The promise of perseverance comforts the believer. God both calls us to endurance and promises to preserve us. We can rightly say that perseverance is the fruit of saving faith. It’s not unlike a marriage. What’s the best way to show your love for your spouse? You stay.
But that’s not to say that every day of a marriage feels like the day before. Some are better and others worse. It is not uncommon for any marriage to go through a period where it may very well feel on the verge of dissolution. Why is that? There are an untold number of influences on your marriage, both from the inside and out. In a similar way, there are number of influences on your perseverance and assurance in the Christian life. Some are more serious than others. Therefore, we must be on our guard against these things. The Confession continues, “And though they may, through the temptation of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins, and for a time continue therein, whereby they incur God's displeasure and grieve his Holy Spirit, come to have their graces and comforts impaired, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded, hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves, yet shall they renew their repentance and be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end.” The Confession lists several ways our perseverance can be affected, leading to a lack of assurance. The first is of outside temptations, namely Satan and the world. We are still in the flesh, but we fight in the Spirit. There was more going on, but if Jesus can be tempted in the wilderness by Satan, then we will not be left alone, either. Jesus tells his disciples, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). We should not expect any different treatment from the people who crucified the Lord. It is precisely because we reject the world and its ways that it hates us. Christ came declaring that all men were equal before the foot of the cross, that all men were sinners and in need of a savior, and that he would save all those who came to him in faith and repentance. Martin Lloyd-Jones gave an excellent sermon about Naaman the Syrian who was sent to Elisha for healing from his leprosy. Naaman expected that Elisha would wave his hand, say some magic words, and send him on his way. Naaman expected special treatment because of who he was. Lloyd-Jones showed how mankind cannot find the cure for our sin, and when we are told the way, we think it is beneath us. But Christ demands nothing else. He is king, and we are his subjects. If the world hated the king, the world his treat his subjects the same. But we should not think that we are innocent victims of the devil and the world. We are reminded of our remaining corruption. We must mortify the sin that remains in us—lust, greed, envy, and the like. These sins are not in the world; they are in us. And if we do not persevere in faith, we are all but assured to fall in to grievous sin. The means of perseverance mentioned are not abnormal. We fill our minds with sound doctrine. We place ourselves under the preaching of the Word and meditate on what we hear. We are held accountable by fellowship with other believers. We regularly receive the Lord’s Supper and examine ourselves. If we fall away from these things, we have no right to expect to feel any assurance. We are in fact called to make our calling and election sure. This means we have an active faith, one that seeks assurance from the Word and not ourselves. Falling way for a time, which is commonly called backsliding, is possible for the believer. It may not threaten their salvation, but it does threaten their peace. The “warning passages” of Hebrews is one of the means of perseverance. They warn us of the dangers of apostasy, or falling way. We do not seek holiness because we think it is up to us. We seek holiness because we want tot be like the Lord in all his holiness. And at times, there are those believers who have let temptation have a foothold and have fallen into great sin. An affair takes place because “harmless” flirting went on too long. You’re fired from your job because you took more than you were permitted over the course of many years without getting caught. Or it could be something less obvious, like forsaking gathered worship on the Lord’s day. Something that seems so frivolous one time stops becoming frivolous when it becomes a habit. If you remove yourself from the ordinary means of grace, you should not expect any extraordinary means of grace. In fact, the normal outcome of removing oneself from the means of perseverance is a hardened heart, making it more difficult to return at all. We start to see the practicality of perseverance. It has consequences. But in the mercy and grace of God who calls and redeems, he does not let anyone falter to the point of falling way for good. In Luke 22:32, Jesus tells Peter, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” This promise took place before Peter denied Christ three times. Christ knew that Peter would fail, so Christ held Peter up with Peter could not hold up himself. This is the love and mercy of God. Perseverance and assurance are tightly bound together, as we see. We will take a deep look next week at “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation”.
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A few months ago, many of us in the church read through Charles Stanley’s book Eternal Security. For some, it was the first time the doctrine had been studied in any thorough way. Stanley did a good job of hitting the major components of the doctrine. In the main, I prefer the term “perseverance of the saints” over “eternal security”. Without intending to do so, “eternal security” dulls the edges of good works in the Christian life. Faith without works is dead, and God is not mocked.
