Maybe the road and two ditches is an overused metaphor.  I would contend it’s a helpful visual.  When you take a road somewhere, you don’t want to drive into a ditch.  Let’s say the road is a narrow one with a ditch on either side.

Just today, I dropped my wife at an airport and it was a heavy snow with slick conditions.  I noticed on the way to the airport, long backups going the other way.  Probably for that reason, my GPS sent me a totally different route.  It’s not always good.  There’s a reason maybe in the Winter why no traffic on the back roads, and that reason came true.  I was alone on remote country roads, including hilly ones.  I drove very, very slowly so I wouldn’t find myself in a ditch in the middle of nowhere.  When I arrived back into town, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The Road of Salvation and Its Ditches

The road of salvation is narrow.  Let’s again say that it is narrow with ditches on either side.  This is the situation I think you should imagine on this.  One ditch on one side takes a steep decline and then off a cliff to destruction.  Quite a ditch.  The ditch on the other side of the road is less dangerous, but still very harmful.  It is more shallow, but it will tear up your vehicle and maybe worse.

Now you get the picture.  The ditch on the side of the narrow doctrine of salvation, which turns into a deadly destructive cliff, is the teaching of conditional security.  In other words, someone once justified could still lose his salvation.  A believer doesn’t have eternal security.  Historically one could call this ditch, Arminianism.  One description of this is the following:  A person believes in Jesus Christ, but because of persistent, unrepentant sin, he loses the salvation he once had.

Alright, what about the other ditch, the probably less destructive one, but off narrow road of the true doctrine of salvation?   In the other ditch is predetermination.  It is the other side of the road, because losing salvation and predetermination are in diametrical opposition to the other.  They aren’t the same ditch, but they are both in separate ditches.  Both are bad.

The Ditch of Losing Salvation

I hear theologians, preachers, and other professing Christians very often criticizing the other ditch.  Those who believe you can lose your salvation will say to predetermination that too many verses in the Bible treat salvation security as conditional.  Those who believe in predetermination will say to losing salvation that predetermination is the only way for salvation to be by grace and not by works, the only salvation someone can’t lose.  The narrow road of the doctrine of salvation is neither losing you salvation nor predetermining your salvation.  Those are both wrong detours.

If someone can lose his salvation, then who is doing the saving?  If Jesus is doing the saving, He can and will keep saving.  Someone could only lose his salvation, if he himself is doing the saving.  Since he himself can’t save himself, this is a path to eternal destruction.

The Ditch of Predetermination

On the other hand, if someone believes in salvation by grace alone through faith alone, that does not imply predetermination of salvation.  “Foreknowledge” means “to know ahead of time.”  God knows whom He will save.  He does not predetermine whom He will save.  God does predetermine, but not whom He will save and whom He will not.  As predetermination relates to salvation, God predetermines that those He saves will conform to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29-30).

I have seen a doctrine of losing one’s salvation send someone toward predetermination.  Also, I have seen a doctrine of predetermination send someone toward losing salvation.  God operates before time concerning someone’s salvation, but that operation of God is foreknowledge.  He knows and elects based upon that knowledge, which is why scripture says that God elects according to His foreknowledge.  God does not elect according to predestination or predetermination.

Ditches Not In the Bible

Neither the idea, concept, or teaching that you can lose your salvation or that God predetermined you saved or lost are in the Bible.  You will not find one verse or even phrase that teaches either.  Someone may say, prove that.  The only way to prove it is not to fined one verse or even phrase in the Bible that teaches either of those.

Surely people see something in the Bible that they think sends them into these ditches.  They do.  I can go to passages where they think they see what they see.  Even though losing salvation is not scriptural and far more dangerous than predetermination, there are many more possible proof texts for losing salvation than predetermination.  I don’t have one iota, one speck of belief in losing salvation, but I can more easily see how people get that from the Bible.

The scriptural view of salvation, that doctrinal narrow road between the ditches, depends on the whole Bible, every individual verse and all of them.  It compares scripture with scripture.  Whatever the Bible teaches will not contradict any other part.  It will also fit with meaning of words based on how they’re used.  Both losing salvation and predetermination do not follow that understanding of the scriptural view of salvation.

Conditional Sentences and Small Sample Sizes

The main category of verses in the Bible that could sound like they teach you can lose your salvation are the conditional sentences.  These are very often the if-then sentences.  One part of the sentence might start with “if ye” in the King James Version.  “If ye” occurs 162 times in the King James Version.  One can easily twist these sentences into losing salvation.  I picked this one at random (John 15:10):

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love.

Here’s another one, random too (Mark 11:25):

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

The first one sounds like that someone could lose the love of God if he doesn’t keep the Lord’s commandments.  The second seems like someone won’t receive forgiveness if he still has ought against someone.  There are many of these kinds of sentences in the Bible, especially the New Testament.  God does all the saving and He keeps whom He saves, so we can’t lose salvation.  Many verses teach that.  Those fit with these conditional sentences.  They don’t contradict them.

Predetermination or predestination is a very small sample size, unlike the conditional sentences.  The key with those few verses is seeing what exactly God predetermines.  Nowhere says he predetermines individual salvation.  Many, many passages then read like God doesn’t predetermine.  They contradict predetermination.  This does not affect salvation by grace through faith.   Grace through faith does not require predetermination.