How Brittle is your Salvation?  

Mar 19, 2025
Spread the love

How Brittle is your Salvation?

When I was a child my parents and grandparents all had a special cabinet filled with precious glasses, knickknacks, and gifts they’d received. Many of these were made of fine glass or lead crystal, incredibly brittle and incredibly expensive. These were the sort of things that you weren’t supposed to look at too long. They were so precious they needed to be left alone.

Precious and untouchable?

This idea of precious and untouchable is something I have found deeply rooted in our theology as Tasmanian Baptists. We are a melting pot of multiple theological influences from the Reformation1, the Apostolic movement, and more ancient traditions2, all of which flavour our movement with occasionally conflicting elements.

One common thread I have found is this idea that our salvation is like one of those pieces of fine glass or lead crystal: brittle and easily lost, something that if you question it or examine it too for long you will lose it.

Access to God

What I mean by salvation, is our access to God and the freedom from the consequences of our sin through Christ’s death and resurrection. I mean the gift that God gives to us through the death of Jesus that we may be called children of God.3 I have noticed, as Baptists that we often treat this gift as brittle, tenuous and weak at best, at worst as tool to keep us in line.

When thinking about this, my mind turns to stories in the book of Judges. The familiar cycle of God’s people initially loving him, but soon turn away from God to do “what is right in his eyes”4. This is followed by oppression this lack of faithfulness, then God’s salvation through a judge. In the light of a Reformation understanding, it’s tempting to say that those who turned away from God are no longer worthy of his salvation.

But God doesn’t behave that way. He saves his people even when the sickness of sin has invaded them to the point that they follow wicked men. God’s salvation never left the people of Israel, but their lived experience of salvation was tainted by their sinfulness.

The Gift of Salvation

Despite all the sin and evil we see in 1 & 2 Kings, and the Prophetic condemnations that follow. God does not remove his salvation from his people. Instead, he exhorts them to draw closer to him and live in that salvation now.5

When we treat God’s gift of salvation as brittle, we are waiting for the other shoe to drop and God to whisk his gift away like an abusive father.

Throughout scripture God doesn’t abandon or manipulate. Instead we see him offer the gift of salvation even when we do not deserve it. He keeps it with us to regenerate our souls, even when we stumble and fail.

If we can do nothing to earn this gift of salvation – given freely through the Christ’s sacrifice – can do anything to lose it? If it is entirely God’s will and his holiness that we receive this gift, what power do we have to break it?

An Invitation to Live Deeper

Naturally we can be unfaithful to the spirit of this gift. We can resist the repentance offered alongside salvation. We are infected with sin. Yet Scripture points to many people who struggled with sin and still remained under God’s salvation

Maybe it’s time we take this precious gift from the special cabinet and live in the glorious strength of God’s faithfulness to us, knowing that our salvation is not at risk, but is an invitation to live deeper alongside our Heavenly Father. Maybe our salvation is resilient, and God wants us to exercise it.

  1. Anabaptism, Calvinism, Puritanism, and Arminianism are a few of the key ones. ↩︎
  2. Church Fathers, Medieval Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy to a lesser extent than our Reformed movements. ↩︎
  3. John 1:12 ↩︎
  4. Judges 17:6, 21:25 ↩︎
  5. Isaiah 27, 40, Hosea 11, 14, Amos 5 ↩︎

Photos by xingchen-yan and polina-cherkasova on Unsplash 

Liam Conway, Hobart Baptist Church

Liam Conway is Associate Pastor at Riverlands, Longford.
He was born and raised in Hobart, graduated from UTas with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Psychology. He is now the associate Pastor of Riverlands community church and is studying his Master of Divinity.

How Brittle is your Salvation?

Read more reCharge articles!