“This one thing is only necessary; whatsoever I leave unknown, 

let me know this, that I am the Lord’s.”

We have come to the final entry into the Doctrines of Grace series. Here we ask the question, how does God’s sovereignty, eternality, omnipotence, faithful and unconditional grace coincide with His other attributes as they relate to salvation? It’s not about personal feelings of assurance, but God’s nature and truth at work within His chosen people. 

The doctrine signified by “P” in the acronym TULIP is taught under so many names; preservation of the saints, perseverance of the saints, eternal security, assurance of salvation, and often pejoratively as “once saved, always saved.” However, this teaching is in keeping with God’s sovereignty, integrity, and covenant election. There is no way around preservation or assurance when it comes to Scripture; that is precisely the language that is used. It’s not only the language of Scripture, but the very theme and motif within the major stories of the Bible.

Can you imagine the experience of Job? The first chapter of Job’s narrative is breathtaking; he is minding his own business when unbeknownst to him, Satan appears before God and demands the testing of Job’s faith, or as I would argue, the testing of God’s preservation. What the reader finds in this opening to the overwhelming story is that the testing is for our sake, and yet it is much more God’s demonstration of His sovereignty as relates to guardianship of His people. God reveals to Job and His angels that He is resolute in keeping His own. God permits and even orchestrates those things which befall the forlorn hero, but commands Satan to spare Job his life. 

Why would a good God do this? Because perseverance is shown in the experience and exercise of faith. Job continues to fight and struggle to know God more intimately throughout the rest of the book as God reveals Himself to Job within the whirlwind. At no point does God abandon or allow for the abandoning of His faithful, Job. Job perseveres; he subjectively experiences the objective truth of God’s sovereign will. We rejoice as Job declares at the end, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (42:2 ESV). 

Perseverance is the practical and logical conclusion, the lived-out effect of God’s cause within us. If God is sovereign, if He calls His own, if He indiscriminately atones for His own, then what do we conclude about His immutable, unchangeable love for those under the promise? Will He hold us fast? What can we know concerning our position before Him now as we live out these earthly years? 

Perseverance of the saints, or preservation, is the immediate consequence of particular redemption (limited atonement). If Christ died for those chosen in Him, then He will raise them up on the last day (John 6:44). What is judged righteous will never be judged unrighteous. God does not retract or replace His covenant grace. What is bought with His blood will be cleansed; if it were not so, then His blood would be imperfect. Let us draw near to this doctrine with hope and thanksgiving.

Addressing the Scriptures

While there are a plethora of pertinent verses regarding this doctrine, I have a few favorites that always come to mind. For the sake of brevity I will not go through them all.

Psalm 139:16: “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

Isaiah 46:10: “...declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose….’”

1 Corinthians 1:7-8: “...as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Ephesians 1:4, 13-14: “...even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. [You] were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” 

1 Peter 1:3–5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

Given more time, the reader may enjoy a deep study of our passiveness in Ezekiel 36:22–36. 

Assuming you have read the four previous articles on the doctrines of grace, you will see the trajectory; this is not simply five points, but five intertwined threads of eloquent logic. What we find through the above verses is a concept that God has chosen a particular group of people for whom He will save through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 

As Hebrews 10:14 reads, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified,” meaning those who are (by the Spirit’s enlivening) growing in the exercise of their perfected salvation. He will seal these people in Jesus Christ through the Spirit of Christ. Those whom the Spirit indwells are those who will never be forsaken by Him. The Spirit is the guarantee of our adoption as sons and daughters by way of Jesus Christ’s inheritance. In this case, we did not guarantee our adoption, we didn’t write the forms, we didn’t even stand the trial — Jesus did, and His promise cannot be thwarted.

The reformed doctrines are typically attributed to John Calvin, so how does he define perseverance? Calvin uses a biblical compass, directing the question to the cross of Christ — if Christ is the sole savior and he was entrusted with our salvation, can/did he accomplish what he is/was entrusted to accomplish? Calvin explains that “perseverance is exclusively God’s work; it is neither a reward nor a complement of our individual act.”

Because it was Christ’s act on behalf of individuals, we can be sure of our personal salvation. It is guarded and imperishable. This is no hypothetical inheritance, it is truly ours and it is truly alive and awaiting us on the last day. We are miserable, ever-changing sinners; even so, we profess our perseverance based on this assurance: “God’s unchanging faithfulness to his promises.” So then why might some people take issue with this doctrine?

