Posted on 10/20/2013 11:29:26 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Once upon a time, Groucho Marx hosted the popular game show, “You Bet Your Life.” At the start of the show, a “secret word” was revealed to the studio audience. If a contestant said the word during the course of the show, a reward would descend from the rafters (a one hundred dollar bill).
Whether we know it or not, we are all, Christians and non-Christians alike, contestants in the spiritual equivalent of “You Bet Your Life.” If we bet wisely, our reward is eternal life. But if we bet foolishly, we condemn ourselves to eternal damnation.
That brings to mind Pascal’s Wager, credited to the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal. He famously posited that every human being bets his or her life on whether or not God exists.
“Let us,” he wrote, “weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”
To put this in terms to which most of us can relate, even if the odds of God’s existence are, say, 1 in 175 million – the odds of winning Powerball on a single ticket – it is worth the wager.
Because, if we have bet on God, and God does not exist, we lose nothing. That is, save for indulging in certain behavior proscribed by God, including sexual promiscuity, idol worship, adultery, homosexuality (and other sexual perversions), thievery, greed, substance abuse, slander and robbery.
But if we bet against the Almighty, and indeed He does exist, we shall be cast into the lake of fire, eternally separated from God. We shall be condemned to place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Where we will be burned with unquenchable fire. Where we will be tormented day and night forever and forever.
Most of us are rationale. So we heed Pascal’s advice.
Even if we are uncertain there is a God, we hedge our bet. We respond to an altar call at some point in our lives. We say we accept Jesus as our personal Savior. We get baptized.
In so doing, we believe we have ensured our eternal security. We believe that, because we went through the ritual of being “saved,” we have a lifetime “Get Out of Hell Free” card. And that we can live our lives as it pleases us – not God – with impunity.
But what if we are wrong? What if this doctrine of “Once Saved, Always Saved,” espoused by many Godly pastors, preached in many purpose-driven churches, is errant? What if it actually is possible for us to forfeit our eternal salvation, to condemn ourselves to hell, by living brazenly and unrepentantly in defiance of God’s law?
That presents a corollary to Pascal’s wager, one that has not been considered by those who profess themselves Christ followers, but who are not truly leading a Christian life.
Let us call this corollary the Salvation wager, in which we weigh the gain and loss in betting on “Once Saved, Always Saved.”
Those who reject the doctrine, who believe those of us whom the Son sets free, must go and sin no more, must faithfully strive to live in obedience to God, have everything to gain if the doctrine is wrong and nothing to lose if the doctrine is right.
But those who subscribe to the doctrine, who believe that, having been saved, they can commit any and all manner of sin and it doesn’t matter in the eternal scheme of things, have hell to pay if they are wrong.
So what might Pascal advise?
That even if it’s more likely that once a person is saved, there is absolutely nothing they can do to lose their salvation, and that even if the odds are, say, 175 million to 1 that the widely-accepted doctrine of “Once Saved, Always Saved” is right rather than wrong, it still is wise to bet against the doctrine.
Because there are many who claim themselves Christians, who think their names have been written in the book of life, who will appear before the great white throne of judgment, who will find themselves sinners in the hands of an angry God.
They will look to Jesus and say, “Lord, Lord,” hoping He will spare them from punishment. But He will declare to them, “I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice wickedness.”
That’s a warning to those abiding unabashedly and unrepentantly in sin. They have bet their lives on “Once Saved, Always Saved.” And if they are wrong, eternal torment awaits.
By the parameters Pascal has set there his conclusion is illogical and wrong.
You have lost a lifetime of seeking the truth and living it.
i never saw belief in God as a get out of jail free card... if you live your life as someone unworthy of a reward i see no reason you will get one. mercy for the guilty is torture for the innocent, raping and or murdering children then saying God forgive me is not a get out hell card to go and be at God's side on equal standing with those innocents you raped and murdered, but that's just me
If my ancestors had stayed in now Godless Scotland, I would not have been lucky enough to have had my seeds carried on a Conestoga wagon, and fortune allowed me to be born in the Bible belt to evangelical parents.
I am going to buy a lottery ticket now.
Is this similar to only Women and little boys need to attend church?
