How do you think a believers life will be if they are living in sin ? What is the first thing that happens ?
I think maybe as you said to me there is something more to this than just the obvious stated position. Are you upset that worldy Christians through God’s promise are saved just as much as those who always faithfully follow God’s commands ?
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Do you know why we are encouraged to be faithful, always seeking and following God ? Because while we are saved all the works we do in the body will be judged good and bad that wll ultimately determine our place in God’s kingdom for 1000 years.
1000 years will be a long time to regret and think about what you have lost and what you could have had.
Not intended at all. It could be a reason. I am just asking. Feel offended.
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We are making progress.
Blessings also to you.
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It went much better than yesterday 
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Hm… this seems to me to differ from what I have understood you to put forth in past posts. You have repeatedly pointed to people who believe OSAS as believing they can sin with impunity (which is a huge assumption not true of anyone I know).
People turning their back on Christ and voluntarily forfeiting their salvation is not the same thing as people who have backslidden and fallen into sin. Those people have not necessarily turned their back on the Lord. They are not living in fellowship with the Lord, but many of them do still believe.
However, there are other people, and I personally know one who once claimed to be a Christian but no longer believes and tells me that I am believing in fairy tales. Did she never actually understand and believe in the first place? Or did she once believe and turn her back on the Lord and forfeit salvation? That I do not know since I cannot know her heart.
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Please give me some of the scriptures that we can discuss with other scriptures…
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I want to start with this one,
John 10:28, And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
First, I see that it is Jesus who gives “them” eternal life…then, they will never perish…and no man can take them away.
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We have a sure salvation which cannot be lost and the believer is safe in Christ, Paul says in Romans 8:1
“there is no condemnation in them that are in Christ Jesus” & later in Romans Paul goes on to say that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, including death, life, angels , principalities, nor powers, nor thigs present nor things to come. Here you have proof that nothing can separate us from the Love of God. In John 10 :27- 28 Jesus says he gives his sheep eternal life – (this is ETERNAL LIFE, and if you can lose it is not eternal!!! This is not a question of your ability to hold on to Jesus but a question of His ability to hold on to you!!!) Once a person has become a child of God thru Faith in God and is saved by the grace of Our Lord and savior, he is indwelled with the Holy Spirit he has E T E R N A L LIFE - PERIOD. Hebrew 6:4-9 says that “IF they fall away” - the writer does not say that they have fallen away – and this is the biggest …IF… in the bible. The passage also says they are mere professors……. Does this to mean they are not “genuine believers”- they only profess to be believers and are therefore apostates.
However, in chapter 5 of Hebrews it talks of a person needing Milk because they are Babes in Christ. Therefore, the writer in Hebrews seems to be referring to a baby Christian and is urging them on to maturity. Some expositors say that since the ones spoken of here are Jewish believers of the first century that this warning applies only to them and that when Hebrews was written the Temple was still standing and this was a warning against returning to the sacrificial system, because in doing so they would be admitting that Jesus did not really die for their sins. There is another possibly that when Heb. 6:4 talks of impossible it is talking about it being impossible (for man) …… but we know that is not impossible for God. There are many possibilities for the interpretation for this passage and many many more I have not mentioned. There is a good Article on the 6th chapter of Hebrews by Dr. RB Rowell-the writer is talking of the rewards of salvation …and if they should fall away … this is a falling away to repentance … not a falling away to salvation. So the writer is talking about the fruit of salvation not the root of salvation. Note in vs 9 “but, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation (he is not talking of salvation but things that accompany salvation) There is danger Paul is writing about that there is possibility of them losing their reward(crowns)
Therefore MR Saved by Grace – maybe you should get some really good commentaries and review all of them to answer the question you have posed about Hebrews so you can rightly divide the word of God for yourself. blessing and I am in Prayer for you as many others on this site are also doing
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The above is a statement from another thread… sorry to bring it in but I feel like it ties in and would like to contrast it with something. Its beginning to seem to me (and maybe I am totally wrong) that maybe it could just be assumptions are being made that have caused division?
