Can We Keep Ourselves Saved?

Note: I'm a female blogger.

Do you think you can keep yourself saved?

If salvation depends at all upon us to keep it, we are lost.
The new birth is from above rather than of us (John 3).

So, the answer to the opening question is that we can't keep ourselves saved.

It is God who is faithful to complete what He has begun (Philippians 1:6). 

Those who turn away from the truth do not have a true living faith (James demonstrates the kind of faith that is genuine).
So, the verses that talk about those who have the knowledge of the truth and disobey or are enslaved to sin again are about those who may go to church & think they are saved, and yet their faith is not genuine. 

They may hear the truth and yet be lying about their claim to know God (1 John 2:4).

Then there are those who are genuine believers who sin, but who repent as believers.

That is where a believer confesses to God, but it is not to be justified all over again.

Other verses that demonstrate God keeps His own saved are 1 Peter 1:4-5; John 10:27-29; Romans 8:35 & 8:38-39.

Nobody can be justified by works or good deeds in order to be made right before God or obtain Heaven.
Old Testament believers were not saved by the works of the Law. 

They were saved by faith (Romans 3; Hebrews 11, Galatians 3) 

Justification has always been by a living real genuine faith (1 John 2:4), but even that faith is a gift of God. Acts 11:17-18...God grants the repentance that leads to life (also you can see Ephesians 2:8-10 & Titus 3:5-7).

So, in review:

The Bible makes it abundantly clear that we could never keep ourselves saved by our deeds. 

Deeds are the fruit ...not the root. We cannot even obey God in repentance without God.

The spiritually dead have no spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear. 

Genuine repentance transforms, and that is a change of heart that a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-10; Philippians 2;13).

with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,
2 Tim. 2:25 NASB

(I notice that it talks about God granting repentance!)

For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

2 Corinthians 7:10 NASB

(Simple regret and worldly sorrow is not the true repentance that is from God.)

Between hearing messages and not reading Why We're Protestant by Nate Pickowicz (I'm in chapter 4),  I've been having scriptural teaching reinforced a lot.  This isn't a new belief!

Free Will vs. Predestination

 Recently I got involved in an online discussion with another woman on the the subject of free will vs. predestination.  I have edited and reordered some of my responses to share with people here.  I hope that people will understand that if you disagree that I do not hate you.  It is more for the purpose of persuasion and showing verses that support what I say.  If this seems too much like teaching and you are a man, you do not need to read further.  Also, this particular post is meant for Christians. 

Do you believe that faith is something that we do to gain salvation or that it is a gift of God given to us by His grace? 

Ephesians 2:8-10 not only points out that faith is a gift of God and not of works, but it also points out that God even prepared the good works Christians will do beforehand that we should walk in them. Even with vs. 5 of Ephesians 2 you can see that we were dead in our transgressions and God made us alive. A dead person cannot choose anything without God first making him alive.  He makes us alive and changes our will. 
 
even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),    Ephesians 2:5 NASB

Here are some more verses that point out God's sovereignty and choosing:

"All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. John 6:37

And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father." John 6:65 (all in NASB)

The "whoever" that believe or call upon the name of the Lord are the ones that in love He predestined to be adopted. ( Ephesians 1:4-6 )  All that the Father gives to Jesus will come to Him. When we say otherwise, we are questioning God's power / sovereignty. People do choose to sin ... that is all they can do apart from God's doing ... and they are happy to do so, but God in His love and mercy chose to save some ... not on the basis of what they have done. 
 
He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, Titus 3:5

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. Romans 9:14-18 NASB
 
 Before Jacob and Esau were born God had already chosen one over the other ... before they had done good or bad.

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?  Romans 9:19-22 NASB

Here is a link that I would recommend reading through:

http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/A167/gods-absolute-sovereignty