Introduction

We come this morning to the fifth point of Calvinism: the perseverance of the saints. This initially sounds like we have moved from the doctrines of grace to the activities of believers, from God to man, to the believer’s enduring and persevering. So what happened to the grace cube? Well, nothing has happened to the grace cube as is seen in the fact that this doctrine can be rightly called preserving grace. That means that perseverance is a grace, that is, a grace granted by the Lord. We have come now to something very relevant to our daily life as Christians because this subject is concerned with journeying grace or grace that enables us to persevere on the Christian/pilgrim journey.

To call it perseverance of the believer accents our conduct; to call it preserving grace uncovers the fact that lying beneath our perseverance is the efficacious grace of God. This is another aspect of redemption applied in the context of redemption planned (election), accomplished (limited atonement) and applied by a) regenerating grace and b) by persevering grace. We will consider three things today: an explanation, defense, and application of the doctrine of persevering grace.

1A. Explanation

1B. A one sentence definition

Perseverance means that the Christian must endure to the end to enter eternal Sabbath rest (Heb. 4:1, 11) and He will so endure by the grace of God (1 Cor. 1:8-9). There is both duty and promise. Central to both aspects is the freedom from sin given by God to the believer. As Dort puts it: Those whom God, according to His purpose, calls to the communion of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and regenerates by the Holy Spirit, He also delivers from the dominion and slavery of sin, though in this life He does not deliver them altogether from the body of sin and from the infirmities of the flesh (Dort, 5:1).

2B. A caution about conditional security and secure carnality

Conditional security teaches that the final issue of the life of the Christian is uncertain. He may enter into life or he may enter into eternal death: "God supports me with unwearied fidelity if I permit myself to be supported" (Berkouwer, Perseverance 18; cf. synergism again). Secure carnality teaches "a theoretical, tensionless, lifeless construction" of the Christian life in which everything will simply "fall in place." It presents eternal life in a way that has nothing to do with life, with living the Christian life here and now. This breeds inertia and passivity (Ibid, 23). A needed caution here is to guard against a "once saved always saved, it doesn’t matter what you do" mentality. It does matter. God has appointed the means and they are real and necessary. We have a conjunction of duty and promise; conditional security fails to do justice to the promise side of this conjunction and carnal security fails to do justice to the duty side of this conjunction.

3B. A Comparison of Arminianism with Dort

The Arminians taught that man’s free will is as decisive in perseverance as it is in coming to faith. Consistently, if salvation depends ultimately on man in the first place then it depends on man for its final outcome:

5:1. [the Arminians] teach: That the perseverance of the true believers is not a fruit of election, or a gift of God gained by the death of Christ, but a condition of the new covenant which (as they declare) man before his decisive election and justification must fulfil through his free will.

5:2. [they] teach: That God does indeed provide the believer with sufficient powers to persevere, and is ever ready to preserve these in him if he will do his duty; but that, though all means which are necessary to persevere in faith and which God will use to preserve faith are made use of, even then it ever depends on the pleasure of the will whether it will persevere or not.

 

5:3. [they] teach: That the true believers and regenerate not only can fall from justifying faith and likewise from grace and salvation wholly and to the end, but indeed often do fall from this and are lost forever.

Dort responds with comments like the following:

5:3. [this error that we reject]: That the true believers and regenerate not only can fall from justifying faith and likewise from grace and salvation wholly and to the end, but indeed often do fall from this and are lost forever. For this conception makes powerless the grace, justification, regeneration, and continued preservation by Christ, contrary to the expressed words of the apostle Paul…And also contrary to the words of Jesus Christ

Part of my reason for keeping Dort in front of us is for clarity by preserving this historical definition of theological terms like perseverance and all five points of Calvinism.

4B. A problem based on admonition

The fact of admonition is summarized in the words of Jesus: "He that endures to the end shall be saved" (Matt. 24:13). The problem is in the difficulty of giving full meaning to the necessity of enduring: how can it have meaning if "the danger of falling is not imaginary but is a very real threat" (Berkouwer, 83). It seems that you have to have both the "possibility of perseverance" and "the possibility of falling" to do justice to this language (83). So admonition is one of the focal points of the biblical support offered for conditional security. Also included within the admonition/warning passages are the many striking "if" passages "on almost every page of Holy Scripture" (85), especially the ones in the book of Hebrews (such as: "we share in Christ, if we hold our original confidence firm to the end," 3:14; "it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened…if they then fall away," 6:4-6).

