Is Eternal Security A “License” To Sin?

The most frequent objection to the doctrine of eternal security is that it supposedly allows people to live any way that they want and still be saved. While this may be “technically” true, it is not true in reality. A person who has truly been redeemed by Jesus Christ will not live a life characterized by continuous, willful sin. We must draw a distinction between how a Christian should live and what a person must do in order to receive salvation.

The Bible is clear that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:8-9; John 14:6). The moment a person truly believes in Jesus Christ, he or she is saved and secure in that salvation. It is unbiblical to say that salvation is received by faith, but then has to be maintained by works. The apostle Paul addresses this issue in Galatians 3:3 when he asks, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” If we are saved by faith, our salvation is also maintained and secured by faith. We cannot earn our own salvation. Therefore, neither can we earn the maintenance of our salvation. It is God who maintains our salvation (Jude 24). It is God’s hand that holds us firmly in His grasp (John 10:28-29). It is God’s love that nothing can separate us from (Romans 8:38-39).

Any denial of eternal security is, in its essence, a belief that we must maintain our own salvation by our own good works and efforts. This is completely antithetical to salvation by grace. We are saved because of Christ’s merits, not our own (Romans 4:3-8). To claim that we must obey God’s Word or live a godly life to maintain our salvation is saying that Jesus’ death was not sufficient to pay the penalty for our sins. Jesus’ death was absolutely sufficient to pay for all of our sins—past, present, and future, pre-salvation and post-salvation (Romans 5:8; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 2 Corinthians 5:21).

Does this mean that a Christian can live any way he wants to and still be saved? This is essentially a hypothetical question, because the Bible makes it clear that a true Christian will not live “any way he wants to.” Christians are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). Christians demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), not the acts of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21). First John 3:6-9 clearly states that a true Christian will not live in continual sin. In response to the accusation that grace promotes sin, the apostle Paul declared, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Romans 6:1-2).

Eternal security is not a license to sin. Rather, it is the security of knowing that God’s love is guaranteed for those who trust in Christ. Knowing and understanding God’s tremendous gift of salvation accomplishes the opposite of giving a license to sin. How could anyone, knowing the price Jesus Christ paid for us, go on to live a life of sin (Romans 6:15-23)? How could anyone who understands God’s unconditional and guaranteed love for those who believe, take that love and throw it back in God’s face? Such a person is demonstrating not that eternal security has given him a license to sin, but rather that he or she has not truly experienced salvation through Jesus Christ. “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (1 John 3:6).

Recommended Resource: Eternal Security by Charles Stanley

Does God Hold Me Responsible For What I Do In My Dreams?

It’s unlikely God holds us much more accountable for the fantasies that appear in our dreams than He does for the predispositions to sin that we all share, including temptations or evil thoughts that drift into our minds. In fact, some of the things that happen in the theater of our dreams may help us be more aware of our deepest longings, conflicts, and fears.

Sexual fantasy, rage, and violence often occur abruptly and seemingly uncontrollably in dreams. We don’t know how much we are capable of regulating behavior in dreams. Some of the ascetic church fathers thought we are responsible for what we do in dreams, but Scripture nowhere indicates that this is true.

Dreams are generally things that “happen to us,” not things we consciously choose to do. To the extent that our dreams are “lucid”—that is under the control of our conscious mind—we may find we encounter some genuine temptation. 

If troubled by dreams, we should commit them to the Lord, asking for protection as we sleep. We should also ask Him to instruct us as we sleep and strengthen our ability to resist both conscious and unconscious temptation.

Furthermore, Scripture nowhere implies that we adopt the other extreme forms of self-discipline the ascetics embraced, such as living in isolation, eating starvation diets, tormenting themselves with hair shirts that constantly itched, remaining unbathed so that lice could multiply, and so on.

Can I be a Christian and still struggle with impure thoughts?

The Bible says that becoming a follower of Christ is like a dead person coming to life. Moving from spiritual death to spiritual life is a drastic change. Spiritual rebirth makes it possible for us to consciously share God’s love and partner with Him in bringing about his kingdom. Although spiritual rebirth brings instant change, it doesn’t result in an immediate transformation. We are too deeply flawed for an instant cure. When we choose to follow Christ, a process begins that will continue to the end of our lives.

Before we followed Christ we were, in a sense, like zombies—spiritually dead and driven by urges and emotions we didn’t understand. Even after we were awakened by spiritual life the same urges and emotions remained, although we were no longer entirely under their control (Galatians 5:17–21; 6:8; Ephesians 2:2–6). The New Testament uses a special term to refer to these urges and emotions: the “sinful nature.” 

Our natural inclination to sin continues to generate impure thoughts that are out of sorts with our new life. But these bad thoughts don’t represent our current spiritual state. They represent the death we are leaving behind.

In addition to our own natural faults and weaknesses, Satan acts as an adversary (see Job 1:7–12), “slanderer,” and “accuser” (Revelation 12:10). He wants us to be obsessed with our dark thoughts. If we do, he—like a vampire—can drain away our joy and the influence of our new life.

Since we will never be completely free of lustful, unkind, and self-destructive desires in this life, we need to have realistic expectations. Experiencing a bad thought isn’t the same as hanging on to and nurturing it. Our goal shouldn’t be to eliminate bad thoughts but to be quicker to recognize and resist them when they appear. Far from indicating that our faith isn’t real, our awareness of continuing impure thoughts and unfree tendencies that still lurk within us proves that we are being transformed. If we weren’t becoming more spiritually aware, we wouldn’t even recognize the lingering shadows of spiritual death. First John 1:8 says, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth,” and the apostle Paul describes his continuing struggle with sin (Romans 7:15–25).

