The question of whether or not a true believer can lose his salvation after having been justified by faith alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ has existed within the church almost from its inception. In fact, during the persecution of the early church in the second and third centuries, many individuals who were facing the prospect of torment and even death chose to renounce their faith in order to avoid suffering a painful and often lethal punishment. Later, when the Roman Empire began to ease its oppression of Christianity, some of the same individuals who had renounced their faith in Christ wanted to be accepted back into their local churches. While some believed that those who had repudiated their faith were still true believers, others held to the idea that these individuals were previously saved but were no longer saved because they had denied their faith. This, in part, led to a further question: “If Christians sin after their conversion, can they lose their salvation?”
This is not simply an “intellectual” issue for the theologians to debate. The question of the eternal security of the believer has profound and practical implications in the life of everyone who claims to be a Christian. Why is this issue so important?