Devotional 88: The Certainty of Perseverance: The Elect Cannot Finally Fall

The Confession Read

They, whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 17, Section 1

Introduction

In the watches of the night, when faith burns low and the memory of past sins rises like a tide, a question visits every believing heart: not a question born of unbelief but of the tender conscience that trembles at the thought of falling away. Having come to Christ, having tasted His goodness, having set my face toward the Celestial City, can I lose what I have received? Is the grace that found me strong enough to keep me? Or might I, through negligence or sudden temptation or the slow erosion of years, drift so far from the shore that I am lost at last? The Westminster Divines, when they turned from good works in Chapter 16 to perseverance in Chapter 17, were not moving to an abstract academic question. They were addressing the deepest anxiety of every pilgrim who has set foot on the narrow way and wondered whether his strength would hold. The opening section of Chapter 17 answers this question with a clarity and confidence that brook no qualification. The language is lapidary, each word cut and set with precision, and the substance is pure gospel. Those whom God has accepted in His Beloved, those whom He has effectually called by His Word and Spirit, those whom He has sanctified and set apart for Himself: these, and only these, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace. They shall certainly persevere to the end, and they shall be eternally saved. The Confession does not say they may persevere, or that they probably will, or that perseverance is likely if conditions are met. It says they shall. The language is that of divine promise, not human probability. The ground of perseverance is not the believer's grip on God but God's grip on the believer. What the Divines set before us in this section is not a doctrine to be debated but a cordial to be drunk, a pillow on which the weary conscience may rest, a foundation beneath the feet of those who have learned that their own strength is altogether insufficient for the journey that lies ahead.

Scripture Foundation

The Lord Jesus Christ, in that discourse which has been called the Holy of Holies of the Gospels, spoke words that form the bedrock of this doctrine. "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand" (John 10:28-29). The structure of the promise is a double grip: the sheep are held in the hand of the Son, and the hand of the Son is enclosed within the hand of the Father. The word rendered "never" in the Authorized Version translates the emphatic Greek construction ou mē, a double negative that in the idiom of the language conveys the strongest possible denial. It is not that the sheep will probably not perish; it is that their perishing is an impossibility, a contradiction of the very nature of the Shepherd's keeping. And the impossibility is grounded not in the strength of the sheep but in the omnipotence of the Shepherd. No man (the Greek tis is indefinite, encompassing not only human adversaries but any power whatsoever) can pluck them from the hand of Christ. And lest any should imagine a power greater than Christ, the Lord adds that His Father, who is greater than all, has given the sheep to the Son, and the Father's hand encloses the Son's. This is the ultimate security: the believer is held in a grip that is at once tender and omnipotent, and behind that grip stands the decree of the Father who chose the sheep before the foundation of the world and gave them to the Son to redeem. The apostle Paul, writing from a Roman prison to the church at Philippi, expresses the same confidence in the language of a craftsman completing what he has begun: "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). The word translated "perform" is epitelesei, a compound that carries the sense of bringing something to its appointed end, finishing what was started. Paul does not say that the Philippians will finish the work; he says that God will. The work that God began in their conversion, the work of regeneration, faith, and sanctification, is a work He intends to complete. The terminus is specified: "the day of Jesus Christ." Not death, not a hypothetical moment of falling away, but the day when Christ returns and every incomplete thing is brought to its consummation. Between the beginning and that day stands the unbroken faithfulness of the One who never begins what He does not intend to finish. The Philippians had their weaknesses (the letter itself addresses disunity, anxiety, and the threat of false teachers), but Paul's confidence was not in their stability. It was in the character of the God who had laid hold of them. Every believer may take these words as his own: the God who began the work has not grown tired of it, has not reconsidered His investment, has not discovered in you some flaw He had not foreseen. He will perform it. He will finish it. The grammar is future indicative, not subjunctive. It is not a wish but a fact. Paul gives the theological architecture that undergirds this confidence in the eighth chapter of Romans, where he traces the unbroken chain of salvation from eternity past to eternity future: "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Romans 8:29-30). The chain has five links: foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, glorification. The verbs are all in the aorist tense: edikaiōsen, He justified; edoxasen, He glorified, speaking of future glory as though it were already accomplished, so certain is its realisation. No link in the chain can be broken. If God has foreknown a person in the intimate, elective sense Paul intends, that person will be predestined. If predestined, called — not with the general call of the gospel that many hear and reject, but with the effectual call that raises the dead and creates faith where there was none. If called, justified — declared righteous on the ground of Christ's imputed righteousness. And if justified, glorified — brought at last into the full possession of eternal life in the presence of God. There is no break in the sequence, no point at which a justified person can drop out before reaching glorification. To assert that a truly justified person can finally fall away is to insert a gap into a chain that Paul presents as unbroken. It is to say that some who are justified are never glorified, which contradicts the logic of the passage entirely. The apostle Peter, writing to believers scattered through Asia Minor, anchors perseverance in the same sovereign power but from the angle of the inheritance that awaits: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:3-5). The inheritance is described with a triple negation: incorruptible, undefiled, unfading. Nothing can spoil it, nothing can stain it, nothing can diminish its splendour. And it is "reserved": the perfect passive participle tetērēmenēn indicates a completed act with abiding results. The inheritance is already secured, already waiting. But the inheritance is not the only thing that is kept. The believers themselves are "kept by the power of God." The Greek word phrouroumenous is a military term, meaning to garrison or to guard, as a fortress is guarded by its defenders. God's power surrounds the believer like an army surrounds a citadel. The keeping is not passive; it is active, vigilant, sufficient. And yet Peter does not say that believers are kept apart from faith or in spite of faith. They are kept "through faith." Faith is the instrument, the channel, the means by which God's preserving power operates. The doctrine of perseverance is not a doctrine of spiritual automatism. It does not teach that believers are carried to heaven unconscious and unresisting. It teaches that God, by His power, ensures that their faith does not finally fail. The faith that justifies is the faith that perseveres, and the faith that perseveres is the faith that God Himself sustains. The prophet Jeremiah, looking forward to the new covenant that God would establish with His people, recorded a promise that gathers all these threads into one: "And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me" (Jeremiah 32:40). Here is perseverance from both sides. On the divine side, God promises that He will not turn away from His people; His posture toward them will be one of unceasing benevolence. On the human side, God promises to put His fear in their hearts so that they shall not depart from Him. The perseverance of the saints is secured not by the native tenacity of the saints but by the sovereign operation of God upon their hearts. He does not merely command them not to depart; He ensures that they will not. The fear of the Lord that keeps the soul close to God is itself a gift of the covenant. The new covenant, unlike the old, is not a covenant that can be broken, because it is not a covenant that depends upon the fickle faithfulness of man. It depends upon the immutable purpose of God, who has pledged both to keep His people and to work in them that which makes their keeping manifest.

