Devotional 90: The Temptations of the Saints: They May Fall but Not Finally

The Confession Read

Nevertheless they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the 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 be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts; have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 17, Section 3

Introduction

Rehearse the promises of the first two sections of this chapter and your heart rises on wings of assurance. The elect can neither totally nor finally fall away. Their perseverance depends not upon their own free will but upon the unchangeable decree of the Father, the finished work and present intercession of the Son, the abiding presence of the Spirit, and the inviolable character of the covenant of grace. From all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof. Here is solid ground beneath the feet of every pilgrim. Here is a pillow on which the anxious conscience may rest. And then comes the third section, and with it a single word that cuts across the confidence of the first two like a shadow falling across a sunlit path: Nevertheless. Nevertheless they may fall. Nevertheless they may sin grievously. Nevertheless the very saints whose perseverance is infallibly certain may plunge into depths of transgression from which recovery is long and painful and the scars remain for a lifetime. The Confession does not flinch from this. It does not pretend that the doctrine of perseverance renders the believer immune to serious moral failure. On the contrary, it insists, with the candour of Scripture itself, that the pilgrim on the narrow way may stumble so badly that bones are broken, that the sweet communion once enjoyed may give way to the bitter taste of divine displeasure, and that the wounds thus inflicted may bleed upon others as well as upon the sinner's own soul. Why does this section exist? It is not a contradiction but a completion. A doctrine of perseverance that could not account for David's adultery, Peter's threefold denial, or the incestuous man at Corinth would be a theology for angels, not for men. The Divines were pastors before they were theologians, and they knew that the sheep for whom Christ died sometimes wander into thickets from which only the Shepherd's crook can extract them: torn, bleeding, shamed, but still His sheep. Section 3 is the Confession's way of saying what every honest Christian knows: the promise of final perseverance does not guarantee an untroubled journey. The destination is sure; the path may yet lead through the Valley of the Shadow, and sometimes it is our own feet that carried us there.

