Saved and Sure, Safe and Secure: The Eternal Security of the Believer

By John David Martin

Have you ever found yourself involved in a conversation about the idea of “once saved, always saved”—one that turned into a religious argument?

Saved and Sure, Safe and Secure seeks to demonstrate from the Scriptures that a born-again Christian, once saved, can have assurance that he or she is saved and safe for eternity. Writing in simple terms and plain language in order to communicate Bible doctrine to the average person, author John David Martin affirms the doctrine of eternal security of believers in Christ and addresses common objections to the teaching of “once saved, always saved.” Whether you believe in eternal security or think you can “lose it,” Pastor Martin hopes to help you strengthen your faith and challenge your thinking on the subject. Many religious people who believe in God and profess to know Christ as their personal Savior still struggle with doubts concerning their salvation. If you are worried, you can put your fears to rest; this study can help.

Aiming to encourage and uplift believers, this theological study explores the topic of eternal security, analyzing the biblical truths that teach and reinforce the certainty of this concept.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664202153

John David Martin

John David Martin became a Christian in his senior year of high school. He joined the US Air Force upon graduation and then felt called to enter the ministry. He holds bachelor of divinity and master of biblical studies degrees. He has pastored various churches in Florida and Tennessee and has been involved in numerous other ministries. A father of two and grandfather of four, he lives with his wife, Linda, in Tennessee.

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Copyright © 2020 John David Martin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0216-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0217-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0215-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020915607

WestBow Press rev. date: 02/05/2024

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Saved by the Grace of God

Chapter 2 Situated in the Body

Chapter 3 Sealed by the Holy Spirit

Chapter 4 The Surgery of the Lord

Chapter 5 Sons in the Family

Chapter 6 The Scriptures Say So

Chapter 7 The Sureness of Salvation

Summary

Appendix 1 Believeth or Believed?

Appendix 2 Shall We Continue in Sin, That Grace May Abound?

Appendix 3 Salvation and Eternal Security in the Old Testament

Endnotes

Disclaimer: I prefer and use the old King James Version (KJV) of the Holy Scriptures in all my preaching, teaching, and writing. My personal conviction is that the King James Version is the inspired and preserved word of God. As such, I believe that it is still the best available translation of the Bible in the English language for Bible study, memorization, and publicly proclaiming the word of God with power and authority. Any deviation from the KJV is unintentional.

The KJV uses italics where words have been added by the translators to smooth out the English translation from the underlying original Greek and Hebrew texts; where italics are used in my Scripture citations throughout this work, they are not the KJV italics, but mine for emphasis in this work.

Let it be noted that truth is truth, wherever it is found or whomever says it. Some of the sources cited are by writers who may not hold to my convictions or beliefs or opinions on certain issues, and citing them in this work is not an endorsement for any false teachings or unscriptural positions they may take.

Author’s Credentials: The author attended Pensacola Bible Institute, where he earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree, graduating in 1984. He was ordained to the Gospel Ministry on January 1, 1986. In 2008, the author received his Master of Biblical Studies degree from Gulf Coast Baptist Bible Institute & Seminary in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. David has been in his current pastorate at Solid Rock Baptist Church in Bartlett, Tennessee, since 2002.

INTRODUCTION

T his study will examine what the scriptures have to say about the eternal security of the believer. Just what is eternal security? It is the teaching that when a person comes to Jesus Christ for salvation and receives Him by faith as their personal Savior, God forgives them of all their sins (past, present, and future)—and from that point onward they are SAVED FOREVER. Ankerberg and Weldon state that God’s born-again children "possess eternal life at the instant we place our trust in Jesus Christ. Eternal life began at the moment of saving faith and continues forever throughout eternity." ¹ Dr. Charles C. Ryrie, well-known author and longtime professor of systematic theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, proposed this definition: Eternal security is that work of God which guarantees that the gift of salvation, once received, is possessed forever and cannot be lost. ² The founder of what is today Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, wrote that there is no Scripture, when rightly divided and related to the whole testimony of God, that teaches that a Christian may be lost. Nor is there any example in the Bible. ³ I wholeheartedly agree.

Unfortunately, controversy surrounds this particular doctrine. The question of whether a Christian, that is a born-again believer, can lose their salvation, has been debated for centuries. There is much strong disagreement among good men and women of faith on this topic. The answer to the question Can a person who has trusted Jesus Christ as personal Savior, once saved, be lost again? is either yes or no. Dr. Chafer says, There is no middle position; both answers cannot be true at the same time. Either a person is saved or lost; and if saved, a Christian is either eternally secure or not.

