Can a Christian Lose Their Salvation?

2 Peter 1 has many encouragements in it for Christians to mature and show the fruits of righteousness in our lives. The encouragement stems from our eternal position in Christ, and there simply is no threat of eternal condemnation to believers ever, in the writings of the Apostles. 

Yet many of us know some who have started well by putting their trust in Christ and then fallen by the wayside, wandering far from what we can legitimately expect of one trusting Christ. It is very easy to use their bad example to promote something far worse; the teaching that a born-again Christian can after all, be sent to Hell.

Let us be honest, it seems logical, and even fair, that defectors should lose their salvation. It would be simple justice if such were the case. We, however, are under grace. Justice was executed at Calvary, for us. God's character is at stake in promising free salvation to all who believe and eternal life as a present possesion. God is not a man that He should lie.

Yet there is still something for the Christian to fear and that is failure to grow in grace. Admonitions for Christians never use loss of salvation as the basis of their warning but rather the loss of blessing and future reward.

The truth is that many have"lost their salvation", in the sense of "working out their salvation with fear and trembling". In other words, their sanctification, the process where God grows His children into a practical holiness here and now, has gone off the rails. The scripture speaks of this as the "shipwreck of faith."

Peter describes the problem of altered spiritual growth in 2 Peter 1:8: "For if you possess these (Christian virtues) qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins."

Please note that Peter does not say these are non-believers or that such have lost their "no condemnation" standing with God. God is true to His promises, whatever any man does.

Rather than thinking that believers who fail are lost, let us see Peter's words as a warning and encouragement to us. Any of us can fail...we can forget that we've been cleansed by the blood...and therefore go into a spiritual blindness that keeps us from seeing what God has planned for those who love Him.

Losing our Heavenly vision causes us to focus only on our immediate life. If persisted in, this life style will be the cause of losing what we might have gained by continuing to grow in grace. The Prodigal son returned to the father, but he still had wasted his inheritance and would never get it back.

Peter's words are for our good so that we don't stop growing and so that we will receive the rewards of a good Servant of Christ at the Bema seat. Not the least of these rewards is the Savior's commendation, "Well done, good and faithful servant."