I have always wondered about the "once saved, always saved" doctrine, primarily because of verses like these:
"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." (Heb 6:4-6 KJV)
"Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul." (Heb 10:38-39 KJV)
"Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;" (2Th 2:3 KJV)
"Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness." (2Pet 3:17 KJV)
"He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels." (Rev 3:5 KJV)
"And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." (Rev 22:19 KJV)
Philip
Try this.
Focus on your thinking,...the object of your thinking, when in fellowship with Christ and what He Provided at the Cross,...compared to say,...when you think about a sin you’ve committed before you’ve confessed it to God through faith in what Christ provided.
Now consider how we think, if we are out of fellowship, in the context of the verses you posted. They don’t point to loss of salvation, rather they point out how we should be thinking and when we aren’t how God is thinking.
IMHO, the most challenging task for God was to communicate to fallen man, who lacked the faculty to spiritually perceive with a regenerated human spirit. Think about it. How do we evangelize to those who have no clue or perception what the spirit means. They have no means to identify the object in their thinking. The natural tendency is to treat anything spiritual as foolishness.
The sealed believers are different. They have a regenerated spirit. We can still sin and fall out of fellowship. God recognizes this and realizes we have volition which He made in us. When we step away from Him by our volition, it’s something He doesn’t control because He made that volition for us to exercise. Even though He recognizes we fall away, and He remains in His integrity, sound in His nature, our actions thereby cause him Grief. That’s why when we sin or fall out of fellowship, it is also called, “Grieving the Holy Spirit”.
So many arguments appealing to guilt/obedience, simply remain out of fellowship with His Plan. We do feel guilty when we recognize we have fallen out of fellowship, but that is part of why He has provided a mechanism for post-salvation sin to be forgiven, namely through faith in what Christ Provided on the Cross and our confession of it to Him. He returns us to fellowship because He loves us.