All Christians will say there is no security outside of Christ. We all know Christ is the only way, the Rock, and to build without Him as Lord is to build on sand.
However there's a continuing discussion among Christian believers about whether you can lose your salvation. It's a deadly serious issue, literally.
Here's one of the verses sometimes quoted to say we can lose our salvation.
Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.
2 Peter 1:10
Peter tells believers to confirm their calling. In view of the following Romans verse it's hard to see how you would confirm your calling before God. He has already chosen you. Certainly you might reassure and remind yourself, and you might thereby start to live better. But in the thoughts of God, this passage applies:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Romans 8:29-30
That's a straightforward statement of God's thinking toward us. He foreknew some would come to Him. This does not mandate that men don't choose or reject Him. They do. We all do choose. However God has always been aware of who will choose what. (Predestination without the condition of foreknowledge leads us to the hard Calvinist theology where we have no active part in our salvation). However, the foreknowledge of God resolves the dilemma. God is sovereign, but in that sovereignty He has granted us a freewill to choose certain things for ourselves. We are a living spirit, not a programmed robot. We do make a real choice about eternal destiny, either for glory or damnation.
God is not constrained by time in the way we are. These verses from Romans read as a fait accompli, a done deal. Even the glorification of the saints is done. He knows who chose Him and who rejected Him. He knows the end from the beginning. He sees all history simultaneously*.
He foreknew some would step out of the temporal realm and enter the eternal realm. This happens at the new birth; we enter the eternal realm, with our innermost being, and so the true self, our real identity, is established (Ephesians 2v4-6, 2 Corinthians 5v17). Our mortal body stays where it was for now. So can our 'true self' drop back out of eternity?
Imagine two sides of a street. There is the possibility of crossing over, in one direction at least. (There's an Abba song about this, it's not Christian though!).
One side of the street is the path of natural life, the life of this world. It starts at natural birth and ends at natural, physical, death. Death of the mortal body. On the other side is eternal life, the sort of life Jesus has, and the Father has also. The street has a certain finite length to it on the first side, but continues in both directions forever on the other side.
The man on the first side of the street has two kinds of life, but lacks a third. The man on the second side has all three. This requires explanation.
Three Kinds of Life
For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself
For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.
John 5v26,21
There is a type of life possessed by God. It is not a derived, created, life. It is a self-existing, uncreated life**.
The Father gives this life to the Son, and the Son gives it to whom He will.
There are three Greek words all translated as 'life' in English versions. They are bios, psuche, and zoe. They represent, loosely, biological life, soulish life, and the life of God, respectively. This is how the words are most often used in the Bible. We can see that the English words 'biology' and 'psychology' are derived from the first two. Bios represents the physical processes of life. Bios is impressive enough as far as it goes. When I look at a well-used guitar, someone has played it regularly for decades. It is worn, the fretboard has hollows, the frets are grooved, the finish is eroded. Yet the fingers of the musician are just fine. Bios did that, the callouses may be there but the cells are renewed. Psuche represents the functions of mind. The mind is complex, nuanced, multi-facetted, different for each person. It may be fragile and delicate. The emotions are also involved in Psuche.
But beyond these, there's a further category of life. Jesus used the word zoe to refer to the life He and the Father shared***. The same word is used to describe the life which He gives to us. The verses from John above use either zoe or a derivative of the root word for zoe. It is the same throughout the New Testament when God's life is involved.
Now the word zoe was not invented for the New Testament: it was a pre-existing Greek word. Strictly speaking, as originally used, the word does not refer only to 'the God kind of life'. Bible teachers often call it that, and that is how it is used in the New Testament. Originally though, it refers to what we might call vibrancy, vigour, productivity, freshness. It is the zing, the beans, in bios and psuche when everything is singing along nicely. It is a very positive take on 'life'. When we combine zoe life with the Greek aioneos, which means something like 'perpetual' or 'always ongoing', we get a phrase usually translated 'everlasting life' or 'eternal life'. This is the Greek phrase from John 3v16, for example. The permanence and the quality of life are both emphasised by the Greek words used. The KJV sometimes translates aioneos as 'everlasting', and sometimes as 'eternal'. Various other versions may prefer one or other word when associated with zoe life.
Interestingly, aioneos indicates a past, present and future continuity. We might think of something described as 'everlasting' as having a beginning, but no end. An 'everlasting' battery for example. (There are things called RTG batteries but they don't really last forever, just a very long time; they got left on the Moon to power instruments. Clearly they had a beginning; someone made them). But 'eternal' has the sense of times past as well as present and future. Or, equivalently, of no beginning and no end. When we say God has no beginning and no end, we are attributing to Him this kind of life. And He is always the source of it. It is granted at His discretion. He has granted bios and psuche to everyone born into this world. New Testament zoe, zoe aioneos, is only for born again believers in Christ His Son.
When we become believers, we cross over into this zoe aioneos. It is perpetual, it is not subject to birth or death, although we are born again into it from our natural life.
Back to the street analogy.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 5:24
'Life' here is, you guessed, zoe, and 'eternal life' is zoe aioneos. But notice what Jesus says. 'He who truly hears and believes has already passed from death to life'.
If you have passed from death to eternal life, it is very, very hard to see how you can pass back again. You have passed into a realm of permanence. I would suggest this means you simply cannot pass out again!
For me, the only question is, 'did you really pass over?'
* Yet He is also able to experience life within the constraints of time. This is how Jesus experienced life; the same as we do.
** This uncaused quality of God is called 'aseity' by theologians.
*** Jesus very probably spoke in Aramaic most of the time; so this is the Greek word used to record what He said.
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