Objections

While there are many well-intentioned people who disagree with this doctrine, these objections are oftentimes a difference of opinion with regard to faith. It is important to make a distinction between works righteousness and sovereign grace. There are many churches where the false teaching persists that in order to maintain your grasp on God’s grace, you must continue to express greater and greater faith or perform some specific actions to maintain and prove your salvation. While growing in faith is a vital part of the Christian spiritual life, this practice is not the same as earning salvation by somehow believing hard enough. The supernatural Jesus Christ obtained your salvation, so do we think that our natural and depraved minds or hands could somehow earn it or lose it? Many Christians have become utterly despondent because they cannot trust their supposed savior with salvation — they can never be sure of where they stand. Be assured of this: any savior you cannot trust with your salvation, is no savior at all, but Satan in a mask.

On the flipside of this, there are some who throw out faith entirely, merely believing perseverance is a license for licentiousness, as if to say “sin freely because God’s taken care of it.” Here we see the proponents of universalistic preservation. This misses the purpose entirely, as evidence of fruit is a matter of the heart; this argument is often found in what’s referred to as antinomianism. But to “go on sinning that grace may abound” is quite frankly heretical, as Paul proved in Romans 6. Perseverance does include the human, the one to whom Christ has gifted such expressible grace.

J.C. Ryle, discusses this doctrine of preservation: 

“It cannot be wrong to feel confidently in a matter where God speaks unconditionally—to believe decidedly when God promises decidedly—to have a sure persuasion of pardon and peace when we rest on the word and oath of him that never changes. He simply leans on the Mediator of the new covenant, and the Scripture of truth. He believes the Lord Jesus means what he says.”

The emphasis that we see in Scripture is passivity on our part. We have been reconciled to Christ and therefore we rejoice and our exercise of faith is the sure-footing we have found (2 Corinthians 5:18). We are promised that no matter if the waters are still or stormy, our anchor holds.  

Another set of objections come from what are known as warning passages, those places where Scripture seems to speak of losing salvation. Warning passages are troubling but generally carry one of two intentions. First, they act to ensure false Christians understand that falling away indicates a lack of ever belonging in the first place (1 John 2:19; Hebrews 6:6-8). 

Second, God is preserving His people by establishing borders for their path; warnings act not to suggest removing the border, but encouraging the safety of the present perseverance. No one would question that love has parameters, attitudes and actions for which we exercise restraint. We perform in this way, not to create love, but to experience it and cultivate it in the eyes of our beloved. I determined early on in our marriage that I would not call my wife certain nicknames that she hated. I seek to love her the way she desires to be loved. We ought to worship God the way He desires to be worshiped. Walking in the ways of God, even when it is difficult, requires perseverance, but the wind is already in our sails to buffet the waves.

Embattled against these objections, John Murray eloquently writes of God’s unchanging love in this way, “The atonement does not win or constrain the love of God. The love of God constrains to the atonement as the means of accomplishing love’s determinative purpose.” Jesus didn’t die out of a hope that God might perfectly love some people, He died and rose again because God loved His people perfectly. We are the subjects of God’s purposed and objective will to preserve His people in His Son (John 6:44) and as we see in the story of Job, God’s purpose cannot be thwarted. God doesn’t save us because we do something to earn it, and He doesn’t love us with a hopeless, helpless love. He loves us and therefore He carries us all the way from regeneration to glorification (Romans 8:30).

Preservation and Immutability

The doctrine of preservation is inextricably linked to God’s immutability, you might call it His unchangingness. As human beings with finite minds, we come to understand the practical side of salvation with two words: preservation and perseverance. Because we are assured of God’s saving us—our preservation—we are able to exercise this assurance by persevering in the difficulties and struggles of life, acknowledging that our loving God is using all things and means for our good and for His glory. 

A.W. Pink, likewise, uses this idea of preservation and perseverance in his illustration of walking. We start at one end of a field and we see our goal at another end. We begin walking as a voluntary act, although the goal is certain and assured for us. If we were to trip or walk into a spiderweb, that does not extinguish the other end of the path, it remains and God’s will remains as we learn the steps and learn to brush away the webs. 

Sometimes walking the path of life is difficult and fog may set in our own eyes. But lack of sensing our assurance does not render us unpreserved. We are made one in Christ, “Communion with Christ is lost when we experience a fall by the way, yet union with Him is [never] severed. Believers may be separated from Christ’s smile yet not so from His heart.” I can vividly recall numerous occasions where I doubted my assurance, yet looking back I realize I was in a wilderness place — still led by my Good Shepherd. Joel Beeke points out, “When the believer lacks assurance, the responsibility is his. No enemy shall keep him out of heaven, but he may well keep heaven out of his heart by sinning against God.” This is the kind of preservation we find in Romans 8:38-39 —  God does not change in His love. If He has chosen us in Christ, given us to Christ, and declared the end from the beginning, then to conclude our calling is only hypothetical — that He only might raise us on the last day — is no conclusion at all. Assurance does not flow from our brazenness, but from God’s benevolence. 