There will be many who convinced themselves they were good people, even Christians, who will one day hear “I never knew you.” There is only one promise made to those who are in reality “carnal Christians”, or those who claim the name of Christ but live as though he were meaningless to them—they will be cast outside with the other goats. Eternal life is offered to the one who conquers and perseveres till the end. By no means do I think our works have any role in our salvation; but I do believe perseverance is the fruit of salvation. It’s a paradigm shift from how we often think of good works. Scripture makes no compromise here. The Confession states this position clearly. Those who God has elected will not be lost, and yet God requires perseverance. The Confession begins, “Those whom God has accepted in the beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, and given the precious faith of his elect unto, can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved, seeing the gifts and callings of God are without repentance, from which source he still begets and nourishes in them faith, repentance, love, joy, hope, and all the graces of the Spirit unto immortality;” Perseverance will be the final fruit and test of true faith. Since faith is a gift of God, ultimately, so is perseverance. Some pastor-teachers have even argued that a better term is the “preservation” of the saints. From beginning to end, faith is a gift of God. The lease never gets turned over to us. It is always God’s work in us. The most beautiful reminder in this passage is that “the gifts and callings of God are without repentance”. It’s a 17th-century way of saying God does not change his mind. Since he called us, he never un-calls us. He never un-adopts his children. This is a radical departure from the popular way of thinking about salvation. All we have to do is give God a reason for leaving us, and he will, we fear. The presence of sin in my life is evidence I’m not saved. But through the biblical witness, in places such as John 17 and Christ’s priestly prayer, we know that he will never leave us nor forsake us. But that does not mean we will always feel such a way. The Confession continues, “and though many storms and floods arise and beat against them, yet they shall never be able to take them off that foundation and rock which by faith they are fastened upon; notwithstanding, through unbelief and the temptations of Satan, the sensible sight of the light and love of God may for a time be clouded and obscured from them, yet he is still the same, and they shall be sure to be kept by the power of God unto salvation, where they shall enjoy their purchased possession, they being engraved upon the palm of his hands, and their names having been written in the book of life from all eternity.” When Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, prophecies in Luke 1, he speaks of God giving “the knowledge of salvation to his people” (v.77). Salvation is surely an experience, but it is not primarily a feeling. Sometimes the things that make us doubt and question are purely outside forces. These are persecutions and mockery. But our own sin can have a similar effect. We may not “feel” God’s presence as an act of discipline upon us. But we must remember that he disciplines those he loves. The lack of our feeling is not the lack of his presence. As the Confession says, he is still the same. It is the power of God that keeps the believer, not our own. It is he who keeps us; we do not keep ourselves. As God tells Israel, “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (49:16). God will not forget us, even at our death or at the end of the age. What is it that causes God to act in such a way toward us? The Confession continues, “This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father, upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ and union with him, the oath of God, the abiding of his Spirit, and the seed of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace; from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.” God redeems us and preserves us because we are in union (in covenant) with his Son. The Father loves the Son and all those who the Son has redeemed. The Father’s love of the Son is unchanging, and so we are saved in that unchanging love. We are in the Son (union with him), and the Spirit is in us (the abiding of his Spirit). What more could we need! A covenant is always how God relates to his creatures. The covenant of grace is another important component of our perseverance and preservation. It also addresses the issue of perseverance across time and between Israel and the church. Some theological reflection results in seeing two covenants: the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. The covenant of works is that covenant in which God entered into with Adam before the fall. Should Adam, the head of the human race, keep his covenantal obligations (fill the earth and subdue it, and keep the garden), God would keep his obligations (the gift of eternal life). Adam broke that covenant by not keeping the garden free from rebels (the serpent and eventually himself). The covenant of works was broken, so God entered into a covenant of grace with his people. He covered them with the skins of animals and cast them out of the garden. And yet, he made another covenantal promise, unconditionally, that the seed of the woman would crush the seed of the snake and therefore break the curse. The subsequent covenants (with Noah, Abraham, David, and Christ) are various administrations of that one covenant. Next week, we’ll look at the final paragraph of this important article of faith. We’ll get some greater detail about why perseverance and assurance can sometimes be elusive. |
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