Three Audiences (Study of Salvation- Part 2)
Verses That Teach You Can Lose Your Salvation
The Jewish and Prophetic Audiences
Let’s preview two verses. They are both used in backing up the teaching, “Losing your salvation”. One is from the old testament and the other is from the new testament. It is important to listen to what I’m going to say in explaining these verses.
Old Testament
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous. – Psalms 69:28
New Testament
And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll. Revelations 22:19
Few of the things that we can forget
- We forget ‘the time’
- We forget ‘who’
- We forget ‘what’
At times we read the bible and think, “oh God is telling me to do this.” But that’s not the case most of the time. When reading the bible, we need to know three things.
What time in history was the passage written in?
Who was the passage written to?
Who was the passage talking about?
What is the passage referring to? Time, Who, and What.
Psalms 69:28
Read Psalms 69:1-36
Written by David, so we know it had to be in David’s time.
David was a prophet and a king. When you read this passage, you must remember that the Jews would persecute the prophets. This psalm is speaking to God, “Save me, O God,”. David cried out to God to save him because as you read on, he was being persecuted.
David was asking God in the passage to defend him. To take care of his enemies for him. The phrase, “Let them be blotted out of the book of the living.” can be easily connected to the Book of Life and most likely is talking about the book of life. There are two possible answers to what David is asking God in this verse. First, He could be asking God to kill his enemies, as in letting their life be taken from them or he could be making a prophecy in this verse about how the Jews will no longer be saved and looking forward to the day Jesus comes the first time to open salvation up to the whole world. The reason this is not talking about losing your salvation is that the second half of the verse says, “let them not be enrolled among the righteous”. This verse points out that David’s enemies never were saved. Also, we can see it this way too, Christians are not on earth at the time of David and the Jewish people are under a type of covenant with God that permits losing salvation. The covenant God made with the Jews had a lot of requirements and strings attached to it. I lean towards this way of thinking of it, this is a whole other covenant God made with the Jews. David also could be making a prophecy, that this current covenant will end and God is making a new covenant, and we know that happened when Jesus came and gave his life on the cross. So it’s possible David among many other prophets is simply prophesying about the end of the current covenant.
We see Isaiah write something very similar to the Jewish people too. Isaiah 50:1, “Thus says the Lord: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions, your mother was sent away.”
The Jew’s Salvation was dependent on how they followed the laws and they kept on turning from God in the old testament and turning to false gods. So God made this clear statement towards the Jews. They couldn’t keep the standard God was placing on them. That was chapter 50, but in chapter 53, we see Isaiah begin to prophesy about a future message, the gospel, a future people, the church.
This is also what the bible refers to as the Mosaic Covenant (Deuteronomy 11). It was a conditional covenant. If you do this and you will be blessed in this or that way. We call that the Law, the 10 Commandments, and around 600 other commandments the Jews were told to follow. These commandments are found in Exodus 20 and beyond. Deuteronomy 11 will tell you about the blessings and curses of the covenant.
Revelations 22:19
Read Revelations 1-22 (The Whole Book, YES)
First, the Book of Revelations is a prophecy book. You can also call a letter since all the new testament books were letters that got saved. We see that the verse says “anyone who takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and the holy city.”. Rev. 22:19
Knowing that the letter of Revelations was written in the new testament time, which is also our time. We are currently living in new testament time. The age of the Church.
Knowing it is the age of the church, that means this verse, this letter, this scroll was written for who? The church.
What is this verse about or for? Read the verse before it, verse 18, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll”. It is a warning to who? A people that understand what the scroll is talking about. Question? Have you ever read revelations and say, “What is this talking about?”. A-lot of people in the faith are confused about this letter, so those people are excluded from this verse. Who is included? People with the gift of prophecy. To teach prophecy or maybe a prophet. Because this is a prophecy scroll. Maybe the End-Time Church.
Now Dig Deep…
Say someone comes and takes away from this scroll and screw around with the word of God. Did they lose their salvation? How could a saved person on purpose, knowingly, change up the word of God? Forgive me, but they would have to be the stupidest person alive, to screw with God and know it.