Scripture Foundation

No figure in Scripture illustrates the doctrine of this section as David. The narrative in 2 Samuel 11 is a study in the anatomy of a fall. David should have been at battle with his armies, but he tarried at Jerusalem: the first negligence, the initial departure from duty that made every subsequent step possible. From the rooftop he saw Bathsheba bathing, and rather than turning his eyes away he inquired after her. She was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his own mighty men; he ought to have recoiled. Instead he sent messengers and took her. Adultery was compounded by deception, and deception gave way to murder, as David arranged for Uriah to be abandoned in the hottest part of the battle to die. In the space of a single chapter, David broke the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth commandments. For the better part of a year he continued in impenitence, until Nathan the prophet stood before him: "Thou art the man" (2 Samuel 12:7). What followed is recorded for the church's instruction in Psalm 51, where the language of a broken and contrite heart provides the pattern for every subsequent believer's repentance. David does not minimise his sin, does not plead mitigating circumstances, does not point to Bathsheba's beauty or the weakness of the flesh. He confesses that his sin is ultimately against God and God alone: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight" (Psalm 51:4). He acknowledges the depth of his corruption, tracing his actual sin back to his original sin: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5). And he pleads not for justice but for mercy, appealing to the multitude of God's tender mercies and asking for nothing less than a new creation: "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10). The verb bara', create, is the same word used in Genesis 1:1 for the creation of the heavens and the earth. David knows that his fallen heart cannot be repaired; it must be remade. He cannot reform himself; he must be re-created by the same power that spoke light out of darkness. And yet the instructive detail is the one the Confession captures with its phrase "and for a time continue therein." David continued in his sin for months: through the murder of Uriah, the marriage to Bathsheba, the birth of the child. The man who wrote, "I will bless the Lord at all times" was living a lie. The Spirit had not been withdrawn (David remained a believer) but the sense of God's presence, the joy of salvation, the comfort of the Holy Ghost: these were gone. His bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long; God's hand was heavy upon him; his moisture was turned into the drought of summer (see Psalm 32:3-4). This is what it means to be a true believer fallen into grievous sin: not to lose salvation, but to lose the sense of salvation; not to be cast out of the covenant, but to walk under the frown of the covenant God; not to perish, but to wither. The New Testament furnishes its own illustration in the fall of Peter. On the night of the Last Supper, the Lord turned to Peter: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke 22:31-32). Satan hath desired to have you: the Greek word exēitēsato means to demand, as though the devil had appeared before God's throne to request permission to test Peter as he once tested Job. To sift you: wheat shaken violently in a sieve, to separate grain from chaff. The devil's intention is the destruction of Peter's faith. But Christ's prayer is the answer: "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Not that Peter would not fall (for fall he did) but that his faith would not be extinguished beyond recovery. And then: "when thou art converted" — not if, but when — "strengthen thy brethren." Within hours, Peter denied his Lord three times, with oaths and curses, in the courtyard of the high priest, while Jesus stood bound before His accusers (Luke 22:54-62). A servant girl's question was enough to unman the apostle who had sworn he would go to prison and death with his Master. The cock crowed, the Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly. That look was not condemnation (Christ had already prayed for him) but a look that broke the heart it would later heal. After the resurrection, at the Sea of Galilee, the restoration came: three times Christ asked, "Lovest thou me?" (three times for the three denials) and three times commissioned Peter to feed His sheep (John 21:15-17). Peter fell grievously, but not totally. He fell for a time, but not finally. The seed remained. The prayer of Christ prevailed. The apostle Paul addresses the same reality in his exhortation to the Galatians: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted" (Galatians 6:1). The word rendered "overtaken" is prolēmphthē, suggesting a man caught unawares, taken before he could brace himself, falling not from settled rebellion but from sudden weakness. Such a man is not to be cast out and abandoned; he is to be restored, set back in joint like a dislocated limb, by those who are spiritual. And the work is to be done in the spirit of meekness, with the sober consciousness that the one who does the restoring may himself be the next to fall. The rod of discipline and the balm of restoration are both instruments in the Shepherd's hand, and the true believer who falls will know both. One further passage, brief but significant, belongs alongside these narratives. The apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesians, gives a solemn warning in the New Testament about the consequences of sin in the believer's life: "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). The verb is lypeite, to grieve, to cause sorrow or pain: a word drawn from the vocabulary of personal relationship. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force that can be resisted without consequence; He is a divine Person who may be grieved by the sin of those in whom He dwells. And yet observe the juxtaposition: the same Spirit whom we are commanded not to grieve is the Spirit by whom we are sealed unto the day of redemption. The sealing is not conditional upon our never grieving Him; it is the permanent mark of ownership that guarantees our final deliverance. The command not to grieve the Spirit is a command addressed to the sealed, to those whose salvation is secure. It is the tender obligation of love, not the anxious condition of acceptance. The grieving of the Spirit is a real and terrible consequence of the believer's sin, but it is the grief of a resident, not the departure of a visitor. He stays. He remains. And in His remaining is both our sorrow and our hope — sorrow that we have wounded the One who loves us most, and hope that the One we have wounded will not abandon the work He has begun.

