That's why I posted this. Ive been puzzling it over for a long time. The only thing I can come up with is, we can lose our salvation. I hate to think like that, but, this is what it seems to be saying.
I feel your pain. I sigh whenever I see discussions over this passage, because it is so hard to understand, and I have wavered many times on it. But I have come to the conviction that God's warnings all throughout Scripture are not in vain.
And Paul urgently warns believers, "And working together with Him, we also
urge you not to receive
the grace of God in vain-- "
(2 Corinthians 6:1). We are rather to use that grace as empowerment (2 Corinthians 12:9) to overcome sin, yet some believers do not always recieve God's grace to the end he intended it, and may instead use it as a license to sin. It has taken me a long time to get to the point where I am with reading the Scriptures, but I now learn to accept the Scriptures for what they say and have
fear enough to believe it even if I don't understand it at first. I learned that principle from a very godly evangelist called John Bevere who essentially said the same thing in one of his sermons, that as far as these warnings in the Bible go that one's first instinct is to run away from them or reinterpret them, but he said he has learned the fear of the Lord to
believe what he reads, rather than read what he believes (reading your beliefs into
something). He said rather than trying to reconcile it to his current views, be fears the Lord enough
even if he does not understand how it is compatible with the rest of the message of the Word and that in time
God would reveal the meaning to him.
I have also learned what Paul meant when he said he experienced much weeping and tears, as I have suffered and struggled over what the word says, and have even gotten
excessively frustrated over it enough to audibly cry out to God, "I don't understand. But please strip away my pride, my preconceptions, and my flesh and reveal to me your word." When you do that, something funny comes over you, where you do not contend as much against God's Word when you read it, even if it causes your flesh to stumble (in fact that's one of the purposes of the Word of God: to make your flesh stumble that it is destroyed - only do not be hindered by it). Also the relieving words of a Pastor, whom I am close friends with, comforted me when he told me that one does not even necessarily have to choose a side on whether
you can loose your savlation or not, but rather fear God and trust in Him to work our the rest (and to believe no matter how seemingly contradictory both the promises
and the warnings). At the very least we have a command, warning, and statement of truth which we can always hold as true and worthy of recognition, "The one who endures to the end shall be saved"
(Matthew 24:13). Hold to that and always persevere and
always take God's warnings seriously, but also trust in His grace that
He is able to keep you from stumbling.
God Bless,
~Josh