There seems to be a misunderstanding regarding the phrase, "Once saved, always saved." Some cannot accept or agree with this saying because it seems to be saying that once a person is saved, he/she can do, say, or live like everyone else in the world, with no distinction between one that follows the Lord Jesus Christ and one that does not. This obviously goes against what the scriptures teach us. One specific example of this is in the book of Romans, at the beginning of chapter 6, which says, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?"

Many people have claimed to have once believed and then stopped for a number of reasons. My question to them is, did they truly believe in the first place? Belief in something changes the heart, which changes everything else. Once someone believes in Jesus Christ, that person is a new creation. Old things are passed away, and all things become new. This doesn't happen overnight. But, as we experience life after believing, we begin to see things differently, especially the more we read the scriptures and learn more about our Savior and God. Our consciences have become very aware of whether or not our lives are pleasing to God and it becomes important to please Him. Yet, we will sin. But to do so repeatedly is to allow sin to become master over us. However, as Christians, as we fail over and over again in different ways, we learn that we no longer desire to continue to sin. We recognize our imperfections, but we also recognize the struggle between a heart that has been changed and the nature of sin that is a part of us until our salvation is complete. Our bodies have not been redeemed yet. Thus, we are faced with a continual struggle between flesh and spirit. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So, as Paul describes, we are constantly at war with ourselves. This is where our will is crucial... we must decide, or have already decided, how to defeat sin in our lives. If we blow it, are we right back where we started... without hope? Do we lose our salvation? No, not unless we are omniscient (or all-knowing), omnipotent (or all-powerful), and omnipresent (everywhere at once), like God, let alone perfect and holy. If we were, we would have no need for God and forgiveness, let alone assurance of salvation.

Frankly, I'm relieved that I am not required to be omni-anything, because I just can't do it! If my own salvation depends on me, I won't make it, and no one I know will either. God fully knows that. And because He knows that, He already had a plan to save us Himself through His Son, the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world.

Does that give us a license to take advantage, or to sin knowing we can just ask for forgiveness later on? No. May it never be. As followers of Christ, do we really want to take advantage? Of course not.

But salvation is gained by our good deeds. Knowing Jesus compels us to good works. Jesus told us that if we love Him, we will take His words very seriously and do them. The Bible also tells us that our only work is to believe. This seems simple, but there more to believing than just acknowledging His existence. Believing is work. It is acknowledging Him in all our ways. If we believe, it is evident that we are delighted at the very thought and mention of His name. We become satiated with God. Not to mention the overflowing gratitude for our salvation the more we realize just how loving He is toward all of us for providing it.

But believing can be especially difficult for those of us who were raised to follow a strict set of rules in order to reach heaven or perfection. History shows that rules are necessary for order, but easily become traditions, and when they are man-made and ever-increasing just to fit our own agendas (and it is our nature to do this), rules become virtually impossible to keep.

So let me ask you... When was the last time you purposed to follow a rule and then broke it? The statement, Rules are meant to be broken is not very far from the truth. The Bible says that the law was created to show us that we are sinners.

We must really think about the one law that Jesus summed up every God-given law into. "Love one another as I have loved you." Now, we don't have faith in mankind, including ourselves once we realize that we are sinners. This new law requires us to think about what that means and act accordingly.

Bottom line? God knows we fall short of HIS glory. No man on his own merits deserves eternal life if this is earned by righteousness. Thus, He provided the sacrifice for our sins Himself, through His only Son. His sinless blood covered our transgressions. But we won't see the fulfillment of the erasure of our sins until we meet Him face to face and our bodies of sin die and he makes us completely new in every way.

Until then, we need the assurance of God's salvation through Jesus Christ, else what would we have to go by? Our righteousness? The scriptures say our righteousness is as filthy rags. Compare it with God's, and I plead no contest.

Remember reading about the woman that had been caught in the act of committing adultery? The people brought her to Jesus, asking Him what He would do. They wanted to stone her to death, and they stood there, ready and waiting for Jesus to give them the thumbs up. But Jesus said, "He who is without sin, let him throw the first rock." And they all walked away. Jesus spoke to her, saying, "Your sins are forgiven. Go, and sin no more."

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. "That sort of talk makes them sick," they say. And half of you already want to ask me, "I wonder%u2026 how'd you feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?"

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you ... what I could do -- I can do precious little -- I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us." There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?

It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier. When you start mathematics you do not begin with calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself!

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently, "Love your neighbor" does not mean "feel fond of him," or, "find him attractive." I ought to have seen that before, because of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself; think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments), but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So, loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments, not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can at look some of the things I have done with loathing and horror. So apparently, I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time, I used to think this is a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later, it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.