Session 9 - The Unpardonable Sin (Saved for Eternity)

Session 9 - The Unpardonable Sin (Saved for Eternity)

OBJECTIONS AGAINST ETERNAL SALVATION (PART VII)
Matthew 18:21–35 (The Unmerciful Servant)

Another even stronger biblical text along the same lines is the following one from Matthew 6:14–15:

The objection brought by some believers based on these two passages is that if you, as a child of God, fail to forgive others as you have been forgiven, your original sin debt will be reinstated, and you will lose your eternal salvation. At first glance, these passages seem to tell us God’s forgiveness, our salvation, is conditional upon how much we forgive others, and if we don’t do that, God will reinstate our sins, even after we have been forgiven initially.

We must note that what Matthew 18:21–35 conveys is in the context of the Jewish Law. At that point in time, when Jesus gave the parable, He had not died yet on the cross and nobody from His audience was yet born again. Because of this, we need to realize that Jesus, during His life before the cross, made the transition from the Law of Moses to the Gospel. Most of the things He said were in the context of the Old Covenant because that is what His audience was familiar with, while a few things were looking forward and speaking about the future New Covenant. The conditional nature of His saying in this parable sounds very much like the Law of Moses. Jesus, throughout His ministry on earth, took the Law of Moses and raised it to the strictest of standards. He talked about its spirit, about intentions, and motivations of the heart, not just outward works. By showing the extremes of the Law, Jesus was preparing them for what was coming: the New Covenant of the grace of God through Christ. Jesus used the apostle Paul to teach that grace to the Gentiles. The sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–6) amplifies the Law of Moses, and this parable is along the same lines. So, it doesn’t say God can revoke salvation for those who are saved and whose sins were forgiven through the atonement of Jesus Christ. That would go against the many scriptures that show we are secure in Christ from the moment of our salvation. That would even contradict many of the words of Jesus Himself. Let’s take a closer look at this parable.

First, Jesus is not saying anything about those unforgiving people being thrown into hell. Second, the way the servant asks the king for mercy and the request to give him more time to pay back the debt shows this individual doesn’t grasp the reality of the situation. He thinks he can pay back the debt of sin through self-effort, but no one can do that. Only Christ accomplished this payment for people’s sins on the cross. Third, notice that nobody paid for the servant’s debt in this parable, but it was forgiven, meaning his debt was overlooked. As a child of God, you need to understand you are not just forgiven, but you are justified as well! When a husband and wife argue, they might often bring up things from the past. While the husband may have forgiven his wife (or the other way around), the moment he brings back into discussion the conflict from the past, he proves he hasn’t justified her. God is entirely different. He says, “I remember your sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). Justification means you never sinned, and you will never be blamed for sin. You are unblameable and this is a fundamental theological concept.

God didn’t only forgive you in the sense of overlooking your sins, He didn’t only provide an atonement or a covering for your sins. These are Old Covenant concepts. Someone paid with innocent blood for your sins and for the whole world’s sins. Hebrews 10 says, “Jesus took away your sins” once and for all. Forgiveness means overlooking the mistakes without making any payment for them and God forgave us only in the sense that we were not the ones who made the payment for sins. However, we were justified, which is beyond forgiveness, because sin was also paid for in full, not just overlooked by God.

All our sins have been taken away by Christ. That is why before the cross, we had to forgive before we were forgiven but after His work, we are first and foremost forgiven completely and permanently. Yes, we should still forgive, but not as a condition of salvation.

Believers in Christ are no longer under the Law of Moses, and neither salvation is under the condition of obedience.

Unforgiveness is a sin like any other. The apostle Paul writes the following words about forgiveness:

Notice here that God is the One Who has forgiven you first.

Then you are called to forgive, but not under the threat of losing your own forgiveness.

The passages say you should do this as a natural flow and outcome of what has already been done for you. If you are in Christ, you have been forgiven, so, now you forgive as well! The Apostle Paul says true forgiveness comes under grace because we know how much we have been forgiven ourselves. Under the Law, it would flow out of fear of not being punished again, it didn’t come from the heart, and it kept a record of wrongs. Before Christ came, there was no forgetting of the sins of the other.

