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Can a True Christian Fall from Grace?
How heartening it is to read clear passages like John 3:16 which says that all who believe in Christ will "not perish but have eternal life." John 6:37-40 teaches that Christ will lose none of those given to Him by the Father but will raise all of them up to eternal life at the last day. Romans 8:28-30 declares, “these He justified; He also glorified” showing that no one who is truly justified by Christ falls through the cracks before full glorification takes place. These and other passages like John 10:26-30 are so clear. However, at least at first glance, some scriptures seem to undermine these precious truths. Because the Bible is the inspired word of God, it is consistent throughout. It never contradicts itself. To see an example of this, here's a question (based on Galatians 5:4) and an answer provided by Dr. James White on his blog at www.aomin.org.
Question: How do we explain Galatians 5:4 which talks of people falling from grace?
Answer: Gal 5:4... you have fallen from grace. - This shows that you can receive God's grace and then fall. Quite true: but what kind of grace, and in what context?
These words are addressed to a particular group, as the context shows:
Galatians 5: 2-4...
2 Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.
3 And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law.
4 You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.
So in what way had those seeking to be justified by law "fallen from grace"? The assumption that is usually made is that to fall from grace proves that you once received saving grace; evidently, the same assumption would follow that one who is severed from Christ was once joined to Him savingly.
Aside from the contradictions such a position creates with the plain assertions of Scripture elsewhere, the fact of the matter is Paul is addressing those who were seeking to add to faith in Christ the single act of obedience encompassed in circumcision--clearly the Judaizers were not saying you did not have to believe in Christ, nor were they importing the entirety of the law of Moses (Paul argues their inconsistency at this point as part of his refutation of them); instead, they were adding a select list of things one had to do in addition to faith to be right before God. Paul has already laid out the stark contrast between the path marked by law-keeping obedience and that marked by grace-inspired faith in Christ. One cannot go down both paths.
These men were still seeking their justification, unlike true believers who look back upon theirs (Romans 5:1). They had not yet found peace with God by faith in Christ Jesus alone, and Paul says they will never find it going down the path they are going. They have been severed from Christ not in the sense that they had been salvifically united to Him and now He was failing to save them, but that by seeking to be made justified by something other than faith alone, they were severed from the only true source of life in Christ; they have fallen from grace not that they had been salvifically regenerated and justified and sanctified by grace already, and were now destroying that grace by their beliefs, but that they have fallen away or failed of grace (literally) by proceeding down a path grace has never, and will never, mark out, that path of human cooperation and works righteousness that is so much the desire of the unregenerate heart.
To prove that God's sovereign electing grace can fail to save the elect would require a text far more to the point than one addressing false teachers who are perverting the gospel and thus cutting themselves off from salvation.
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Comments
John
I do not disagree with your view that a Christian cannot fall away from his salvation, but I think Galatians is more complex than you suggest. While we cannot know for sure the salvific state of the Galatians who were ‘falling away’, we do know that Paul compared them with Peter’s similar error previously. Clearly Peter was saved so his table fellowship error, which Paul criticised, was a serious mistake which a believer can make. Maybe Peter was not guilty of legalism (if we reserve ‘legalism’ to mean the attempt to get saved in the first place) but maybe he was guilty of neonomianism, which I take to mean a believer’s wrong attitude to the law, an obeying the law to stay saved. This is clearly as deadly as legalism but fortunately God does not abandon neonomianists to their heresy but, somehow, brings them back. Their falling away is therefore not final, but is akin to the ‘fall from grace’ that any and all of us make when, as believers, we still sin.
Richard
Posted by: Richard | October 2, 2006 06:17 AM
It is interesting that people neglect to look to Hebrews 6:4-6, which states,
"It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace."
We need look no further than this for clear answers to this question. I am not a legalist, I am free in Christ. However, I am not free to sin as I please. Rather to praise and live freely from my sin which I regrettably continue to commit. I will not glorify sin or "throw" my salvation out as an excuse to sin.
Posted by: Chris Brown | December 20, 2006 06:22 AM
Hi Chris,
The Hebrews 6 passage has been addressed on this blog a number of times. Here are some words on this from Vincent Cheung who was responding to someone who said that they still tended to read passages like this as an Arminian:
"... there are a number of commentaries that adequately address Hebrews 6. It is good to read and review them. After that, the struggle is not in attaining exegetical precision with the passage, but it is in the part of you that still tends to read it as an Arminian — as a self-centered rebel — when there is no warrant for it.
Consider the example of John 3:16. It says that whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life, which both Calvinism and Arminianism affirm, but it does not say who will believe or why they will believe. Thus the verse affirms only salvation by faith, and has no relevance to the disagreement between Calvinism and Arminianism until you bring other biblical passages into the discussion. However, many people want to read it as Arminians, and so they think that Arminianism is what it proves. They take the words "whoever believes" to mean something so different as, "Every man has free will, and anyone can by his free will believe in Christ apart from God's foreordination and direct control." I might as well deduce the entire Alice in Wonderland when someone says "Good morning" or "Have a nice day."
Likewise, Hebrews 6 says that whoever satisfies the listed conditions and then withdraws from the faith cannot repent again. Since this is what it says, then this is what it means. Now, we can argue about whether these conditions completely define a believer. We could argue from the example of Judas, who exercised the very powers of the world to come, but Jesus knew from the beginning that he was "a devil." He was never truly converted. However, even this discussion is unnecessary, since it is irrelevant to the main point of the passage. Even if it describes a believer, does a believer actually withdraw? Does it ever happen? The passage does not say. The only mention of this topic points toward the other direction: "Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case — things that accompany salvation" (v. 9). The writer was convinced that at least the original readers would not suffer the fate that he describes. What is it then? The passage cannot be used to support Arminianism, since even the relevance is absent.
I could say, "If God dies, then the earth will also disappear," or something to that effect. The statement is certainly true. But will it ever happen? Is it even possible? It would be pure lunacy to infer from the statement, "Therefore, it is possible for God to die." The statement does not address the topic at all. Now, we could argue that the words "if God dies" contain a categorical error, rendering the phrase meaningless, but other than that, the statement makes an important point, that God is the sustainer of all things, and that all things continuously depend on him. This is what it implies, and one cannot read more into it unless he does so by force."
Posted by: John Samson | December 20, 2006 10:18 AM