Topic: Salvation as a process...need more help

[TruthSeeker]

I can see salvation as a process in this way.....our final salvation is a process in developing our holiness(theosis) because at any time along the way we can fall from grace and be lost, if we so choose, through lack of faith, which leeds to playing with sin and the severing of the communion with God.

Could there not be a CURRENT state of salvation and then a FINAL salvation?

  ......and to futher this.....Is the orthodox believer able to say that I am saved NOW, because of what God has done for me through Christ, and will be saved in the end IF I maintain the faith I had in the beginning(and now) unto the end?

[Stamfordguy]

I don't think we're meant to live in fear of losing our salvation. That doesn't mean we should assume the evangelical posture of "once saved always saved" either. For me, I simply trust in the Lord to do what is right. I recognize that He created me, died for me, accepts me and loves me infiinitely more than I love Him. He is not looking to damn me because I may have failed to do such and such. Could I be lost? He alone knows this. So, I live by confessing my sin, communing of His Body and Blood as frequently as possible and "working out my salvation" to the best of my ability but aware that I fall flat on my face every day. I just get up, dust myself off and keep on keeping on. But I don't live in mortal fear that He's waiting for me to slip up.

I'm a father. I know my children (who are all married now) messed up every day. I wasn't looking for opportunities to kick them out of the family, as it were. Some times I had to punish them... more often than that we had our heart-to-heart conversations, particularly when they came to me and admitted they'd done such and such. He will do what is right in His eyes and I trust in His love for each and every one of us. 

[Elisha]

I just get up, dust myself off and keep on keeping on.

Yup.  It's just when you don't try to get back up and say "Why bother!" that you're damning yourself. 

[Chacci]

Romans 5:10 comes to mind.

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.