But now, when you realize God doesn’t even keep a record of your wrongs, but He has chosen to forget your iniquities, you find that forgiveness flows from His grace.

Matthew 12:31–32 (The Unpardonable Sin)

The Mark account is even harsher, talking clearly about eternal damnation in the case of those blaspheming the Holy Spirit:

Many genuine believers have this fear from time to time, that they might have committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit and lost their salvation. That fear comes from a faulty interpretation of these passages, that born-again believers can commit that sin by mistake, in a fit of anger, and be subject to eternal condemnation, even if they were sorry about it afterward.

The word “blaspheme” means to speak evil of, defame, or revile. In context, Jesus is saying blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is attributing the working of the Holy Spirit to the Devil. Many people in the Bible did this, including Saul, who became the apostle Paul. However, in 1 Timothy 1:13, Paul said he received mercy concerning his blasphemy because he had done it ignorantly in unbelief.

Therefore, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit Jesus is warning against here must be willfully reviling the Holy Spirit wi

Session 8 - Abiding in the Vine (Saved for Eternity)

OBJECTIONS AGAINST ETERNAL SALVATION (PART VI)
John 15:1–6 (Abiding in the Vine)

This passage is often used to teach that Christians can lose their salvation. It’s easy to see why they would think that way, especially when you look at verses 2 and 6: “Every branch in Me that doesn’t bear fruit He takes away”; “anyone who doesn’t abide in Me, he is thrown into the fire, and burned.” In particular, the phrase “in Me,” which is used twice, apparently suggests a loss of salvation. The branches that don’t bear fruit—the signs of salvation—are gathered and “thrown into the fire,” a clear symbol of eternal judgment. The question is though, since these hell-bound branches were initially “in” Jesus, does that mean they represented true believers who lost their salvation? Is being “in” the vine in this parable the same thing with being saved? I would suggest the answer is no and I feel this is the correct conclusion for a few reasons. First, the Greek word translated into the verb “takes away” in Verse 2 is airo, which actually means “to lift from the ground” or “to lift with a view of carrying.” The Passion Translation (TPT) of the Bible seems to provide a more accurate rendering of that word in the first two verses of John 15:

The same Greek word airo is used in John 5:8 for the verb “take up” when Jesus tells the lame man from the pool of Bethesda to take up his bed and walk. Then, in Matthew 16:24, when Jesus says, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” the airo is used for the verb “take up” again. As a matter of fact, every other instance of this Gr. word airo in the New Testament is translated as “lift up” or “take up” except in John 15:2, where it is interpreted as “cut off” or “remove,” and I have an explanation for why. The theological “lenses” of the translators really matters. All of us wear certain “lenses” of interpretation when we read the Scripture, whether we are aware of it or not. I hear sometimes believers saying, “I only obey what the Word says” when in fact they obey whatever they think the Word says most of the times. And what they say the Word says is filtered through the “glasses” they use. Blessed are those who know what kind of glasses they use! So, I believe the translators chose to render airo as “cut off” or “take away” because of their theological understanding, but it should have been translated as “lift up.” Why? Because the vine is a creeper or a crawling plant. You often see a vinedresser picking up the branches from the ground and tying them up with strings to the pillars of the vine. If the branches sit on the ground in the dust, they don’t bear fruit. In this passage, Jesus is saying the Father lifts up every fruitless branch to help it bear fruit. He is not waiting for a given opportunity to cut people off, but to make them bear fruit. That is the Father’s job. Jesus is the vine and the Father God is the vinedresser Who is making sure we bear fruit.

