Is Jesus your safety net or is he your Savior?

I had better qualify what I mean by that question because Jesus is a safety net to all of us. He is always there to pick us up when we fall, to guide us through life’s troubles, and to lean on when we need help. He will always be there and he will never forsake us.

However, that is not the type of safety net I was referring to when I asked the question. What do I mean by a safety net? I hope to explain in the paragraphs to follow.

Once Saved, Always Saved

If you have truly accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your Lord and Savior you are saved. You cannot lose your salvation. Some call this eternal salvation, while many call this “once saved, always saved.”

True faith in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross, through the grace and mercy of God, is all it takes to be granted your salvation. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that he was raised from the dead you are saved.¹

Jesus as a Safety Net

Some have taken once saved, always saved to the extreme. They are using it as an excuse to continue living a sinful life. These people are abusing God’s grace and mercy by claiming that because Jesus already died for our sins they can continue to live sinful lives. I see people encouraging this in the online community.

If their sins will be forgiven anyway, they say, why do they need to stop sinning? After all, their future sins have already been forgiven even before they commit them. Paul spoke out about this mentality in the Book of Romans² because it was a problem 2,000 years ago as well.

This, of course, is not how once saved, always saved works. This is not how eternal salvation works. This is what I meant when I asked if Jesus was your safety net. Are you using your faith in Jesus as an excuse so you can continue to purposely and unremorsefully sin believing he is there to continue to catch you? If so, you are not treating Jesus as your Savior, you are using him as a safety net.

Paul wasn’t the only one that warned about this false mindset, here is what Peter had to say about it:

¹⁶ Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.³

Yes, Jesus is there for us when we fall, and we all fall, however God expects that a change in our mindset will lead to a change in our behavior as we continue to grow in Christ. We are supposed to become servants of God, we are not supposed to remain in sin believing Jesus is our get out of jail free card.

Jesus as Savior

When you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior the process of sanctification begins. We are given a new heart, a heart in which the Holy Spirit lives. This new heart moves us closer and closer to Jesus and we begin to live for Christ.

²⁶ And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.⁴

Jesus also expected people to change. Jesus told both the man at the Pool at Bethesda and the woman caught in adultery to “sin no more.”⁵ He himself had this to say about people who call him Lord but do not change their ways:

 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?⁶

And:

 You are my friends if you do what I command you.⁷

It is true that all of us continue to fall into sin even after accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but it is because we are faulty human beings who fail again and again. However, as our hearts change and we begin to move more toward God through the process of sanctification, the desire to sin should start to fade and our resistance to sin should grow.

We will not WANT to keep sinning, we will want to live for Christ. We understand that sinning is an affront to God and we make an honest attempt to change.

What Does This Mean?

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was not meant to give us license to continue in our old ways. Repentance is required for salvation, it is needed for the sanctification process to begin.

Those whose hearts do not begin to change, and those who have no intention of changing their sinful behavior, have not truly accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts as their Savior. They have accepted him as their safety net, their Plan B. It was an outward acceptance without repentance and it was not from the heart.⁸

²⁶ For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, ²⁷ but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.⁹

You might not always succeed in changing your behaviors but when Jesus is your savior and not just a safety net, it changes your heart and makes you want to change. In order for the once saved, always saved doctrine to be sound you have to be “once saved” in the first place, and that means truly accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart and turning away from your old ways through repentance and the process of sanctification.

 “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”¹⁰

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1. Romans 10:9 ↩︎
2. See Romans 6:1-2 ↩︎
3. I Peter 2:16 ESV ↩︎
4. Ezekiel 36:26,27 ESV ↩︎
5. See John 5:14, John 8:11 ↩︎
6. Luke 6:46 ESV ↩︎
7. John 15:14 ESV ↩︎
8. See Matthew 23:25 ↩︎
9. Hebrews 10:26, 27 ↩︎
10. 2 Timothy 2:19 ↩︎