What the Divines Meant

The first section of Chapter 17 is the foundation upon which the remaining two sections (treating the causes of doubt and the grounds of assurance) are built. Before the Divines could speak of why believers sometimes lose the sense of their salvation, they had to establish that the salvation itself cannot be lost. The historical context is essential. The Synod of Dort, which met in 1618–1619 to answer the errors of the Remonstrants, had addressed the question of perseverance with great care. The fifth and final article of the Remonstrance had declared that the question of whether the regenerate could fall away finally from grace "must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scriptures before we can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds." The Remonstrants were not prepared to affirm that the saints would certainly persevere. They left the door open to the possibility of final apostasy. The Synod of Dort closed that door and bolted it, affirming that God preserves the elect so that they "can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace." The Westminster Divines, writing a generation after Dort, adopted the same formulation, and in doing so they were consciously standing against the Arminian theology that had troubled the churches of the Netherlands and was making inroads into England. The distinction the Divines draw between falling "totally" and falling "finally" is crucial and bears careful attention. A believer may fall partially. He may, as David did after his sin with Bathsheba, fall grievously and for a season lose the joy of his salvation, the comfort of the Spirit, and the testimony of a good conscience. He may fall into sins that wound the name of Christ and bring reproach upon the gospel. But he cannot fall totally — that is, he cannot so fall as to lose the entire habit of grace, to be cut off from Christ, to have the root of the matter destroyed within him. The seed of God remains in him, as John teaches in his first epistle, and that seed keeps him from making sin his settled practice. And he cannot fall finally — that is, he cannot die in a state of apostasy, be found at the last day among the goats rather than the sheep, and suffer the condemnation of the lost. The believer's falls, however serious, are within the bounds of a salvation that is ultimately secure. The Confession does not minimise the seriousness of those falls, and the remaining sections of the chapter will address the misery that attends them. But it insists that no fall a true believer can take is a fall from which there is no recovery, no fall that places him beyond the reach of the Shepherd's retrieving grace. The Divines were equally careful to identify the subjects of this perseverance. It is not every professor of religion, not every baptised person, not every member of the visible church who enjoys this security. The promise belongs to those "whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit." Each of these three descriptions is a link in the chain of Romans 8. To be accepted in the Beloved is to be justified, to stand before God clothed in the righteousness of Christ, with no condemnation and every blessing. To be effectually called is to have heard not merely the outward call of the gospel but the inward call of the Spirit, the call that raises the dead and creates faith and repentance where there was only rebellion. To be sanctified by His Spirit is to have the Spirit of holiness dwelling within, mortifying sin and vivifying the new man, producing the fruits of righteousness that are the evidence of a living union with Christ. These three marks are not arbitrary. They correspond to the work of the Trinity in salvation: the Father accepts, the Spirit calls, the Spirit sanctifies. And the one who bears these marks is the one of whom the Confession can say with absolute confidence: he shall certainly persevere and be eternally saved. The Divines were also answering a cluster of related errors. Against the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian error that perseverance depends upon human free will, they grounded it in the sovereign purpose and power of God. Against the antinomian error that turned perseverance into a licence for carelessness, they insisted that perseverance is through the means of grace (the Word, the sacraments, prayer, and the mutual watchfulness of the church), and that these means are not optional but necessary. Against the morbid introspection that could turn the doctrine into a torment rather than a comfort, they held out the objective marks by which a believer may know that he is among the number of those who shall persevere. The section is a masterpiece of pastoral balance: strong enough to comfort the weakest saint, and careful enough to exclude the false professor; clear enough to answer the gainsayer, and warm enough to cheer the pilgrim's heart.

