If You Must Maintain Eternal Life, It Was Never Eternal
Paul roots salvation in God' action, God's seal & God's guarantee, not our performance.
Scripture never presents salvation as something we maintain. Titus 3 says God saved us not by our works but by regeneration & renewal, an act done to us, not a system we keep running.
Ephesians 1 says we heard, believed & were SEALED with the Holy Spirit, it's God's eternal life guarantee. A guarantee that depends on our obedience isn't God's guarantee at all.
John 15 doesn't teach self sustained salvation, the vine supplies the life, not the branch.
Redefining ""in Christ"" as ""those who obey the Law"" replaces Paul's stated positional position & definition, which is belief in the gospel.
Titus 3:8 says good works flow from salvation, not preserve it. That creates the core contradiction: if eternal life can be lost, it isn't eternal; if the guarantee depends on us, it isn't God's & if salvation rests on performance, we're only as secure as our best day.
The biblical pattern is consistent, God saves, seals, preserves & good works follow as fruit, not conditions.
If something something can be powered for eternity, then that is eternal life.
Obedience to the Law of God has absolutely nothing to with having a good enough performance. God's action is graciously teaching to experience being a doer of His law, which is how He is giving us His gift of saving us from not being a doer of it. In Titus 2:11-13, the content of our gift of salvation is described as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly, so it someone is participating in that training in obedience to the Law of God through faith, but then rejects the content of their gift of salvation by doing what is ungodly and renouncing doing what is godly, righteous, and good, then they are no longer participating in that training and no longer have the content of their gift of salvation.
In Titus 3:5, is is speaking against becoming saved as the result of our works, so there are not works that we are required to have done first in order to become saved and we can't become saved even as the result of having had perfect obedience to the Law of God, but rather the experience of being a doer of the Law of God is the gift of salvation, which intrinsically requires us to be a doer of them in order to have that experience. Jesus saves us from our sin (Matthew 1:21) and sin is the transgression of the Law of God (1 John 3:4), so Jesus graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of it is intrinsically the way that he is giving us his gift of saving us from not being a doer of it, which requires our participation.
I did not claim that the branch provides life by that we need to remain in the vine in order to have life. If someone separates themselves from Christ and is no longer in the vine, then they no longer have eternal life.
In Matthew 4:15-23, Jesus began his ministry with the Gospel message to repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, which was a light to the Gentiles, and the Law of God was how his audience knew what sin is, so the way to believe the Gospel is by repenting and becoming a doer of the Law of God, which is the same as what it means to be in Christ. In Romans 15:18-19, Paul's Gospel brought Gentiles to obedience in word and in deed, and in Romans 10:16, 1 Peter 4:17, and 2 Thessalonians 1:8, they all speak against those who do not obey the Gospel. So 1 John 2:6 is in accordance with how Paul spoke about those who are in Christ.
Good works to not extrinsically flow from or into salvation, but rather the experience of being a doer of good works is intrinsically part of what salvation is.
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