Despite Christians witnessing their friends and family fall away from God, somehow most Christians believe that once someone "accepts" Christ, they are saved forever and will never lose their salvation. A parent might take their child to church every Sunday, and at the age of five, the child might say a prayer accepting Jesus into his heart. But by the age of fifteen, the child is no longer interested in God.
The same thing often occurs with adults who have an emotional experience while attending a church service. They decide to become a Christian based on their emotions, and then when the emotion wears off, they leave and "return to their vomit" as Jesus puts it.
So, the question is, are they saved and can a Christian lose their salvation?
Some Christians believe that if someone falls away from God, then they were never truly saved in the first place. That might be true, I don't know. Only God can judge who is saved and who is not. But we can look at the Bible and see what it says about salvation and being a Christian.
First, salvation means "saved". So, what are Christians saved from? They are saved from sin, death and God's wrath. However, salvation is usually thought to mean someone's eternal reward in heaven. Many Christians think that the end goal is to go to heaven when they die. But what about their life right now - their present life? Is their present life included in salvation? According to the Bible it is. In fact, the Bible contains the instructions for how a Christian is supposed to live their present life and overcome the sin that leads to death that God saved them from. The Bible contains very little information about what happens to us when we die. We're not given enough information to know for sure what happens after we die. However, we are given a ton of information about how a Christian is to live their life right now. Salvation is more about our present lives than about our eternal lives.
With that in mind, let's look at what the definition of a Christian is. The Bible only uses the word twice. One of the times is when Paul and Barnabas are on mission, and it says that the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. Based on that, a Christian is defined as a disciple of Jesus.
A disciple is someone who is being taught by a teacher how to do something; how to perform a specific task. At the time when Jesus was here, young Jewish men who wanted to become a Jewish teacher would ask existing teachers to disciple them. In order for the teacher to agree, the young men were required to attain to certain standards. In other words, they would not disciple just anyone. A young man would be considered qualified if they demonstrated devotion to Judaism, and knowledge of Jewish law and traditions. They were also required to submit to their teacher's authority of interpreting the Scriptures.
Jesus's approach was similar but not exactly the same as how practitioners of Judaism made disciples. First of all, Jesus was not a Jewish rabbi. He was Jewish and knew the Scriptures, and likely practiced Judaism, at least some aspects of it, however He was a carpenter by trade.
Next, rather than having men come and ask Him to disciple them, he went to them and invited them to follow Him after praying to God the Father. No doubt that it was God who instructed Jesus to invite them to become His disciples.
The men whom God had chosen to follow Jesus do not appear to have been looking to become teachers of Judaism. They were untrained, working men. One was a tax collector, four were fisherman, and the others we are not told. However, the reason that God chose them was because He knew that they would be faithful to Him and that they would carry out their assignment. Just as Jewish rabbis required their students to be faithful to the teachings of Judaism and to submit to their authority of the Scriptures, God required Jesus's disciples to be faithful to everything that Jesus taught them.
The disciples of Jesus loved both Him and God the Father, and therefore they learned from Him, they submitted to His authority of the Scriptures, they shared what they learned from Him with others, they obeyed His commands, and they did what He instructed them to do. They were fully committed to Jesus and devoted to His teachings and to His authority. This is what a Christian is.
So, can a Christian lose their salvation? Not based on what a Christian is or on what salvation is because a Christian is living his life for God's glory because he loves Him.
But, can a Christian fall away from God and then lose his salvation? Yes because he is no longer a Christian living his life for God, based on what a Christian is and on what salvation is. What I mean is, since a Christian is a disciple of Jesus - a follower of Jesus - someone who decides to leave Jesus and follow after sin or the world is no longer a Christian because they are no longer following Jesus, and therefore they no longer have salvation because salvation includes living their present life for God.
Writing to Christians, James warned them that sin leads to death, and then concluded by saying, "Do not be deceived my brothers!" (James 1:14-16).
