In article entitled “Is Our Continued Standing in Christ Conditional?” John Hendryx writes:
Good works and obedience may be the necessary fruit of conversion but they are not the gospel which saves, nor do they play ANY part of what maintains our right standing before God. That office is reserved for Jesus alone. We contribute nothing to our justification. And if, as some claim, our continued standing in Christ is ultimately conditional, then it would directly contradict any feigned assertion that justification comes through Christ ALONE. Again, fruit is necessary, but it is Christ’s fruit.. He chose us and APPOINTED US TO BEAR FRUIT… fruit that will abide (John 15:16)
What about passages which call us to obedience and warn about disobedience. Well, this is what actually happens to true believers who fall into sin:
“But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we MAY NOT BE condemned along with the world.” (1 Cor. 11:31-32)
When a believer acknowledges his sin and the righteous judgment of God, God will not judge us, but when we sin we are judged by GOD as a form of discipline SO WE MAY NOT BE CONDEMNED ALONG WITH THE WORLD. Such discipline drives us back to obedience, and never results in causing God to forsake our status as His children. No one, including you or me, would have hope if any of our salvation depended, even a little, on ourselves. The idea that Christ can lose a believer also directly contradicts God’s promise that His call is irrevocable to all those he has given Christ. (Rom 11:29; John 6:39)
Theologian Robert Reymond once noted that in 1 John there is “a cause and effect relationship exists between God’s regenerating activity and saving faith/obedience/perseverance.” When one takes into account that John says in 1 John 3:9a that “everyone who has been begotten [gegenn?menos] by God does not do sin, because [hoti] his seed abides in him” and then in 1 John 3:9b that “he is not able to sin, because [hoti] he has been begotten [gegenn?tai—the word in 5:1] by God,” we definitely find a cause and effect relationship between God’s regenerating activity as the cause and the Christian’s not abiding in sin as one EFFECT of that regenerating activity. [The reverse is true that those who continue to abide in sin have not been regenerated]…In every other place where it occurs — an?then, means “from above.” [i.e. those who have been begotten [perfect tense] by God sins [present tense] not,”[ Though he does not say so in so many words, it is surely appropriate, because of his pattern of speech in 1 John 3:9 and elsewhere this word is used, to understand him to mean that the cause behind one’s not abiding in sin [and even the cause of one’s faith (1 Jn 5:1)] is God’s regenerating activity.”
In other words, the work of grace which the Lord does for us in the gospel is a complete work, and lacks nothing. Jesus Person and work is sufficient to save to the uttermost (Heb 7:25). Jesus says, “I have come to do your will … And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10)