Hebrews 3:16
Who were they that heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses?
Woody Allen once remarked that he wasn’t afraid of dying, he just didn’t want to be there when it happened. A lot of Christians have similar ideas about salvation. There is a theory current among many Christians that “once you are ‘saved’ (by asking Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord of Savior) you can never lose your salvation.” The idea is that salvation is God’s work alone and we do not participate in it beyond the act of saying “yes” to the initial offer. We can, according to this theory, neither add to nor subtract from this work of salvation in our lives and nothing we do can stop the “salvation program” from being downloaded and activated in our beings once we have clicked “OK” by praying the “Sinners Prayer”. Scripture, however, gives a different picture. Jesus warns his disciples that those who do not “abide in me” can, in fact, lose the eternal life he gives us (John 15:6). Paul warns against the same thing, noting that even he himself could, if he abandoned the gospel, be found “disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:26). And Paul, at least in part, gets this idea from the story of the Exodus. For Paul, the passage through the Red Sea by Moses and Israelites was an image of baptism (1 Corinthians 10:1-2). But those who were “baptized into Moses” were not thereby given a free pass. If they honored the covenant with obedience, they continued on in the covenant. If not, not. The downside of this for us is that we must grow up and not live in the dream of discipleship-free salvation. The upside is: growing up is better and sweeter than any childish fantasy. For we are going to Heaven, not just to the land of Canaan.
