Am I Too Sinful To Stay Saved?

For some believers, they believe the sins they have committed after believing in Jesus have been so bad that they are no longer saved.

They believe they have lost their salvation and can never get it back.

Is this true?

Can believers lose their salvation?

Can believers go from being saved to not being saved because of sins they committed after believing in Jesus?

The answer is no.

Believers cannot go from being saved to not being saved because of their sins, no matter how many, how messy, how dirty, how deep, how public, or how private their sins are.

Let’s take a look at David in the Bible.

David was a believer.

David knew God.

David was the greatest King of Israel.

He wrote many psalms expressing his adoration for God, his trust in God, as well as writing about his own personal struggles and failures.

David was a person who loved God but who also struggled with sin.

We see his struggle with sin in his relationship with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:1-12:25).

As King of Israel, David was to be with his men at war; yet he stayed behind.

While his army was at battle, David had an adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, getting her pregnant.

He then tried to cover up his affair with Bathsheba, lying about it all.

Eventually, in his efforts to cover the affair, he had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, murdered.

Soon, David’s affair came to light publicly.

David began to feel the weight of his sin…the shame of his sin.

He regretted what he did.

David writes about this is Psalms 32 and 51.

In Psalm 51:12, he asks God to “restore to me the joy of my salvation.”

David did not lose his salvation, but he did lose the joy of his salvation.

The sins we commit after we become believers in Jesus do not cause us to lose our salvation, but they do cause us to lose the joy of our salvation.

Just like David, sins weigh us down with shame and disgust.

Like David, we may have lied about our sins and tried to cover them up.

Eventually, we regret the sin or sins we committed.

For some this regret is immediate.

We regret the pain and damage our sin or sins have caused in the lives of others, as well as in our own lives.

Yet through it all, we are still saved.

We have not lost our salvation, but we have lost the joy of our salvation.

Prayerfully, our joy may be restored.

We know we can’t restore it ourselves…only God can.

David, living under the old testament of law and before the blood of Jesus was shed for our sins, asked God to cleanse him of his sins.

Unlike David, we do not ask God to cleanse us from our sins, since our sins have already been cleansed by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 1:3; 1 John 1:7).

This is the new testament of grace that we live under.

When we placed our faith in Jesus, we experienced complete and permanent cleansing from our sins.

Through faith in Jesus, our hearts are purified from all sins (Acts 15:9).

The writer of Hebrews explains that the purification of all our sins was complete and permanent through the blood of Jesus, which we experience by faith (listen to my teaching on Hebrews on The Gracereach Podcast with Brad Robertson with Brad Robertson or watch the teachings on my YouTube Channel).

David confessed his sins, seeking forgiveness and cleansing from sins, which was the old testament way of dealing with sins.

However, we live under the new testament of grace, where all our sins have been forgiven and cleansed.

We receive this forgiveness the moment we place our faith in Jesus.

Therefore, we do not need to confess our sins as believers to stay forgiven by God (some may ask about 1 John 1:9 - I have written fully about 1 John in my book, Forgiven and Cleansed: 1 John 1:9 In Context. Click HERE to order the book.)

Again, the writer of Hebrews explains this fully in Hebrews when he writes that God remembers our sins no more now that Jesus shed his blood for the full forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 10:16-18).

Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:19 also writes about the full forgiveness of sins when he writes that God is not counting our sins against us.

Confessing our sins to God and others is healthy.

We may need to confess our sins to others for their forgiveness, but not to God for forgiveness -since we are already forgiven.

We confess sins to God because he is our loving Father.

He knows we need to be transparent with him.

We don’t need to carry the weight of our sins.

Confessing them helps us release the weight of them.

Additionally, claiming our forgiveness and righteousness in Jesus is equally important.

By claiming our forgiveness and righteousness in Jesus and confessing our sins to God and others, we can experience the restoration of the joy of our salvation.

When we confess our sins to others, we need to make sure they are safe people…not all people can be trusted.

It may be that we only need to talk with God about our sins, not all sins need to be confessed to others.

But either way, the sins we commit after we become believers can never cause us to not be saved or lose our salvation.

When Paul writes about David, he states that David was a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22).

From David, we learn that those who love God, who have a heart for God, are capable of coveting, lusting, adultery, murder, and lying, among any other sin that can be committed.

The truth is…if committing sins caused believers to lose their salvation, then every believer would lose their salvation.

What believer has never sinned?

The good news is that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus.

The same grace we needed to save us when we believed is the same grace that keeps us saved after we believed.

We do not save ourselves by not sinning or keep ourselves saved by not sinning.

Our salvation is secured for us by grace.

If you are thinking that you have lost your salvation because of the sins you have committed after your salvation, you have not lost your salvation.

It is possible you have lost the joy of your salvation…but you have not lost your salvation.

If you would like to read more about the new testament of grace that Jesus established in his blood, click HERE.