This was a warning to Christians then, and is a warning to the Christians today, who believe they are safe from sin and death because they professed Jesus as Lord once upon a time. Undefeated sin in anyone's life has the power to entice and lead them away from God and to death.
Some people will say, "God said that He will never leave you or forsake you, and therefore when someone comes to Him and professes that He is Lord, they are saved for eternity because God always keeps His promises."
They are correct in saying that God said that and that He is faithful. There is no one more faithful than God. And that is where the problem lies. God will never leave or forsake His children, but his children will leave and forsake Him.
A good example in the Old Testament is Israel who left God time and time again, and a good example of this in the New Testament is in John 6, when almost all of Jesus's disciples stopped following Him and returned to their old ways of life because they could not accept what He was saying. When He asked His Twelve disciples if they were going to leave Him too, they said, "Lord, to whom would we go? Do you not have the words of eternal life?" (John 6:22-71).
Jesus was intentionally sifting the wheat from the chaff. He was only looking for disciples who would be fully committed to Him and His authority. The crowds were not committed to Him, so they left Him. However, the twelve knew that eternal life was only through Him, and therefore they didn't think twice about continuing on as His disciples.
Today, Christians are so desperate to get someone to come to the Lord, that they have no criteria for them to meet. They do not share with their new potential Christian candidate that God has very high standards and expectations of His people and those who call themselves Christians. They also do not share with them to count the cost of following Jesus before deciding to follow Jesus. Not informing them of these things is detrimental to both them and the church, because they can potentially fall away from God and leave Him when their life gets hard, and it's a poor witness of Christ and the church when people who profess to be Christians, but really aren't, continue to live in sin.
When a Christian makes a new disciple, he needs to make these things clear to him prior to them deciding whether or not they are going to follow Jesus. If they decide not to, it might feel like a fail, but the seemingly cold, hard truth is that God does not want uncommitted people calling themselves Christians because it tarnishes His reputation, and He does not want people turning away from Him and leaving Him to return to their vomit. It is better for God, for the individual and for the church that people are informed of counting the cost, that God has high standards and expectations of His people and those who call themselves Christians, and to persevere in the faith and overcome sin. That is better than telling them that they now have eternal salvation because they trusted in Christ one time in their life, regarding a decision that they made without knowing all of the important details. Doing that has caused a sinful, weak, faithless, passive, selfish lukewarm people who identify as being Christians and the church, and who have blemished God's reputation by being given the impression that once a Christian is saved and forgiven, he can live however he wants.
Also, what about the former Christian who decided to leave Jesus and follow after his sin - does he want to spend eternity with God, and furthermore, is God going to make him spend eternity with him because he prayed a prayer during an emotional moment of his life or because he made an uninformed decision to follow Jesus? If Christians believe that someone is saved for eternity because they cannot lose their salvation once they accept Jesus as Lord, then they would have to believe that the person is locked in as a Christian and will spend eternity with God whether they want to or not. Yet, they also believe that God is a god of free will and does not force anyone to do anything, but rather allows the individual to decide for themselves. It can't be both ways. God is either a god of free will, or He forces people to stay with Him regardless if they want to or not.
I know someone very close to me, who played an important part in me coming to faith in Christ by me witnessing the change in his life. He no longer follows Jesus, and as far as I can tell, he has a hatred towards him. Does it make sense that he would continue to have eternal life with God in heaven and that God would require him to be with Him forever? Does it make sense that he would want to spend eternity with God, given the amount of hatred that he has towards God? No it doesn't make sense. In fact it makes zero sense to me and goes against the fact that God allows people to make their own decisions.
Writing this has made me want to reach out to those people who I know who have left God, because it does lie heavily on my heart. I have no idea why some of them left Him - maybe bad things happened in their lives and they blame God, or maybe they were hurt by other Christians. Whatever the case may be, my hope is that they would consider returning to God and following Jesus, because He wants them to return and live the life He created them for.
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