Two of the passages most often cited against eternal security are found in Galatians 5 (verse 4 and verses 19-21). I want to explain why neither passage contradicts eternal security and address some principles that have an application that goes beyond those two passages.
The terms "severed from Christ" and "fallen from grace" in verse 4 are often taken to be addressing people who were Christians, since both phrases suggest removal from somebody or something you're attached to. Similar reasoning is applied to other passages, like John 15:6. But there are problems with that reasoning both in the abstract and from what scripture teaches elsewhere.
Unbelievers can be referred to as attached to God in some manner. They're created by him, sustained by him, and so forth. And Galatians 5:4 is addressing people who are seeking him in some sense, which allows for the possibility of an association that's initiated by the seeker, then rebuffed. The concept of falling from something, like falling from grace in Galatians 5:4, can refer to somebody who possesses soteriological grace and falls from it. But it can also refer to falling away from something you're approaching, but haven't reached yet, like falling as you climb a mountain whose top you haven't yet reached.
There are Biblical references to such concepts. Unbelievers can be referred to as children of God (Malachi 2:10) and "in God" (Acts 17:27-29), for example. The vine of Psalm 80:8 included unbelievers along with believers. So did the vineyard of Isaiah 5:1-7. Unbelievers can be attached to God or to believers in some sense, without an implication that those unbelievers are redeemed.
It's more common, though, for such language of attachment to be used of believers. The "severed from Christ" language could more easily refer to unbelievers than critics of eternal security often suggest, but they are right that the language favors their position on balance.
However, that's not the only language that's relevant in Galatians 5:4. The verse also refers to those who are "seeking to be justified". That could refer to people who are already justified who are seeking to maintain or increase their justification. But it more naturally would be taken to refer to somebody trying to obtain something not yet possessed. There is no qualifier along the lines of maintaining or increasing something, so an unqualified reading makes more sense.
What we're left with, then, is different parts of the verse seeming to point in different directions. What other factors should we take into account?
The larger context in which Paul was writing is relevant. The Galatians are referred to as if they're believers or plausibly could be (1:3, 1:11, 3:2-5, 3:15, 4:28, 4:31, 5:1, 5:13, 6:1, etc.). Yet, they're also referred to as departing from the gospel for a false gospel, the one Paul is warning against in 5:4 (1:6, 3:1-3, etc.). And he made similar comments to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:4). So, it doesn't seem that Paul is saying that departing from the true gospel or following a false gospel causes a Christian to lose his salvation. Rather, he's commenting on a situation in which the behavior he's describing in 5:4 isn't accompanied by anything good that's relevant, any mitigating factors. In other words, he's addressing an unqualified situation, not the qualified one of the Galatians, in which they had started with the true gospel (3:3). As authors often do, Paul was allowing for his audience to be mixed. Believers could be accompanied by unbelievers who professed the faith in some manner. So, Paul would address one type of reader at one point and another type at another point. He allowed for genuine believers who had departed from the gospel to still be saved, but also warned that if anybody had only followed a false gospel like the one the Galatians had been presented with, he wouldn't be saved by it.
Something similar seems to be going on in 5:19-21. Paul seems to be addressing sin in general, as indicated by how extensive the list is and how he ends it with "and things like these". Some of the sins he mentions there are known to have been present in people's lives at a time when Paul referred to those individuals as Christians (1 Corinthians 1:11-13, 3:3, 11:18-19). So, he can't be saying that committing one of those sins produces a loss of salvation. He seems to be referring to a lifestyle, not an individual act. The surrounding context refers to walking and running, which are metaphors for a way of life (Galatians 5:7, 5:16, 5:25). As with 5:4, the point in 5:19-21 seems to be that those who have such a lifestyle - a lifestyle of sin in general, not just a particular type of sin, like mortal sins - aren't regenerate. If somebody's behavior is mixed - if there's good along with the bad, as we see with groups like the Galatians and the Corinthians - then Paul's comments don't apply, at least in full. There would still be a partial application, in that believers shouldn't want to resemble unbelievers and so forth. But the primary application of 5:19-21 is to an unmixed or unqualified situation, in which the person is as Paul describes. If, instead, a person has some of the qualities Paul refers to and some good qualities, that's not what Paul is addressing. Opponents of eternal security frequently make the mistake of applying unqualified or unmixed language to situations that are qualified or mixed.
If what you know about somebody is entirely good, you conclude that he's a Christian. If what you know is entirely bad, you conclude that he's not. If the situation is mixed (e.g., the Galatians, Peter, the Corinthians), you make a probability judgment based on the evidence you have. In other words, you can't take passages about an unmixed situation and apply them to a situation that's mixed. The Galatians weren't merely trying to be justified by the law. Rather, they had been pursuing justification in multiple ways, partly good and partly bad. Likewise, the Galatians (and the Corinthians, etc.) weren't just producing the fruit of the flesh. They were also producing the fruit of the Spirit. So, Paul responds to them by criticizing their errors and concluding that at least most of them seem to be saved, whereas others may not be and need to be warned about it.
Another problem with taking passages like Galatians 5:4 and 5:19-21 as evidence that justification can be lost is that it puts those passages in opposition to what Paul says elsewhere in the same letter and in other contexts about the means of justification. Read what Paul wrote in Galatians 3, for example, about the exclusion of every law of works, how justification can only be by faith, and how no further conditions can be added. If behaving better than what's described in 5:19-21 is a means of justification, then that's a form of justification through works, including some of the works called for in the Mosaic law.
We need a view of passages like Galatians 5:4 and 5:19-21 that makes sense of the letter as a whole and the larger context of early Christianity as a whole. The anti-eternal-security interpretations of those passages do neither. If Paul was saying that a pursuit of a false gospel causes the loss of justification and that we're justified through behaving better than the behavior described in Galatians 5:19-21, then he shouldn't have referred to the Galatians as Christians, and he shouldn't have excluded all works as a means of justification.
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