Free Grace Classics: Escape to Reality Greatest Hits, Volume 2 by Paul Ellis Page B

what are the consequences? Most
people have no idea but fear the worst: “Shipwrecked faith means you’ve lost
your salvation. It means you’re going to hell.”
    Actually,
it means no such thing.
    Look
again at the passage above and note how Paul defines fighting the good fight as
“holding on to faith and a good conscience.” These two things are connected. If
you reject or cast away a good conscience your faith will become shipwrecked:
     
    Holding
fast to faith (that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute
trust and confidence) and having a good (clear) conscience. By rejecting and
thrusting from them [their conscience], some individuals have made shipwreck of
their faith. (1 Timothy 1:19, AMP)
     
    This is not about ignoring your
conscience; it’s about the dangers of thrusting away your clear conscience. In other words, if your conscience condemns you, you will have
trouble believing what God says is true about you.
     
    Dear
friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and
receive from him anything we ask… (1 John 3:21–22a)
     
    Condemnation is a faith-killer.
Condemnation will cause you to be timid before God making it hard for you to
receive from the abundance of his grace. If your conscience is constantly
telling you that you’re unworthy, you’re a hopeless Christian, and you don’t
deserve to be in the kingdom, you will be in danger of shipwrecking your faith.
     
    What is shipwrecked faith?
     
    If you are not secure in your
Father’s love—which you won’t be if your conscience condemns you—you’ll make a
wreck of your faith. Like a ship that fails to reach its destination, you’ll
fall short of all that God has in store for you.
    And no,
that doesn’t mean you’ll lose your salvation and go to hell. It simply means
you won’t mature in the faith (Luke 8:14). You’ll lose the freedom that is
yours in Christ (Galatians 5:1) and you’ll fear punishment that isn’t coming (1
John 4:18).
    The New
Testament writers list many bad things that can happen when we fail to trust
God in our daily lives, but the thing many Christians fear most—Christ writing
them off—is the one thing that absolutely cannot happen. If you are one with the
Lord be at peace, for the One who took hold of you will never let you go. If
the Holy Spirit dwells in you he will never leave. Jesus promised (see John
14:16).
    So what
does it mean to shipwreck your faith? It means moving from the secure
foundation of Jesus Christ. It means diluting your faith in God with faith in
self, faith in effort, faith in your ability to perform. It’s trying instead of
trusting and striving instead of resting.
     
    What Paul never said
     
    “If you shipwreck your faith,
you’ll lose your salvation.” Preachers of insecurity love to quote this verse
as support for the idea that we can undo what we never wrought—as though we
could unfuse the Holy Spirit from our spirits and tear ourselves from God’s
mighty grip. Don’t you think if that could happen, Paul would’ve mentioned it?
Yet he says nothing of the kind.
    What
Paul does say is that a group of certain men had shipwrecked their faith
and of that group two men had been handed over to Satan so that they might be
taught not to blaspheme. I don’t know exactly what Paul had in mind with this
handing over business—perhaps it meant kicking them out of the fellowship—but
note that he did it with the intention of teaching them, not condemning them.
    What else
do we know about these two guys Paul handed over to Satan? We know they were
part of a group of teachers (i) who were promoting controversies rather than
God’s work—which is by faith (v.4) and (ii) they saw themselves as teachers of
the law (v.7).
    Ask the
right questions and you will get the right answers:
     
    –         How do we preach law? By telling people
they must work for salvation/sanctification/blessings, etc.
    –         What is the purpose of