Adam’s and Eve’s fall from grace prove once saved always saved is false and, even worse, it creates a false god.
Some Protestant denominations, especially those of the Calvinist tradition, teach that once a person is justified by grace, that person will never lose their justification. Their doctrine of eternal security is colloquially known as “once saved, always saved” (OSAS). These Protestants go so far as to teach that nothing the believer does will cause them to lose their justification.
An article at Got Questions, a popular Protestant apologetics website, states, “…when people come to know Christ as their Savior, they are brought into a relationship with God that guarantees their salvation as eternally secure.” The major problem for proponents of this manmade tradition (Mk 7:8) is that at least one iron-clad case of persons who were once saved, yet not always saved exists – the case of Adam and Eve.
The Iron-Clad Case
God created Adam and Eve full of grace. We know this for a few reasons: 1) God created man in His own image and likeness (Gen 1:26); 2) after God created man, He looked across creation and said it was “very good” (Gen 1:31); and 3) man was created to live forever (Genesis 2:17).
First, God, who is spirit and grace, created man in His image and likeness, which means God gave man finite spiritual qualities that mirror His attributes. For instance, God is infinite power, truth, and love, and He gives humans finite power, truth, and love. Similarly, God is grace, and He communicates grace to those who are designed for its reception for the purpose of making them spiritually alive. To emphasize this point, Genesis 2:7 says that man became a living soul (see also 1 Cor 15:45).
Since God made everything perfect in the beginning (deficiencies came about because of the Fall), and humans need grace in their souls to be perfect, God infused Adam’s and Eve’s souls with grace. Further, since grace perfects man, God’s creation of the first two humans without grace defies reason. Rather, God made Adam and Eve full of grace because their perfect souls were designed for grace, and they were not inclined toward sin that would have impeded their souls’ reception of grace.
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