The author of Hebrews writes like a pastor, mixing encouragement with exhortation and wise warnings. Many of us were raised hearing the phrase, “Once saved, always saved!” Precisely what does that proposition mean and how do passages like Hebrews 6 reconcile with it? Join Pastor Jim as he helps us unpack its meaning in light of the sovereign grace of God and the consistent message of the Gospel from the rest of scripture.
“The gospel is one indivisible whole. You believe it all, or nothing. To profess to have believed the gospel, and then subsequently to refuse, deliberately and persistently, to make progress in the path of holiness and to enter into the great inheritance stored up for us in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus is very serious. It would cast grave doubts on whether we had ever really believed the gospel at all.”
David Gooding, An Unshakeable Kingdom
“They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”
1 John 2:19
“The doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints has as its corollary the salutary teaching that saints are the people who persevere to the end.”
F. F. Bruce
“We depend for our salvation not on our love for God but his love for us, not on our commitment to him but his pledge to us, not on our hold on him but his grasp of us.”
Raymond Brown
“Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love
Take my heart, O take and seal it
Seal it for thy courts above.”Robert Robinson (1735-1790)
“Even here, in your repentance, you must not only turn from temptation and sin but also turn to Christ. He is the one who both preserves the tempted and restores the fallen. So wherever you are in respect to temptation and sin, seek Christ.”
Brian G. Hedges, Watchfulness