John Gill wonderfully puts it this way, “It would be contrary to his immutability, should he cease to love those whom he once loved, withhold his grace from them, and show no more mercy to them….” Gill brings out a rich logic just as John Owen taught in his Death of Death in the Death of Christ, “God can never deviate in his actions, nor have any end attend or follow his acts not precisely by him intended.” 

It would be contrary to His divine justice to die on the cross for the sins of those whom He would ultimately condemn. This would be double damnation; to be damned by sin, then paid for, then rejected again for losing faith. How could God finally satisfy His wrath for those in sin through the perfect atonement of Jesus Christ, but then pour out wrath again once those in sin fell away from His perfect atonement? Jesus is not so weak, and I am not so strong. His purpose of redemption cannot be thwarted.

The foundation for this doctrine rests on God’s immutability, as well as the historicity of the cross. If the cross is not hypothetical, if it is precise and fixed in time, then it is a completed action with eternal, unchangeable consequence (see Hebrews 10:14 again). God’s will does not change, and the cross is proof of God’s immutable will. The foundation for our assurance is God’s immutability; He said that if we received His sovereign grace, then, in order for us to ever become condemned, His eternal God-ness would have to be altered. If God could lose any of those whom He has called, then the very essence of His nature and attributes would have to be altered, His love would contradict His character and eternal purpose.

Perseverance is a Definite Love

Christ’s blood is not laid up in a medicine box, for use as needed. Christ’s blood was shed once and for all of His beloved church, and He does not un-shed His blood. Whoever does not believe in Jesus is already condemned, but what does that mean for those who do believe? It means that they will be raised up by Him, not by their act of faith, on the last day (John 3:18, 6:39). Perseverance is assured to us according to His definite love. 

Preservation is not an issue of our striving; it is a greater issue pertaining to the doctrine of God. The preservation of the saints must be answered in the form of two questions. First, does God change? This question of immutability is a far lesser controversy; however, its answer directs the stream of logic into the second question. Second, for whom did Christ die? This question presupposes that the historical act of Christ’s death on the cross had a definite cause and end. The cause: God, peremptorily, revealed his list of those whom Christ would save. The end: salvation was accomplished upon the cross, ascribed in the blood of Jesus before the foundation of the world, and it took effect and could not be prevailed against due to the immutability of God’s sovereign will and love. Those for whom the Holy Spirit dwells, are immutably sealed by Him for the end that will be ascertained in New Eden (Revelation 3:5; 13:8; 17:8). 

He saves those whom He loves (Romans 9:15-16). What do you say of a Savior who does not hold you fast? When did He decide to love me, or when might He choose to stop? When can I prevail against such love? Do you dare to answer such questions? If so, then could you dare sing such hymns:

Before the throne of God above

I have a strong, a perfect plea;

A great High Priest, whose name is love,

Who ever lives and pleads for me

One with Himself, I cannot die;

My soul is purchased by His blood;

My life is hid with Christ on high,

With Christ, my Savior and my God13

We respond with Job, “no purpose of yours can be thwarted!” This I believe: If Christ definitely died, then I am definitely saved. Thus assurance is based not on any frivolity of pride or hubris, but on God’s sovereign grace toward the lowly sinner redeemed by the justice satisfied at once in the historical, definite atonement of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. My hands are frail and weak, but I rest assured that His will hold me fast.

1. Thomas Adams, “Heaven Made Sure; or the Certainty of Salvation,” in The Works of Thomas Adams (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 63.

2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 971–8.

3. Calvin, Institutes, 1:304.

4. Anthony A. Hoekema, Saved by Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 254.

5. J. C. Ryle, Holiness (1877; repr., Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2014), 142-3.

6. James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 172-3.

7. John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955, 2015), 4.

8. Arthur W. Pink, Eternal Security (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1974), 25. Pink makes the distinction between communion and union. We are always in union with Christ, even if we do not recognize Him at the table.

9. Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality: A Practical Theological Study from Our Reformed and Puritan Heritage (Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2006), 189.

10. John Gill, The Cause of God and Truth (1855; repr., Paris, AK: Baptist Standard Bearer, 1992), 199, 200.

11. John Owen, “Death of Death in the Death of Christ,” in The Works of John Owen, vol. 10 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1993), 162.

12. Pink, Eternal Security, 41.

13. From the poem turned hymn, “Before the Throne of God Above” by Charitie Lees Bancroft (1841-1923).