P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

CAN GOD PUT A STOP-PAYMENT ON THE CHECK?

I remember a number of years ago when one of our staff people here where we do our Christian TV and radio work got a phone call right out of the blue. And the man calling in said to our employee: “Say, fella, I like the sound of what you all are doing there on the TV. I like it a lot.”

Oh. Well, thanks very much.

“No problem. Listen, I just happen to have me a little bit of cash lying around . . . could you use a contribution?” Well, most of us don’t hesitate when an offer like that comes across the transom. “You bet,” he told him. “We certainly could use your help.”

As it turns out, this person on the telephone was — he said — a fairly well-known vintner . . . meaning he owned some wine vineyards. And in his Napa-Valley-country accent, he said he was just going to go down to the bank that very day and hustle off in the mail a check for $60,000. And everyone around here rejoiced and began to make merry with our own non-alcoholic Martinelli’s. But the days went by and the check never arrived, and when people tried to call 1-707-555-1212 to track down this person, he just didn’t seem to even exist anymore. To this day, I don’t know if someone was simply pulling our leg, or squeezing our grapes, or what kind of hoax it was. But the guy with the $60,000 never came through. He had apparently changed his mind.

And maybe Christians — both novice and veteran — feel like they’re in the same boat. We fall on our knees at the foot of the Cross and we accept Jesus’ sacrifice for us. We pray the sinner’s prayer. We cling to the promise found in Acts 16:31:

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

Which is a promise worth a whole lot more than $60,000, believe me. And as we studied yesterday, when a person has made that choice for the Lord, they “pass over from death to life.” That’s John 5:24, a fabulous promise right from Christ Himself. At that moment a person is saved. The check for $60,000 is in their hand.

But then we get to this question of “Once Saved Always Saved.” Or, as our series title very disturbingly suggests, ONCE SAVED, ALMOST ALWAYS SAVED. Can the deal go sour? Can Jesus do a stop-payment on the check? Probably the most worrisome scenario is this: Will He look at our behavior, our performance, our low level of obedience, and say to us: “Give that back. I’ve changed My mind. You don’t deserve salvation . . . not the way you’re acting. So you’ve just passed over from death to life and now back to death again”?

We’ve been exploring this issue through a good scholarly book which dissects the interpretations of “justification” held today by Protestant and Catholic churches. Authors John Ankerberg and John Weldon explain to us the concept of “forensic justification” like this:

“An act that God does outside of man. It is the judicial pronouncement of God about a sinful man that, as a result of placing faith in Christ, he now stands before God having been given the status of justness.”

Yesterday we kind of used sound effects here on the radio, as in . . . Boom! “You’ve got it!” You say yes to Jesus, and friend, you are saved right at that moment. Based on Calvary, and based upon your acceptance of Him in a genuine faith relationship, He gives you, on the spot, salvation. $60,000. Or sixty billion is more like it.

And yet Catholics and Protestants alike struggle mightily with the question of whether or not that gift is going to last. Is it revocable? Can it be taken away or forfeited?

I don’t put this next point on the table to trouble our friends in the Catholic community, because we wrestle with it on our side of the aisle as well. But here’s a quote about it all, from these same writers:

“Catholicism teaches that justification can be increased, lost through mortal sin, or regained.” A bit later in the book, they point out: “For Catholicism a man can lose his justification, which means he can never be certain he will someday be in heaven.”

Tomorrow — brace yourself — I’m going to quote for you the lyrics to the most famous song by the rock group, the Eagles, entitled Hotel California, and then discuss why the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther also believed that a person could lose that salvation, and have that $60,000 check evaporate on them. Join us for sure as we get to that. But here in the teachings of a great world religion, we find the suggestion that you can have salvation, and then have it taken away. Here’s the statement from the Council of Trent, and again, friend — please — this is just for the purpose of our understanding this vital doctrine. Protestants have to prayerfully work their way through this too. But here’s the statement:

“Those who through sin” — that would be serious, or mortal, sin — “have forfeited the received grace of justification, can again be justified when, moved by God, they exert themselves to obtain through the Sacrament of Penance the recovery, by the merits of Christ, of the grace lost.”

Now, these two writers, being staunch Protestants, raise their hands in protest. “No, no, no!” Losing salvation, and then getting it back by penance? And they counter with this:

“Historically, the Protestant Reformers argued that since a man’s justification depended solely on God’s never-ending favor and Christ’s meritorious life and atoning death — and not upon anything which a man can do — a person could not lose his justification before God. Since Christ has already successfully lived a perfect life and died to pay for all of man’s sins, nothing will ever change this fact.”

Essentially, they’re saying this: it’s out of our hands. If you accept Jesus Christ, and express your faith in Him, He gives you salvation. Since He never runs out of salvation, and since salvation isn’t based on your good deeds, your own merits, and since He never changes His mind . . . how could you possibly be deprived of it again? There are no variables in the algebra equation that could ever change. Everything is fixed. Here’s how they finish the thought:

“Christ is the unchanging basis of a man’s justification. Therefore, once a person believed in Christ, he was entirely and eternally secure. In essence, because salvation was a gift from God based solely on Christ’s atoning death, the number of good or bad deeds in a person’s life would never change a person’s perfect standing before God.”

It reminds me of that old Abe Lincoln story about the Union soldier who, from how I remember it, had been caught sleeping on his sentry duty. Which was a capital offense back then. Death by firing squad. It was sometimes frustrating to the Northern Army’s lieutenants and generals that soft-hearted Commander-in-Chief Lincoln had a bad habit of pardoning these guilty soldiers, but a teary-eyed mother, maybe knowing about the president’s kind heart, went to the White House and pled for her son’s life. So the story goes, the president got out a piece of paper and wrote on it: “Private so-and-so is not to be shot until further orders from me. Signed: A. Lincoln.”

Well, the mother took the note, but with some reluctance. “Until further orders from me”? What if those orders should come a week later? Or a year? What kind of assurance was this? What if Lincoln had a case of heartburn some night and changed his mind? So she got up her courage to ask him.

And Mr. Abraham Lincoln said to her, very gently, “Ma’am, if your son lives until those further orders come from me, he will survive to be a good deal older than Methuselah.” In other words, he had been given the gift of life from a man who did not run out of presidential mercy, and who also did not change his mind, who did not waver. Meaning that if the person dispensing grace has lots of it, and never changes his mind about giving you some . . . well, you’re in good shape then. How can you lose?

The Bible seems to be telling us that from God’s side of the relationship, salvation is instantaneous. “You have crossed over from death to life.” It is eternal, because God never changes His mind. It is full and free because God’s mercy is unlimited. I like how the new paraphrase, The Message, breathes new life into this great passage from Titus chapter three:

“It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin,” Paul writes, “ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, He saved us from all that. It was all His doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with Him and given us back our lives.” And notice this grand conclusion: “And there’s more life to come — an eternity of life! You can count on this.”

From God’s side, it’s instant. It’s eternal. It’s unlimited. And we can count on it.
But what about from our side? Just one question remains from the banquet room of the Hotel California: Can we ever leave?