What the Divines Meant

The structure of this section is a careful progression from causes to consequences, and each element has been weighed by men who knew the human heart and the devices of the enemy. The Divines identify four sources from which the believer's falls arise, and these four are not theological abstractions but the actual machinery of every spiritual catastrophe. The first cause is "the temptations of Satan." The Confession does not hesitate to name the personal malignancy behind much of what befalls the church. Satan is not a metaphor for human evil but a fallen angel of great cunning and malice, who "as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8). He studies the believer's temperament, observes his weaknesses, chooses his moment, and baits his hook with precision. The temptation that overcomes a saint is rarely a crude assault; it is more often a suggestion so subtle, so apparently reasonable, so carefully timed to coincide with a moment of physical weariness or spiritual lethargy, that the believer scarcely recognises it as temptation at all until the jaws have closed. The Divines knew the believer's falls cannot be understood without reckoning with this adversary. The Christian does not sin in a vacuum; he sins in a battlefield, and the enemy is more intelligent and experienced than he is. The second cause is "the temptations of the world." By this the Divines mean not the physical creation, which is good, but the organised system of values, priorities, and pressures that stands in opposition to God and His kingdom. The world tempts by promise and by threat. It promises pleasure, profit, and prestige to those who conform to its patterns; it threatens ridicule, marginalisation, and loss to those who do not. The world's temptations are daily and cumulative. A thousand small concessions to its standards can, over time, produce a conformity to the world that looks indistinguishable from apostasy. The believer who neglects the means of grace finds himself slowly absorbed into the world's way of thinking, feeling, and acting, until the line between the church and the world is no longer visible in his life. The third cause strikes closer to home: "the prevalency of corruption remaining in them." Here is the uncomfortable truth the Confession presses upon us. The believer is regenerate but not yet wholly sanctified. The old nature has been dethroned but not annihilated. The flesh, with its affections and lusts, remains an active and dangerous presence within the soul of every Christian, capable of rising up with terrible force when vigilance slackens. The Divines use the word "prevalency" with precision: corruption does not merely remain; it may, under certain conditions, prevail: gain the upper hand, dominate the will, drive the believer into sins that shock the conscience and stupefy the onlooker. This is not to say that corruption reigns in the believer as it does in the unregenerate. The reign of sin is broken at conversion, and the believer is no longer under its dominion. But the presence of sin continues, and when the believer neglects the means of grace and yields to temptation, that remaining corruption may for a season reassert a terrible mastery. The fourth cause is the one most immediately within the believer's control, and therefore the one most urgently pressed upon the conscience: "the neglect of the means of their preservation." God has appointed means by which He preserves His people: the Word read and preached, the sacraments rightly administered, prayer public and private, the fellowship of the saints, and a vigilant watchfulness over the heart. These means are not optional accessories to the Christian life; they are the appointed channels through which the preserving grace of God flows. To neglect them is to cut oneself off from the ordinary operations of that grace, to withdraw from the physician's care, to lay down one's weapons in the midst of battle. The Divines are careful not to say that God's grace is bound to the means, as though He could not preserve His people without them. But they insist that God ordinarily works through the means He has appointed, and that the believer who despises the means is tempting God and inviting disaster. From these four causes flow seven consequences that the Divines enumerate with clinical precision. The fallen believer incurs God's displeasure, not the wrath of a judge, for that wrath was exhausted on Christ, but the displeasure of a Father toward a disobedient child, felt in the soul as a weight of darkness. He grieves the Holy Spirit, whose indwelling becomes a ground of holy sorrow when that indwelling Guest is treated with contempt. He is deprived of some measure of graces and comforts: faith weakens, love cools, and the joy of salvation becomes a memory rather than a present reality. His heart is hardened, not absolutely as Pharaoh's was, but partially, so that sin which once provoked immediate grief now provokes only a dull ache. His conscience is wounded, lacerated by guilt, so that even after forgiveness the scars remain sensitive. Others are hurt and scandalised: the enemies of the Lord find occasion to blaspheme, the weak brother is wounded, and reproach falls upon the church. And temporal judgments descend: sickness, loss, the natural consequences of sin working themselves out in the providence of God. David was told the sword would never depart from his house, and so it proved. The pastoral wisdom of this section lies in its balance. It will not permit the believer to treat sin lightly, for the consequences are too terrible. Neither will it permit him to despair, for the covenant holds. The falls of the saints are real, grievous, and consequential — but they are not final. The hand that chastens is the hand that saves. The dark valley through which the backslider trudges is still a valley on the road to the Celestial City, and the light at its far end is the same light that shone at the beginning.