Furthermore, Verse 2 of this passage says God, the Father, prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit. When God prunes, He always does it with the purpose of life in mind. Even His so-called discipline is life-giving. Jesus seems to have understood our potential and capacity to misinterpret scripture here. So, immediately in the next verse He tells us what He uses to prune. “You are already clean because of the Word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3). The Greek word for “to prune” or “to clean or cleanse” is the same: kataros. The instrument God uses to prune us is His Word and not a cancer or a life-changing car accident in which you lose one of your limbs. Moreover, the dust talks about serpent mentality. In the garden of Eden, God cursed the serpent, saying: “From now on, dust shall be your food.” Whenever the branch is in the dust, it does not bear fruit. Whenever we feed with what the serpent feeds itself, when the serpent’s food becomes the atmosphere of our living, we do not bear fruit. If we keep feeding on the lies of the enemy, we will not bear fruit. That is why God lifts us up and cleanses us by His Word—to bear fruit. Just because a couple has a legal marriage certificate does not necessarily mean they have a great marriage. The certificate validates the union, but life in the union is purely relational. A certificate does not give birth to babies. It is not the legal union that brings fruit, but the relational intimate union. Likewise, in our walk with Christ, it is our relational intimate union with Him that brings fruit and life.

The second reason I believe John 15 is not a passage about the possibility of believers losing their salvation is because metaphors are only meant to go so far. Jesus here is speaking in a parable. He uses an illustration to make a point. As with any picture or parable, one can take it too far. In His wisdom, Jesus uses an everyday image—especially for ancient Easterners—to make a spiritual point, that is, our continual spiritual fruition and growth here on earth. The picture of vines, branches, and gardening was a reference the commoner could understand. The whole thrust of John 15 is to prove Jesus is the source of all spiritual life. This is clear since the punch line is that bearing fruit comes only from staying in Jesus. Just as a branch separated from the vine will wither and die, so will people who are separated from Christ. In this context of fruitfulness, separation from the vine or Christ, as well as withering or death does not refer to being without God and unsaved, but to having certain parts of the whole body of truth, which is fully revealed in Scripture, “turned off” in our lives about what Christ has accomplished for us, what we have a right to, who we really are in Christ, and what our lives should look like. And this may be due to lack of knowledge, revelation and understanding because of wrong teachings or due to failure to keep the faith fresh and strong always in the areas where we have been enlightened. The Bible says in John 8:32 that we will know the truth and the truth will make us free. There is a truth about sanctification, about healing, about blessing, about walking by the Holy Spirit, etc. We can sanctify ourselves either through faith in the grace provided by Christ or through our own efforts. We can live either in healing and physical health through faith in what Jesus won on the cross or in fear and suffering. We can have a life that is prosperous and blessed by faith, or one dominated by poverty and want, or one in which we try to prosper only by our own efforts. We can make any life decision by letting ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit or relying only on our human wisdom. In any area of ​​life where we do not live by faith in the spiritual truth about us, there comes separation from the vine and partial fruit bearing or temporary cessation of fruiting, but not irreversible separation from God. Perhaps the summary statement of Jesus’s teaching is Verse 5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

A parable is not meant for every single detail to correspond to some sort of spiritual reality. It’s rather meant to make a single, central point. The fact that the branches were already “in” Jesus to begin with is not the main point, so it’s not good to build a doctrine based on a secondary point or a limited metaphor.

Third, the branches didn’t require attachment first. If one was to take the phrase “in Me” literally to refer to someone who is already saved, it creates another problem with the metaphor: how did the branches get attached to Jesus in the first place? If the branches represent people and attachment to the vine symbolizes salvation, then the branches should first be separated from the vine at the beginning of the metaphor since everyone is born apart from Christ and needs to put their faith in Him before salvation.

Let me give you an example to clarify. Imagine Bill is twenty-five years old when he believes in Jesus as His Savior. Using Jesus’s imagery, Bill was a dead and shriveled branch for twenty-five years before connecting with the vine. Yet Jesus’s parable completely glosses over any branches needing to be attached to begin with. If we consider the removal of fruitless branches a loss of salvation, then we must also notice that every branch started already attached to Jesus. This means everyone is already saved unless they depart from Jesus

Session 7 - The Ten Virgins (Saved for Eternity)

OBJECTIONS AGAINST ETERNAL SALVATION (PART V)
Matthew 25:1–13 (The Ten Virgins)

The most common interpretation of this parable is that those ten virgins represent born-again believers belonging to the Kingdom of God who were all saved at one time. Then some of them lost their salvation due to their lack of watchfulness in morality and good works.

