15^th Sunday after Pentecost                                                            September 21, 2003

Text: Romans 8:1-3                                                                  St. Paul Lutheran Church

Title: “Our Life In Christ.”                                                              Rev. Randy Emmons

            Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen. Our text for this morning’s meditation is taken from the 8^th chapter of Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans where we read in verses 1 to 3:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.   For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to a sin offering.”

Dear friends in Christ: There’s an old adage that says “you are what you eat.”   And while most of us understand the meaning behind that statement, it’s obviously an exaggeration because if that were true, my youngest son would now be a bowl of macaroni and cheese.   I once saw a commercial that was selling some breakfast bar that was supposed to be good for you (my guess is it probably tasted like cardboard), and during the commercial they tried to emphasis the idea that you are what you eat and they way they did it was by having a woman eat a doughnut and then all of a sudden a huge doughnut appeared around the woman’s waist and she was inside the doughnut. Then they showed a man eating a pastry of some sort and then all of a sudden the man was wearing this giant pastry outfit and he was literally inside the pastry.   It was an interesting marketing ploy.

Now the reason I tell you this is because in our Epistle lesson from Romans, Saint Paul makes it clear that there are amazing blessings associated with the idea of being in Christ Jesus.   And one of the primary blessings is the reality that there is no condemnation for anyone who is in Christ; if you are in Christ, then all your sins are forgiven; additionally; being in Christ means that you have been set free from the law of sin and death.   That’s great news for sinners like you and me because the truth is we are all selfish sinners who stand condemned before a Holy God.   That means that the only hope that we have for avoiding an eternity of everlasting punishment in hell when we die is for us to be in Christ Jesus, and we are in Christ Jesus, by faith; when we trust and believe that He is indeed the Son of God who died for our sins, then whether it feels like it or not, we are in Him.   Now I don’t want you to miss the importance of that statement. When Jesus calls you to come to Him by faith, the result is that as incredible as it might sound - you are now in Jesus and that reality is what a lot of people miss.

One of the differences between the Lutheran faith and many other denominations in our country has to do with an issue called “Eternal Security” or “Once Saved Always Saved.”   If you’re not familiar with it, this is a teaching that says that once you become a Christian, once you give your life to Christ, assuming you were completely sincere and you really meant it, then no matter what you might think later and no matter what you might believe for the rest of your life, that’s okay because you’re still going to heaven.   Your eternal salvation is secure.

There’s a man named Charles Stanley who is very famous; you can see him on television almost any Sunday morning preaching to huge crowds of people.   He wrote a book entitled “Eternal Security” and in that book Stanley claims that salvation is like getting a tattoo. Stanley says; “A person may detest it the moment after they receive it, and yet its permanence is assured regardless of that person’s attitude toward it.”   That point of view is typical of a lot of people who hold a “Once Saved Always Saved” point of view.   But think about that.   They’ve just created an interesting group of people.   It is now possible to have people who can honestly be called saved-unbelievers or unbelieving-Christians. 

Obviously as Lutherans, we would say that position is wrong, but why do so many people teach this point of view?   Well a large part of the issue has to do with the arguments that are used to support this teaching.   When you talk to someone who holds this “Once Saved Always Saved” point of view, they will usually give you a series of logical arguments that sure seem to make good sense.   Let me give you some of their arguments and I want you to think about how you might answer them.

1. St. Paul teaches that collectively speaking, all Christians make up the Body of Christ.   Well if that’s true, then if you could remove someone from the body then Christ’s body could be maimed - it would be incomplete. Therefore God would never allow that to happen.   If someone were ever part of the Body of Christ, then they will always be a part of the body of Christ.
2. When someone becomes a child of God, then no matter what happens, they can’t stop being God’s child.   An analogy would be to consider your own parents.   No matter where you go, no matter what you do or say, no matter what you might think or believe, you cannot cease to be the child of your parents.   That parent/child reality simply cannot be changed and that’s the way it works with God and His children.
3. If someone has been born again by faith in Christ, then they can’t become unborn. When people try to teach that a Christian could loose their salvation they’re teaching that born again Christians can become unborn and that’s impossible.
4. Jesus promises Eternal Life as a present possession or a present reality. Now think about the phrase ‘Eternal Life.’   If a Christian could later lose it, then it wasn’t ‘Eternal Life’ it was ‘Temporary Life.’   But God never calls it temporary life; He always calls it eternal life.

Those are some of the arguments you will encounter – but keep those arguments and how you would answer them in the back of your mind; we’ll come back to them.   Earlier I mentioned that when Jesus calls you to come to Him by faith, as incredible as it might sound, you are in Jesus and that reality is what a lot of people miss, especially many of the people who teach the doctrine of “Once Saved Always Saved.”   Let me try to explain what I mean.   The Bible specifically teaches that all of the benefits of salvation belong to us in Christ.   It’s also clear that no one possesses any of the benefits of salvation in abstraction and yet that’s how many groups treat them.   They talk as though the benefits of salvation are things that the individual simply possesses.

But that’s the problem because Scripture never talks that way.   Forgiveness of sins, eternal life, salvation, these aren’t things that God gives you and you put in your pocket, they aren’t things that get stamped on you like a tattoo.   These are concrete things that belong to everyone in Christ.   We should never refer to them as though they were ours by right; we must always remember that these blessings are ours by virtue of being in Christ.   Ephesians 1:3 says that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing “in Christ.”   Ephesians 1:4 says that we are elect “in Christ.”   Ephesians 1:7 says we have redemption “in Christ.”  Ephesians 1:11 says we were chosen “in Christ.”   1 Corinthians 1:30 says that if we are “in Christ” then Christ has become our wisdom, our righteousness, our holiness and our redemption.   Ephesians 2:5 says that we are made alive “in Christ” and we have been raised up and seated in the heavenly realms “with Christ.”   Even our reading for today from Romans 8:1 says that there is no condemnation for those “in Christ.”

