I noticed that you use Romans 8:39-39 in justifying OSAS. I’ve been told that this verse lists only external factors and doesn’t include anything internal to us. This means while nothing external to us can cause us to lose our salvation, we can either forfeit or give back our salvation by things we do ourselves. Is this true?
Let’s look at Romans 8:38-39 and see.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are covered in the phrase “nor anything else in all creation”. This phrase literally means “any created thing”. Since we are a “created thing” we are included. To exclude us the phrase would have to read “nor anything else in all creation except us.”
Even if that was Paul’s only comment on the subject we can see it was not Paul’s intent to exclude us. But in fact, he made several other statements that are even more specific in denying the opinion that we can lose our salvation. For example, in 2 Cor. 1:21-22 and Ephesians 1:13-14 he said our salvation was guaranteed the moment we believed. In 2 cor. 1:21-22 he said God has taken ownership of us and it is He who makes us stand firm in Christ.
And in 2 Cor. 5:5 he said,
Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
He was talking about the fact that when we die we will give up our earthly bodies for a heavenly one, something we long to do. The Greek word translated “fashioned” in the above verse means “to accomplish or bring about”. By sending His son to die for us God accomplished His goal of making us fit to dwell with Him and sent His Spirit as a deposit to guarantee this will happen.
Put these verses altogether and it becomes clear that Paul meant to include us in Romans 8:38-39.