Theological Depth

The Puritan divines who expounded this doctrine in their sermons and treatises wrote with surgical realism. They did not flatter their hearers with promises of an easy sanctification. They knew the heart's treachery, the world's allure, and the devil's cunning, and they wrote as men who had themselves fought the battle and borne the wounds. Thomas Brooks, in Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, catalogues the stratagems by which the enemy draws believers into sin. One penetrating observation concerns Satan's habit of presenting the bait while concealing the hook. The temptation to David was not presented as adultery and murder; it was presented as a beautiful woman, a moment of pleasure, a private indulgence. Satan shows the sweetness; he hides the bitterness that follows. Brooks warns that the devil will suggest that small sins are safe sins: that a little pride, a little covetousness can be entertained without serious consequence. But small sins are the thin end of the wedge. The leak that seems trivial can sink the ship. No sin is so small that it does not grieve the Spirit and wound the conscience. And for the believer who has already fallen, Brooks identifies a dangerous device of Satan: the suggestion that it is now too late to return. This, Brooks insists, is a lie from the pit. The very fact that the fallen believer feels grief for his sin is evidence that the Spirit has not abandoned him. No dead soul mourns its own death. The grief itself is a token of life, and the throne of grace remains open. John Owen, in his treatise On the Mortification of Sin, addresses the third cause named by the Confession: the prevalency of remaining corruption. Owen's central thesis is that the believer must be killing sin or sin will be killing him. There is no armistice, no negotiated settlement, no peaceful coexistence between the new nature and the old. The command is not to restrain sin or to moderate sin but to mortify it: to put it to death, deliberately and persistently, by the power of the Spirit. Owen is ruthlessly honest about what happens when this mortification is neglected. The remaining corruption, like a beast that has been chained but not destroyed, will strain against its restraints, and if the chain is not regularly checked it will snap. The believer who thinks that past victories guarantee future safety is a believer on the verge of disaster. Owen's counsel for the fallen is equally direct: the discovery of a prevailing lust is a call not to despair but to renewed warfare. The general who loses a battle does not surrender the war; he regroups, reassesses, and attacks again. So the believer who has been overcome by a particular sin must not conclude that the cause is lost but must return with greater vigour to the means by which the Spirit wages war against the flesh: prayer, the Word, watchfulness, and the fellowship of those who can strengthen his hands. Richard Sibbes, in his Bruised Reed, offers one of the tenderest applications of perseverance ever written. Sibbes contemplates the believer whose conscience is so wounded that he scarcely dares look toward heaven. To such a one, he brings the promise: "A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench" (Matthew 12:20, citing Isaiah 42:3). The reed is bruised (damaged, bent) but Christ does not snap it and cast it away. The flax gives more smoke than flame (more grief than zeal) but Christ does not extinguish it. He tends the bruised reed until it stands again; He fans the smoking flax until it burns. Sibbes insists there is more mercy in Christ than sin in us, and the fallen believer who returns with tears is met not with reproach but with embrace. The father of the prodigal ran to him, fell on his neck, and kissed him before the confession was complete. So the heavenly Father receives every returning backslider. Thomas Watson, writing on the Lord's Prayer, distinguishes with clarity between the reign of sin and the remainder of sin, a distinction essential to this section. Sin reigns in the unregenerate as a king upon his throne; it commands and the will obeys without resistance. But in the regenerate, sin has been dethroned. It remains as a rebel, not a monarch. It may win skirmishes; it may, for a season, seize territory; but it has lost the war. The believer who falls into grievous sin is not a man whose king has returned to power but a man whose defeated enemy has mounted a successful raid. The damage is real, the grief is acute, but the outcome is not in doubt. Watson applies this pastorally: if sin prevails in your life, do not immediately conclude you are unregenerate. Examine whether it prevails with the consent of your will or against it. Does your renewed nature protest? Do you hate the sin even as you commit it? These are the groans of the new nature, the protests of dethroned but not destroyed sin: evidence that the war continues and the Spirit of God is still at work within you.