Let’s analyze first what we know for sure about this parable. First, the parable is about the Kingdom of Heaven, about a bridegroom who is king Jesus, and about ten virgins who represent the visible church of Christ. Second, the action in this parable occurs between the first and second coming of Jesus. Third, the harshness of the bridegroom’s answer in Verse 12—“I don’t know you” or “I never knew you”—makes very clear this parable is about an eternal matter of life and death, respectively the matter of eternal salvation into the Kingdom of God or of eternal damnation. Fourth, it’s also obvious that when the bridegroom came, alluding to the second coming of Jesus, some of those virgins, representing some Christians, participated in the wedding of the Lamb. That means they entered heaven while the rest were rejected and went to hell. Only three things are left to elucidate: (1) First, what do the oil in the lamps and the extra oil in the jars represent? (2) Second, were the people rejected genuinely born again in the first place or not? (3) Third, what does watchfulness mean?

The oil in the Old Testament was used to anoint kings and priests. It was a picture of anointing to work for God:

In the New Testament, believers are anointed with the Holy Spirit, as we see in these passages:

Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit, and believers are also anointed with the Holy Spirit at the time of salvation. 1 John 2:27 says the anointing the believers received from Him abides in them and teaches them all things. According to John 14:16, 14:26, and 16:13, the Holy Spirit is the Helper given to believers to be with them forever, teach them all things, and lead them into all truth. So, the oil in the parable of the virgins is a picture of the Holy Spirit. The light of the lamps represents good works, morality, fruits of the Spirit, or different divine acts of the Spirit like healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead.

Now, what is the difference between the oil already in the lamps and the oil in the extra jars? On one hand, based on John 14:16 and 1 John 2:27, we know once the Holy Spirit comes into believers, He abides in them forever. He no longer comes and leaves like He used to do in the Old Testament with the people of God. Moreover, Ephesians 1:13–14 strengthens this eternal presence of the Holy Spirit in believers by asserting that He is a seal of salvation, a guarantee of believers’ inheritance until they acquire full possession of it:

The Greek word translated as “guarantee” in this passage (gr. arrabon) is a legal and commercial term that means first installment, deposit, down payment, or pledge. It represents a payment that obligates the contracting party to make further payments. When God gave believers the Holy Spirit, He committed Himself to give them all the consequent blessings of eternal life, as well as a great reward in heaven with Him. So, the five virgins for whom lamps ceased to burn cannot represent genuinely born-again believers who once had the Holy Spirit in them as a seal and then lost Him.

On the other hand, a closer look into Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, will reveal that the Holy Spirit can come over people just for a while, for them to fulfill some divine tasks or even to do good works. However, it is not necessary for the Holy Spirit to remain inside them in a saving way. In other words, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, but not in them. A few examples from the Old Testament include Samson, who received the spirit and anointing of might, King Saul, who received the spirit of prophecy, Joshua, and King Solomon, who both received the spirit of wisdom in different measures. All those people “burned” for a while by the anointing of the Holy Spirit without being saved during their lifetime because Jesus had not come yet. At that moment in history, they belonged to the kingdom of darkness.

