The grass that fades away vs. the Word of God that lasts forever.  What lasts forever?  The Word of God which was preached to us.  So if you receive and believe the Word, you receive the incorruptible seed that lasts forever – eternal life.

Show me in these verses where it is possible for a person to lose their salvation.  Is it possible for a person to lose the new birth?  If it is, then it’s not incorruptible and it’s not eternal life either – it’s temporary.  It is possible for me to lose my first birth.  When I die I’ll lose that life I had as a result of my first birth proving that it was corruptible.  But I can’t lose my second birth because Jesus gave it to me and only He can take it away.

There would be a lot more peace in the church if Christians learned to frame questions biblically.  What I mean is when you pose the question as to whether a Christian can lose his salvation, those for and against line up and debate the question as it is posed.  But salvation is not a personal possession of ours, like car keys, which can be misplaced by us.

The way the question is usually asked, we wonder if a Christian can lose his salvation, which is the same thing as asking whether a Christian can lose Christ. Some say “yes” and others say “no.”  But the more biblical way to ask it is “Can Christ lose a Christian?”  You see the Bible says that Christians are those who are redeemed or purchased for God thru the blood of Christ.  We have been bought with a price.  Now if someone, so purchased, ends up in Hell, then who has lost that person’s salvation?

Christians cannot lose their salvation for the simple reason that their salvation doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to Christ. If anyone is to lose it, it must be Jesus. And He has promised not too.

In salvation, Christ doesn’t become our property; we become His.  So we must remember that all the saving is done by Him.  Those who want to maintain that salvation can be lost are really saying that He (Jesus) is the one who loses it.   

It really boils down to the difference between grace and works.  To assert that a person can lose his salvation through what he does or doesn’t do is to assert salvation by works.

Some churches today preach a conversion experience by grace but you have to keep yourself saved by works.  They start with the Spirit, but turn to the flesh.  Galatians 3:3 (NKJV)“Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?”

There are those today who teach that by committing certain sins you can place yourself outside of Christ.  Let’s say you committed one of those sins and then not long after you were killed in a car wreck?  Where would you go?  Those who teach that would say you go to hell because you sinned and a holy God cannot look upon sin.  And that person’s salvation, or lack of it, was up to whom?  Salvation was up to them.  It was up to the person.  Those people who believe this think their salvation is riding on a roulette wheel everyday.  If you die tonight, you go to heaven.  If you die Saturday night, it’s off to hell.  Sunday night, you’re on your way to heaven again.

This is clearly salvation by works and it produces two kinds of people.  One group is confident in their own righteousness (but they have watered down the righteous standards of God in order to delude themselves this way).  The other group is comprised of sincere people, who, because they are honest, realize that they are under condemnation.

Those that teach this aren’t teaching the gospel.  If someone teaches that a person can do a work that can get them saved, or keep them saved, or blow their salvation away – that’s not the gospel.  It’s works.  But the one who believes you can lose your salvation may come back and say, “OK, but what keeps you from saying because you are saved by grace, you can go out and sin up a storm?”

Well, first of all, having to answer that question places me in good company.  The apostle Paul had to answer the same objection in Romans 6 against those who objected to his message of grace.  Secondly, the answer is the one Paul give in that passage.  Recipients of grace do not get to decide to receive forgiveness grace, while refusing death-to-sin grace.  How shall we who died to sin, still live in it?

Look at Ephesians 2:8-10.  Good works – if you are truly saved, the result will be good works not living like the devil.  Those who are His workmanship do not abuse the grace of God.

Finally, a look at 1 Peter 1:3-9 states it very clearly: