Correct. One must keep believing, must hold fast to one's faith in Christ's finished work on the cross.
On this we agree. Belive means to belive with Heart.
That’s like saying your grip on your rescuer is more important than the rescuer. In this case, Christ is running the Blackhawk, and you are practically unconscious, you have given him save-me-please, He is running the rest of the operation.
Ie., once you cross the threshold to faith, all your sins are forgiven, unless you think Christ was not enough, and the church (any church) has to add to it.
My preacher has a WAR for that explanation, when the person later starts looking lost again: was this person really honest about their initial saving faith in the first place?
I don’t agree with this either, but generally, I don’t argue about it... because it presupposes the initial confession of faith was a lie from the “wannabe believer”. Maybe there are cases, but I can’t judge. But I will bet there are a lot of folks we think are “lost” in heaven, just as a lot of folks who think they are saved WON’T be in heaven, because of the simple inability to recognize Christ as giving MORE THAN ENOUGH grace for everyone who will receive it.
My responsibility as a Christian is to convey the Gospel. I can NOT save a single soul. I need to have the Gospel down pat, God either wants that person, or He doesn’t. That does NOT include me needing to be a academically gifted theology professor or apologist, etc. God was clear: the Gospel stands on its’ on, I am just the conveyor for the person(s) He has in mind. Nothing more. I am to add nothing or takeaway anything. If you think otherwise, you may be in that camp of the self righteous who wakes up in hell.
I once saw someone here complaining about the Babylon Bee’s staff hamfisted (or similar description) attempt at converting Elon Musk. Guess what? They did what they were supposed to do under God’s command, presented the Gospel repeated the Gospel to Musk. God takes it from there. As long as that Gospel message is accurately conveyed, that’s all God wants out of you for the initial saving phase. Honestly those comments just weirded me out... it’s like they were saying, no normal Christian can get the Gospel to Musk it HAS to be through a great preacher or apologist, to bring Musk on board. Great, you just said Christ was not enough. It doesn’t sound like you trust the Gospel or Christ.
We come in again in the discipleship phase...
Additionally, Christ also knew none of us would move His story absolutely perfectly, I suspect it has a lot of automatic self correction built in, so when it goes through my mouth, it will still work fine on the receiver side :)