CAN A JUSTIFIED SAINT LOSE THEIR SALVATION AFTER HEARING ANOTHER GOSPEL?

They are still saved, even though they have been “bewitched” away from the truth of the gospel and have been beguiled into accepting “another gospel.” And they are still saved because as God has Paul teach us in Romans 5, when a person believes in the Lord Jesus Christ as his all-sufficient Savior as per “the gospel of Christ” and God thereby justifies him in His sight, and saves him from the debt and penalty of his sins, and reconciles him unto Himself, then that person’s justification, salvation, and reconciliation are permanent possessions. (In fact the truth of the matter is that if our justification, salvation, and reconciliation with God are not permanent by nature, then none of us could ever remain justified in God’s sight. It would be impossible for us to do so.) A person’s justification unto eternal life is a judicial act of God’s Justice that is both everlasting and that is eternally secure, for it is given as an irrevocable gift of God’s grace in response to the act of faith in Jesus Christ as one’s all-sufficient Savior, and its existence is founded solely upon (and its eternal existence is solely dependent upon) the everlasting merits of Christ’s perfect and complete work on the cross as our Redeemer and Savior.

Wherefore as the beginning of Romans 5 says, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” And then as the latter portion of Romans 5 (verses 11-21) teaches us to understand and appreciate, we are eternally secure in our justification in God’s sight, and in our accompanying salvation from the debt and penalty of our sins, and in our reconciliation to God, (and we possess them as an everlasting possession), because through our Lord Jesus Christ “we have now received the at-one-ment.” That is, because we are now permanently “at-one” with God through and in Jesus Christ.

So then when God justifies someone in His sight, he is justified forever, being made permanently “at-one” with God through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In essence the situation you describe is really not any different from what happened to many of the Galatian saints when they became “removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another.” The “another gospel: which is not another” that the Galatian saints ended up believing actually caused them to no longer believe that “the gospel of Christ” that Paul had preached to them was true. It caused them to think that the cross work of Christ either was not enough to save them, or that it was not even true at all. Hence ‘the other gospel’ told them that they needed to establish their own righteousness before God if they wanted to be justified in His sight and saved from their sins. And it told them that the way to do that was to keep the law. Whereupon the “bewitched” Galatian saints abandoned “the gospel of Christ” that they had believed and they went about to establish their own righteousness. But as Paul makes plain by what he says to them throughout the epistle, they were still justified in God’s sight, and they were still saved from the debt and penalty of their sins, and they were still reconciled to God.

Sincerely yours “in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:”

Keith Blades

Enjoy The Bible Ministries