Theological Depth

Calvin treats perseverance as the necessary consequence of election and the corollary of effectual calling. In his Institutes, he argues that if God has chosen a people for Himself from eternity, and if He has called them irresistibly into fellowship with His Son, then it is unthinkable that any of that number should be lost. To assert the possibility of final apostasy is to assert that God's eternal decree can be frustrated, that the blood of Christ can be shed in vain, that the Spirit's regenerating work can prove insufficient. Calvin is deeply conscious of the pastoral dimension. He knows that the doctrine of perseverance can be twisted into presumption, and he guards against it by insisting that the means of perseverance (prayer, watchfulness, the use of the ordinances) are not optional but mandatory. But he will not allow the fear of abuse to silence the proclamation of the promise. The Christian's security, he writes, does not rest upon his own steadfastness but upon the immutability of God's purpose, the efficacy of Christ's intercession, and the indwelling of the Spirit who is the earnest of the inheritance. To look at oneself is to find a thousand reasons for anxiety; to look at the Triune God who has undertaken to save is to find every reason for confidence. Owen devoted an entire treatise to the doctrine of perseverance, The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance Explained and Confirmed, and nowhere is his writing more pastorally vigorous. He understands that the doctrine can be a stumbling block. If the saints shall certainly persevere, why the warnings against apostasy that litter the New Testament? Why does the author of Hebrews speak of those who "fall away" if final falling is impossible? Owen answers that the warnings are among the means by which God preserves His people. The same God who has decreed the end has also decreed the means, and the means include the sobering warnings that drive the believer to watchfulness, to prayer, to dependence upon grace. The warning passages in Hebrews are not hypothetical; they describe a real possibility for those who are outwardly associated with the church but lack the inward reality of regeneration. But for the true believer, they serve as goads, awakening him to the danger of sin and driving him to the Christ who alone can keep him from falling. Owen develops with particular care the role of the indwelling Spirit as the seal and earnest of the believer's inheritance. The Spirit is not a visitor who may depart; He is a resident, a permanent inhabitant of the renewed soul, and His presence is the guarantee that the work He has begun will be completed. The Greek word arrabōn, translated "earnest" in Ephesians 1:14, refers to a down payment that pledges the full sum, a first instalment that guarantees the remainder. The Spirit is God's arrabōn in the heart of every believer, the pledge that what He has begun in grace He will complete in glory. Turretin, with his characteristic precision, distinguishes between the certainty of perseverance as it exists in the divine decree and the certainty of perseverance as it is experienced by the believer. Objectively, the perseverance of the elect is infallibly certain; it is grounded in the immutable will of God, the merit of Christ, and the indwelling of the Spirit, and nothing in heaven or earth can overturn it. Subjectively, however, the believer's sense of that certainty may fluctuate. He may, through negligence, fall into a state of spiritual lethargy in which he doubts his salvation and fears that he has been cast off. Turretin compares this to a ship at anchor. The anchor holds fast in the seabed even when the winds buffet the vessel and the passengers on board fear that they will be driven onto the rocks. The anchor is the decree of God; the ship is the believer; the winds are the temptations, afflictions, and spiritual darkness that may assail him. The ship will not be lost, not because the winds cannot blow, but because the anchor cannot slip. Turretin is also careful to address the objection that the doctrine of perseverance fosters spiritual carelessness. If I cannot finally fall away, why should I watch and pray? The answer, he says, is that perseverance is perseverance in faith and holiness, not perseverance in sin. The very idea of a believer who reasons from the certainty of salvation to the permissibility of sin is a contradiction in terms. The one in whom the Spirit dwells cannot make peace with the sin that the Spirit has come to destroy. The promise of perseverance includes the promise of sanctification, and the God who guarantees the end guarantees also the means by which the end is reached. Hodge, in his commentary on the Confession, draws out the practical implications with characteristic clarity. He notes that the doctrine of perseverance is not a theological curiosity but an essential component of any robust Christian assurance. If the believer's final salvation depended even in part upon his own faithfulness, there could be no certainty, for no man knows what temptations tomorrow may bring or what weakness may yet be exposed. But because perseverance is grounded in the decree and power of God, the believer may have a confidence that is proportioned not to the strength of his own faith but to the strength of the God in whom he trusts. Hodge also addresses the common but mistaken inference that the doctrine makes the warnings and exhortations of Scripture superfluous. These warnings, he argues, are among the means by which God secures the perseverance of His people. The farmer who knows that God has ordained the harvest does not therefore neglect to plow and sow and weed. The means are ordained as certainly as the end. In the same way, the warnings of Scripture are the voice of the Shepherd keeping His sheep on the path; they are not signs that the path may lead to destruction but instruments by which the Shepherd ensures that it does not.

