Our Arminian friends who think that one who has been saved may lose salvation do not really understand what salvation means. "Oh," they may say, "but if your faith fails or if you turn back from serving God, you do not deserve salvation." No indeed, one would not deserve salvation then. But none deserved salvation in the beginning either! You see, if unworthiness could keep one from salvation, it would already keep everybody in the universe from salvation for all are unworthy. If God can not keep people who do not deserve it, then He could not save people who do not deserve it. You must remember that salvation by grace is wholly of God, of grace, and not of works. The God who does the saving does the keeping. The keeping is part of the salvation. - John R. Rice [Great Truths for Soul Winners, pg. 83]
It is true that repentance is a part of saving faith. Inevitably one who honestly turns to Christ for a new heart is tired of the old way. One who does not want to have a good heart would not be asking God to cleanse him. So when the sinner turns in his heart from his sin, he turns toward Jesus. Or to put the saying the other way: one who comes to Jesus Christ for mercy is thus coming from his sinfulness. There is no way to separate repentance from faith. But we must not make these separate steps in salvation, for the very moment one turns to Christ and trusts in Him, he has repented. Or the very moment one has honestly turned forever from his sins, he has turned to Christ for mercy. I speak here, as God does, of a heart attitude, not primarily of a change of outward life. Heart repentance takes place the instant one decides to turn to Christ and trust Him for salvation. - John R. Rice [Great Truths for Soul Winners, pg. 85]
Dr. H. C. Morrison was a good Methodist Holiness preacher. When someone asked him, "Dr. Morrison, have you got to where you can't sin yet?" He answered sadly, "No, but I have gotten to where I can't enjoy it." - John R. Rice [Great Truths for Soul Winners, pg. 83]
Years ago a preacher who thought that baptism was essential to salvation, but who seem to know little about the new birth, scoffed at the idea of eternal salvation, saying, "If I believed that one who has been saved could never lose his salvation, you know what I would do> I would first believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and get saved, and then I would just go out and have my fill of sin!"
And I said to him very seriously, "If you have not already had your fill of sin, I doubt if you know what I am talking about at all." The new heart has an inward rebuke for sin and God adds His own chastening hand. - John R. Rice [Great Truths for Soul Winners, pg. 90]
We are plainly told in Psalm 66:18, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Sometimes sin in the heart, unlamented, unconfessed, unforsaken hinders the power of God and brings deadness onto the whole church and failure to our best efforts. Oh, in Jesus' dear name, Christian reader, forsake that sin that grieves God and hinders His power! Turn from it with penitent tears. Make right the wrong! Correct the fault before God, then expect His blessing. - John R. Rice [Great Truths for Soul Winners, pg. 90]
We should consider that salvation is a miracle. Those who talk blandly of growing little children into Christian character, without the new birth, talk tommyrot. They talk heresy. They talk infidelity. They have forgotten that every unconverted sinner is dead in trespasses and sins. - John R. Rice [Great Truths for Soul Winners, pg. 116]
Any man who preaches salvation by character is a condemned, lost sinner with the curse of Almighty God upon him! Any man who preaches a so-called "social gospel" which is no gospel at all, "let him be accursed," let him be damned. He is a doomed, Christ-rejecting sinner. He is not even a Christian and he has no right to preach. He is a blind leader of the blind. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing, Jesus Christ Himself being witness. To men like him Jesus said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. 23:33). - John R. Rice [Great Truths for Soul Winners, pg. 129-130]
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