Can I Lose My Salvation?

Can I lose my salvation? It’s easy to understand why many ask. There are plenty of examples of people who have gone from committed Christian believers to adherents of other religions, agnosticism, or atheism. Loss is a painful part of life, and we all experience it at times—sometimes even when it comes to faith.

Faith lost and faith (re)found are both part of the human experience. But “Can I lose my salvation?” isn’t answered by our life experience alone. It’s not even the most helpful question to ask first.

“Sara” was raised in a loving Christian home before going to university and becoming persuaded by atheism. In her 10th year on campus, as she neared the completion of her third degree, she was looking for some new friends to play guitar with and wandered into a “jam night” hosted by a Resonate-supported campus ministry. While there, she was captivated by hearing the voice of Jesus, the good shepherd, telling her how deeply she is loved and enfolded by God.

Sara is a composite of many stories from my 20 years of campus ministry representing how I’ve seen Jesus’ parables about lost things (Matt. 18; Luke 15) get retold in many students’ and professors’ lives.

Maybe we can now see why “Can I lose my salvation?” isn’t the best question. It bears all the marks of what sociologist Christian Smith calls “moralistic therapeutic deism”—the faulty assumption in our anxious, individualized age that Christian faith is primarily about me, my feelings, my behavior, and my eternal well-being. In contrast, the Bible is first and foremost a testimony about God and God’s gracious love for creation.

The Bible’s grand narrative arc asks a very different question about the lost things of life: Can God be trusted with creation, even when we wander from God’s path and get lost? To the frustration of the religious leaders, Jesus repeatedly teaches that God is the One who looks after those we categorize as “lost.”

We live in a world where things get lost. But Jesus says that the good shepherd won’t let even one sheep (or coin or child) remain lost forever. We might feel or think that we have lost our salvation. We might think someone we know has lost their salvation. But Jesus says that God is tenacious in searching until all of his are eventually found and rescued. Can we trust that?

We might give up, but God never does. The Bible’s refrain is consistent: God is gracious and compassionate, abounding in love and faithfulness (see Ex. 34:6; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15; Ps. 103:8; Ps. 145:8; Joel 2:13; and Jon. 4:2 for a few examples).

Jesus paints word pictures with his parables. He is emphatic: God will one day heal and gather all of creation under a canopy of divine love, joy, and peace. Even here and now, God can be trusted with this cosmic vision. Because God can be trusted with the sparrows sitting in the trees and the flowers growing in the fields (Matt. 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-34), God can equally be trusted with everything (and everyone) in between.

Can I lose my salvation? In a manner of speaking I can. But if or when I do, the good shepherd will continue to show unmerited favor toward me, most especially when I get lost.

That’s what grace is. The good shepherd came to find the lost. For Jesus, one lost sheep is worth searching out and bringing home so that none of his will be lost.

Jesus makes this seemingly absurd claim about God’s grace. But that’s why the religious leaders killed Jesus. A message of grace for the lost is dangerous to those who use their power to categorize and dismiss others.