Yes. A Christian can fall from grace, and Paul used those very words about believers (). Grace is God’s kindness to people who haven’t earned it, and the New Testament warns that someone who has received it sadly, often, walks away. Stumbling into sin, which every Christian does, is a different thing. Many churches teach that a true believer can never be lost, an idea often shortened to “once saved, always saved,” so it’s reasonable to ask what does God’s Bible say.
What Did Paul Mean by “Fallen Away From Grace”?
Some Christians in Galatia had been persuaded that they also had to keep the Law of Moses, beginning with circumcision, to be right with God (). Paul wrote back bluntly, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” ().
You can only sever two things that were joined, and only someone who was standing can fall. Paul was writing to Christians. They were leaving a grace they’d truly received.
Were the Warnings Written to Real Christians?
Yes. Hebrews speaks to its readers as family when it warns, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God” (). Peter wrote about people who got free of the world and then went back. “For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first” (). Nobody gets “again entangled” in a net he never got out of.
Paul used Israel as his example. All of them left Egypt, and most died in the wilderness (). Then he warned the Corinthians, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” ().
Which Churches Teach That a Believer Can’t Be Lost?
The Southern Baptist Convention does. Article V of the Baptist Faith and Message, its statement of faith, says those God has accepted in Christ “shall persevere to the end.” Believers “may fall into sin through neglect and temptation,” it adds, and God still keeps them. Its supporting passages include and .
The Westminster Confession of Faith, the doctrinal standard of the Presbyterian Church in America, calls this the perseverance of the saints. Chapter 17 says those God has called and made holy “shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved,” and it explains why: “This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election.”
Other bodies disagree, sometimes inside the same family. The Treatise of the National Association of Free Will Baptists sees “strong grounds to hope that the truly regenerate will persevere,” meaning those truly born again, yet says that through weakness and temptation “they are in danger of falling.” The United Methodist Church’s Articles of Religion state, “After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin,” and add that by God’s grace a person can rise again.
Doesn’t John 10:28 Settle It?
Both Baptist documents cite this passage. They reach opposite conclusions. Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (). We believe it fully. No enemy can tear one of Christ’s sheep from Him.
The promise covers what someone else can do to a sheep. It doesn’t speak to a sheep that strays, and Scripture knows plenty of those, from Isaiah’s picture of all of us going astray () to the one shepherd “of you” who leaves ninety-nine to find the one that’s lost (). puts the danger where no thief could reach it, in an unbelieving heart inside a believer.
John assumed Christians would occasionally sin. He told them to confess their sins and promised that Jesus is their advocate with the Father (1 John 1:8-9; 2:1).
Falling away looks different. Hebrews describes someone “sinning deliberately” after knowing the truth (), and Peter pictures someone overcome by the world again (). Both describe a life that turns back to the world and stays there, which is a long way from a Christian who sins and confesses it.
Then How Can a Christian Feel Secure?
By leaning on God’s promise instead of a spotless record. John told his readers why he wrote, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (). He picked the word know.
Earlier in the same letter he wrote, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (). Cleanses is present tense. The washing goes on as long as the walking does, so a faithful Christian doesn’t wake up wondering whether he’s still saved.
What if I’ve Already Walked Away?
Come back. Simon, in Acts 8, believed and was baptized (immersed in water). Later he tried to buy the apostles’ power with money. Peter told him his heart wasn’t right before God, but he didn’t say Simon had never been converted. He told him to repent, which means to turn from the sin back to God, and to pray (, ).
In Jesus’ story of the lost son, the father ran to meet his son and said he “was dead, and is alive again” (, ). And once you’re home, keep going. Jesus told a church about to face prison to be faithful unto death, and He promised them the crown of life ().
A Steadier Place to Stand
If this question has left you unsure where you stand with God, or something has felt missing for a while, we’d be glad to sit down with an open Bible and read these passages beside you. Sunday mornings at the Church of Christ at South Bumby start with a 45-minute Bible class, and the building sits at the corner of Pershing Street and South Bumby Ave in Orlando.
Plan your visit When we meet:
- Sunday: Bible Class 9:30 am · Worship 10:30 am
- Wednesday: Bible Class 7pm
If you’d like to see how the New Testament says a person becomes a Christian in the first place, start here.