Responsibility once saved

Ephesians 4:30
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Jude 1:4
“For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.”

John 15:4
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me? “

Abide or remain in me, or you the branch will be cut-off, be fruitless and be burnt in the fire. There are Jews that failed to go on believing, these were the ones who spent forty years wandering around the desert. Only two got into the promised land the other lacked faith. They believed to get out but did not believe to get in. Not all that start off the journey will make it to the end. There is no once saved always saved. God is not responsible for the whole of salvation solely. We often see so many come to Christ, but then they never follow through. They don’t continue in the faith, or dive into discipleship and study of the word and prayer. Infant baptism is also unbiblical.

The word (sanctification) is for believers who were not only born-again but who are also now being conformed to the image of Christ through a continual process of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Justification is precisely when we become born-again and then the Spirit of God coming in us will begin to clean and sanctify us so that we become more and more like Jesus Christ in His image and likeness. So what if we backslide and reverse that image?

Hebrews 10:26-29
“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?”

Sinning willfully and deliberately will remove the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the cross and then there will remain no more sacrifice for wrongdoings but a certain fearful looking for judgment. There is an ultimate sin called the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit which is a total hate of all that God stands for. But before that, we can insult the Holy Spirit which is worse than disobeying the Law of Moses of the Old Covenant. By doing so the falling away Christian is said to have deliberately chosen to trod underfoot the Son of God. So what does this tell us?
The born-again believer has access to the Holy Spirit inside them, but insults the truth that has already cleaned them, or is cleaning them. It is clear that one can lose their salvation after being born again quite easily.

God and man are responsible for salvation. God takes the initiative, and it’s man’s free will to respond. We can refuse God’s Grace or be easily misled by other believers to accept a lie, even if other born-again Christians say otherwise. Emotions can muddy clear thinking when it comes to family or relationships, as many can’t shake off the trappings of the world. There are the folk that are stuck in one spiritual level thinking that they have all the answers. This mentality then stops them from exploring other topics, knowledge and ideas that may be worth researching.

We must all understand that we live in a world full of lies and deception and different denominations of church beliefs that differ from the truth. God commands us to repent, but other verses state He grants us repentance that confuses many, that we produce He produces. This is true it’s a cooperation of both parties.

If you don’t do your part in salvation, then why should God do His?

There are things that we have to do to make salvation possible, yet there are things that God Has done and is doing to make it possible. The gospel is being thrown out to drowning sinful people. We are instructed to grab hold of it and be pulled to the shore. God pulls us to the shore hence He is part of the process. Mankind then continues establishing the foundation of learning, growing, spreading the seed, reaping the benefits and blessings until He arrives at the shore.

The work of God and the work of man go together in salvation. To say ‘God can do it all is actually an insult to human beings, as we are made in the image and likeness of God. In the first place, grace is not a doctrine of “license” or Ignore God’s law and count on his grace as many do. This doctrine implies that our attitude and actions toward the Creator does not matter at all, that we can flagrantly live in knowing and willful rebellion against God if we choose through free will, and that somehow God’s grace will take care of anyway when we face God at judgment day. But Scripture plainly teaches that biblical grace is not a license to do what you want or as little as you want:

2 Peter 2:20
“If they (Christians) have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.”

Proverbs 26:11
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness.”

Psalm 69:28
“May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.”