No one will be in heaven who did not walk in good works on earth. In other words, and in the words of
Hebrews 12:14, there is a “holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Abbreviated, “no holiness, no heaven.” ...
The person I quoted cites this verse often and implies it means that salvation is based on the merits of our personal, progressive holiness, which crosses the line into salvation by works.
The NASB reads - Pursue peace with all men, and the
sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14). To be sanctified is to be "set apart/made holy." Without justification, there is no sanctification.
They may imagine God putting souls on a conveyor belt to glory. “Once saved, always saved” — no matter how deeply compromised their lives may be. In so doing they pit the essential doctrine of justification against the blood, sweat, and toil of the essential doctrine of sanctification, judging the first to eclipse the second. We do not need holiness, it is thought, because once saved, always saved. And by “saved” we cannot help but conclude they include “saved from needing to obey.”
This person also relentlessly attacks OSAS and implies that OSAS believers promote a license to sin and are most likely living like the devil.
Texts that speak conditionally of inheriting eternal life (conditions God empowers his true children to meet) bewilder dead faith. They cannot stomach texts about the need to continue stable and steadfast in the faith, to endure to the end, to stand firm through trials, to put the flesh to death by the Spirit, to work out one’s own salvation with fear and trembling, to make our calling and election sure through energetic striving (
2 Peter 1:1–11) ...
This person also cites these texts to imply we are saved by works. I see this is a wide spread problem. By cultivating the qualities listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7, Christians can be sure that God has called them and elected them. These fruits will confirm it. Make sure you have been called and elected - bébaios (an adjective, derived from bainō, "to walk where it is solid") – properly, solid (sure) enough to walk on; hence, firm, unshakable; (figuratively) absolutely dependable, giving guaranteed support (security, surety). To practice these qualities gives evidence of salvation, though they are not the basis (or cause) of salvation. They are the effect. Cause of being in Christ (FAITH) effect of being in Christ (FRUIT).
For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (vs. 8). For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins (vs. 9). What is the object of the forgetting? Is this forgetting temporary because this believer had fallen into error or does this lack of fruit exist because this person’s "cleansing" was merely an external reformation that did not come from a truly changed heart?
The genuineness of their profession will be demonstrated as they express these virtues. These fruits confirm their divine source. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. Those who are born of God practice righteousness and not sin. (1 John 3:10)
Proverbs 24:16, we read - For a
righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, But the wicked shall fall by calamity.