Book 1 of Musings Eternal Security
The doctrine of eternal security proceeds from an arrogant, rebellious spirit.
It is clear from the New Testament that any one of us can choose to walk away from the grace of salvation. Given the numerous passages that reveal that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, how can we account for the fact that many sincere, intelligent Christians subscribe to the doctrine of the security of the believer?
If it is in an attempt to soothe the anxiety of fearful believers, then we would suggest this is not a satisfactory device. It is not connected to spiritual reality. One time I was admitted to the hospital because of pain in the region of my chest.
The examining physician was a young man. In order to allay my fears of a heart attack, he told me the pain almost certainly was a digestive malfunction. He inquired about the intensity of my working day.
When I told him, he was positive that indigestion was my problem.
Then he gave me some excellent suggestions as to diet, pace of work, and so forth.
He was benevolence itself and was ready to send me home.
Meanwhile an older man, an orderly, had taken a blood sample to the laboratory.
When he came back, they wheeled my bed upstairs and put me in a room in the coronary unit.
It seems hospitals can tell from enzymes in the blood whether there has been heart damage - and there was.
The point is this: the young doctor was anxious to relieve my anxiety about a heart attack.
However, before the week was out I was sent to surgeons who inserted two stents in a main artery.
I was close to death.
Thirty percent of men die from their first heart attack.
If you are tired in the morning you can set your clock back four hours.
If you get up at six o'clock, set the hands back to two o'clock. That way you get four more hours sleep. Right?
The problem is, it really is six o'clock and not two in the morning.
Your technique did not change reality. So assuring the lukewarm believer that he or she has nothing to worry about because of eternal security may give temporary relief, but there is a day of reckoning ahead.
The same is true of those who are trying to hoist God on Paul's statements in Romans, Chapters Three through Five.
The wages of sin is spiritual death.
This is written to the believer, not to the unsaved.
No amount of theological contortions will ever alter this fundamental truth one iota.
If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. (2 Peter 2:20-21)