Saved by Faith Alone Paradox
To avoid “bias” I have used Google’s AI answer to define saved by faith alone.
The basic idea is that once you profess Jesus to be your savior and ask for forgiveness of your sins then you are saved. Presumably you make Him your Lord, but obedience is optional. There are no works or laws you must follow to be saved as that would be considered “works based salvation” which I have also asked Google AI to summarize.
So saved by grace through faith alone requires that there be no law that you are obligated to follow to maintain your salvation. This in turn leads many to also adopt the once-saved-always-saved position.
I see a lot of people who teach that once you say the prayer of salvation and accept Jesus that you can never lose your salvation. These people also teach that the law has been done away with and anyone who tries to keep the law will fall under the law and be condemned to hell. They will oppose anyone teaching that faith in Yeshua produces obedience to the law and that willful and unrepentant disobedience to the law after you have been saved results in you being cutoff from the tree you had been grafted into.
So this is the paradox. I use to believe the once saved always saved doctrine and the doctrine that the law has been done away with. According to their teaching I cannot lose my salvation even though I denied the very existence of God for 14 years after my salvation. I have since repented and have full faith in the work Yeshua did and do my best to keep his whole law as a means of showing my love and avoid grieving the spirit of grace.
According to the “saved by faith alone” and “once saved, always saved” doctrine, I should be in danger of hell by attempting to follow the law and failing; however, according to their same doctrine there is nothing I can do to lose my salvation and there are no laws I must follow to keep my salvation.
The “once saved, always saved” folks have a “retrospective” loophole that says “if you fall away” then you were never “really saved” in the first place. But this creates another paradox because you can never really know if you are saved. After all, before I rejected God for 14 years I was a devout church going Christian for 8+ years who attended multiple churches every week and went on mission trips. My idea of fun with my friends was going on hikes singing worship music. I earnestly believed for many years that I was saved and was far from lukewarm. I was the kid that was mocked in High School and College for wearing Christian slogans on my t-shirts and carrying a bible to class. I would do daily devotionals so it wasn’t purely a “social club” kind of thing.
You cannot claim such a person was “never really saved” unless every single person that professes to be Christian is actually in an indeterminate state waiting to see if they fall away in the future before you know whether they were saved in the beginning or not.
This is further complicated by the condemnation of anyone who isn’t sure whether they are saved or not. Everyone is expected to know they are saved, but no one really knows until they die. Admitting that you “might not be saved” is akin to admitting that you really were not saved. “No True Christian” should have doubts!
If you really were saved, then even the so-called-sin of “attempting to keep the law” cannot cause you to lose your salvation.
Based upon their logic, everyone that prays and trusts Yeshua is saved and can never be lost no matter what unrepentant sin they commit afterward. Once you are saved then you are free to obey the law as a means of loving Yeshua as it is written “if you love me keep my commandments”. You are not in danger of losing your salvation by doing so.
However, if the once saved always saved doctrine is false and you proceed to continue sinning without repentance (even after prior years of faithful service) then you could be in danger of hell.
The only logical conclusion is that your salvation depends upon maintaining your submission to Yeshua as your Lord and repenting from the works of your flesh whenever you become aware that you have sinned. If you ever say in your heart, “X is not a sin” or “the law does not exist”, when you know it is against his law, then you have fallen for the same lie as Eve, “Did God really say…” You cannot lose your salvation by keeping the law after salvation, but you just might lose your salvation by willfully breaking the law after salvation.
Why then are “once saved always saved” folks and “saved by faith through grace alone” folks so offended by those who teach keeping the law after salvation? They get so offended that they exclude you from their communities for recommending that we remember the Sabbath and honor other feast days? Keeping the law is not sin and never can be sin because the definition of sin is transgression of the law.
The Anti-Law Law
There is not a “new law” that says the “teaching old law is now sin” and if there was you couldn’t demand people follow the “new law” without creating your own “works based salvation”. This leaves those who teach saved by faith alone in a pickle because they cannot make a new law that says keeping the sabbath and teaching others to do so as well is a sin that causes them to lose salvation. “Thou shalt not keep or teach sabbath” is a new “work” that must be followed to maintain your salvation under their doctrine… it is so serious a violation that those who teach it put you out of the assembly for preaching the sabbath and feasts. At the same time, those who teach its ok to violate other laws are welcome.
This Anti-Law Law is the doctrine of the devil and is going to leave many or most rapture watchers deeply disappointed when they enter the tribulation in the midst of Nuclear War. If they are wrong they might not have time to repent.
Keeping the law is not relying on your righteousness. Relying on your righteousness is to proudly say that you don’t need Yeshua to forgive your accidental sins and to claim that animal sacrifices are of equal power to Yeshua. So long as you confess that you confess the law is good, desire to keep it, and ask Yeshua to forgive your accidental, unintentional, and repented from sins then you are saved.
If want to be ready for the rapture and provide instructions for those who get left behind, then you can download my free book. Subscribe for notifications to find out when it becomes available in print at cost (no royalty for me). I expect the book to be available for purchase around September 18th. Not much time to buy for those who are left behind because the rapture on the Last Great Day of Tabernacles in the last year of Daniel’s 70 jubilees is likely coming on October 9th.
