“No, I do not believe that you can “LOSE” your salvation.”
Not even if you lie, cheat and steal?
The problem is this:
You are taking “believe and be saved” and throwing out the Cross of Christ.
There is a concreteness in the Sola Scriptura that reduces salvation to a formula that in turn reduces Christ’s message to a mere set of directions that will eventually carry the unwary slowly out of the light and with increasing speed cast them into darkness.
We are saved by Grace, but not faith alone.
What you call “works” are the visable sign of Christ’s Church on earth, the Catholic Church.
Jesus promised he would not leave us orphans (John 14:18) but would send the Holy Spirit to guide and protect us (John 15:26). He gave the sacraments to heal, feed, and strengthen us. The seven sacraments —baptism, the Eucharist, penance (also called reconciliation or confession), confirmation, holy orders, matrimony, and the anointing of the sick—are not just symbols. They are signs that actually convey God’s grace and love.
The sacraments were foreshadowed in the Old Testament by things that did not actually convey grace but merely symbolized it (circumcision, for example, prefigured baptism, and the Passover meal prefigured the Eucharist. When Christ came, he did not do away with symbols of God’s grace. He supernaturalized them, energizing them with grace. He made them more than symbols.
God constantly uses material things to show his love and power. After all, matter is not evil. When he created the physical universe, everything God created was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). He takes such delight in matter that he even dignified it through his own Incarnation (John 1:14).
During his earthly ministry Jesus healed, fed, and strengthened people through humble elements such as mud, water, bread, oil, and wine. He could have performed his miracles directly, but he preferred to use material things to bestow his grace.
In his first public miracle Jesus turned water into wine, at the request of his mother, Mary (John 2:1–11). He healed a blind man by rubbing mud on his eyes (John 9:1–7). He multiplied a few loaves and fish into a meal for thousands (John 6:5–13). He changed bread and wine into his own body and blood (Matt. 26:26– 28). Through the sacraments he continues to heal, feed, and strengthen us.
Tell me,...
Who is perfect after being saved? Who is capable of never sinning again, ever?
We all stumble and fall because of our humanness, but that doesn’t mean we have to fear going to hell for it.
David was a man after God’s own heart, even though he sinned tremendously.
Abraham took matters into his own hands to try to fulfill God’s promise to him and he is still considered righteous.
Goodness, even Lot is called *righteous* in second Peter, and Lot is the last man I’d consider the term *righteous* to be appropriate for....
II Peter 2:7...and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men...
Does your child cease to become your child just because they disobey and disappoint you on occasion? If you adopted him, do you give him back if he doesn’t listen? What would you think of the kind of parent who would do that or threaten to do that?
Either the person who claims to be a Christian and lives a life of habitual sin isn’t really one in the first place, or if they are, they’d better watch out for the correcting hand of God in discipline to straighten them out.
Even if one could lose salvation because of works, I seriously doubt it’s saved today and not tomorrow and you’d better hope that if you die it’s not before you get to confession and communion again. God’s will is not that any should perish but that all come to repentance. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
He’s not nearly as quick to damn as I was brought up believing.