Coming into the New Testament, in the age before the death of Jesus, Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, healed people, and cast out demons through the Holy Spirit, together with the other disciples, but he was called the son of perdition in John 17:12, and ended his life without being saved. Furthermore, as we have seen earlier in Hebrews 6:4–6, there can be people represented by the rocky ground from the parable of the Sower who are enlightened with the Gospel, who taste the heavenly gift, who become partakers of the work of the Holy Spirit, and who taste the good Word of God, but have no root in themselves. These people continue to rely on their good works, morality, and self-righteousness for acceptance before God. Moreover, Matthew 7:21–23 seems to imply somehow that there can be people who prophesy, who cast out demons, and who do mighty works in Jesus’s name, but still are not recognized by Jesus in the end. The way Jesus didn’t recognize the foolish virgins is not different:

1 John 2:19 advocates as well that those who apparently departed from faith were not really in it, for if they had been, they would have continued until the end. But they “went out,” and so it became clear they had not been in faith:

Now putting all these facts together, who are these people who are not genuinely born again but have a very strong appearance of being saved by their external deeds? Their works even consist of miracles of healing and acts of deliverance. They can be included in three categories. The first one is people who are sincerely excited about Christ, who stay for a while in the church and try to model their lives after biblical principles, but never tak

Session 6 - The Book of Life (Saved for Eternity)

1 Timothy 4:1–5 (Departing from the Faith)

The first two verses of the above text state that in the last times some people will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, not realizing it of course, and out of hypocrisy they will speak lies, their conscience being marked with a hot iron. Many Christians believe that the apostasy in these verses refers to the loss of eternal salvation, because they interpret deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons as immoral sins that will eventually cause some genuine Christians to lose their salvation. However, I invite you to take things one at a time and see first what these wrong teachings consist of and then who are those “some” who will fall away from the faith, what kind of faith they are referring to, and what this distancing means.

Verses 3 and 4 describe some of the things and doctrines these people promote, namely: the prohibition of marriage and abstinence from certain foods. The things related here are not immoral sins and carnal pleasures in which people usually like to indulge in, but rather “other apparently good ways” and ascetic ways of attaining righteousness. They are teachings and doctrines, but not sins.

These teachings are clothed in an appearance of holiness which makes them very subtle and deceptive. Judging by their nature, it seems that those who propagated them were trying to be holy by works instead of faith. They believed that holiness came from strict adherence to a set of rules. These doctrines seem to resemble very much the Law of Moses and to be Jewish in nature. Who can these people be? Since the passage speaks of a falling away from faith it means that those people had contact at some point with the pure teaching of salvation by faith alone in Christ. They were either so convinced that they were also born again, or they only joined the church for a while, but they could not fully renounce the Law of Moses and were never born again. Paul calls them hypocrites and liars because they preached one thing to others, but they did the exact opposite in their private lives, and their consciences became numb because of their constant living in that lifestyle. They no longer saw the seriousness of the contradiction in their lives from the desire to appear before men as religious and holy. Just as the area where an animal is marked with a hot iron becomes numb and insensitive to pain, so the conscience of these people had become desensitized. Because of this, the apostle Paul describes their conscience as being marked with a hot iron.

It is very possible that those “some” influenced by the teachings of the Jews were even leaders (pastors and teachers) of the church of Christ in Ephesus, since the heresies had to do with doctrines that are usually preached from the front. Moreover, in 1 Timothy 1:7, they are described as wanting to be teachers of the Law. If they were born again, they probably loved God, were eternally saved by grace, but from time to time were “bitten” by the self-righteousness propagated by the followers of the Law of Moses, and focused mainly on their good works in order to please God here on earth, and this was because of a lack of understanding and revelation. They were not yet fully established in Christ and believing the truth in all areas. This does not mean that they had lost their eternal salvation, but that in their daily lives, they relied more on their self-righteousness to attract God’s favor, instead of applying the same simple faith that they had at the moment of salvation. Therefore, their departure from the faith was not an irreversible fall from the faith, but a temporary distancing or limited to only some aspects of their faith life. The same is happening today with many genuine Christians in the body of Christ who slip from time to time into self-righteousness or do not have full faith in the truth in all areas of their lives. Paul did not have in mind here the loss of eternal salvation. Lots of born-again Christians who are still legalistic and self-righteous will still go to heaven because they put their faith in Jesus for forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation.