In fact, it is important that we recognize the wrong within. If we didn’t recognize the impurity that still remained in us, we might be drawn into the most dangerous sin of all—spiritual pride.

In the New Testament the Greek term, sarx, often translated “flesh,” occasionally refers to the body, but most often refers to the destructive, death-prone tendencies within us. These tendencies still reside in us even after conversion, while we are moving from spiritual death to spiritual life. Paul calls it the “law of sin at work within me” in Romans 7:23 (niv). The Bible calls this the “sinful nature” in Romans 7:18 and 7:25.

The name “devil” is from the Greek word diabolos, meaning “slanderer, false accuser.”

How to Overcome Repetitive Sin

Will God forgive you if you keep repeating the same sin over and over again? This is a great question because none of us have reached perfection yet. “We all stumble,” James said, “in many ways, and if anyone hasn’t stumbled in what he says,” there’s the biggest stumbling place right there, “he’s a perfect man, or woman, able to bridle the whole body as well.” (see James 3:2). And he goes on to elaborate about how the tongue is this unruly thing. There’s an area that we can always probably use improvement on, “that no unwholesome word would proceed from our mouths, but only what is good for edification that it might give grace to those who hear it,” as Paul wrote to the Ephesians (see Ephesians 4:29).

We’re still stumbling accidentally, not intentionally. No believer is willfully sinning. Every true believer, even when they do sin, has an inward resistance to that saying, “No, no, no, no, no.” And even if we yield to the temptation, the whole time it’s, “No, no, no.” After yielding to the temptation, there’s now a different feeling on the inside, “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. You are guilty. You have sinned against God. You have disobeyed the Lord,” and it’s that feeling of conviction.

Of course we’re supposed to confess our sins, and God promises that, when we do that, He will forgive our sins. Always, of course, there’s a purposing in our hearts to not repeat it. Of course you don’t want to repeat it. You didn’t want to do it the first time, and so, of course, when you confess it and you’ve gone through that process, then you’re thinking is all, “Man, I want to avoid this as much as possible. I don’t want to do this ever again.”

Will God Always Forgive Me If I Keep Repeating the Same Sin?

Well, that’s a great question, and no wonder we ask that question. We think, “Well, how much mercy does God have? If I do it too many times, it’ll expose that I must not really be sincere.” But I think this is the place where the devil loves to get in and defeat us by condemning us, causing us to doubt the mercy of God and that he will keep his promise to forgive us if we confess our sins, to try to get us just to give up and say, “There’s no sense in even trying because I have out-sinned the grace of God.” Well, Paul said, “God used me as an example to show everybody how merciful he is, because I was a persecutor of the church, and a blasphemer, and a violent aggressor, and yet God showed me mercy to set an example that He’d forgive the chief of sinners” (see 1 Timothy 1:12-17).

God’s Promise of Continual Forgiveness
So will God keep forgiving you? Yes, He will keep forgiving you. Another reason that we can believe that is because there was a time when the apostle Peter—whom I love so much because of his forthrightness and his transparency and his bumbling transparency, at times—one time he asked Jesus

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? – Matthew 18:21

As if, woo-hoo, Peter, impressive! He’s thinking Jesus is going to say, “Wow, Peter, seven? I was only thinking maybe two or three. But wow, Peter, you’re really merciful.” But no, that’s not what the Lord said.

Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. – v. 22

So that’s 490 times if your brother comes and asks you to forgive him you are obligated to forgive him. 490 times. If the Lord expects that much forgiveness to come out of you and come out of me, well, that’s a pretty good indication that He’s going to at least come up to his own standards for us, right?

The Forgiveness God Expects of Us

I don’t really think that the Lord meant for us to be keeping one of those little counter clickers in our hands, and every time a brother or sister in Christ asks for our forgiveness we say, “Okay, that’s 1. You got 469 left, so be careful.” And then 7 years later, “Okay, that’s 422.” No, I don’t think that’s what the Lord was saying. I think the Lord was saying just keep on forgiving as long as that brother or sister keeps on coming back to you, because it indicates some degree of sincerity.

Even though it becomes less believable every time they come, the Lord expects us to be that merciful. Boy, if you don’t forgive somebody that asks you to forgive them, you’re in big trouble according to Jesus. We’re taught to pray, in The Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our sins or transgressions, as to the degree—to the extent—that we forgive others” (see Matthew 6:12). After that prayer, Jesus gave an explanation and said, “If you don’t forgive others, neither will your Father in Heaven forgive you.”

A Cliffhanger

Now, of course, it is important to add the element of expecting people to come to us humbly and ask for forgiveness, and this is actually the next question that I want to cover on our next Little Lesson, “Do I have to forgive people who don’t ask for forgiveness?” I’m going to leave it as a cliffhanger, so I’ll get you tomorrow or whenever the next time is you have a chance to hear the answer to that question. But yes, I mean just think about this for a moment. Don’t you have to ask forgiveness to get forgiveness from God? Does He automatically give it? Something to think about.

Not a License to Sin

In any case, I’m not offering anyone a license to sin. And there will be some mean people who will, no doubt, say, “Well, you’re just a greasy grace preacher telling people they can sin all they want, and all they have to do is just confess it.” No. No true Christian is thinking, “How many times can I sin and get away with it,” or “How many times can I use that forgiveness thing?” No, true Christians want to please God. They are trying. And even those that are stumbling and falling a lot, God loves them. And if they confess their sins, He forgives them. Amen.