At the outset, we ought to distinguish between salvation, eternal security, and the assurance of salvation. Salvation is obtained by receiving Christ as Savior (John 1:12) and trusting in His redemptive work on the Cross in our behalf to freely forgive us our sins and freely give us eternal life (Romans 5:8; Romans 6:23). Assurance of salvation is the personal confidence a believer has in knowing that they are saved, forgiven, justified, redeemed, and so on (i.e., simply put, we know we are saved and going to heaven when we die, because of what Jesus did for us on the Cross and in our hearts [1 John 5:10–13]). But eternal security is the teaching that Christians are once saved, always saved. And even if a truly saved person doesn’t accept that doctrine, if it is true (which we have no doubt about), then it doesn’t matter what you think or how you feel; the fact is that if you’ve trusted Christ as Savior, you were saved at that moment, you’ve been saved ever since, you’re saved now, and you will be saved in the future and on into eternity. What a blessing that is! As Fanny Crosby said it in song: Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Among the criticisms those of the Baptist faith receive, probably no doctrine held by our faith tradition is called into question more than our staunch belief in the eternal security of the believer. It has been called a "blessed doctrine by men like Charles Spurgeon and an accursed doctrine by men like Jimmy Swaggart (equating the teaching of once saved, always saved [OSAS] with a perversion of the Gospel, by misapplying the apostle Paul’s condemnation of a false gospel in Galatians 1:8, 9, and alluding to Simon Peter’s censure of heresies in 2 Peter 2:1 as damnable," as translated in the King James Version).

The Roman Catholic Church in essence calls it the "sin of presumption. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Presumption is here considered as a vice. … It may also be regarded as a product of pride. It may be defined as the condition of a soul which, because of a badly regulated reliance on God’s mercy and power, hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it."⁴ In their system, to state it plainly, they teach that you are anathema and will go to hell for believing that you can know you are saved. To one Roman Catholic apologist,

Salvation is not guaranteed. … Many fundamentalist denominations profess that Christ actually promised that Heaven is theirs in exchange for a remarkably simple act; they are only required at one point in their lives, to ‘accept Jesus as their personal Savior.’ … living well is not crucial and it does not affect their salvation. … Christ has redeemed us, but this is not a guarantee of salvation; it is just a necessary prelude. Jesus did His part, now we have to do ours. … Fundamentalist teaching is that God ‘covers’ our sins so we can be saved, even with those sins on our souls. In his booklet called There is Therefore Now No Condemnation, Wilson Erwin writes: ‘ … the person who places his faith in Jesus Christ and His Blood shed at Calvary is eternally secure. He can never lose his salvation.’ This is the purest form of fundamentalist teaching, but is in direct confrontation with the teaching of the … Catholic Church!"⁵

Evangelical Christians who deny the doctrine of eternal security, most of whom reject Roman Catholicism, find themselves in agreement with the Catholic Church on this point. This statement by an evangelical Mennonite writer is typical: Nowhere does the Bible suggest that a person who one time believed in Christ is … assured of final salvation.⁶

Those who accept the teaching of eternal security, and believe the Scriptures clearly teach it, have been maligned as people who promote a careless lifestyle and imply that Christians have a license to sin because they believe in once saved, always saved. The nineteenth century American evangelist Charles G. Finney said that if this doctrine inspires any man to commit sin, it only shows that he never did repent; he only pretended to repent.⁷ Those who reject the doctrine of eternal security believe that a Christian can lose their salvation through careless living. Some call it conditional eternal security,⁸ which is no security at all.

Proponents of eternal security have typically been referred to as Calvinists and its opponents called Arminians. This goes back to the Council of Dort in 1609. According to the accepted definitions, the Calvinist believes in salvation by grace and once saved, always saved, whereas the Arminian believes in salvation by grace but that one can fall from grace and lose salvation if one does not live right. The Calvinist believes saved by grace, kept by faith. The Arminian believes "saved by grace, kept by faith and works."

The doctrine of eternal security is one of the five particular tenets Baptists embrace that mark them as Baptists, known as the Baptist distinctives, the other four being the absolute separation of church and state; believer’s baptism (by immersion); a regenerated church membership; and the priesthood of the believer. [It should be mentioned that among the Baptists there is one group that rejects eternal security and believes that a Christian can lose their salvation, and that is the Freewill Baptists.]

Just because a person is