What is eternal security?
Reading Time: 6 minutesWhat is eternal security? Can we lose our salvation? No! is the emphatic answer.
Can salvation be lost?
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07019. Can you lose your salvation? I do not believe you can, and I want to give you the reasons rather than simply the conclusion, because this question deserves better than a slogan. It is asked by frightened people far more often than by curious ones, and a frightened person needs argument, not reassurance…
What is justification?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07014. Justification is the moment a guilty sinner is declared righteous by God, and I want to be precise about that word declared, because everything hangs on it. God does not pretend that we are better than we are, and he does not wait until we have improved enough to deserve the verdict. He…
What is the sin unto death in 1 John 5:16-17?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07009. The sin unto death in 1 John 5:16-17 is one of those phrases that people trip over at the very end of a letter otherwise full of comfort, and it stops them dead. John has spent five chapters telling his readers how they may know that they have eternal life, and then, almost…
What does Hebrews 6:4-6 teach about falling away?
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07008. Hebrews 6:4-6 is the passage people reach for when they want to argue that a genuine believer can be lost, and the language about falling away is undeniably severe. I am not going to pretend otherwise, and I have no patience with treatments that wave the difficulty away. If you have been troubled…
What is the unforgivable sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit)?
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07006. Few passages have caused more private agony than the one about the unforgivable sin, and I have lost count of the number of believers who have come to me convinced that they have committed it. They are almost always the last people on earth who could have done so, and I want to…
What is the difference between saving faith and intellectual belief?
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 07005. The difference between saving faith and intellectual belief is one of the most practically urgent distinctions in the whole of Scripture, and it is one that a great many church attenders have never had explained to them. A person can hold every article of the Christian faith to be true, defend it in…
What if I don’t feel saved?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07004. If you have ever gone to bed at night troubled because you do not feel saved, you are in far larger company than you imagine. I have sat with believers who could explain the gospel more clearly than I could, who loved their Bibles, who served their church week after week, and who…
Can someone be saved and not know it?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7003. Can a person be saved and have a lack of assurance about it? Yes, and that is not the same thing as a lack of salvation. Many genuine believers have lived for long stretches without the settled confidence that they belonged to God. This question usually arrives from someone in real distress, so…
What are the biblical evidences of genuine salvation?
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 7002. Genuine salvation leaves marks. Scripture says so plainly, and the first letter of John was written largely to describe them so that believers could know where they stood. I want to handle this carefully, because the same evidences that steady a careless person can crush a sensitive one. So before the marks of…