Can a Christian lose his salvation? Some think so, based on passages like this one. Is not Paul writing to Christians? Is he not saying that Christians who display the previous list of fifteen symptoms of fleshliness will not be entering into heaven? I do not think that is what this passage is addressing at all.

First, which of us has never failed in some regard concerning these symptoms? Even the most mature of us has disputes with others from time to time or been jealous. Would we not all then be disqualified from entry into heaven? Of course not. Further, Paul is not listing these things as a sort of Christian law system that we must perform in order to merit or keep God’s forgiveness. Grace that so freely forgave our sins before we came to Christ is also sufficient to forgive us for any of these fleshly deeds after conversion.

Paul, by his own writing, is not referring to Christians but to those “who will not inherit the kingdom of God.” He says elsewhere, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals” (1 Cor 6:9). These are descriptions of people who are not Christians, whose lifestyle and practices give evidence that they are unconverted. They are still under law and the law will judge them as sinners.

But why then would Paul be writing this to the Christians in Galatia? He explicitly says this is a repeated warning, so it is not to be dismissed as irrelevant. The answer is that in all groups of Christians there may be some unbelievers (the tares among the wheat – see Matthew 13). The apostle, as he wrote elsewhere, counsels his readers to, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” (2 Cor 13:5).

This does not mean that anyone who lapses into failure in one of these symptoms forfeits what he already has, that is, salvation. The tense of the verb practice indicates the habitual nature of the life style. The person who is characterized by one or more of these symptoms, who has an unrepentant heart, needs to think soberly about his pretentions to faith and fellowship among true believers. The true believer, on the other hand, is motivated not by a fear of losing salvation, but by an abhorrence of that for which the non-believers are judged. He does not want to continue in sin that is condemned by God in the lives of non-believers. Why flirt with that which God detests?