It is thought that perseverance must "wreck itself" on these passages (admonitions/ifs) because, they say, "it is impossible to conclude from a decision of faith taken today that the entire span of life will be good" (89). Thus the real problem of perseverance is that it seems "too foreign to the real life of faith that musts again and again make new decisions" and it thus seems to "disregard all the earnest admonitions" (90).

If we point out that there is more to the story than warnings and admonitions, that there is "the irresistibility of God’s sovereign grace" they will try to place the "unconditional" texts within the framework of the conditional texts (90; cf. the power of presuppositional grids).

2A. Defense

1B. The work of sovereign grace

Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me…they shall never perish" (Jn. 10:27-28). The good shepherd gave His life for His sheep (10:15). By His death He secured eternal redemption for them (Heb. 9:12). That means that when He died He made it certain that His people would be called by name from darkness to light and from death to life. That call delivered them (it gave them redemption); the deliverance He secured on the cross is everlasting (He obtained eternal redemption as high priest). As faithful high priest, Jesus intercedes for us, for all those given to Him to the end that we be sanctified, kept from the evil one, and safely arrive in glory to be with Him and behold His glory (Jn. 17:15-19, 24). Our great high priest is faithful; therefore our perseverance does not depend on us but on Him.

2B. What about the admonitions and warnings?

Do we simply ignore them? Of course, as disciples of Christ we cannot ignore any part of His word to us. So how do we deal with these passages (the "ifs" and the warnings)? Three basic things need to be said.

1) Promise and duty (consolation and admonition with strong warnings) are bonded together in Scripture, even found in the same passages (cf. work out your own salvation with fear because God is working in you to will and do of His good pleasure, Phil. 2:12-13). We cannot properly isolate one from the other.

2) The correlation of admonition and consolation is not synergistic. It is not that we have two co-operating factors with faith as the condition (cf. the Arminians at the time of Dort). Clearly, if salvation depends on man’s free will as something beyond and independent of the power of God’s grace then a Christian can lose everything in the end. Instead, of this synergism, all depends on the faithfulness of God not on our faithfulness.

a) Philippians 2:12-13 does not tell us to work so that God will work; it exhorts us to work because God is already and always working the very willing and doing of His will and pleasure.

b) Just as you were called, with that same power you will be sustained to the end: Jesus Christ …will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Cor. 1:6). The marvelous call into fellowship was powerful, irresistible, and effectual. It is rooted in the faithfulness of God. So that same power, irresistibility, and efficacy will sustain you to the end. It cannot be ultimately a cooperative venture or a synergism in which God does all He can and we finish the project.

c) Jesus authored our faith and He will finish it (Heb. 12:2).

d) The Father began a work in us and He will complete it (Phil. 1:6).

3) Therefore, the bond of duty and promise is the way that God brings about His sure purposes. Admonition with severe warnings is the means by which God completes the work in His people. God’s people hear the good shepherd, they hear the warnings, and they follow Him. Accordingly, Dort puts the warnings in the context of the means of grace:

5:14. And as it has pleased God, by the preaching of the gospel, to begin this work of grace in us, so He preserves, continues, and perfects it by the hearing and reading of His Word, by meditation thereon, and by the exhortations, threatenings, and promises thereof, and by the use of the sacraments.

5:15. The carnal mind is unable to comprehend this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints and the certainty thereof, which God has most abundantly revealed in His Word, for the glory of His Name and the consolation of pious souls, and which He impresses upon the hearts of the believers. Satan abhors it, the world ridicules it, the ignorant and hypocritical abuse it, and the heretics oppose it. But the bride of Christ has always most tenderly loved and constantly defended it as an inestimable treasure; and God, against whom neither counsel nor strength can prevail, will dispose her so to continue to the end. Now to this one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be honor and glory forever. Amen.

3A. Application

The application of this doctrine is very straightforward.

1) Trust and Obey

The dual complexion of the doctrine leads to two interrelated exhortations: trust and obey. Work hard on the path of faith. Have a real working faith. Run the race and run hard reaching forward for the prize. But run with confidence; run in the joy, comfort, peace, and strength of God’s faithfulness.

2) The first duty

When we see that the foundation of perseverance is God’s grace (persevering grace: the grace of God underpinning our efforts) then we know that our first duty here is to look at the promises. We are directed to emphasize the gospel as the remedy to all of our feebleness and sin. We are directed to look to Christ, to trust Him, to entrust ourselves to Him. But the first duty does not eliminate the second duty. Instead, clinging to Christ gives us a spring in our step. It is in the light of the gospel that shines on the face of Christ that we are to find our comfort as we follow Him. We must continually look to His promises. That is where we gain strength for the difficult journey ahead of us. We are to look to Jesus. Fix our eyes on Him. As we do this what are we directed to in the way of promise? We are directed to the fact that He is both the author and finisher of our faith: "Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith" (Heb. 12:2).