If it’s wrong, everyone’s in big trouble, because there is no clear delineation in scripture as to when/how one loses their salvation - so no one will ever know.
The delineation is so clear: faith. “THIS IS THE WORK OF GOD - that you BELIEVE in Him whom He sent.”
The real question is, if one continues to live in overt sin, do they really have faith? When Christ truly is living in the believer, the life is changed. Many say they believe, but their lives prove otherwise.
If there is no fruit, there is no Christ-life within. So simple.
“If my ancestors had stayed in now Godless Scotland, I would not have been lucky enough to have had my seeds carried on a Conestoga wagon, and fortune allowed me to be born in the Bible belt to evangelical parents.
I am going to buy a lottery ticket now.”
Even the cast of the lot is under the authority and control of God:
Pro_16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.
In truth, every man in his heart wishes mercy for themselves, and justice for everybody else.
and sometimes the answer is no...
So God created Souls he wished to destroy? We are “selected” to be chosen, and some are “selected” to be destroyed? But lets substitute “created” for “selected”.
I am not trying to be argumentative, and i have no answers other scripture quoting which I can do as well as most and better than some.
And yet we will. It is inevitable. All we can do is try our best, and ask for and accept the help of the Holy Spirit.
Saying you've accepted Christ does not make it so. But once you really have, you cannot continually live in sin without attempting to fight it. That is not repentance at all.
Even if the flesh is weak, the spirit has to be willing.
But if you CAN lose your salvation after being saved, then how is our religion better than that of the Muslims, who do not know until they get there(according to what they say) that they make paradise? Unless of course, they die in the attempt to commit mass murder for Allah.
Once saves always saved is correct; because God is the keeper of salvation in those who trust in Jesus. The people you describe were’t really saved. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water ( doctrinally)!
“But those who subscribe to the doctrine, who believe that, having been saved, they can commit any and all manner of sin and it doesn’t matter in the eternal scheme of things, have hell to pay if they are wrong.”
A gross misstatement and over simplification of the saved by Grace theological view point.
Also just for the record... you are a blog pimp too boot
However, it can be blotted out (Psalms 69:28).
BEST POST OF THIS DISCUSSION (And Scripturally based); Thank You!
There are numerous scriptures which establish the fact of a probation being the truth in the life of the believer in this world. “IF” appears much in the New Testament.
The starting premise of the article is flawed.
Key on: “we have a lifetime “Get Out of Hell Free” card. And that we can live our lives as it pleases us – not God – with impunity.”
There’s the flaw in the article. Right there.
CHANGE is required. Jesus forgave freely, but He also said to those sinners He forgave, Go and Sin No More.
“Go and Sin No More” == CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOR.
“Go and Sin No More” NOT == “Just Keep Sinning, You’re Awesome Just the Way You Are”
At least fight and resist the temptations you have. Make a real effort. Learn to do something different. Deal with it.
“So God created Souls he wished to destroy?”
They’re not destroyed. They’re tortured in hell for an eternity. And the answer is, most definitely. God created the elect for salvation, and God created the reprobate for condemnation.
Pro_16:4 The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
If he did not, then God allowed people to be born who literally have no purpose from Him, whom He foreknew would sin and damn themselves for all eternity, when He could have stopped them being born in the first place. Or, at least, could have sent an evangelist to them, instead of leaving them in some Mongolian place where they will never hear the Gospel, and therefore would not even have the opportunity to be saved at all.
Hence the verse, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and whom I will I hardeneth.”
God has no obligation to save us in the first place. When Adam sinned, he died, and all his offspring died with him. We, before salvation, are all spiritually dead, having noting but sin in our flesh and a desire for evil in our minds. We are all the enemies of God, a damned race, and therefore not one of us is worthy of mercy.
“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)”
(Eph 2:1-5)
But thanks be to God, that He chose us in Himself before the foundation of the world, so that though we were utterly depraved and great enemies of His, yet He plucks us out of the greater damnation of the world and brought us infallibly to eternal life.
“Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats 19 my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum
Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you?
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.
And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”
As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?”
He was referring to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot; it was he who would betray him, one of the Twelve.” [John 6: 49-71]
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