JU16-16: Did Samson Lose His Salvation When He Allowed His Hair To Be Cut?

So the big question that arises is…

Did Samson lose his salvation when he allowed his hair to get cut?

Or to be even more precise…

Was he spiritually and eternally cut off from the Lord and as a result destined for what the Hebrew Bible calls the Place of Torments (what the New Testament refers to as hell)?

The answer is NO.

This all goes back to the discussion I held earlier that compared HAVING faith to BEING faithful.

As far as we can tell, Samson never lost his faith and allegiance to the God of Israel.

He never stopped believing in the Lord.

We don’t have any record of him adopting the gods of the Philistines or the deities of any other gentile people group for that matter.

So he always still HAD faith.

But when it came to BEING faithful or expressing his faith through good deeds and works, well, let’s just say that Samson left a lot on the proverbial dinner plate to be desired.

Samson had a serious tendency to let himself be pulled left and right by the things of the world.

He loved to party with the pagans.

He loved sleeping with gentile prostitutes.

And he thought nothing about touching dead bodies.

What was the result of this worldly lifestyle?

He became spiritually weak.

And that spiritual weakness turned into physical weakness.

Things reached the point where Samson became totally helpless to resist Delilah’s taunting and nagging…

Which led to Samson abandoning the all-important symbol of his faith (his hair)…

Which then led to him completely losing his physical strength.

There’s a huge lesson here for us.

A Believer who disobeys God and His commandments becomes weaker and weaker day by day.

He becomes helpless to ward off worldly temptations…

He starts to lose blessings from the Lord…

And then finally like Samson, he may lose all protection from God.

That person has stopped BEING faithful…

BUT it doesn’t mean he has lost his faith…

Or his salvation.

I’m sure you’ve experienced something like this in your own life.

I know I have.

In fact, there was a time in my life when I stopped being obedient altogether.

I started to doubt God’s Word in exchange for funky New Agey Law of Attraction beliefs that tell us the control of the whole universe is in our hands (what a bunch of utter BS!)

I stopped praying to God.

I stopped fellowshipping with other believers.

I stopped reading my Bible and applying the principles therein.

The result was quite predictable.

My life turned into total chaos.

I’d wake up in the morning staring at the ceiling with this deep dark cloud of depression hanging over me.

It was like my life didn’t have any meaning any more.

I had stopped BEING faithful…

But, and this is oh so important, although it was as small as a mustard seed, I still HAD an inkling of faith in my possession.

Because deep down in my heart, I know for a fact there is only ONE true God in this universe…

The God of Israel who created the universe…

That’s right.

I believe in the God of the universe…

As opposed to believing in the universe (New Agers be gone!).

I reached out to Him in prayer and repentance…

And then slowly but surely my life began to turn around…

But man oh man was the path to restoration painful as all heck…

CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

“From one man God made all the nations,
that they should inhabit the whole earth;
and he marked out their appointed times in history
and the boundaries of their lands. 
God did this so that they would seek him
and perhaps reach out for him and find him,
though He is not far from any one of us.” 
^{-Acts 17:26-27
 “}Do not love the world or anything in the world.
If anyone loves the world,
love for the Father is not in them.
For everything in the world—
the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life
—comes not from the Father but from the world.
The world and its desires pass away,
but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”
-John 2:15-17