Puritan Application

First, let this doctrine anchor your soul in the faithfulness of God rather than the constancy of your own devotion. There is a subtle and persistent temptation, especially among tender consciences, to make perseverance a work that we perform rather than a gift that we receive. We examine our faith, and we find it weak. We examine our prayers, and we find them cold. We examine our love, and we find it inconstant. From these observations we draw the anxious conclusion that we may not persevere, that our weakness will be our undoing. But this is to look in precisely the wrong direction. The ground of perseverance is not the quality of your faith but the object of your faith. It is not the warmth of your love but the love of God from which nothing can separate you. The assurance that you shall reach the Celestial City does not rest upon the vigour of your legs but upon the strength of the Shepherd's arms. When you find your heart cold toward God, let that discovery drive you not to despair but to the throne of grace, there to plead the promise that He will perfect that which concerneth you. The doctrine of perseverance, rightly understood, does not make the believer presumptuous; it makes him humble, because he knows that his standing before God depends at every moment upon a grace that he cannot supply and a power that he does not possess. Second, let this doctrine teach you the proper use of the warnings and exhortations of Scripture. The Bible is filled with passages that call the believer to watchfulness, to perseverance, to holding fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. If we are certainly kept by the power of God, what need is there for such exhortations? The answer is that these exhortations are the very means by which God keeps us. He who has ordained the end has also ordained the means, and the means include the earnest call to watch and pray lest we enter into temptation. The same apostle who wrote that nothing can separate us from the love of God also wrote that he buffeted his body and brought it into subjection, lest having preached to others he himself should be a castaway. The certainty of the end does not render the means unnecessary; it guarantees that the means will be employed. When you read the warnings of Hebrews, do not reason from them that you might finally fall away. Let them drive you to the Christ who alone can keep you from falling, and in that very act of fleeing to Christ you will find yourself doing the very thing that Christians do: trusting, cleaving, holding fast, and thus confirming by experience what you already know by promise. Third, let this doctrine sustain you in seasons of spiritual darkness when the evidences of grace are obscured. Times come in the life of every believer when the sense of God's presence is withdrawn, when prayer feels like speaking into an empty room, when the Scriptures seem dry and the ordinances barren. In such seasons, the enemy whispers that you have been abandoned, that your faith was never genuine, that you have finally worn out the patience of God. What will hold you in that hour? Not the memory of past fervour, for that memory may itself become an accusation. Not the assessment of present experience, for present experience is precisely what is causing the distress. Only the promise of God, standing outside of you and independent of your feelings, can anchor the soul when every inward evidence seems to testify against you. The Confession's statement that the elect "can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace" is not a description of how things feel; it is a declaration of how things are. Your feelings may tell you that you are lost; the promise tells you that you are kept. Your doubts may tell you that you have fallen away; the Word tells you that you cannot. In the darkness, stand upon the promise. It will hold you when nothing else will. Fourth, let this doctrine produce in you a holy and humble boldness in the face of every adversary. The world, the flesh, and the devil are united in their determination to destroy the faith of the saints. The world applies pressure, offering its pleasures as a bribe and its persecutions as a threat. The flesh whispers that the way is too hard, the battle too long, the sacrifice too great. The devil, that ancient serpent, accuses you before God and suggests that your sins are too many and too heinous to be forgiven. Against this triple assault, the believer who knows the doctrine of perseverance stands unmoved. The world cannot offer anything that compares with the glory that shall be revealed. The flesh cannot prevail against the Spirit who dwells within. And the devil's accusations, however true they may be with respect to your unworthiness, are answered by the blood of Christ that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. You are not called to fight for victory; you are called to fight from victory. The battle is real, but the outcome is certain. The serpent's head has been crushed, and though he may bruise your heel, he cannot destroy your soul. Walk, then, with the confidence of one who knows how the story ends, not because you are strong, but because the Captain of your salvation has already won the war. Fifth, let this doctrine fill you with adoring gratitude toward the Triune God whose love has no terminus. The Father chose you before the foundation of the world, not because He foresaw your perseverance, but because He purposed it. The Son redeemed you with His precious blood, not to make your salvation possible, but to make it certain. The Spirit sealed you unto the day of redemption, not as a temporary resident, but as a permanent inhabitant, the earnest of a purchased possession. The whole Trinity is engaged in your keeping. The Father's decree, the Son's intercession, and the Spirit's indwelling are the threefold cord that cannot be broken. When you consider the doctrine of perseverance, do not receive it as a piece of theological furniture to be dusted and admired. Receive it as a love letter from the God who has sworn that He will never leave you nor forsake you. Let it kindle in your heart a flame of thankful love that burns all the brighter because you know that the fire was kindled by Another and will be kept burning by the same hand that lit it. The perseverance of the saints is not, in the end, a doctrine about the saints at all. It is a doctrine about the God who saves them, keeps them, and presents them faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.