I already gave an in-context comment from the Bible on the verses below based on a request from you months back, but it caused disruption with you and another person I’ve not seen on forum in a long time and I removed the post to avoid disruption. I can share again if that is desired.
Hebrews 6:4-8
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
So are you saying here @Saved-by-Grace that you believe this to mean if someone has fallen away (backslidden and fallen out of fellowship with God for too long?) that they cannot come back? That it’s impossible. That there is no hope and they are doomed to Hell.
Because IMHO, that line of thought can only lead one place: TOTAL DESPAIR.
Making people doubt and despair, especially with all that is going on in our world currently, is playing right into Satan’s hands.
Satan doesn’t want us saved, but if we are, then he surely wants us to doubt as that is when we are at our most ineffective. As @goodboy once said in another thread, if you aren’t sure you can swim, you aren’t going to offer to teach someone else how.
The Bible says we are ADOPTED and made son’s of God. To me, it has seemed like many of the things you have said were attempting to get us to accept that we are actually only FOSTER KIDS. That we are not truly a part of the family but are rather always in danger of being sent back to the orphan farm if we step out of line or for some reason are found to not be good enough.
And the thing is, NONE OF US are good enough. Not even one.
Hi Ed. Blessings. It is pretty cool that you guys are going about this. Such a hot topic approached in care and love is something that would blow Pastor JD away as to how God has blessed his online family 
As for 1 Cor 15, I think it is good to keep in mind this is the rapture chapter, and for contextually good reason. The entire chapter deals in context with “the resurrection,” which seems to be the issue of concern for Paul. Verse 2 uses language of “believed in vain.”
. . . . .
VERSE 2
by which you also are saved, if you hold firmly to [a]the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
VERSES 10-11
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
VERSES 13-14
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain.
VERSE 58
58 Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters , be firm, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
“Vain” is related to if they have been thinking in vain. If they do not believe there is a resurrection, then no one will be raised from the dead…and that inadvertently calls into question if Christ even was. “Believed in vain,” to me speaks to how they had been believing. If a person believed in Christ as one not resurrecting, that person would not have been saved to begin with. But the Corinth church had received the correct gospel. So to me Paul is contrasting the message they heard from him with what they are allowing to be instructed in. Paul’s contrast of “vain” is in whether or not they are believing correctly. But the connection is with the “reality” of what the gospel is. If a person did not believe in Christ as resurrected, then they would not be believing the gospel. But they had. So “the vain” is compared to helping them think through what they knew to already be true.
Believing in vain here would mean they were hoping in Christ’s promise even though there would ideologically be no such promise to realize. Therefore, it would be hoping in Christ in vain because there would be nothing to hope in. Paul even places himself in that same analogy. So the “believing not in vain” has to do with what is real to believe to begin with. That argument species is not on par with whether someone can lose salvation as much as it is related to what is real to begin with and to help fight against the false doctrines of the day.
Albeit it could be said, “Yes, but if they stopped believing then it shows some believers can stop believing.” But the species of argument is speaking to the legitimacy of Christ’s claim, not that a true believer can stop believing. This is a fluid situation where the word of God is still being written. And what Paul is doing is affirming the gospel already established as transient doctrines emerge within the church to challenge it along the way (thus muddying the faith once delivered to the saints). Perhaps there are arguments where a person could lose salvation that are helpful to discuss on their contextual merits. But this passage would not be one of them, as far as the context (what Paul means by “vain,” and that the word was still fluidly being written) and exegetical drive imply.
. . . . .
So we see the central concern is that the Corinthian church had false teachers they were listening to saying there is no resurrection. Of which Paul notes in verses 32-34
If [m]from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what good is it to me? If the dead are not raised, let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. 33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.” 34 Sober up [n]morally and stop sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
. . . . .
Here seems to be the core essence and exegetical drive of the passage.
1 Cor 15:12-19
12 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain. 15 Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified [g]against God that He raised [h]Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised; 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18 Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied.
. . . . .