They are not saved. They don’t have salvation. They never received Christ. They only know the bible, but their actions are evil, and they’re not a living tree. Their deeds are dead, therefore their faith is dead. They don’t have the Holy Spirit to convict them of sin. Therefore, they were never saved. I know this is true. When I sin, the Holy Spirit convicts me of it. If I was to ever change up the word of God. I wouldn’t be at peace. I wouldn’t be able to even sleep at night. This verse is a warning to false teachers alone. They think they’re saved, but aren’t. They lose the salvation that they think they had, but never had. They were never saved.
So, these two verses in the Old and New Testaments look like verses that teach that you can lose your salvation, but in reality, they are speaking towards two different audiences and the church is not one of the audiences.
Verses That Teach You Can’t Lose Your Salvation
The Church Audience
Here are two verses, one from the old testament and one for the new testament, backing up the teaching, “we can not lose our salvation”.
Old Testament
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed.” – Isaiah 53:5
New Testament
“For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, hostile powers, height or depth, or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” – Romans 8:38-39
We’ll be looking at these two verses, and once again find the “Who, What and Time”.
Isaiah 53:5
Read all the Passage, Isaiah 53:1-12
Who is who? Verse 1 covers this. It’s written to a group of people who believed the message. This is pointing to the future coming of Jesus. The Prophets all told about how a Savior would come one day and create a way for us all to be saved. So Isaiah is referring to the Gospel Message and he is pointing towards the church. The People (church) who believe the Message (Gospel). Now the time it was written was when the Jewish people were the main people of God. Isaiah steps out of the current time and into a future time and tells of a future people of God and a future covenant.
Okay, but how is this proving that you can not lose your salvation? You got to dig deep into it.
“By his wounds, we are healed”. There is no question about it. Those who believe the message of the Gospel (V.1) are healed (V.5) of their sins. No matter how many wounds we put on ourselves, it was by Jesus Christ wounds, we are healed. We have wounds, because of sin. What Jesus did is, took our wounds upon himself, so we can be healed. So when we sin, Jesus receives that punishment (V.5). This was the grand plan. Men can’t save themselves. So Jesus came and lived a perfect life and offered himself as a punishment for the sin.
Jesus Christ died and took it all to hell, he paid our debt to sin in full. There is no condemnation, once you come to Christ. Christ died for the unholy (Romans 5:6). Now deeds are something different. Deeds come because you are saved, not so you can become saved, we are saved by faith through the cross of Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes and lives in us and changes our ways, our hearts and renews us back into a holy creation, but that doesn’t mean we won’t mess up here and there, we are slowly being renewed and changed day by day, into the image, likeness, and person of Jesus and this is a lifelong process that is completed at the second coming of Christ.
Romans 8:38-39
Read Romans 8:1-39
Since we are saved, there is nothing that can stop us from being saved. No matter how much we sin, since we are not under the law, the law does not apply to us. Now Romans was a letter written to the Church in Rome. But we can also say, God had written it for you and me to also read.
These verses say it clearly that nothing in hell, nothing in heaven, and nothing on earth, not even you or I, can cause us to lose our salvation. This verse is clear, when it says nothing can separate us from God, it means nothing. So according to these verses, we find that we can not lose our salvation. Correct? Yes.
So we saw one verse that was written to a Jewish Audience, another verse written to an audience that understands the prophecy, this could be known as an End Time Audience or a Prophetic Audience. These last two verses above were written to the Church Audience. So as you and I read the bible, it is important to understand who is the passage talking to directly? God gave the church the entire blueprint, but he isn’t speaking to the church directly all the time in each passage of the Bible, he gives us the whole blueprint for us to read and understand the history and how we got from the creation account to the church age.
Just like we had the Mosaic Covenant in the old testament that was conditional, we have a new covenant today during what is called the church age, a New Covenant that is unconditional. Why is that? Why did God create two different covenants that are opposite of each other?
God chose the Jewish people to be His ambassadors of the world. He wanted them to be his holy nation, his holy people, but they failed and He knew they would fail. He wanted us to know that apart from him, we are powerless. So Jesus came into the world, lived a holy and perfect life, and died on the cross. During the Mosaic Covenant, they had to kill all these different types of animals and in doing so, the blood would temporarily cover the sins of the Jews. Well, those animal sacrifices were all a foreshadowing of the Sacrifice Jesus would pay on the cross. The animal sacrifice was done every year by the high priest, but Jesus offered himself as a One and final sacrifice and he is our high priest. This is what began the New Covenant. Whoever comes to God by accepting that Jesus paid for their sins, they enter into an unconditional covenant, which salvation can never be taken away.