From this passage we can also draw some general principles of faith. For example, the devil’s lie will always result in a works-based salvation. This is appealing because a religion oriented toward good works seems impressive, holy, and righteous for others. We can examine religion by religion and we will see that they are all based on what you do or don’t do. It is believed that thus God is tempered in His demands, or, in other words, good human works temper Him, they appease God. However, all these teachings are satanic and demonically fueled. True Christianity is not based at all on human works, but only on the grace of God. False religions teach that we must work for salvation, but true Christianity teaches that God has done everything in Christ. This is one way to identify falsehoods in teachings. Satan’s lies always refer to the same thing: spirituality achieved through human effort and not based on Christ alone.

Revelation 3:1–5 (The Book of Life)

These verses seem to focus on good works, on the idea of being watchful, not defiling our garments, and overcoming. Verse 5 specifically says that only those who overcome will be clothed in white, their names will not be blotted out of the Book of Life or the book of the saved, and Jesus will confess their names before His Father and before His angels. One of the most common interpretations of this verse in the Christian world is that some born-again people will not be watchful enough, will not overcome, and eventually their names will be blotted out of the Book of Life, even though they were once truly saved. At first glance, this seems a plausible conclusion. But let’s take a closer look at each verse.

These words were addressed to the pastor of the church of Sardis, who represented, in fact, the whole church from that city. It consisted of two kinds of people: (1) genuinely saved, (2) and those who called themselves Christians and did all kinds of good, moral works, but they didn’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ and had never been born again spiritually.

In Verse 1, Jesus told this church in Sardis it had some works and a reputation for being alive, but it was dead. What is a dead church? It is a Christian community where most people (but not all) present themselves as good Christians, but in reality, have a dead faith. The church in Sardis consisted mainly of such people. They were doing a lot of good works and activities for their community, and probably that is why the church of Sardis had such a good reputation, but all those things they were doing were dead works because they were not coming from faith in Christ and were just some good works. Verse 2 mentions their works were not perfect (or completed in the NASB translation) before God, strengthening the idea that these people were not born again. Galatians 5:6 says the only thing that counts in Christ is faith working through love. For any work to be alive, it must be worked out from a faith-based relationship in Christ through love. Moreover, Colossians 2:9 says whoever is in Christ is complete in Him already. Only someone in Christ is complete and perfect and, so, can perform perfect works before God.

There might have been a time when the church of Sardis was fully alive, meaning most of the people in it were born again and effective in the Kingdom. However, in time, through teaching that was maybe too inclusive and too negatively influenced by the society’s culture, the church became dead. That doesn’t mean people who were born again lost their salvation, but it means the church as a whole became dead in the sense that some believers left from there, new people were added, and in time, the spiritually dead outnumbered the spiritually alive. Verse 4 highlights that even in that dead church of Sardis, a few people still didn’t comprom

Session 5 - Many Will Fall Away (Saved for Eternity)

OBJECTIONS AGAINST ETERNAL SALVATION (PART III)
Galatians 5:19–21 (The Practice of Fleshly Works)

Some preachers use this passage to threaten Christians that, if they habitually practice the works of the flesh described in the text, they can lose their salvation at any time without knowing. First, as we demonstrated in the previous section, inheriting the Kingdom is tantamount to being saved. Second, Paul doesn’t say that those people who practice fleshly works will be disinherited from a state of heirs, but that they will not inherit anything in the first place. Third, he doesn’t specify a clear timeline or a number of times after which those who practice the works of the flesh will lose their salvation.

Fourth, if we look carefully at the context (a few verses before and a few verses after our passage), we can quickly discover that the apostle Paul is portraying a stark contrast between the flesh and the Spirit and between the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit: “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish” (Galatians 5:16–17). He merely puts them side by side for comparison and godly instruction to believers. After enumerating all the works of the flesh, he begins Verse 22 with the preposition “BUT,” which commences the enumeration of the fruits of the Spirit. He concludes in Verse 24 that those who are Christ’s (who are different from those who practice the works of the flesh and will not inherit the Kingdom) have already crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. So, he encourages believers to live according to the truth about their already changed nature. In fact, in Verse 25, he says this: if you are in the Spirit, live in Him, and belong to God, then also walk, and behave in the Spirit or according to Him. The theme is clearly the renewal of the minds of believers in Christ and not their loss of salvation.

