Now, let me start off by saying that I was raised in the Baptist church, most of my family is still Baptist, and I love Baptists. My biggest frustration with the whole Baptist/Wesleyan, once saved always saved/lose your salvation discussion is the misconceptions between the two groups. As someone who has spent a significant time in both camps, let me try to explain. My goal is to help us all grow stronger in our faith and stronger as the church of Christ.
1. When a Wesleyan hears “once saved always saved” they make the assumption that Baptists believe someone can get saved, sin the rest of their life, and still go to heaven. Baptists do not believe this. By “once saved always saved”, Baptists mean that someone who has had a heartwarming conversion(for all you John Wesley historians out there) is able to walk in faith for the rest of their life by the grace of God. They believe that someone who has had a true conversion would never turn away from the faith. Someone who does, it is believed, was never a Christian to begin with.
2. When a Baptist hears “lose your salvation” they think that Wesleyans live in fear that they would somehow do something that would remove them from God’s grace and hand. I can state no more clearly than this: Wesleyan do not believe you can LOSE your salvation. Losing is something you do despite your best efforts. I lose my keys everyday(sometimes my son Drake has put them somewhere else). Wesleyan do believe that any person, no matter how long they’ve been a believer, has the choice and free will to WALK AWAY from the faith. We do not believe that God forces us to remain saved if we don’t want to be.
Now, let me throw a few more thoughts at you. If someone has a salvation experience when they are 15 and at age 22 decide to leave the church and the faith to live like the world then a Baptist would look at them and say,”They weren’t really saved to begin with.” A Wesleyan would look at them and say,”They walked away from the faith.” Both would agree that this person is now lost and in need of Jesus. There may be a disagreement on how a person got to their current state, but there is no question on either side that this person needs to be shown the love of Christ for the hope of salvation.
There are just a lot more things we agree on than we disagree on. The issue I will tackle later is “if Baptists believe in Eternal Security then why are so many of them insecure?”