Perseverance Of The Saints Rather Than Eternal Security

This week we have made the move to the updated Fighter Verse lists so that the Scripture we memorize within the church each week matches what comes upon on the Fighter Verse app for those who use that. Since the app provides a blog and commentaries on the verses, I will no longer blog on the Fighter Verses. If some of you want to explain the weekly verse to your family, I would encourage you to check out the resources on the app or to get your hands on a good study Bible (either the Reformation Study Bible or ESV Study Bible). The notes in either one of these will invaluable to you. From now on, I will return to blogging on topics or biblical passages that are on my mind and which help explain some aspect of joyfully following, as well as loving God and others, all to God’s glory.

A very important aspect of joyfully following God to his glory is to understand what the Bible teaches about various aspects of the Christian life. One that many evangelicals over the past few generations have misunderstood is the security of the Christian. The common designation for that doctrine among general evangelicals has become “eternal security”. Though I agree that any person who has truly received and rested upon Christ alone for salvation is secure and will not fall from the state of grace, nevertheless, such a passive label for the doctrine has certainly weakened and ultimately twisted it.

The London Baptist Confession of 1689 (17.1) provides a much better statement of this biblical reality that through history has been known as perseverance of the saints:

Those whom God has accepted in the beloved, effectively 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…. 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 [God’s] hands, and their names having been written in the book of life from all eternity.

The way the New Testament presents our salvation is that one who has trusted in Christ must persevere to the end to be saved (e.g. Matthew 24:13). Those who do not persevere were not in Christ in the first place (1 John 2:19). Yet, those who truly are Christ’s sheep and united to him will be preserved by God (John 10:27-30; Romans 8:38-39) and so will persevere in faith by his grace.

One text that presents this with clarity is Colossians 1:23. After Paul has written that the Father is “the one who has qualified you for the portion of the inheritance of the saints in light” (1:12), he is the one who “delivered us out of the domain of darkness and transferred [us] into the kingdom of his beloved Son” (1:13), and that Christ “reconciled [us unto God] in the body of his flesh through the death” in such a way that it is a done deal (1:22), Paul adds in verse 23a:  “if indeed you continue in the faith”. Paul is saying that our qualification, inheritance, deliverance, and reconciliation are all the complete, perfect work of our Savior, a done deal—that is, if we continue to trust in Jesus Christ.

Now, this condition might be taken to mean that it must be our own effort, that we must make this happen, if it were not for all the language in verses 12-22 that affirms true salvation is totally from God and secure, and also for what follows 23a. In 1:23b Paul writes that the manner in which a person continues in the faith is literally “having been established”. The word that Paul uses connotes something that happened in the past that someone else did to true Christians and which has continuing results into the present upon them. That act was laying a foundation and establishing them upon that foundation. The one who performed the action, in context, was God (cf. 1:12-14; 19-22). In other words, at the very heart of our ability to persevere in the faith is the reality that God has established us upon his firm foundation and so we continue established. This enables us also to be “steadfast, not moving away from the hope produced by the gospel which you heard” (1:23).

So, when we run across such conditions in the New Testament or warnings that one dare not drift away (Hebrews 2:1), they become part of the means of grace whereby our eyes are turned upon Christ who has perfectly secured our salvation and who keeps us in that salvation.

Though several benefits of this doctrine could be listed, two of the most important are these. First, it reminds us there is such a thing as a false profession of faith that shows up in those who are not truly born again and thus do not truly change in such a way that they obey Christ (Matthew 7:21-27). Second, it reminds us that the Christian life is not passive. Paul, in Ephesians 6:10, tells us we must be strong in Christ and in the strength that comes from his might”.  Our strength and standing, in other words, come only in an from Christ.  Yet, as he expounds in verses 12-18 upon how this can take place, he makes it clear that we must use Christ-purchased instruments or armor by which his empowering grace works in us—things such as truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation (and understanding the hope that comes from it), God’s Word, prayer, and the support of each other in the church (this last one implied in the call to pray for each other in v. 18).

So, as you think through this doctrine and read material upon it I would encourage you to look beyond the simplistic explanations that often fly under the banner of “eternal security” and look to the more robust treatments you will find known as “perseverance of the saints.”