Puritan Application

First, let this section teach you a holy fear that never presumes upon past grace. There is no saint in Scripture, save the Lord Jesus Himself, whose record is unblemished. Abraham lied. Moses struck the rock in anger. David committed adultery and murder. Peter denied his Lord with curses. If such men, with such privileges and such experiences of grace, could fall so low, what reason have you to think yourself immune? A dangerous moment in the Christian life is the moment after a great victory, when the adrenaline of triumph dulls the edge of vigilance. The apostle's warning stands as a sentinel at the gate of every believer's heart: "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12). The man who thinks he stands is the man who is most likely to fall. The man who knows his own weakness and walks humbly before his God, leaning hard upon the arm of the Beloved, is the man whom God preserves. Holy fear is not the enemy of assurance; it is its guardian. The ship whose captain knows the rocks are near is the ship that navigates them safely. The soldier who patrols as though the enemy were at the wire is the soldier the enemy cannot surprise. Walk, then, with a sober wisdom that takes seriously the four causes named by the Confession, and you will find that the fear which drives you to Christ is the very means by which Christ keeps you from falling. Second, let this section make you diligent in the use of every means of grace that God has appointed. The Confession's fourth cause, the neglect of the means of preservation, is a mirror in which every backslider may see his own face. Ask the man who has fallen into grievous sin when he last truly prayed. Ask him when he last opened the Scriptures with a heart hungry for God. Ask him when he last sat under the preached Word with an attentive and obedient spirit. Ask him when he last sought the counsel of a wise brother or sister in Christ. In almost every case, the fall was preceded by a withdrawal from the means. The door was left unlocked before the thief entered. And the remedy for the fallen believer, and the preventative for the one who would not fall, is the same: return to the means. Not as a work of merit, as though the means themselves could save. But as the channels through which the saving, preserving, restoring grace of God ordinarily flows. The Word is the lamp; do not walk in darkness. Prayer is the breath of the soul; do not suffocate yourself. The sacraments are visible words, pledges of a love that does not waver; do not absent yourself from the table where Christ welcomes sinners. The fellowship of the saints is the communion of the body; do not amputate the limb from the body and expect it to live. Third, if you have fallen (and who among us has not?) let this section teach you the difference between a fall that bruises and a fall that destroys. Do not let the enemy persuade you that your sin is too great, that your backsliding is final, that the covenant has been broken beyond repair. The very existence of this section in the Confession, after two sections that trumpet the certainty of perseverance, is proof that the Divines expected believers to fall: expected it, accounted for it, and provided comfort for those who do. Your fall does not prove you are unregenerate; your response to it may. If you lie where you have fallen, content to remain in the mire, then the apostle's warning has proved true of you: you have made shipwreck of the faith, and your profession was hollow from the start. But if you hate the mire, if you cry out from it with David's words, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation," if you look to the Christ whose prayer sustained Peter and whose look broke Peter's heart and whose question restored Peter's commission. Then take heart. The covenant holds. The seed remains. The Spirit has not departed. Your present misery is the rod of a Father who loves you too much to let you wander unafflicted, and the pain you feel is the pain of healing. Flee to Christ, not from Him. The throne to which you are afraid to come is a throne of grace, and the One who sits upon it has hands that still bear the marks of the nails. Fourth, let this section shape the way you deal with the fallen among your brethren. The apostle's word to the Galatians is a standing order for the church: "restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted" (Galatians 6:1). The temptation when we see a brother fall is either to harshness or to indifference. Harshness picks up the first stone, forgetting that the Lord who said, "Go, and sin no more," had first said, "Neither do I condemn thee." Indifference shrugs and looks the other way, pretending that love means never confronting sin, forgetting that the same apostle who commanded restoration also commanded the Corinthians to deliver the impenitent sinner to Satan. The way of wisdom lies between these ditches. Restore him: the Greek word katartizete is a surgical term for setting a broken bone. The work is delicate, requiring skill, patience, and tenderness. Do it in the spirit of meekness, not the strident righteousness of the Pharisee, but the humbled gratitude of the one who knows that he himself stands only by grace. And do it while considering yourself, because the fall you are called to repair may be your own tomorrow. The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints, and the physician who binds the wounds of others may soon need his own wounds bound. Fifth, let the solemn catalogue of consequences in this section teach you the fear of grieving the Spirit as a motive for holiness. Much Christian motivation is mercenary: we avoid sin to escape punishment, or we pursue holiness to earn favour. The Confession calls us to something higher. The Spirit of God dwells within you. He is not a distant monarch to be appeased; He is an indwelling Friend to be cherished. When you sin, you do not merely break a rule; you grieve a Person. You wound the One who has sealed you, comforted you, walked with you, borne with you, interceded for you with groanings that cannot be uttered. Let that thought, the thought that my sin causes sorrow to the blessed Spirit of God, be a check upon your hand when it reaches for what is forbidden. Let it be the whisper that stays your foot when it turns toward the path of the destroyer. And if you have already grieved Him, let the grief of having done so drive you not from communion but toward it, with the prayer that David prayed: "Take not thy holy spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11). The prayer was answered for David. It will be answered for you, for the same Spirit whom we grieve is the Spirit by whom we are sealed unto the day of redemption, and He does not abandon the work that the Father ordained, the Son purchased, and He Himself began.

