I'm afraid that I have fallen from grace.
What do I do?
Hi, welcome to today's little lesson.
Thank you so very much for joining me.
We're going to once again, try to address a question from one of our beloved viewers
and that viewer wrote to me and said, "I'm afraid that I've fallen from grace."
Now that is a biblical expression 'fallen from grace.'
The apostle Paul wrote, and this particular viewer pointed out Galatians 5:4, Paul said
to the Galatians.
Now let me read it so I get it exactly.
You have been severed from Christ.
You who are seeking to be justified by law.
You have fallen from grace.
So that's a biblical concept.
And I know that there is a diversity of opinion and a lot of disagreement within the body
of Christ on what that really means.
There are quite a few within the body of Christ, who would say that it's impossible to be severed
from Christ once you are joined to Christ and because they have trouble with verses
like these because Paul told the Galatians, you have been severed from Christ.
Well, in order to be severed from Christ, you'd have to first be joined to Christ, right?
That only makes sense.
But if your theology doesn't allow for any such possibility, then you have to come up
with some kind of explanation for what we've just read.
Not to mention scores of other scriptures.
And those who believe that it's impossible to be severed from Christ once you're joined
to Christ, they will gravitate towards those scriptures that give us assurance of our salvation.
And those scriptures, which point out the faithfulness of God and his mercy.
And those are all in the Bible.
Those are all good scriptures, but they have to be balanced, I believe with other scriptures
in the Bible, that point out the fact that we are free moral agents, even after we become
believers in Jesus Christ, and therefore it's possible for believers to become unbelievers,
right?
I mean, it's possible.
Peter was a believer when he was walking on the water towards Jesus, walking by faith,
but then he looked at the wind, the waves and he began to doubt and he sank.
And Jesus asked him, why did you doubt?
Well, he was experiencing a miracle from God and he lost that miracle from God when he
doubted.
So it's possible for believers to become unbelievers.
And so I think the same thing could be considered to be possible with faith in Christ.
And if you've been around, as long as I have as a Christian, you've seen people who, by
all indications, they were at one time believers in, and therefore devoted followers of Jesus
Christ, who today would tell you, they don't believe in Jesus Christ and they're not following
Jesus Christ.
So those who believe you can't forfeit salvation under any terms, or you can never be severed
from Christ once you're joined to Christ.
They explain that by saying, "well, that was ... he was just a phony convert and never
really had at the beginning, because if you really got it, you would maintain it" and
they'll often use other theological arguments like, salvation is all of God and none of
us, et cetera, et cetera.
And we could go into all of that.
I'm not going to go into that today.
But so a person reads a scripture and this particular viewer thought, well, it says you
have been severed from Christ and why?
Because you are seeking to be justified by law.
And therefore, another way of saying that you've been severed from Christ and including
the reason that is you're seeking to be justified by the law, you have fallen from grace.
So you were in grace, but now you've fallen from that grace.
And as she elaborated on why she was wondering if she found grace, she's watched a YouTube
video, I believe she said, and the guy was talking about how you're not really saved
unless you're baptized.
And there are those people out there, God bless them and of course, baptism is important.
No one's going to say otherwise.
But to say that you're not saved unless you been baptized.
I know that ... I think that there's reason to question that.
Every believer should be baptized and baptism is an indication that you are a believer.
And if you read what Jesus said about the importance of being baptized, His commandment
to be baptized and you refuse to be baptized, that would probably indicate you're really
not a believer.
Okay.
So true believers do get baptized, but if they die from the time of they believing in
Christ and get baptized, they don't go to hell.
That's how I see it in the word of God.
Okay.
But she being and watching this, one of these videos, those guys said, you have to baptize.
She had not been baptized yet.
So she I guess hurried up and got baptized.
But then she began thinking to herself, wait, and maybe she watched somebody else's YouTube
video.
And that person said, well, those people are trusting in their baptism to save them.
And so they're being justified by what they do, they're trusting in their works.
And so those are the people who fall from grace and are severed from Christ.
And she was afraid, I've been severed from Christ because I was looking at my baptism
as the means of salvation, other than Jesus Christ.
Would be a mistake to be thinking, well, I must be saved, that I'm safe and secure in
Christ, in salvation because I've been baptized.
And no matter how I live my life it doesn't make a difference whether I'm a fornicator,
an adulter, a thief, a murderer, I've been baptized.
So I'm safe and secure in my salvation.
Well, that would be of course, very wrong thinking according to many other scriptures,
right?
So baptism is not what guarantees salvation.
Baptism is an indication that you do believe in Jesus and therefore you are saved.
All right.
So anyways, I of course wrote to her.
I said, "it doesn't sound to me like you're trusting in your baptism.
Even if you were at one time, doesn't sound to me like you're trusting in your baptism
and you believe that you're saved because Jesus died for your sins and we're saved by
grace through faith.
And so even if you were temporarily severed from Christ, you're not now."
Amen.
And I would say that same thing to anybody.
Now in the Galatians case, there've been some false teachers who came into Galatia after
the apostle Paul, and we're teaching people that you're not saved unless you are circumcised.
Look here in the Bible, the Old Testament, it says, you got to be circumcised.
So you guys, aren't saved.
If you die, you go to hell.
And so you need to be circumcised.
So everyone's lining up, all the men, I guess, were lining up to be circumcised.
And Paul is saying, "what?"
You're trying to be justified by keeping the law.
Well, it's too late to be saved by keeping the law.
All the law has ever done for anybody is condemned them because we're all sinners.
So that's why we needed Jesus to die for us.
That's why we need ... the only way to be saved is by grace.
And so if someone walked away from the circumcision saying, "well, now I'm saved because I've
been circumcised and that's the reason I'm saved," well, you've fallen from grace.
You've been severed from Christ.
That's what Paul said.
Sure.
Because now you no longer have faith in Jesus.
You have faith in your circumcision.
All right.
So we'll talk about this a little bit more in the next lesson, because I think there's
some ramifications here that are very, very important for us to understand.
We're not saved by our works, but we are saved unto good works.
Saved people do have fruit, but that fruit is not what saves them.
Okay.
Thank you so much for joining me, do check out heavensfamily.org to see how you can get
involved and what every Christian should be involved in helping the least of these.
Until next time, God bless you.