Shepherd’s Outpost
By Pastor Ron Gardner

“But for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, 
to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, 
to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, 
to brotherly kindness, love.” 

2 Peter 1:5-6

The apostle Peter, the one who walked on water, and began to sink as he looked at the storm all around him, the one who drew his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, the one who denied knowing Jesus three times on the night our Lord was betrayed, now offering up words of wisdom as to godly character traits which we would do well to obtain for ourselves. Now declaring to them and us in 2 Peter 1:10, “Be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble.”   Peter who, knowing all too well what it was to stumble, as Jesus Himself had prophesied would happen in Luke 22, also knew the guilt which one would experience as a result of his denial of Jesus. As well, Peter would experience the wonderful forgiveness and restoration which is only found through the person of Jesus Christ.

And so we come to the age-old question: Can a person lose their salvation? A can of doctrinal worms to be sure, even among the greatest of theologians. Yet as Peter continues in his epistle, we found in 2 Peter 2:20, “For if, after they have escaped the pollution's of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.”  Going on in 2 Peter 2:21, “For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.”  You see, to lose something is to not be able to find it. However God assures us in
Jeremiah 29:13-14, “You will seek me and find me, when you search for Me with all your heart.  I will be found by you, says the Lord…”

So then, by allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture, we see that a person can never lose his salvation, but he can leave it, that is to say, no thanks, thus denying the work of salvation through the Lord’s death and resurrection. Jesus said in Matthew 10:33, “Whoever denies Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”  The Bible is very clear to the fact that we can only be found accepted to the Father through our acknowledgment and acceptance of the redemptive work of His Son.  Which further supports Peter’s encouragement to us to “give all diligence” in our efforts to “make our call and election sure”.

We are given a wonderful illustration of how to posture ourselves and lay hold of this assurance in the book of Acts. Here, the apostle Paul, a prisoner at this time, found himself on board a tempest-tossed ship, when an angel of the Lord appeared to him and told him there would be no loss of life if, and only if, all stayed on board the ship. While some men said, “To heck with this, we’re out of here,” Paul’s response in Acts 27:31, “Unless the men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.”   The point was simply this: As long as they didn’t leave the ship, they would not lose their life. The application and understanding for us is this: Stay aboard the good ship salvation. Don’t leave, and you can be assured you will reach your destination.

The bottom line: I don’t want to see how far away I can drift and still be saved. I want to be on board, in my seat, and secure in the upright position, resting on the promises of eternal life, found only in Jesus Christ.  1 John 2:28 “And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.”