“Once Saved, Always Saved” Refuted: Can a Christian Fall Away?

by Terry Wane Benton

Christians (those truly “saved to begin with”) can:

1. Depart from the faith (I Timothy 4:1)
2. Wander away from the faith (I Timothy 6:10)
3. Swerve from the faith (I Timothy 6:21)
4. Abandon our faith (I Timothy 5:12)
5. Make a shipwreck of our faith (I Timothy 1:19)
6. Fall from grace (Galatians 5:4)
7. Desert him who called you and turn to a different gospel (Galatians 1:6)
8. Receive the grace of God in vain (II Corinthians 6:1)
9. Swerve from the truth, upsetting the faith of some (II Timothy 2:18)
10. Drift away from the truth (Hebrews 2:1)
11. Have an evil, unbelieving heart, leading us to fall away from the living God (Hebrews 3:12)
12. Be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:12-14)
13. Fail to reach the promise of entering into His rest (Hebrews 4:1)
14. Fall by disobedience to enter His rest (Hebrews 4:11)
15. Fall away and become impossible to restore unto repentance (Hebrews 6:4-6)
16. Deliberately go on sinning and no longer have a sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10:26-27)
17. Shrink back (Hebrews 10:38)
18. Fail to obtain the grace of God (Hebrews 12:15)
19. Wander from the truth (James 5:19-20)
20. Forsake the right way (II Peter 2:15)
21. Become entangled and overcome after having escaped them (II Peter 2:20-21)
22. Be carried away with the error of lawless people and lose our stability (II Peter 3:17)
23. Commit a sin leading to death (I John 5:16)

But the good thing is that we can take these warnings to heart and do things to “make our calling and election sure, and do things so that we never stumble” (II Peter 1:5-13).