1. More times than I can count.
2. Over 20 years and some very serious sins.
I still believe I was saved, because I did not reject my libertarian free will in Christ all that time. Also there was some mercy because I was blinded to the sins I had let loose in my life. When God revealed the sin to me about 5 years ago, I repented very fervently for many months.
We are not saying you can "out sin" the Cross, but rather you can reject it by a free will decision. If you would like just a short argument against Eternal Security (I use the term OSAS loosely here), I can paste it in from another forum.
I don't believe we need a form of eternal security to feel secure. We should not be trusting a doctrine anyway, we should be directly trusting God himself.
OSAS assumes any promise it finds in the Bible is unconditional, but this assumption is unwarranted.
Consider this verse: "I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever. But now the LORD declares: Far be it from Me!" 1 Sam. 2:30.
The original promise did not directly address the conditions involved, they were assumed from other Bible passages.
OSAS assumes ALL warnings that sound salvific HAVE to necessarily be addressing unsaved people who are "almost" saved, but these warnings both describe elements of salvation in those they are addressed to, and they also make absolutely no sense to be addressed to people that have no commitment or belief in God anyway, for those people have no promise of salvation, nor can they fall from anything, nor have the partaken of Christ, nor have they escaped corruption.
Rejecting OSAS does not mean you have to confess every single sin every second of every day or you instantly lose your salvation, nor does it even mean you have to leave in fear and anxiety and worry about your salvation. These things are gross straw men that don't logically follow.
Rejecting OSAS means you take God's warnings as if they actually applied, but in so doing, it drives you even deeper to grace, dependence, trust, reliance, and faith in the merits and strength of Christ. God does not ask us to do what we cannot do, but always provides the grace for it.
Rejecting OSAS does not mean salvation by works. It is a logical error to insist that an action that produces a result necessarily means an attempt to merit it. Christ asks us to meet non-meritorious requirements that are easily achievable and only require trust in Christ's merit and not our own.
There is no single verse anywhere that indicates you can reject and leave your faith in Christ, and still expect salvation. And so many forms of OSAS become completely legalistic, the very thing they "claim" to want to save you from, by preaching you can't be saved without believing OSAS, or that if you later fall away it means you were never saved at all. If you have to bear fruit to prove you are saved, this is logically no different than works salvation.
Don't listen to the devil offering a false security. Ask God directly and persistently, and he will show you that you don't have to believe the lie of Eternal Security to be saved, nor do you have to live in fear without it.
Could eternal security be more clearly stated?
100% yes, it could be more clearly stated.
For this promise to mean eternal security it must with absolute clarity and precision make it clear that there are no conditions and variables that could apply to it.
This is a presupposition brought to the text from man made ideologies, that clearly does not fit the verse I quoted nor all the times the Bible gives clear conditional warnings that express an actual potential and hypothetical.
To make someone "feel secure" by giving them hundreds of warnings that don't apply to them but sound like they do, is the most unreliable and dishonest way God could possibly bring security to us.
Also when you say "by faith" you are implying we have to do something volitionally to apply the Work of the Cross.
Under the logic that if you do anything it is meritorious works added to the Cross, you have to completely eliminate all free will and say a person is born saved.
But the Bible says we are born children of wrath, therefore the Atonement and Merits of Jesus logically have to be conditionally applied, since there is a point in time when they are not.
If you claim fear and love "can't mix," you have thrown out the beginning of wisdom and knowledge itself, which Scripture clearly says is the fear of the Lord. Even Christ clearly said "fear him."
In conclusion OSAS is actually that doctrine that brings man-made philosophical rationalizations to dismiss the clear warnings of Scripture and mischaracterizes grace as having to only be monergism.
Both of these do not match the Bible, nor are they confirmed by the Holy Spirit, nor do they match the experience of devout believers we later find fallen away.
Should we believe a lie just to make ourselves feel secure? I think the clear answer is, no.
