to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who com­mit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. (1 John 5:16)

John assumes the pos­si­bil­i­ty among broth­ers that one might com­mit a “sin lead­ing to death”, which means that spir­i­tu­al death is the result of this sin. Some con­sis­tent oppo­nents of apos­ta­sy sup­pose that John did not mean spir­i­tu­al death but phys­i­cal death in this verse. But it is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble that John should have intro­duced Chris­tians to the truth that one can­not pray for the dead! If this pas­sage does not speak about apos­ta­sy, what sense would it make oth­er­wise?

God will grant for­give­ness to any­one who repents from their sin, as grave as it might be. If they do not want to repent, even suf­fer­ing phys­i­cal death will not change any­thing as far as their stub­born­ness goes.

4 But He Who Endures to the End Will Be Saved

In addi­tion to the vers­es which direct­ly speak of the dan­ger of falling away from God, many oth­er pas­sages in the New Tes­ta­ment urge Chris­tians to con­tin­ue in obe­di­ence to God.

Broth­er will deliv­er broth­er over to death, and the father his child, and chil­dren will rise against par­ents and have them put to death, and you will be hat­ed by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Matthew 10:21–22)

Oth­er pas­sages that express the same thing are: 1 Corinthi­ans 15:1–2; Colos­sians 1:21–23; Hebrews 10:35–39.

Some peo­ple think that the pas­sages about apos­ta­sy express only a seri­ous warn­ing, which, if ignored, will not have con­se­quences, because after all God would not pun­ish those who fell back into sin any­way.

If apos­ta­sy real­ly has no final con­se­quences, or is not pos­si­ble at all, why then do so many bib­li­cal texts stress the impor­tance of per­se­ver­ing to the end? God, who is always firm and true in what he says, would not resort to emp­ty threats in order to lead his chil­dren to obe­di­ence! Edu­ca­tors would agree that this approach to edu­ca­tion is unac­cept­able.

The Old Tes­ta­ment also clear­ly shows that God does not count some­one’s pre­vi­ous sins against them if they repent from their god­less­ness. On the oth­er hand, some­one’s right­eous­ness can­not help them if they once again turn away from the truth.

But when a right­eous per­son turns away from his right­eous­ness and does injus­tice and does the same abom­i­na­tions that the wicked per­son does, shall he live? None of the right­eous deeds that he has done shall be remem­bered; for the treach­ery of which he is guilty and the sin he has com­mit­ted, for them he shall die. (Ezekiel 18:24)

Why were there such severe pun­ish­ments in the Old Tes­ta­ment?

Are they not meant to edu­cate us to shun sin and to abstain from it in order to avoid its dev­as­tat­ing spir­i­tu­al con­se­quences, name­ly the hard­en­ing of one’s heart and sep­a­ra­tion from God.

5 Verses Which Are Often Used As Counter-Arguments Against Apostasy

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him gra­cious­ly give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who jus­ti­fies. Who is to con­demn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is inter­ced­ing for us. Who shall sep­a­rate us from the love of Christ? …For I am sure that nei­ther death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor pow­ers, nor height nor depth, nor any­thing else in all cre­ation, will be able to sep­a­rate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–35,38–39)

This pas­sage is about God’s faith­ful­ness to his chil­dren. When a Chris­t­ian remains faith­ful to God no third par­ty, no alien pow­er, nor even death itself, can iso­late them from God.

It is God’s plan that each Chris­t­ian remains firm to the end, and he gives each of us the nec­es­sary strength to do this.

But this pas­sage does not aim at explain­ing what hap­pens when this per­son is no longer ready to fight against sin and iso­lates them­self from God. We can­not expect that each promise of God is accom­pa­nied by a com­plete list of terms and con­di­tions or con­di­tions of lia­bil­i­ty.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose noth­ing of all that he has giv­en me, but raise it up on the last day. (John 6:39)

It is clear that God does not want any Chris­t­ian to be lost. Despite this, he does not encroach upon deci­sions made of our own will, since he gave us our free will because he loves us. His sov­er­eign­ty is not com­pro­mised by this in any way.

Accord­ing to 1 Tim­o­thy 2:4 it is God’s will that all peo­ple come to rec­og­nize the truth and are saved through it. If this is God’s will, why does it not hap­pen? The answer is that most peo­ple do not want to change their lives. In the same way Chris­tians can lose their faith if they do not want to live with God any­more, that is, when they love sin more than the one who can pro­tect them from it. Why should there be a dif­fer­ent stan­dard for Chris­tians? God shows no partiality—even towards those who had once repent­ed but are now no longer ready to live a life of repen­tance.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they fol­low me. I give them eter­nal life, and they will nev­er per­ish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:27–28)

This verse also speaks about God’s faith­ful­ness. The expres­sion “snatch them out of my hand” shows that Jesus speaks about exter­nal influ­ences. God will enable us to remain faith­ful if we ask HIM for help. Jesus will not, how­ev­er, keep us in his hand by force against a clear expres­sion of our will which is man­i­fest­ed in the way we live.

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your sal­va­tion, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spir­it, who is the guar­an­tee of our inher­i­tance until we acquire pos­ses­sion of it, to the praise of his glo­ry. (Eph­esians 1:13–14)

And do not grieve the Holy Spir­it of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemp­tion. (Eph­esians 4:30)

The Holy Spir­it as deposit or guar­an­tee is com­pared with a seal. The image of a seal was used to express val­i­da­tion, the putting into force or reaf­fir­ma­tion of some­thing, and was per­haps also a sign of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. How­ev­er, a seal is not some­thing you can­not break—as if a per­son would be forced to remain God’s pos­ses­sion. Break­ing the seal has an effect. It is true that God’s inten­tion is to grant Chris­tians not only the deposit but also the full vol­ume of the reward—eternal sal­va­tion. Paul empha­sizes God’s inten­tion in sav­ing us time and time again in order to strength­en the dis­ci­ples.

