Focus Passage: Galatians 5:18

‘But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.’

This verse under our consideration this week is parallel in many ways to the teaching of the same apostle found in his letter to the Christians in Rome, and at the beginning of the eighth chapter, we read these words of Paul:

God, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. —Romans 8:3-4

There is a pernicious teaching that has been abroad for many years now. And like many false teachings, it has a plausible basis in truth while harboring a dangerous poison at its heart. Books have been written to defend ‘Eternal Security’ against the error of Arminianism that claims that a Christian can lose his or her salvation. This is taught in the face of the Word of God, and the Christ of God, who has told us plainly, in the assertion of John 10:27-29, that;

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who hath given them unto me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

Pseudo-Calvinists have taken their pens to oppose the Arminian error that one that has been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ can subsequently lose that salvation. This is a logical understanding for those that believe and teach a works salvation; that teach that man has the ability, in himself, apart from God, to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. If one’s salvation is founded upon their decision to come to Christ, it makes logical sense that they could, at a later point in time, make a decision to go back from Christ; does it not? Yet, sadly, as in many cases, in rightly defending against one error, another error is embraced.

There are those in many fundamental churches that have been taught the doctrine of ‘eternal security.’ One of the teachers of this doctrine has written a book under that very title, Eternal Security. His teaching, and his nomenclature, his choice of this term, taken by itself, is accurate. Those whom God has chosen to save are eternally secure. In the face of Arminian teaching, they will never perish. Nevertheless, the writer in question, and many like him have corrupted the Bible’s teaching of this precious doctrine: the perseverance and preservation of the saints.

This terminology is that which was employed centuries ago by the framers of the London Baptist Confession of Faith. The preservation and perseverance of the saints is not dependent upon themselves, but upon God’s covenant faithfulness. He has promised, in Jeremiah 31:33, not that He will enable His chosen to come down the aisle and make a decision for Christ, but that He will put His law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts. These, He has said, will be His people. And Paul reminds us, in Philippians 1:6, that ‘He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.’ Hopefully, the joint activity made clear in the union of perseverance with preservation, brings to the reader’s memory such a passage as Philippians 2:12-13, where Paul joins the believer’s responsibility with God’s sovereign activity, when he has exhorted us to:

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling: for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.

It is the saints responsibility to ‘work’ while it is only saving as God ‘works.’ This is pointedly taught by the same apostle in Ephesians 2:8-10. Many false teachers are guilty of citing this passage without the 10th verse, for it does not serve them.

For by grace have ye been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.

This, as we might well expect, corresponds perfectly with Paul’s teaching to those in Rome. Many there are who love Romans 8:28. It is undoubtedly one of the most popular verses in the Scriptures. ‘And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good.’ Even as so many popular television preachers will deliberately excise Paul’s statement about ‘good works’ from the Ephesians 2 passage, so do they seemingly ignore the truth that them that love God for whom all things work together for good, have been, in the very next verse, foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son.

This error, if not heresy, of Charles Stanley and his ilk, is at least twofold in his book Eternal Security. His teaching, and that received by many of his dupes, is in fact, ‘once saved, always saved,’ with the assumed ‘no matter what!’ When he says, ‘no matter what,’ he includes not only the absence of any fruit unto good works, but even faith. He says that a ‘believer’ can stop believing; can repudiate his ‘belief,’ and yet, because he has once ‘accepted Jesus,’ he will still be saved. He goes so far as to say; to offset those that would ask ‘why then do good works?’ that these works will gain them a better place in the kingdom. So while he seems to oppose meritorious works at first sight, he posits merit to them at last. His defense of his views is that the grace of God, based upon the love of God, trumps the sins of the believer, even his unbelief, in the final analysis, so that he can say with all fervor, ‘once saved, always saved,’ at the expense of the holiness of the Holy One of Israel. The love of God and the holiness of God shall never be divided. Yet the love of God is a Holy love. Primacy is given, in the Scriptures, to the holiness of God. We most surely read in John’s first epistle that God is love, yet we read, in both testaments of threefold holiness, holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts, Isaiah 6, and Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty, Revelation 4. Stanley should perhaps have titled his book ‘Carnal Security.’ This would be more consistent.

David Farmer, elder

Fellowship Bible Church