4 thoughts on “How to Become a Christian”

  1. I am considering visiting your church.

    I have a question though – does your church hold that a Christian can lose their salvation? I just want some clarification on the next to the last paragraph above.

    Also, “Submit” above is misspelled. 🙂

    thank you!

  2. Jane, thanks so much for “sumbitting” a comment on the site, it does my heart good to know that at least one person has read this page. When I wrote it, I wondered if that paragraph would be a point of contention. It’s probably more of a wording from the way I personally understand the situation at this point in my life rather than our official stance. I thought it was important to mention the concept because it is easy to think that becoming a Christian is just for the “fire insurance” (or the get out of Hell free card) and doesn’t involve perseverance to the end in active relationship with Christ.

    Our church and the movement from which it was started, Great Commission Ministries, has traditionally worded it this way:

    All who are born again of the Spirit can, through the sure promises of God, be fully assured of eternal life from the very moment they put their faith in Christ. This assurance is not based upon any kind of human merit, but upon the finished work of Christ, who completely paid for their sins and upon the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who is the deposit guaranteeing their inheritance.

    While the Bible supports this in many passages, it seems to me (just like the free-will paradox) that we are also given the responsibility to continue on with the relationship once we enter into it with Christ. We didn’t earn it to begin with and we don’t have to earn it once we get it, but saving faith is a continued action of trusting. Study Philippians 2:12-13, Matthew 3:7-11, John 15, Hebrews 10:32-39, and 1 Timothy 1:18-20 and feel free to post your thoughts on these passages. Bonhoeffer and Willard (mentioned in the article) give it much more attention too. I’d like to know what other readers think about this. It takes a lot of creative interpretation to try to explain that salvation is impossible to lose.

    I think we can be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will not slowly grow cold, forget about us or lose interest and decide that He doesn’t want to remain faithful to his side of the salvation covenant.

    I also hope you’ll visit [nlcf] and find us to be a group of people who wrestle through the Scripture with God to try to understand important issues like this. There’s a lot more to it than I’ve just written but it’s a start. I’d love to hear what your perspective is on this.

  3. So what is your black and white answer? Can you lose your salvation or not? Do you feel that if we stray away that you lose it? Or, do you feel that no matter what we will always have our eternal salvation with Christ in heaven, once we have given our life to him?

  4. I’ve probably overstepped my authority as the web guy. I’ll talk with our pastors about it. Again, in addition to the web, this would be great to discuss in person with them if/when you visit.

    I don’t want to give the impression that we are mushy on our theology because, as you can see, we’re striving to do our homework. [nlcf] tends not to make something black or white which the Bible may not have clearly deemed thus. We do know that scripture is black and white about this for sure: if you trust in Jesus you have salvation and if you don’t you don’t.

    I’ll have to ask the pastors if there’s anything they want to add. Again, thanks for the interaction. What are your thoughts on the topic?

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