Shipwreck!

Q: 1 Timothy 1:19 KJV Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: ok I`ve asked the question earlier on, can a Christian lose his or her salvation. The verse above shows that your faith can become a shipwreck. Meaning that if you sin and your conscience is convicting you and you ignore it all the time. Sooner or later you can get your self into a situation that you just won`t have faith in forgiveness and just lose your salvation. Yes a person can repent again and get back their salvation. So again I ask, cab a Christian lose his or her salvation?

A: Thank you for your very important question. No, a Christian cannot lose their salvation. I believe the answer to your question is contained within 1 Timothy 1:19. The section to look at is "having put away concerning faith." Other versions of the Bible translate this as "which some having rejected." My point is that I believe Paul is saying that the people he is talking about, "of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.(1 Timothy 1:20)," have rejected the faith. In other words, they are not saved in the first place. To blaspheme, as Paul mentions in verse 20, means to reject the Holy Spirit. If you have rejected the Holy Spirit you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior. Therefore, your faith, not being in the Lord, is shipwrecked, ruined and of no real consequence. To shipwreck your faith could also mean that a person is saved, but believing bad doctrine which hinders your Christian life.

You defined shipwreck as "Meaning that if you sin and your conscience is convicting you and you ignore it all the time." If a person is doing this and they are saved, their sin may lead them to experience many unfortunate consequences, but it will not cause them to lose their salvation. Why? Because God is not counting our sins against us any longer because of the death of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:19 says, "that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them." Therefore, since God is not counting our sins against us, there is no sin we can commit that will cause Him to remove His Holy Spirit from us. The Bible encourages us as Christians. Galatians 6:1 says, "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently." For example, if you see someone you believe is trapped in a sin and ignoring it, go to them and try talk to them about salvation and why they feel they need to engage in a sin when they have Jesus Christ. For many people, the reason they get trapped in sins is because they don't know the Gospel, who they are in Christ, and all that they have as inheritance of their faith. Therefore, they turn to sin to get from the world, what they do not believe they are receiving from their God.

That brings us to the question, "Why can't a Christian lose their salvation?" Salvation is the restoration of the life of God, lost in Adam, restored to us when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior. When God created Adam, "the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7)."God indwelt Adam and he became a living being. God warned Adam that he "must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die (Genesis 2:17).”Adam ate the from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and died. He died a spiritual death; having the life of God removed from him. Adam was physically alive to the world, but spiritually dead to God. The Bible goes on to record that, "When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth (Genesis (5:3)." Like Seth, all mankind is born into this world in the image of Adam. We are all spiritually dead to God in our sins. The good news of the Gospel is that God, in His love, desired to restore His life to us. But, before He could restore His life to us, He had to deal with the sin that caused Him to remove is life from Adam. Our sin is so terrible that it required the death of God in order to pay for it.

The Bible says that, "He [Christ] did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12)." The death of Jesus Christ was once for all and for eternity. Now, with the sin question dealt with, God could go about restoring His life back to mankind. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this (John 11:25-26)?” The resurrection of Jesus Christ is God's offer of restoring His life to anybody who would receive it. And because of the eternal consequences of the cross, there is now no sin that will cause Him to remove His life again. That is why the life a Christian has is an eternal life. A life that will carry us through this life and on into eternity. Therefore, to shipwreck your faith is to reject God's offer of life made available through Jesus Christ, it is not being trapped in a sin God is not counting against a person. We are now able to approach God when we sin in order to receive His grace and mercy. In doing so, we can discover why we chose to engage in a sin as opposed to resting in all He has given to us in Himself. I hope this answers your question. Grace and Peace.