7 Reasons Why You Can’t Lose Your Salvation
Can you lose your salvation?
If you are worried about losing your salvation, here’s a question: When you were born again, did you do it? Did you remake or re-create yourself? Did you somehow join yourself in spiritual union with the Lord?
You did none of those things.
You were born again, saved, sanctified, and put in Christ by the Holy Spirit (see John 3:5–6, Gal. 3:3, 2 Th. 2:13). God did it all.
Once upon a time, you were dead in your transgressions…
…but God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us … made us alive together with Christ … and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–6)
Do you see? Since you cannot save yourself, you cannot un-save yourself.
Yet some still worry.
“God would not have saved me without my permission. If I change my mind, I could lose my salvation.”
Not a chance. Just as a little baby cannot be unborn, no one can undo what God has wrought.
“But if I break the commands, fail the test, become reprobate…”
Wrong covenant. The old covenant hinged on you and your performance, but the new covenant rests on Christ. You are not standing on your brittle promises to him but on his solid promises to you.
The unbreakable promises of God
Many Christians are worried that they might stumble and fall out of the kingdom. Perhaps this is something that concerns you. If so, let me put your mind at rest.
If I could show you one promise from the Lord that guaranteed your eternal security, would you quit fretting? Here we go:
He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. (1 Corinthians 1:8-9)
If you are worried about losing your salvation, frame this verse. Let it remind you that your salvation is not about your faithfulness but his.
Who called you into fellowship with Christ? God!
Who will keep you strong to the end so that you will be blameless on that Day? God!
Who is faithful? God!
And don’t forget that these good promises were addressed to those Corinthians “reprobates”!
In the New Testament there 130+ promises guaranteeing your eternal security. Each one is a comfort. I encourage you to write them on your heart and take them to the bank because they are gold. But I will give you just seven.
7 promises about your eternal security
For a Christian to lose their salvation and be expelled from the kingdom…
- God would have to forsake us, when he said he wouldn’t (Heb. 13:5)
- God would have to cast us out, when he said he wouldn’t (John 6:37)
- God would have to condemn us, when he said he wouldn’t (Rom. 8:1, 34)
- God would have to withdraw his Spirit, when he said he wouldn’t (John 14:16-17)
- God would have to remember our sins, when he said he wouldn’t (Jer. 31:34, Heb. 10:17)
- God would have to forget that we are his children, when he said he wouldn’t (Is. 49:15)
- God would have to blot our names out of the book of life, when he said he wouldn’t (Rev. 3:5)
Good news, no?
“But what about those scriptures that say we have to hold fast, continue, and endure to the end?”
Read those scriptures through the lens of the new covenant and you will find they all say the same thing – we are saved and kept by grace.
“But I need to overcome, obey, avoid sin, be holy, and persevere.”
Whatever need you may have, God will supply according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:19).
Can you imagine a three-year-old child who lies awake at night worrying about buying groceries or paying the bills or getting a mortgage? These are legitimate concerns, but they are not the concerns of a child.
It’s the same with you. Your heavenly Father does not want you to lose one minute’s sleep over your salvation. “Do not worry.” You can be confident that he who “began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Php 1:6).
Saint, you are one with the Lord. His future is your future. Since Jesus isn’t going to lose his place at the right hand of God, it can’t happen to you. You may fall asleep on the job, but the one who watches over you never slumbers (Ps. 121:3–4).
God’s got you and he will keep you safe and secure.
Be confident. Be secure. Be at peace.
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Jesus told us to store up treasures in heaven and most of us have no idea what he was talking about. But to a Jewish listener, his meaning would have been perfectly obvious.
Learn the context behind Christ’s words – and learn how to store up treasure where moth and rust can’t touch it – in my Patreon-only study note “How to store up heavenly treasures.”
Escape to Reality 
The Lord God holds me not by my hands but by my wrists and the reasons are obvious – I’m so grateful that He who is Faithful – Will Do it (1Thess 5:24) even if I am (oft times) unfaithful -He remains Faithful (2 Tim. 2:13) and I continue to hear His voice – How wonderfully beautiful in that I am so undeserving of so awesome a Grace.
Christ Jesus is my salvation. If ever I lose Him in my life, I’ve lost it all. Not because I’ve sinned so much… but because I’ve lost Jesus, the focus of my Faith.
Since you are one with the Lord, you cannot lose him. Even if you were to prove faithless, he will remain faithful.
I recognise this voice !!!- THIS IS MY FATHERS VOICE- THIS IS MY SAVIOURS VOICE!!!!!!John 10:5/John 10:27-28 John 10:14-18
We shall know the truth and the truth will set us free” Thank you Paul. God bless..