Here is the promise: He is author and finisher of our faith. Even our faith, the critical necessity is His work from beginning to end. We cannot fully understand this but we can lay hold of the clear basics given to us. Just as He powerfully brought us to faith in the first place, likewise, He will powerfully uphold us in faith. Thus He promises to give us what He requires of us. We must endure in faith to the end to be saved and we will so endure because He will not let go of us. We are prone to wander; we feel it, we sense it, we know it. But in all our wanderings and all our failings He is there with us to see to it that we successfully complete the journey. That is His promise and sure word.

3) It is a strenuous effort that we are to put forth

This is a tough race to run; there are many pitfalls on the road we must travel. Sometimes we trip, stumble, and fall. Sometimes it is very difficult to climb out of the pit into which we have wandered. We get discouraged and feel like quitting the race. To make matters worse, it is as if someone is throwing cold water on the fire of our faith; smoke and steam is everywhere and our faith sputters like a candle ready to go out. We are so often like Pilgrim in Bunyan’s allegory when he wanders off from the narrow path into by-path meadows and falls into slippery muck, is seized by Giant Despair, and cast into the dungeon of doubting castle. Miserable in the dungeon, "nasty and stinking" Christian finally said to himself, "why do I remain imprisoned for I have a key that unlocks every door in doubting castle, it is the key of promise. Using that key he escaped and returned to the narrow way.

We have a key. We must lay hold of the promise; we must use the key of promise. That is our duty. But does this mean that all may be lost because it all depends on the reality that we must use the key of promise? Bunyan’s illustration of the wall with fire coming out of it will help us answer this question. A man named interpreter showed the Christian pilgrim a wall with a crack in it. Out of the crack came fire. On one side of the wall stood a man who continually threw buckets of water onto the fire to put it out. The fire would thus sputter and smolder as if to go out. But then it would burst into a visible flame again and chase the smoke away. "What does this mean?" asked Christian. Then interpreter showed him the other side of the wall where there was a man pouring oil into the crack in the wall. Thus, he told pilgrim: "This man is Christ, the fire is faith, and the man with a water bucket is the devil who seeks to put out the fire of our faith. But Christ continually pours in the oil of the Holy Spirit so that our faith will never ultimately fail."

We must look then to our duty knowing that our Lord is faithful and He will accomplish the work that He has begun. Looking to Christ is the duty to which we are directed and that is where we are given the strength to overcome and to not grow weary (Heb. 12:3). Faith is not the key. Christ is the key. By faith we look away from ourselves, even from our faith. We do not trust in ourselves, nor do we trust in our trusting. Knowing that the work is His from beginning to end cuts away all self-dependence. This casts us totally into the arms and embrace of our risen high priest. What better place can there be?

4) So, we must hear two things at the same time.

We must persevere in faith to the end to be saved and we will persevere in faith to end to be saved. This is our duty stated in light of His promise. By knowing the promise of His love, power, and faithfulness, we are encouraged to take up the necessary duty. Those who do not strive to enter but who live in disobedience will not enter safely through the gates into heaven. The duty is real, the warning is firm, and the promise is certain.

A word of caution to any idea of "hand-sitting" seems important to give. Hand-sitting claims something like this: "if God wants me to do this or that, then He will bring it about, so I will simply sit here in the status quo until He does (and I thus do so justifiably!)." I hope I can make myself very clear regarding this attitude. It is a perverse way of thinking that distorts the teaching of sovereign grace. It is an expression of unbelief. This posture is pure and simple disobedience for it pits God’s promise against man’s duty in such a way as to excuse and rationalize a posture of passivity and rebellion against the command of God (putting God’s promise over against His command). Consider the following interchanges in which the answer to both is in principle the same:

Discouraged Olympic runner: "If I can’t win I won’t run." Reply: "If you don’t run you can’t win."

Confused professing Christian: "If I will win I need not run." Reply: "If you don’t run you won’t win."

Conclusion

God has promised His grace to insure our preserving. He has promised both the reward of eternal Sabbath at the end and efficacious enabling all along the way: "Let us therefore strive to enter that rest" (Heb. 4:11). But in our frail persevering we must always remember God’s faithful preserving.

Only if we remember the profundity of God’s faithfulness can we see our life, not as only a series of independent moments, but as a life that is preserved in spite of everything. Therefore the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints will always be a doxology to God’s preservation, which again and again places the weak and threatened life in the unextinguishable light of His grace (Berkouwer, Perseverance 123).