Ephesians 5:5–6 (The Sons of Disobedience Part 1)

This text, which is often used as an objection to eternal salvation, is very similar to two other scriptures from previous sections with a new addition: “the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” The implication is that believers in Christ, who are sons of God and disobey Him by doing any of the shameful things enumerated, will come under the wrath of God after a certain point. However, what kind of disobedience is Paul talking about here? It’s disobedience of faith, not disobedience to the Law. He also says in Romans 1:5 that through Jesus, we received the grace and apostleship to bring about “the obedience of faith” among all nations. Sons of obedience are those who put their faith in Christ while the sons of disobedience are those without Christ.

Again, here the main argument to this objection is that the apostle Paul describes the behavior of those who will never inherit the Kingdom of God and are under His wrath with the purpose of teaching believers how not to live. He begins in Ephesians 4:17 by saying, “you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk,” and he continues with this contrast throughout Chapters 4 and 5. In Ephesians 5:1, Paul encourages believers in the church of Ephesus to become imitators of God, as beloved children, and in Verse 7 of the same chapter, he instructs them not to be partakers with the sons of disobedience. In Verse 8, Paul clarifies even more that they were once darkness, but now they are light in the Lord, so they should walk according to that light from inside of them. So, they are not those who will be disinherited if they persist long enough in sinful behaviors. The phrase “wrath of God” is meant to emphasize the gravity of sin. Although Jesus Christ has removed all sin and condemnation at the time of salvation, that doesn’t mean God became softer on sin and we can be relaxed about it. We should strive to differentiate ourselves from darkness and live according to the Kingdom standards we inherited.

Colossians 3:5–11 (The Sons of Disobedience Part 2)

This passage is identical to Ephesians 5:5–6, which we already explained. Still, I wanted to include it separately for repetition and to cover all possible objections people might bring to the eternal salvation of the new creation. Based on the context of the passage, we can quickly notice again the contrast Paul clearly makes between the unsaved (the sons of disobedience) and the saved who might still do sinful things. That is precisely the reason for such a comparison because Christians usually still do sinful things in the process of mind renewal and sanctification. Verse 5 begins with the preposition “therefore,” which introduces the result of what has already happened. Because you died with Christ (Colossians 3:3) and were raised with Christ (Colossians 3:1), therefore put to death the earthly things like fornication, uncleanness, evil desires, etc. Verse 7 continues in the past tense: “in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.” Finally, Verse 8 says, BUT NOW, put aside all these things: anger, wrath, malice, etc.

So, Paul doesn’t say the Christians in the church of Colossae might become sons of disobedience through their sinful deeds and come under wrath, but that they should change their way of life now that they have inherited the Kingdom of God and are no longer under His wrath.

Revelation 21:8 (The Punishment of the Second Death)

Some Christians in the body of Christ use this verse to advocate that believers who don’t live a holy enough life according to decent moral standards might end up in the lake of fire that is the second death. If you want to believe this interpretation, no one can stop you. However, if we are really interested in knowing the intention and truth of the verse in the context of the whole scripture, we can see it clearly. First, notice the apostle John doesn’t say those in Christ who behave cowardly, unbelievingly, abominably, or murderously will suffer the second death. Instead, he names them according to their nature and identity, which is not in Christ. Moreover, he begins Verse 8 with the preposition “but,” clearly demarcating those who conquer and who will inherit the things of God in Verse 7 from the liars and the sexually immoral people who will go to the lake of fire. Furthermore, as I previously mentioned, the Bible never identifies the righteous people of God with those sinful designations described in Revelation 21:8.

Matthew 24:3–14 (Many Will Fall Away)