As for Hebrews, I understand that book as a mirroring of the Kadesh Barnea generation. Like, “If you Jews miss the boat of the word of God moving onto Christ, you would be like the generation of those who refused to accept the promised land and wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.” It appears the name Hebrew for the book constitutes an official treaty and warning for the Jews as a whole not to miss the new promised land, Christ. Because that is the direction He is going. And apparently, historically then did miss it. Only they did not wander for 40 years…but 1,900 and some change. And even as Israel has been reestablished, they are still unbelieving as a nation yet have come out of the 2,000 year diaspora. So history affirms Hebrews as understood as a mirror to Kadesh Barnea generation. For the moving from the Old to New Testament is a massive (no small deal) paradigm shift for the Jews and the world and how God is dealing with humanity. And part of context, context, context, is the realization of how big of a deal this (concerning the Jews) is to God. When to book of Hebrews is viewed in this exegetical approach (history in and cultural meaning context are super huge hermeneutics in exegesis), the theme of individual salvation does not appear to be the focus of the book, but rather that the Hebrews as a people don’t miss the paradigm shift. To look back onto this book omitting the historical and cultural context might lead Western ideological approaches to eisegesis. Is this premise something you are willing to discuss? Blessing
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You made this statement:
I am asking what you are saying because it seems to me the divisive issue is that it has come across as if you are saying we are foster kids and if we fall away (backslide and fall out of fellowship with God for too long), then we lose our salvation and cannot come back and are doomed to Hell. And that promotes nothing but despair as I said in prior post.
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The verses must be taken in context of the entire epistle to be clear and not pulled out separately to make a point. I can give my understanding, but as I said, I already did so once.
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Dear Saved by grace -
You have said that believer’s sin with immunity- 1 cor 3:11-15 every believer’s work will be tested by fire -works done in the flesh are burned (wood, hey, stubble) works in the power of the Spirit are rewarded
…But good works are not the basis for salvation
God chastens His beloved and will take them to the wood shed …. my prayer is Lord make me a fast Learner!!! Vengeance is mine sayth the Lord- so for you to say that belivers that sin with impunity you just are not taking into account all the biblical authority that says other wise - Why ARE you doing this???
Heb 10:26 was written to Hebrew believers who were continuing to go to temple and offering sacrifices there, pretending to be under the Mosaic law- we know that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross ended that and Paul was reminding them that no sacrifice for sin is left after Christ’s death. Paul is telling them to look to Christ now and not look to temple sacrifice. Same for us today.
Hebrews 10: 26
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,
27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
Paul is telling them in 6:27 that Christ’s death was adequate and it is wilful disobedience
To continue with temple sacrifice and then makes a comparison in vs 28
glad we are not fruit inspectors
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Correct translation is “IF” they have fallen away - not those who have fallen away
there are other translation problems you are having
I agree.
You have asked folks to give our understanding on those verses in past. I am simply asking that you share your understanding of them so we have a clear picture of the stance you are coming from but you are not being clear. ARE you saying that your understanding is that if we fall away (backslide and fall out of fellowship with God for too long), then we lose our salvation and cannot come back and are doomed to Hell? OR are you saying that fall away means something else? Like in your prior post when you talked about voluntarily turning their back on Christ and forfeiting their salvation? There is a huge difference to my mind, and so I am confused about what your stance actually is.
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Wow, Violet, this is a very good question. I remember you shared with us that you are somewhat of a slow processor. But this is a very refined and perfectly reasonably nuanced question. I admire the clarity in your heart to ask. I consider myself a slow processor too. I think what this shows that is really going on is that your are processing at a deeper level. Amen 
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Going to jump in again with this fantastic example of God’s faithfulness.
Matthew 26:34
…33Peter said to Him, “Even if all fall away on account of You, I never will.” 34“Truly I tell you,” Jesus declared, “ this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” 35Peter replied, “Even if I have to die with You, I will never deny You.” And all the other disciples said the same thing.…
And this came before
Matthew 16:15
…14They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” 16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”…
Now did Peter turn his back on Jesus ? Did he forfeit his salvation ? Did he sin ?
But isn’t Jesus described as the good Sheppard, who will leave the 99 to go after the 1 who has wandered?..so that he will not lose even one? I am confused how we could walk away with the Holy Spirit dwelling in us?
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