Prayer

O Lord God, who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity and yet hast undertaken to save a people who sin against Thee every day, we come before Thee with gratitude and with shame. We thank Thee for the blood of Jesus Christ Thy Son, which cleanseth us from all sin, and for Thine eternal purpose that none of those whom Thou hast given Him should be lost. We thank Thee that our standing rests not upon the constancy of our obedience but upon the finished work of our Surety, and that even when we fall, the covenant holds and the seed remains. Yet we confess, to our deep humiliation, that we have made far too little use of the means Thou hast appointed for our preservation. We have neglected Thy Word when it should have been our daily bread. We have hurried through our prayers. We have absented ourselves from the fellowship of the saints when their counsel might have kept us from disaster. We have entertained the first motions of sin as harmless, forgetting that the spark unquenched becomes a conflagration. We have grieved Thy Holy Spirit, by whom we are sealed, and brought reproach upon the name of Him who bought us. Grant us, we beseech Thee, the grace of holy watchfulness. Let the falls of David and Peter stand as perpetual warnings before our eyes. Let the devices of Satan be exposed before they ensnare us. Let the allurements of the world lose their glitter in the light of Thy countenance. Let the remaining corruption within us be mortified day by day through the power of Thy Spirit, that it may not prevail to our shame and Thy dishonour. And for those of Thy children who have fallen, who lie in the darkness with wounded consciences and hardened hearts, we pray Thy restoring mercy. Send Thy Nathan to speak the word that breaks the silence. Look upon them with the look that broke Peter's heart and healed it. Restore unto them the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold them with Thy free Spirit. Let them not be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow, but let the pain of their fall become the soil in which deeper repentance and more watchful obedience take root. Comfort, O Lord, those hurt and scandalised by the sins of Thy people. Repair the breaches in Zion. Let not the enemies of the gospel find occasion to blaspheme because of the falls of those who bear Thy name. Raise up men and women who are spiritual, who will restore the fallen in the spirit of meekness, considering themselves, lest they also be tempted. Bring us all at last to that inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, where sin shall be no more, where the tempter shall be bound and the world with its vanities passed away, and where the Spirit whom we grieved on earth shall be our eternal joy. There we shall see Thy face and serve Thee without distraction or defect for evermore. Until that day, keep us by Thy power through faith, and let the promise that we cannot finally fall away make us more careful, not less (more watchful, more prayerful, more humble) until faith gives way to sight and perseverance to possession and hope to the beatific vision. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. Amen.