Prayer

O almighty and everlasting God, who hast made us and not we ourselves, and who hast called us out of darkness into Thy marvellous light, we adore Thee for the exceeding greatness of Thy power toward us who believe. We confess that apart from Thy preserving grace we should long since have made shipwreck of the faith. Our hearts are prone to wander, our wills are weak, our enemies are strong, and the way is narrow. Were our perseverance left to our own keeping, we should be of all men most miserable, for we should have no hope. But Thou hast not left us to ourselves. Thou hast laid hold of us with an everlasting grip, and Thou hast promised that nothing shall pluck us from Thy hand. We bless Thee, O Father, for Thine eternal election, that Thou didst set Thy love upon us when we were not, and didst ordain us to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We bless Thee, O Lord Jesus, for Thy finished work upon the cross, by which Thou hast purchased our redemption and secured our inheritance, and for Thine unceasing intercession at the right hand of the Majesty on high, by which Thou dost ever live to save us to the uttermost. We bless Thee, O blessed Spirit, for Thy regenerating work that raised us from the dead, for Thy sanctifying work that renews us day by day, and for Thy sealing work that marks us as Thine own possession until the day of redemption. We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, and we give Thee all the glory. Grant, we pray Thee, that we may not abuse this precious doctrine by turning it into an occasion for sloth. Let the certainty of the end make us diligent in the means. Let the promise of perseverance drive us to prayer and not from it. Let the assurance that we shall never finally fall away make us the more watchful against every sin, the more earnest in every duty, the more tender in every relationship. Preserve us from the pride that would think we stand by our own strength, and from the despair that would doubt Thy promise because our strength is small. Keep us in the golden mean between presumption and unbelief, rejoicing with trembling, working out our salvation with fear and trembling because Thou art the One who workest in us both to will and to do of Thy good pleasure. Comfort, we beseech Thee, those of Thy children who walk in darkness and have no light. There are those among Thy people who fear that they shall one day fall away, who see in themselves so much remaining sin that they can scarcely believe the work is genuine. Speak peace to their troubled hearts. Show them that the very fear of falling away, when it drives them to Christ, is evidence that the Spirit dwells within. Show them that their security lies not in the strength of their faith but in the faithfulness of their Saviour. Lift up the hands that hang down and strengthen the feeble knees, that they may run with patience the race that is set before them, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of their faith. And for those who make a profession of Thy name and yet walk carelessly, as though the promise of perseverance were a licence to sin, we pray that Thou wouldst awaken them from their slumber before it is too late. Grant them the grace of genuine repentance. Show them that perseverance is perseverance in holiness, that the same God who has promised to keep them has promised to sanctify them, and that the one promise cannot be had without the other. Bring us all at last to that blessed state where faith shall give way to sight, where perseverance shall be swallowed up in possession, and where we shall see Him face to face whom having not seen we love. There we shall know even as we are known, and we shall sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, ascribing blessing and honour and glory and power unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. Amen.