You Can Never Lose Your Salvation, and Here's Why!

by Andrew Farley

You Can Never Lose Your Salvation, and Here's Why! Adapted from the new bestselling book “Twisted Scripture: 45 Lies Christians Have Been Told” by Andrew Farley

You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. (Galatians 5:4, NASB)

Fallen from grace? That certainly sounds like they've lost their salvation. And the way the term is popularly used today doesn't  help, either. When we hear in the news about a celebrity who has “fallen from grace”, it typically describes someone who was behaving well but then suffered a moral failure. Perhaps they were arrested for illegal drugs, cheated on their spouse, or cheated on their taxes.

But in Galatians, falling from grace means something very different: falling away from the message of God’s grace and toward the Law.

Paul wrote Galatians to a variety of people. Some had accepted the Gospel; others were acquainted with the message but hadn’t accepted it. Still others had flirted with the idea of salvation by grace through faith but instead chose to seek rightness with God through keeping the Law.

In Galatians 5, Paul was speaking to those “seeking to be justified by law” (v.4) and notes that they were planning to “receive circumcision” (v.3). Clearly, this means they were unbelievers who had no clue how to get right with God.

How can we be certain that Paul was not speaking to believers who had lost their salvation? Notice the contrast between “you” and “we” in the passage:

You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness. (Galatians 5:4–5)

The Greek word for “severed” here conveys that some of the Galatians were “void of” Christ. In other words, those who seek rightness with God through Law-keeping inevitably cut themselves off from the truth of the Gospel. This makes it impossible for them to be justified before God.

So this is not a group of believers who have lost salvation. Instead, it’s a group of Galatians influenced and ultimately persuaded by Judaizers to mix Old Testament rule-keeping in with the true salvation message. This is why Paul separates himself and his fellow believers (“we”) as those in Christ who approach rightness with God in a different way—by faith, not by the works of the Law.

God’s Promise of Security
The New Testament is full of evidence that we cannot lose our salvation. Jesus said that the new life we have is eternal, not temporal, and we will never die (Luke 20:36). He said that no one can snatch us out of His hand (John 10:28–29). Paul tells us that we’ve been sealed with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13–14) and that our calling will never be revoked (Romans 11:29).

God will never leave us and never forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). We are protected by His power (1 Peter 1:5). God is able to save us completely because He always lives to intercede for us for any sins imaginable (Hebrews 7:25).