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Can we Lose our Salvation?

We are often told that salvation is past present and future. We have been saved (made righteous at the cross), we are being saved (our ongoing sanctification), we will be saved (to future glory). Likewise the kingdom of God is now and not yet. Now this is probably true across the whole of Scripture, but in any given book there tends to be an emphasis using one or the other for whatever idea you're looking at. Take salvation, for example. In the book of Hebrews salvation is a future event. The term is not used about our past or present state or life with God. Therefore to ask the question, 'Can we lose our salvation?' in the context of Hebrews 10:19-39 is to ask a poor question, as salvation is only future in Hebrews, therefore you can lose your salvation as you haven't had it yet! In Scripture as a whole, however, it seems the opposite is true. i.e. if you define salvation as the act of us being made righteous through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, then the answer is 'no'! It all depends on perspective. The perspective of the author of a given book of the Bible. Our perspective. God's perspective. Without talking about the point of view from which we are asking the question makes that question too vague, and therefore impossible to answer.

In other words, different biblical authors use the same words to mean different things in their books. That's because words don't have fixed meanings, rather authors use words to mean what they want them to mean (within a certain semantic range). The word 'salvation' is a rather broad, and fairly hard to define term. Do we mean salvation from our enemies (Psalms)? Salvation from sin and death? Salvation from the suffering we presently experience? What are we being saved from, and when?

Some theologians in the past were guilty of borrowing the meaning of a word from one book of the Bible and importing it into another. James Barr in his book The Semantics of Biblical Language called this illegitimate totality transfer. He said it would be crazy to think that Paul uses the term logos to mean the same as John. For Paul, logos simply means 'word'. For John, logos is a principle, a living being, the one who is the source of all life. John's use of logos is much richer and broader than Paul's (apologies to those who worship Paul as the best writer in the New Testament 😄).

So, we need to be careful how we frame our questions. Can we lose our salvation? Yes, if you haven't had it yet. Read Hebrews to find out why!

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