Are We Once Saved, Always Saved?

In an attempt to prove that a child of God cannot be lost, Baptist preachers and others who teach the impossibility of apostasy make the charge that only the man of the flesh sins. They try to make a distinction between the man of the flesh or as they put it, the outward man, and the man of the spirit, or the inner man. Their argument is that God will not hold the man of the spirit accountable for the deeds done by the man of the flesh. In addition they claim that the man of the flesh, our bodies, will suffer destruction but the inner man will go into heaven. Now, no one who knows the Bible argues that our outward man will not perish but all who know the scriptures are also aware that the inner man is responsible for all of the deeds done in the body and that such an argument is just a dodge to escape the truth.

In II Cor. 5:9-10, Paul teaches that every Christian will give account for the deeds done in the body

“Wherefore we labor that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”

It is also interesting to point out that the Baptist Union Version translates the passage, “things done through the body.”

How strange would this doctrine be in the light of the apostles teaching in the first letter to the church at Corinth. He reminds the brethren there that all they are belongs to the Lord and that they are bought with a price. This includes both their spirit and their body. Let him explain this to us in I Cor. 6:18-20.

“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are Gods.”

In the fifth chapter Paul gives an example of a fornicator who had been bought by the Lord and was one of the elect of God but took his father’s wife and was living in sin. They were instructed to deliver such a one “to Satan” that he might learn to control the lusts of the flesh and thus save his soul. This they did and he repented and was restored to the body of Christ.

In the listing of the sins of Israel in the first 12 verses of the 10th chapter of I Corinthians we have sins of the body and of the spirit catalogued together. The writer is very clear that “all of these things happened unto them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”

“But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Here we have a sin in which the man of the spirit is involved without an overt act on the part of the body. A truth to be remembered is stated in James 2:26. “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” Baptists make both mistakes referred to in the verse. They separate the body from the spirit and teach that one can belong to the Devil and the other to God, and the separate faith from works and teach that men are saved by faith without the works taught in the word of God.