Hello Dr. Ellis. Thanks for these endless treasures. They keep us in the pleasure of the Lord because we are yoked with Christ. Question for you: Is it possible to twick comments so that we have the ability to give thumbs up or down?
Hey Paul,
What I’ve been thinking lately is why are there so many verses that on the surface seem to suggest you could lose your salvation? Couldn’t the gospel and epistle writers have been more clear and sensitive to the fact that people are worried about losing their salvation?
I really think the answer is that being afraid of losing your salvation wasn’t a thing in the the 1st century. The writers weren’t tiptoeing around it or working harder to be reassuring because their direct audience wasn’t fretting over it. Their understanding of the gospel and their relationship with and to God left them secure in their status.
It’s too much for this comment, but I think it has to do with our flawed modern version of the gospel that focuses on getting to heaven as a our main goal. That’s what people care about, so that’s what their afraid of losing.
Can you list some of these verses? Because I don’t see any. I used to, but since I changed the lens in my glasses, they all disappeared. What I see now is two things: (1) in the scriptures, pure gold, and (2) in much of our teachings, terrible distortion.
I am not being glib about this. Just this week I have been deep in Colossians where there is a verse about not being defrauded from your prize (Col. 2:18). Commentators have a field day with this one. What is the prize? It’s your salvation, your reward, or the gospel, apparently. Which means you need to take care you don’t lose these things. But did you know there is no noun for prize in the original text? The verb Paul uses (katabrabeuō) means “to judge against.” Paul is saying, “Don’t let anyone act like an umpire deciding against you.” He’s repeating what he has said two verses earlier. “Don’t let anyone judge you.” We are the free children of God. We’re not to let anyone guilt trip us or lay law on us. Which is a very different from what some people think he is saying.
Someone wearing the wrongs lens would look at that verse and conclude we could lose our salvation. But someone who has counted the many promises regarding our eternal security – many of which were written by Paul – would know the Bible doesn’t contradict itself.
I’m right there with you. I don’t see them that way anymore either. It is precisely about looking through a new lens. But I remember lots of discussions about such verses. Now, I’m not sure how many I can come up with. The first one that pops into my head is John 14:15… Another place that is often misinterpreted is in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27…
I guess my point was that because many Christians today have been fed a gospel that is all about them getting to heaven; it skews their interpretation. They think every verse is about that. If I were Paul writing today, I might be more sensitive to this audience and the verse might read, “lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified by the person I’m trying to reach.” But Paul didn’t need to add that little bit because his direct audience wouldn’t be reading everything as being about whether I get into heaven or not.
I’d be happy to discuss those scriptures in the threads under the relevant articles.
Hello Paul, what if a person stops believing in Christ?
If my son were to say I was no longer his father, I would still be his father. If he were to say he was no longer my son, he would still be my son. He would be estranged, but he would still be part of the family.
When God adopts you into his family, he never casts you out. Once you have been made new, you cannot be unmade. “But what if I deny the Lord?” He will not deny you because he cannot. That would be like denying himself.
I understand that we are saved entirely by his Grace but we can choose to reject him as our Father & we can choose to reject His family….(John.15.6 – If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth AS A BRANCH.)..Someone who has never been in Christ cannot be cast as a branch. He was never a branch in the first place, he was never in Christ.
We are not just saved by grace, we are kept by grace. It is grace from start to finish. Your salvation and security rests on his faithfulness, not your’s (Php. 1:6). Since Jesus promises not to cast away any who come to him (John 6:37), we can be sure we will never be cast into the fire. I have written more on John 15:6.
This so upsets me- the belief comment from Ralph- I understand where it comes from and why and I don’t mean any disrespect as I fell for it too when I was an eager,baby but very insecure,inexperienced new believer-surrounded by well meaning but miseducated mature believers and it’s just plain fear mongering from misinformed,miseducated believers and “ fake imposters dressed up as believers” This kind of comment drove me away from the very arms of Grace that saved me and promised to keep me and into the arms of the “ law” of “ man’s man made religion,mixed messed up teaching which resulted in a nervous breakdown and back into the “ world” -( where unfortunately I received more acceptance and compassion than I was receiving from the church)that Christ had died to deliver me from.. Why would we rather choose to believe that it’s “ normal/ acceptable to be insecure/ uncertain/ unsure about our Father God- His love for us and our salvation and to believe that God wants us to be insecure with about Him when His word plainly states that He so loved us thatHe gave us His only begotten beloved Son in order to save us. That statement is enough in itself to Him proving to us that He doesn’t want us to be insecure about Him,His nature,character,heart,love towards us and our salvation from HIM.Why am I hearing in my spirit – WAKE UP!!!!!If I want my kids to feel secure about my unconditional love for them then how much more so Father God!! We need confidence building about our great God and Saviour not diminishing teaching.