I hope you see the point, because that’s a big part of what I think gets missed.   The benefits of salvation are not an ‘it’ that we possess.   They are not ‘things’ that God has given us that we possess as our own.   Everything that we possess is ours because we have been joined to Christ by faith.   Forgiveness of sins is not a thing that we possess; rather it is what we possess in Jesus Christ.   Even our righteousness has not been imparted, infused or engrafted into us; it is accounted or considered to be ours solely because we are in Christ and that by faith.

If we’re not in Christ, then we’re in trouble. On our own we deserve nothing but death and punishment!   My friends, we sin and we sin constantly and that’s not just some abstract concept either. If you’re not in Christ, then you’re like the people at the time of Noah who refused to get in the ark.   When the wrath of God comes raining down you have absolutely no hope.   However, if you’re in Christ, then you’re like the people in the ark.   Neither height, nor depth nor wind nor rain nor any wave could touch those people who were in the Ark.   In 1 Peter chapter 3, God makes a direct connection between the people who were saved in the Ark and the salvation we have in Christ.   In the same way that God promised that the Ark would never sink no matter rough the seas got. God promises that if you are in Christ you will live and there is no thing and no one who can touch you.   If you follow that analogy through, it’s pretty clear that the one thing you don’t want to do is get out of the boat!

So what about those arguments we mentioned earlier that the “Once Saved Always Saved” groups try to use?   Well, let’s think about them.   The first argument was that if a Christian were engrafted into the body of Christ and then later removed, then the body of Christ would be incomplete, it would be maimed.   The problem with this argument is that Scripture simply does not teach that Jesus is complete in us as this argument is trying to imply; rather the exact opposite is true.   Colossians 2:10 makes it clear that we are complete in Him, not the other way round.

Well, what about the argument that says that if you are a child of God, then no matter what happens you cannot cease to be a child of God.   The problem with this argument is that it’s trying to make an absolute connection between a physical relationship and a spiritual relationship.   Don’t get the wrong idea, there are indeed some wonderful connections between a father and a son that the Bible uses, but if you push these connections too far you’ll end up in trouble.

Listen to what Jesus says to the Jews in John 8:44 “You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.”   In Ephesians 2:1-3 Paul is talking to current believers but he says that they use to be children of disobedience.   If it’s true that a spiritual relationship simply cannot be broken, then we would have to say that a child of the devil must always remain a child of the devil; but we know that’s not true.   And besides, what are you going to do with Adam who was once a child of God, he sinned and died spiritually and was separated from God and then Adam was later saved because he believed the promise of God for a coming Savior?   I hope you see the point.   The argument that says “once a child of God always a child of God” is an analogy that has been pushed too far and is simply an invalid argument.

Okay, what about the argument that says that if you’re born again, you can’t become unborn?   The problem here is in thinking that if you’re born again you’ll become unborn if you deny Christ, but that’s not what happens.   If someone denies Christ and turns from the faith, they don’t become unborn, he or she spiritually dies!   Before Christ called us, we were all spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins, apostasy from the faith returns us to that state of spiritual death.

Well what about this last argument?   That’s the one where Jesus promises Eternal Life as a present possession or a present reality.   The “Once Saved Always Saved” argument says that if you could lose it, then it wasn’t eternal life it was temporary life.   This is the argument that I probably hear the most and it’s the one that is used with all sorts of proof texts.   So how do we answer that?   Well, part of the problem here is in our understanding of the term “Eternal Life.”    You see, eternal life is not the idea of simply living a long period of time. It’s not the idea of continual existence.   How do we know that?   Well think about unbelievers who die.   There’s not a single verse anywhere in the Bible that says that unbelievers have eternal life.   However, the Bible is very clear when it says unbelievers will exist forever – but the problem is unbelievers have eternal existence in hell.

That’s what most people miss when they read the phrase “Eternal Life.”   When the Bible talks about Eternal Life, it’s not talking about perpetual existence, it’s actually talking about the very life of God.   It’s much deeper and richer than simply thinking that we will exist forever.   We participate in that eternal life of God when we’re joined to Christ by faith.   No one outside of Christ has eternal life even though they will continue to exist forever. 

I hope this has helped some of you understand at least part of the reason why we as Lutherans reject the teaching of “Once Saved Always Saved”.   But that does bring up another question that we need to answer before we close.   Does the fact that the Bible rejects the idea of “Once Saved Always Saved” make us any less sure or any less secure of our salvation?   Not at all! In fact, if you think about it you’ll realize that we can be even more secure.   We don’t have to worry about whether or not we’re one of the ‘elect’ like “Once Saved Always Saved” groups teach.   And we don’t have to worry about whether or not we’re really Christians because we struggle with some in our life.  

Think of it this way; if you want to be connected to Christ – if you want eternal life, forgiveness of sins and salvation in Him; then the very fact that you want it means that God’s Holy Spirit has been working on you to create faith and you already have it!   Think about that; don’t let it slip by.   The fact that you can want to be connected to Christ and the forgiveness of sins that He offers means that you ARE connected to Christ and your sins are forgiven.   If you want Christ, then you’ve got Christ.   There is more comfort in that reality than you’ll ever get in some false doctrine of “Once Saved Always Saved”.   It is my prayer that we would all have a greater understanding of this wonderful truth that gives us true comfort in this life.   In His most precious name; Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!