In his perfect timing, he assigned me an essay (via my professor) on endurance. Life is crazy, confusing, and can sometimes seem overbearing, and I was beginning to loose it.
Then I was told to wright an essay on one of the grace doctrines. (I love my school.)
So here it is. A paper I wrote basically in one day, and it shows.(The fact that I only had time to crunch in a paper in one day may give you a taste of how crazy life is!) So please don't judge to harshly, but I hope that it brings some encouragement as you run the race that is set before you. :)
Any progression and perseverance in the Christian fight of faith is a gift from God. The need for biblical saturated assurance and perseverance is much needed in today’s world when so many Christians base their assurance on what they feel.[1] One of the most beautiful and reassuring truths found in the Bible is the eternal security of a believer. God saves those who he has called, and by his power alone are they kept in his hand. Holding on to this truth has kept many of faithful saints to stand firm in the midst of trial and suffering. To endure is to hope that God will not let us go. Sadly, many object to this doctrine, and argue that holding on to perseverance of the saints leads to a license for sinning and false assurance of salvation. Though these objections do need to be seriously considered and addressed, in this essay we will find that through out Scripture it is clearly expressed that God faithfully and powerfully preserves those who are His, and he will not let them go. We come to Christ by grace, and remain in Christ through grace.
Our endurance and final glorification finds its assurance in the very fact that God’s people were foreknown by him before the foundation of the world. According to Romans 8:29-30 “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined…and those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” All those who the Lord has foreknown, he justified, and all those who are justified are glorified. None are lost in the transition. The same people who are called are the same people who are glorified. God will finish the good work that he began. [2]
Jesus’s death secured his inheritance. His atonement for sin brings us to Christ and is powerful enough to keeps us in Christ. The act that caused our justification is the same glorious act that sustains our perseverance. “Through union with Christ ‘the assurance of salvation becomes real and effective as the assurance of election.’” [3] There is a clear connection between God’s eternal predestination and the final realization that those who are elected will be raised on the last day. [4]
Those who are saved will persevere until the end. Jesus says in John 6:38-40;
For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
It is the Father’s will that Jesus loose nothing that he has been giving. If the elect were lost, Jesus would have failed his Father. But Christ has not failed; he has accomplished the work he came down to do, he has been charged to bring those who have been given to him safely home to glory.[5] Jesus clearly shows here that those who are his he will raise up on the last day. A couple chapters latter, in John 10:27-29, Jesus says:
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and not one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Again, in this passage we see that those who are his are given eternal life, and in this passage, he goes further and says “no one shall snatch them out of my hand”. Some have argued while yes, no one can take a Christian out of Christ’s hand, but it does not say that a Christian can’t jump out. [6] Jesus says no one and he means no one, including the Christian himself. Would our final salvation be left to ourselves? No. If God is the one who by grace alone, elected us, is it possible that he would then give us the choice of walking away from him? “If the elect could lose their salvation, the Father’s election would be ineffectual, Christ’s intercession would be irrelevant, and the Spirit’s sanctification would be impotent.” Christ paid too high a price to let his beloved slip out from his fingers.
In order to be saved, we must persevere until the end. “He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast.”[7] It is both God’s work and our own. Because of our assurance of final victory we continue to wage war against sin and strive to bear fruits of grace. This is not to say that our works of endurance saves us, only we show that we are indeed saved by persevering. Just as good works do not save, but are the result of salvation. “So divine preservation and human perseverance are complementary. Saints preserver only because of the preserving activity of God at work in them.”[8] Philippians 2:13, For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.[9] And in 1 Peter 1:5, “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time”. God provides the strength we need to persevere though our “doubts, fears, and afflictions, providing us grace and strength to ‘keep on keeping on’.”[10] The One who commands that we endure till the end, is the One that keeps us, by his own power, in the palm of his hand.
Those who fall away prove they never truly believed. The New Testament speaks of and gives examples of “false brethren secretly brought in”[11] and that these people disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. [12] There will be people in the church who do give external signs of conversion, but then fall away. There is a seemingly conversion with no real saving faith, and like the parable of the soil, the seed is planted, sprouts quickly but then dies away because it has no roots. John speaks of this in 1 John 2:19 “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” In this passage, John speaks of those who leave because they were never truly saved, and he clarifies, that if they were among the saved they would have continued with them. One verse latter, John further clarifies and says, “But you have been anointed by the Holy One”. The ones who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit are in a separate group from the ones who have walked away.
Some have objected that people believing upon eternal security gives them a license to sin and with no repentance. This concern is valid. Some indeed have used this doctrine as a way to continue in their sins and presume upon the “goodness and kindness of God”. “But the abuse of a doctrine does not disprove that doctrine.”[13] In Romans 6, Paul answers a similar objection “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” His replies, “By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourself to anyone as obedient slaves you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” True Christians are no longer slaves to sin; their hearts have been transformed so that they grow in love for righteousness.[14] Someone who truly loves Jesus, and who strives to be more like his Savior, does not need to stop in continued sin.
Another objection is that this doctrine leads to false assurance. But, as with the first objection, human error cannot be used to disprove this truth. Man is sinful, and will twist and distort the truth for his own personal gain. Perseverance does not create false assurance but opens a way for true assurance. “If a Christian does not believe in the perseverance of the saints, he cannot be sure he is going to heaven”. [15] How can he know that tomorrow he is going to walk up and still trust in the gospel? He can’t. We must rely upon the goodness of God that keeps us believing, trusting, and enduring day-to-day, hour to hour.
In sum, it is not our secure hold on Christ, it is Christ’s secure hold on us that perseveres till the end. This is what comforts us. The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is not a “get out of jail free” card. It is a powerful and hope creating truth that brings stability and endurance to the Christian, and encourages him to press on knowing that he who called you is faithful.
[1] Beeke, Joel. Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism. Lake Mary: Reformation Trust, 2008 (115).
[2] Philippians 1:6
[3] Lang, Peter. Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation. New York: Peter Land Publishing, Inc, 1991, 1994 (65).
[4] Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan. (791)
[5] Beeke, Joel. Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism. Lake Mary: Reformation Trust, 2008, (117).
[6] Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan (790).
[7] Colossians 1:22-23
[8] Beeke, Joel. Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism. Lake Mary: Reformation Trust, 2008, (119).
[9] Philippians 2:13
[10] Beeke, Joel. Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism. Lake Mary: Reformation Trust, 2008, (119).
[11] Galatians 2:4
[12] 2 Corinthians 11:15
[13] Peterson, Robert, Williams, Michael. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004. (89)
[15]Beeke, Joel. Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism. Lake Mary: Reformation Trust, 2008. (120)
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