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IS YOUR SALVATION LOCKED IN, OR ARE YOU LOCKED IN?

It has one of the most recognizable pop-music openings in history, and then at the close, a long, classic guitar solo that goes for a couple of minutes. In a recent national tour, Don Henley did the song again, but had four trombonists play the closing solo medley with its rather inventive slide triplets. Very interesting . . . and what a lot of memories. Probably a good number of you can easily “name that tune” if I give you the opening line: “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair.” Of course it’s “Welcome to the Hotel California. Such a lovely place, Such a lovely face. Plenty of room at the Hotel California. Any time of year, you can find it here.”

It almost sounds like a gospel song, also from long ago: “Plenty of room in My Father’s house.” And you know, as we’ve been studying and praying together these past two-and-a-half weeks about the Bible topic of justification, it’s been good news that there is plenty of room in God’s hotel. Californians are welcome there, and so are the rest of this planet’s travel-weary citizens.

I suppose if I were to summarize where we’ve arrived to in our discussion so far, we’d say it this way: “Salvation is free. Salvation is instant. Salvation is eternal. The Hotel California is there for you, and you don’t ever have to leave.” Most evangelical Christians would say: “Once Saved Always Saved.” Once you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have a luxury suite at the hotel, and no one can ever kick you out, drag you out to the parking lot and make you leave.

Let me share again a paragraph from this very interesting resource book on the topic of justification; it’s written by John Ankerberg and John Weldon, two well-known Christian apologists. And you know, they must have visited the Hotel California themselves, because the word “irrevocable” continues to crop up in their description of salvation. Notice:

“God’s justification,” they write, “takes place at the point of time at which a man believes. It is a once-for-all divine act, God’s final judgment, brought into the present.” Now listen to this: “Once passed, God’s justifying sentence about the sinner is irrevocable. To say God justifies is to say God has issued a verdict of acquittal concerning the sinner. It is a legal pronouncement that forever excludes the sinner from receiving any punishment for the sins he has committed during his lifetime.”

The Bible affirms this truth in many places; it takes Jesus Himself only seven words to say the same thing in John 3:18:

“Whoever believes in Him” — Jesus is referring to Himself here, the Son of God — “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned.”

The crux of the Protestant position, then, is this: if and when a person honestly and truthfully does accept Calvary as his or her only salvation, and begins a genuine faith relationship with Jesus at that point . . . they are saved. They have it then — at that moment. And — we studied this yesterday — since we are receiving salvation from a loving Jesus whose mercy is unlimited and whose mind never changes, that salvation is irrevocable. It can’t be taken away. Which is why these two earnest Christian writers, Ankerberg and Weldon, keep using the word “irrevocable.” Here’s another line from the same book:

“The Bible teaches that any person who simply and truly believes in Jesus Christ as his or her personal Savior from sin is at that moment irrevocably and eternally justified.”

Well, friend, this is good news. As an evangelical Protestant Christian, I want to embrace it. I’m sure you noticed, though, that our radio series title is this: ONCE SAVED, ALMOST ALWAYS SAVED. Why is that fifth word inserted there?

I guess most of us who have been in the Christian community have been troubled by this question. We read that salvation is eternal and irrevocable. And yet we can all think of people who, at one point in their lives, appeared to be the most sincere of Christians. I mean, they were there! They were reading the Word of God, they were in church, they were praying, they were witnessing. And then, years later, you either saw it happen or you heard about it. But that certain friend is gone. Their light has gone out; at least it appears that way. They are not walking with the Lord; they aren’t in the community of believers, they don’t read or study or pray, they talk openly about their Christian experience being a former thing for them. By all accounts, by all appearances, what they had with Jesus Christ is a thing of the past.

And if we completely believe in “Once Saved Always Saved,” we have only two conclusions we can fall back on. One: that despite their apparent rejection now of the Christian message, despite the fact that they are living in open dis-fellowship with Christ, in distinct separation from Him . . . God is going to still save them in His kingdom. Or stick them in His kingdom. Even if they are living in all of the openly rebellious sinful lifestyles that the Bible clearly says will not be in the kingdom. Even if they expressly say: “I will not have this Man as my Savior any longer.” Some Christians teach that God’s promise of “irrevocable” means that they will still be in what is now for them an alien kingdom called heaven.

Well, that’s Option One. Option two, regarding this person who once appeared to walk closely with Jesus Christ, and now is plainly not doing so, is for the rest of the Body of Christ to surmise: “Apparently the original faith experience was not real. We thought they were in relationship, but apparently not. We thought there was faith, but apparently not. We thought they had fully accepted Calvary, but apparently not.” We think of Judas as a prime example of this.

And of course, many sinners talk this way to themselves about themselves. “I thought I was saved, but you know, I’m rather lazy and I don’t spend time with Jesus. And I’m not really living the way the Bible says I should. So maybe I don’t have faith. Maybe I never did.” And what happens here is that instead of “Once Saved Always Saved” bringing a person assurance, it takes it away. Because how much faith is enough faith? If it dips just a little bit here in 2003, does that mean that your original experience back in 1973 was fake and not real? You see the dilemma.

So what does it all mean? Ironically, I think the answer actually lies in the lyrics to “Hotel California.” You remember that this person driving along sees this place to stay.

“Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim. I had to stop for the night. There she stood in the doorway; I heard the mission bell. And I was thinking to myself, ‘This could be Heaven or this could be Hell.’”

And at the end of the experience, this visitor finds out that he doesn’t really want to stay at the Hotel California. Even if there’s pink champagne on ice. Because “we are all prisoners here, of our own device.” But when he runs for the door, trying to find the passage back to the place he was before, he meets someone who says he has to stay. His visit there is irrevocable.

“‘Relax,’ said the night man, ‘We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like. BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE.’”

And after those chilling words, the guitar begins to play. But friend, it’s not playing the chorus of heaven, because — listen to me here — we serve a God who believes in free will. God does not force people to be saved. God does not force people to be His friends. God does not force people to stay in a heaven they no longer wish to have as their permanent address.

And do you know something? These two great writers who teach and believe in “Once Saved Always Saved” as the classic Protestant position, then admit that the great Reformer himself, Martin Luther, believed instead in “Once Saved Almost Always Saved.”

“We should point out,” they write, “that although Luther agreed that the merits of Christ were the sole basis of a man’s justification, and that it did not depend in any way on a man’s deeds, Luther still thought that a man could lose his justification if he totally and finally turned away from Christ.”

I don’t know if “lose” is really the right word to use here; perhaps “give it back” would be better. But they finish the thought this way, and I agree with their conclusion:

“Since God’s gift of forgiveness of sins and eternal life was appropriated by faith, if a man decided not to rest his eternal destiny in Christ, and totally turned against Him, Luther believed that only then would a man lose his salvation. In other words, the only sin that Luther thought would cause a man to lose his salvation was the sin of unrepentant apostasy.”

That’s a sad, sad picture, isn’t it . . . and yet one which preserves the priceless divine gift of free will. “You can check out any time, but you can never leave”? Friend, God will never hold you and me as moral prisoners in a heaven we don’t want. The gift is secure and eternal and instant and irrevocable on His side, but on our side, we always have a choice. The door to heaven is always open . . . going both ways.