Can You Lose Your Salvation?

I. A Personal Question

In this short article I wish to ask a very personal, rather than general question.

Can you lose your salvation?

Please note, I didn’t ask can a Christian lose their salvation, but can you lose your salvation? People who insist that a Christian can lose their salvation always have a story about someone they knew who started well. Let’s call him John Doe. He seemed to be dedicated, maybe even involved in a ministry and then something happened, and now this person denies Christ, wants nothing to do with Christianity and openly confesses to being atheist, just as they were at the start, in open rebellion to anything about God.

If someone asks me if I can lose my salvation my answer is, ‘which me are you talking about?’ Can I do what John Doe did, can I go back to what I was before and be in open rebellion to God? The answer is no because that me no longer exists. In 1982 that arrogant New Age Satanist called Steve Copland was convicted by the Holy Spirit, saw his sin as God sees it, surrendered his life to Christ by faith and received God’s grace and forgiveness. In that moment the rebellious self that ruled him was destroyed, it died with Christ, was crucified with Christ, was buried with Christ and united with Him in His death (Romans 6).

I can never go back to being that person because he doesn’t exist, he’s been dead for over 4 decades. The person I am now belongs to Jesus Christ (Romans 8:9), he is God’s own possession (Ephesians 1:14), and a new creation being daily conformed to the likeness of Christ through the power of God.

Free Grace adherents would say John Doe is still saved, despite the fact that he utterly denies Christ or continually lives in the acts of the flesh listed in Galatians 5:19. They would point to 1 Corinthians 5-6, claiming that even the man who was sleeping with his father’s wife was saved. What they fail to mention is that all of these carnal Corinthians repented, including the one mentioned, and in their repentance proved they were born again. John Doe refuses to repent.

So…if we ask the question ‘can a Christian lose their salvation’, rather than a personal question, we are indeed asking three questions, including, what do we mean by ‘Christian’, and what do we mean by ‘salvation’. Those questions will have multiple answers depending on who you ask.

II. What do we mean by ‘Christian’?

There are dozens of verses of NT Scripture warning people about whether or not they are in Christ. Jesus used analogies such as the wheat and tares, the sheep and goats, the false prophets, and warned about producing fruit. In the epistles we have warnings about falling away, about being moved from the hope held out in the gospel, about not persevering to the end, and examining ourselves to see whether we are in the faith.

The bottom line is simply this: If you claim that you have the free-will to just get up and walk away from God and deny your salvation, you are in essence stating that you have never surrendered your life to Him as Lord and Savior. Indeed, you are admitting that you have always retained the right to rule your own life, and in that case the root of sin has never been destroyed.

That is the fundamental issue and why I post so many videos explaining what is required to be born again, what is required to become a partaker of the divine nature.1 The very root of sin is the creature demanding to rule its own life. I call it the sin principle or self-ruling principle. Scripture simply calls it the ‘self’ or ‘I’ (ego), and it is this ‘self’ or ‘I’ which must be crucified with Christ.

From day one the requirements for being born again have been watered down and twisted. The Galatian Christians were influenced by legalists who demanded they must obey the old covenant law, submit to circumcision, Sabbath keeping etc, or their salvation was not complete. Paul warned them that if they did this they had ‘fallen from grace’ because they were no longer relying on Christ’s sacrifice but adding law to grace. He asks them, ‘did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law, or by faith in Christ’, and ‘who has bewitched you’(Galatians 3:1-3). Is he trying to tell them they have lost their salvation, or demanding that they examine themselves to see if they really did receive the Holy Spirit and are simply being deceived?

John’s first letter to the Church asks similar questions. John is dealing with the heresy of Docetism, an early heresy which threatened the simplicity of the gospel, a form of Gnosticism. John writes about false or counterfeit Christians that left when confronted with their heretical ideas and says ‘they left us because they did not belong to us’ (1 John 2:19-20). John was never suggesting they lost their salvation, but that they were never in Christ in the first place.

The Roman Catholic Church evangelized by the sword. In the later medieval period Charlemagne and his army went from village to village in the name of the Pope. People who worshipped pagan gods were given the choice, submit to the Pope or lose their heads. Many submitted to save their lives and were branded as ‘Christians’, but secretly they remained pagans. The Inquisitions murdered millions who rejected papal authority. Was this ‘christianity’ or just a political and corrupt power forcing its will on people?

In Kyiv in the 10th century, Prince Vladimir commanded his subjects to be baptized and claimed the country to be ‘Christian’. He set up the priesthood, established religious traditions, and people obeyed even though virtually none of them had any relationship with Christ whatsoever.

In modern-day America, a child is born in a Christian home, is pressured to make a public confession of faith, even as young as 5-6 yrs old, they are baptized and told they are ‘born again’.

According to statistics by coldcasechristianity research, 81% of these kids who were baptized before 17 yrs old, leave home, and declare themselves atheists or agnostics by the age of 25-30. From God’s perspective, these children were already sanctified by their parents (1 Corinthians 7:14) and His only command to them was ‘obey your parents’ (Colossians 3:20, Ephesians 6:1-3). God never commands a child under their parent’s authority to submit to Him as Lord until their life is under their own authority. I discuss this issue in depth in my video entitled ‘are your children saved?’ *2

III. In Conclusion

In conclusion. The New Testament does not claim anywhere that a genuine born again person can lose their salvation. They can be deceived by legalism, or doctrines of demons and rendered useless in serving Christ, they can lose any reward for faithful service to Christ, they can temporarily fall into gross sin and grieve the Holy Spirit, and in such cases the Scripture demands that they examine themselves to see if they are genuine Christians.

The genuine Christian will be tested by trials, persecution, tragedy and even the threat of death (1 Peter 1:3-24). If they are a person who ‘denied self, took up their cross and followed Christ’, then they will also be practicing that daily. They will persevere to the end because the issue of persecution and death were already dealt with in the beginning, they already belong to Christ, have already been crucified with Christ.

But, if they are a counterfeit Christian seeking prosperity, wealth, perfect health and their ‘best life now’, when trials and persecution come, their self-centered religion will be exposed, they will stand with fist raised shouting ‘this is not what I signed up for’, and prove themselves to be ruled by self and not belonging to Jesus Christ.

So, I ask you again. Can YOU lose your salvation? If you say yes to that question then you are admitting that you do not belong to Christ, that you are still the one controlling your own destiny, that you have never had the root principle of self-rule crucified with Christ. In this case, you were taught a false gospel, a mere diluted counterfeit of Christianity. Please watch my videos regarding the root of sin *3, having Christ as Lord *4, and ‘cannot continue in sin’ *5. Let me ask one more question. If today you were arrested for being a ‘Christian’ and sentenced to death, like so many in the early church, would you deny Christ to save your physical life? The way you answer that question may determine whether or not you will have that opportunity and test during the Great Tribulation, which many believe is soon to come.

Steve Copland

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1 See my YouTube Channel for videos

2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1WZnEr_whA&list=PLHYRoE9xIekb6CSsg5E8tZslAWw9-0EMG&index=38

3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFVvNRU-8Vo&list=PLHYRoE9xIekYFuCoSingcrSbogozSGxax&index=17

4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a20MRxbM9j4&list=PLHYRoE9xIekb6CSsg5E8tZslAWw9-0EMG&index=39

5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKi-w6Nl9Ns&list=PLHYRoE9xIekb6CSsg5E8tZslAWw9-0EMG&index=41