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SCRIPTURAL WARNINGS AGAINST FALLING FROM GRACE A warning against an impossibility would be ridiculous and an insult to God’s intelligence. Note carefully the various warnings sounded in the Bible against falling from grace. About becoming careless in this life. “And take heed to yourselves (you disciples), lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares … watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of God”—Luke 21:34, 36. Our being ready for the judgment day is conditioned by our watching and praying. About being over confident. “But many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness”—1 Cor. 10:5. “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall”—1 Cor. 10:12. About continuing in God’s goodness, as we have already considered (Rom. 11:22) and about being overcome as we have also noted (2 Peter 2:20–22). Against getting bitterness into the heart. “Looking diligently lest any man fail of (fall from) the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled”—Heb 12:15. Against the Christian sinning a “sin unto death.” “If any man see his brother (in the Lord) sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not a sin unto death. There is a sin unto death (eternal death) I do not say that he shall pray for it”—1 John 5:16. This shows the possibility of a Christian falling and sinning a sin that is beyond the reach of God’s mercy, or never will be forgiven. Against not being sanctified. “For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end”—Heb. 3:14. “Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it”—Heb. 4:1. Being ready to meet God is strictly conditional as the scriptures clearly prove. The Bible warns against becoming intemperate. The great man of God, the Apostle Paul, “But I keep under my body and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway”—1 Cor. 9:27. This text clearly shows us that particular persons are not in Holy writ represented as elected unconditionally to “eternal life,” but that believers in general are elected to enjoy the Christian privileges on earth, which, if they abuse, those very elect persons will become reprobate. Saint Paul was certainly an elect person, and yet he declares it was possible he himself might become a reprobate. He actually would have become such if he had not thus kept his body under, even though he had been so long an elect person, a Christian, and an apostle. Against becoming devoured. “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour”—I Peter 5:8. This text shows that it is possible for any and all Christians to be overcome by the devil and be destroyed spiritually in this world, and lost in the world to come. The exhortation is strongly given to be watchful and diligent at all times, and in all places.
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