Thus, the aim of this pas­sage is not to say some­thing about whether or not a per­son can fall away from God, but to encour­age those who want to live as Chris­tians.

5.1 A Child of God

Some peo­ple use the com­par­i­son of rela­tion­ship to God with a “par­ent-child” rela­tion­ship in order to rea­son that also the rela­tion­ship “God-believ­er” can­not be made invalid either. The expres­sion to “be God’s child” is a pic­ture, and not every aspect of this pic­ture (rela­tion­ship of a human father with his child) can be referred to the rela­tion­ship with God. For instance, nobody can choose to become the child of a human father, although this is the case with becom­ing a child of God.

In fact, even a per­son who falls away from Him will always remain his cre­ation, as much as he or she remains a child of their par­ents even if there is no rela­tion­ship between them any­more. How­ev­er, just as only those who accept and wel­come Jesus can become chil­dren of God, only those who remain true to Him can be saved.

6 Common Reasons for Rejecting the Teaching of Apostasy

6.1 A Lack of Interest in Others

We can only make oth­ers aware of the things that we our­selves are ready to live out. When new­com­ers join the faith, are they real­ly giv­en sat­is­fac­to­ry and clear exam­ples of what the full extent of dis­ci­ple­ship means and what it looks like in every­day life?

Many neglect fel­low­ship. Pri­vate mat­ters are more impor­tant than spir­i­tu­al ones, and the respon­si­bil­i­ty for oth­ers is shift­ed onto a nar­row cir­cle of leaders—if at all. As a result, many show very lit­tle self-assess­ment and recog­ni­tion of sin, oth­ers are not chal­lenged to give up sins, and still oth­ers fall back into past sins.

Under­stand­ably, under such con­di­tions it is difficult—and some­times also wrong—to see some­one who lives in sin as hav­ing fall­en away from God. There are also cas­es in which some­one that went away turns back and starts anew. In this case the ques­tion aris­es as to whether such a per­son repent­ed before at all. These and oth­er cas­es often give rise to the wish that it is impos­si­ble to fall away from God.

It is wrong though, to assess the sit­u­a­tion in the New Tes­ta­ment through the per­spec­tive of this kind of expe­ri­ence and to arrive at the con­clu­sion that ALL who turned away from faith were nev­er Chris­tians. The fol­low­ing pas­sage is not the only one that clear­ly con­tra­dicts this idea:

For if, after they have escaped the defile­ments of the world through the knowl­edge of our Lord and Sav­iour Jesus Christ, they are again entan­gled in them and over­come, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been bet­ter for them nev­er to have known the way of right­eous­ness than after know­ing it to turn back from the holy com­mand­ment deliv­ered to them. What the true proverb says has hap­pened to them: “The dog returns to its own vom­it, and the sow, after wash­ing her­self, returns to wal­low in the mire.” (2 Peter 2:20–22)

6.2 Giving Up the Fight Against Sin

If God is not the most impor­tant thing in a per­son­’s life, they will not have enough love to fight against sin with the deter­mi­na­tion Jesus taught either: “And if your eye caus­es you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.” (Matthew 18:9). If that con­sis­tence in fight is too much for them, it will be even near­er to them to wish for the cer­tain­ty that they can nev­er aban­don God.

7 False Teachings

7.1 The Understanding of Grace

God works in us “to will and to act” so no one can boast to him about what they have done. What is there that we could give, that we did not receive? Yet no one can grasp that grace ful­ly unless they endeav­our with all their strength to put their whole life at the dis­pos­al of the Cre­ator.

Who­ev­er thinks that God—without our own acting—does every­thing at the right time to grant us eter­nal life; who­ev­er, con­se­quent­ly, builds up a com­fort­able life on that idea and dis­miss­es as legal­is­tic or self-right­eous those who strive to live up to the com­mand­ment of Christ; such a per­son has not real­ly under­stood what God’s grace means (see James 2:17).

7.2 Predestination

Pre­des­ti­na­tion in the form that Augus­tine, Luther, or Calvin believed it says that:

God does not sim­ply know each per­son­’s future in advance, but that he him­self deter­mines who will attain sal­va­tion (Luther), and who will not (Calvin!).

This way of think­ing dis­re­gards man’s free will and declares his capac­i­ty for mak­ing deci­sions as non-exis­tent. Falling away from God is how­ev­er, just the expres­sion of free will. That’s why every­one who teach­es that the free will of man does not exist will, for the sake of con­sis­ten­cy, has to deny any pos­si­bil­i­ty of apostasy—and vice ver­sa.

See our arti­cle: “Pre­des­ti­na­tion”.

For each of these rea­sons, and many more, which would go beyond the scope of this arti­cle, we are con­vinced that Chris­tians must take an unam­bigu­ous posi­tion on this ques­tion.

How­ev­er, any­one who shows awe and respect for God and regrets, con­fess­es, and aban­dons his sin need not have any fear of apos­ta­sy at all.

We are glad to answer any ques­tions you might have about this.

1. The Greek text uses the verb “anas­tau­rein”, where “ana” means again, and “stau­rein” to cru­ci­fy. ↩