In His well-known discourse about being the Good Shepherd, Jesus gave a powerful promise when He declared, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand” (John 10:27–29). Included in the “all power” given to Christ is that of protecting all who belong to Him.
Common expressions for Christ’s protecting power are “the eternal security of believers” or “once saved, always saved.” Of course, the operative part of this assertion is its first phrase, “Once saved.”
This truth is dependent on the genuineness of that initial condition of once saved. When the salvation experience is genuine, Christ’s protecting power precludes the possibility of losing that salvation.
Jesus’ promise in His discourse about the Good Shepherd clearly states that the life He gives to genuine believers is eternal. While communicating something about the quality of that eternal life, the adjective also describes its duration as life that is forever. Blessed indeed are all who share the unshakable confidence in Christ that the Apostle Paul voiced in 2 Timothy 1:12: “I know Whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that day.”
The security of genuine believers in Christ’s protecting power finds an apt analogy in the miracle of birth. Whether animals or humans, that which is born can never become unborn.
However difficult and disappointing a physical life may turn out to be, a person can never return to the womb to experience the safety of one not yet born. Birth is an irreversible fact of physical life.
Eternal salvation
That consideration makes it all the more apt an illustration for the eternal salvation Christ brings to those who place their trust in Him. Those born again cannot ever become unborn.
Said another way, those in whose heart Christ comes to dwell will never experience His exit or loss of His protecting power. If one should ask about a person who chooses to quit believing, consider that failing faith was faulty from the first, being something less than saving faith.
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