The problem is you're using what we're trying to prove as the answer to what we're trying to prove.
Can a believer replace and subvert the justification they have received through faith in Christ by later seeking to be justified by the law? Apparently so, for that is what Paul is warning them against. The question is, will God ultimately allow his children to do that? That is the fundamental question that needs to be answered to prove or disprove OSAS.
What you're trying to prove and what I'm trying to prove are not, I think, identical things. It seems to me that Paul has made it clear that God
does allow His children to migrate into moralism and law-keeping. It seems, then, that the question is actually: If they
persist in moralism, can they reach a point where God withdraws what Christ has accomplished for them in his redemption, justification and sanctification of them? I don't think so. All that moralism (aka - self-justification through law-keeping) does, ultimately, is cut off the born-again believer from
fellowship with God. Their
relationship to Him through and in Christ, however, is unalterable and eternal because it exists and is established and maintained
in Christ, not in the believer, which is what I was pointing out in the OP to this thread.
We know what will happen if the believer goes back to the law for justification, they will be rejected concerning the inheritance (
Galatians 4:30), for it has no power to justify and produces slaves, not sons.
Galatians 4:28-31 (NASB)
28 And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise.
29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also.
30 But what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the bondwomann and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman."
31 So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.
Is Paul indicating here something about a born-again person's spiritual condition if they live moralistically/legalistically? I don't think so:
Galatians 4:24-26 (NASB)
24 This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar.
25 Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
26 But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.
It seems to me Paul is just trying to make as clear a distinction as possible between the Old and New Covenants and those living under them. He is not threatening salvation lost to those who take up Old Covenant justification-through-law-keeping but merely explaining why doing so is out-of-character for a "child of the free woman" and how futile such living is.
Ultimately, what we are in dispute about is if the true believer can permanently stop believing, not what happens if they do.
Not even a lost person can truly "stop believing." At best, they can merely "suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (
Romans 1:18-32). I don't think a person who has truly believed, that is, exerted genuine saving faith in Christ, not just given intellectual assent to his salvific person and work (
James 2:17-26; Romans 10:9-10), could ever completely, permanently relinquish that faith. Even in the filth of the pigpen, after a rebellious departure from his father and a season of playing the profligate wastrel, the Prodigal looked up from the mire and thought to go to
his father. I have seen this very thing happen with many believers who were thought to have "stopped believing," for decades living in outright rebellion toward God in sin, but who have testified to a persistent, center-of-being awareness of a connection to Him that could not be dissolved and that finally brought them back to Him. A younger brother of mine is one of these.
Yes, at the time he is speaking to them he considers them still saved. This shows me there was still hope for them. And as I pointed out, we don't know if they responded positively to his warning. We don't know if they came back to justification in Christ, or not. If they didn't then we'd know a true believer can in fact fall away from salvation.
Perhaps the most serious problem with this thinking is that it ends up suffering from enormous arbitrariness and uncertainty. Where is the cut-off point where the loss of one's salvation occurs? It seems to me, given how eternally significant this question is, that there would be a careful delineation in Scripture of where, exactly, this point is. But there isn't any clarification at all. If one wants to declare a point of cut-off, the choice of where or when will be unavoidably arbitrary. And if one doesn't make such a declaration, they must remain utterly uncertain as to when a loss of salvation occurs. But there are the examples of the Galatian and Corinthian believers who were caught up in moralism/legalism, carnality and even gross sexual sin whom Paul repeatedly confirms are, nonetheless, fellow, born-again children of God. In light of this (and other things), I am profoundly resistant to the notion that one's salvation can be lost.
This is about believing, not just sinning.
A distinction that is not crisp and clear. Sin is always a reflection of a corresponding belief.
They weren't just turning back to "moralistic law-keeping". They were doing that in unbelief.
I don't think they were. They merely doubted that faith in Christ
alone was sufficient to accomplish their justification. It seems to me that
fear that he wasn't, that they had to do something, too, in order earn their full acceptance with God, rather than simple
disbelief, was at the bottom of their migration toward law-keeping. How many Christians I know today who labor under the same fear and who embark upon the very same self-justification! They are afraid to trust that Christ has, indeed, done it all and that in him they are fully, forever justified before God and unalterably accepted by Him. This
fear erodes their trust, it makes them doubtful; it is not
disbelief, though, that is at the heart of self-justifying law-keeping.
You can't ignore that the context is justification, not the joys and benefits and fullness of being saved.
These things are not discretely separate from one another, in my view.
You can't be saved if you make Christ of no value to you in justification.
Well, for the reasons I've offered, I don't believe this. One can be certain of their justification in Christ at the first and be truly saved and then, as in the case of the Galatians, be eroded in this certainty by false teachers. Does God withdraw His salvation of such people? Not according to what I read in Paul's letter to the Galatians.
People who do not have the benefit of Christ in justification are not going to be saved from God's wrath when Christ returns.
I would say that only those who've NEVER obtained the benefit of Christ's justification of them will suffer God's wrath at Christ's Second Coming.
Justification in Christ means receiving the imputation of God's righteousness. A perfect righteousness that makes you sinless and perfect in God's sight. Justification through law keeping means being righteous in God's sight by doing righteous things. That's why it's a damnable 'justification'. You can't do everything you have to do for that to make you righteous in God's sight (
Galatians 5:3). And so the person who replaces the perfect righteousness of Christ with the righteousness of law will perish in the coming judgement and not partake in the inheritance. They will be turned away.
Well, as I've explained, I don't believe that a person truly justified in Christ, who turns from that justification toward self-justifying law-keeping will thereby undo what
God through Christ accomplished in redeeming and adopting them as His own. Salvation is a permanent work of God, wrought upon a person
by Him; it is not
the person's work that they can undo as they like through unbelief and sin. Some things that God does in His dealings with us are not open to our alteration or approval, like our being created, for example, or in whose womb He decides we will be formed, or that we will convicted and drawn by God to Christ. In these things, God acts unilaterally and in a way we cannot reverse. So, too, I believe in the matter of salvation. I choose to be saved, yes. But God saves me and, having done so, I can do nothing to reverse what He has done any more than I can undo God's bringing me into existence through a particular human family.
