Can Christians Lose the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit Descending on Christ in the Form of a Dove, Revealing the Holy Trinity for the First Time (Mark 1:9-11; Matthew 3:13-17; Luke 3:21-22; John 1:32-34)

 

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

“Can Christians lose the Holy Spirit?” 

This is a very good question, and many people teach a form of “Easy Believism” that insists “once saved, always saved,” and that those who have prayed a prayer of repentance and faith, or who have asked Christ to be their Lord and Savior at some time in their lives, “don’t need to worry about it.” They also often mistakenly teach that those who believe a continued, close, active relationship with Christ are somehow believing in “Works based salvation,” forgetting that Christ told His disciples that “if they loved Him, they should keep His commandments (John 14:15).” Those who love Christ and follow Him would never believe that they can earn their own salvation. Such an attitude undermines Christ’s place in our lives as true Lord and Savior. 

“For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:8-10).”

Let’s first look at what Scripture has to say about losing the Holy Spirit…

Psalms 51:11 “Do not take away from me Your Holy Spirit, O Lord.”

Ephesians 4:30 “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit, because He is the One Who keeps you until the Day of Salvation.”

I Thessalonians “Do not quench the Spirit.” (This verb means to “put out like a fire.”) 

Isaiah 63:10 “Those who grieved the Holy Spirit then have Him turn against them.”

Hebrews 10:29 “Worse punishment awaits those who insult the Spirit…”

Acts 5:3-4,9 “Lying to the Holy Spirit leads to judgment and death.”

Matthew 12:31-32 “Sin against the Holy Spirit won’t be forgiven, although the Father and the Son will forgive us.”

2 Peter 2:20-22 “Those who are converted and then reject the Holy Spirit have a worse end that those who have never heard the Truth.”

The Scripture and Early Church Tradition are very clear about how this functions in our lives. The Holy Spirit brings the conviction of God’s perfect Law to our hearts, illuminating our sin, calling us to Christ, and revealing the Father’s love to us (John 16:8). The Holy Spirit doesn’t teach us about Himself, but reveals Christ for our salvation (John 16:13). Because He is the vessel for this work, rejecting the Holy Spirit is damning and is the “unpardonable sin,” which Scripture shows can’t be forgiven. 

Christ’s Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 shows how this happens, because the Seed of the Gospel is choked out and the land that originally was planted with God’s good message, eventually becomes a desert and is abandoned. Also, Christ compares us to branches of a Vine in John 15, and those branches that do not bear fruit are “cut off and thrown into the fire.” So, we clearly see that the Holy Spirit can begin a work in us, but then we can reject Him and remove ourselves from His Grace, and the “end result is worse than before conversion.” 

It is true that “Nothing can remove us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39)”, and we are not afraid of God rejecting us and arbitrarily throwing us into Hell. We know that He loves us and desires to save everyone (1 Timothy 2:4), and that He already did everything necessary for the salvation of the whole world through the finished work of Christ on the Cross (Romans 5:6-11). 

However, at no time does God cancel our free will, which is the “Image of God (Genesis 1:27)”, and at any time we can leave God without being coerced or forced back into love with Him. He always respects our choices and gives us our freedom, so that our love is real and our relationship with Him is built on mutual intimacy, mirroring the relationship that God has with Himself within the Holy Trinity. We are being saved by our conversion through faith, baptism, obedience, and continually following Him by doing the good works He’s commanded us to do (active faith, the faith St. James talks about in James 2), and, as the Jesus says, “the one who endures until the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13) 

St. Seraphim of Sarov, a recent Eastern Christian monk and teacher, was famous for saying “As for fasts, and vigils, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for Christ's sake, are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Mark my words, only good deeds done for Christ's sake brings us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. All that is not done for Christ's sake, even though it be good, brings neither reward in the future life nor the grace of God in this life (The Little Russian Philokalia).” 

Summary

The Holy Spirit can be lost by degrees, in proportion to our sin and hard-heartedness, just as we see over and over in the Old and New Testaments, as people harden their hearts against God and refuse to repent. The Holy Spirit can also fill our lives and transform everything we do, in proportion to our sincere faith, repentance and obedience to Him in every area of our lives. 

A Beautiful Contemporary Icon of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-3, When Christ Sent Down the Holy Spirit Upon the Apostles Gathered Together in One Accord in the Upper Room, Starting the Church and Proclaiming the Gospel to the World in Tongues, Signs and Wonders!