I received a question from a preacher named Mark. He wrote:
Greetings my brothers in the Lord.
I have a request for you. I keep hearing Jimmy Swaggart’s time when he was caught with pornography and a prostitute as his time of “falling from Grace.”
I believe that even some in his camp or ministry use this term and I wish they would stop.
Brother Swaggart did not “fall from Grace” because to do so is quite impossible if brother Swaggart was a born-again, Jesus-trusting Christian.
I would think it timely if you touched on this as this event of Jimmy’s passing is all over Christian radio and talk shows. Perhaps you could help us coin a better term to use for not only Jimmy Swaggart but others who, while deeply involved in a successful ministry, find themselves caught up in sexual sin.
Would you write about this please and perhaps give us free Grace preachers an alternative term which we can lovingly use when speaking with our family and friends who were and are big fans of the Swaggart ministry, please? My own wife is one such person.
Thank you in advance for your reply.
Great and timely question, Mark.
I agree with him that no one can lose everlasting life. A born-again person has everlasting life that can never be lost.
Mark calls Jimmy Swaggart “a Jesus-trusting Christian.” I would prefer the expression “a believer,” or “a believer in Jesus Christ for everlasting life.” But I get his point.
I don’t recall ever reading what Jimmy Swaggart said a person has to do in order to be born again. Did he say that, “Once saved, always saved,” is true? Did he say that the only condition of eternal salvation is faith in Christ?
If he believed that through faith in Jesus, he was eternally secure (Eph 2:8), then he is absolutely with the Lord right now. If he ever believed that, then he is with the Lord. Even if he was no longer believing that when he died. Even if he was out of fellowship with God when he died.
You are right in saying that it is not correct to equate falling from grace with losing everlasting life. Paul used that expression to mean falling from the present experience of grace. Don Campbell in the Bible Knowledge Commentary wrote, concerning falling from grace in Gal 5:4:
The issue here is not possible loss of salvation, for “grace” is referred to not as salvation itself but as a method of salvation…If the Galatians accepted circumcision as necessary for salvation, they would be leaving the grace system for the Mosaic Law system. The same error is repeated today when a believer leaves a church that emphasizes salvation by grace through faith and joins one which teaches that salvation depends on repentance, confession, faith, baptism, and church membership (p. 605).
If Swaggart once believed in the promise of everlasting life and later stopped doing so, then he indeed fell from grace.i However, that is not what people mean when they refer to his moral fall. A moral fall is not falling from grace, that is, from its experience. A doctrinal fall is a fall from grace as Gal 5:4 shows.
Every one of us is capable of being duped and falling from grace—but not from everlasting life. We need to keep grace in focus so that we hear the Lord’s “Well done, good servant,” when we are judged by Him at the Bema.
i No one can fall from everlasting life, just as Mark suggested in his request.
