Theopedia

Perseverance of the saints

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

— John 10:28 (ESV)

Definition

Perseverance of the saints is the doctrine that those whom God has effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit can never totally or finally fall from the state of grace, but will certainly continue in it to the end and be eternally saved.1 This does not mean a believer cannot sin gravely or backslide for a time: the same confession also describes believers falling into “grievous sins” for a season before being restored through renewed repentance.2 The doctrine rests not on the believer’s own strength but on God’s electing love and the efficacy of Christ’s intercession.3

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states the doctrine plainly:

“Those whom God hath 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 … they being engraven upon the palm of his hands, and their names having been written in the book of life from all eternity.”1

The Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration state the same chapter, in nearly identical wording, so this is not a Baptist distinctive but the wider Reformed tradition’s shared teaching.4 The Canons of Dort reach the same conclusion from the Synod that produced them: those whom God calls and regenerates, he also “mercifully confirms, and powerfully preserves … even to the end,” not because their own strength is sufficient to withstand “the remains of indwelling sin, and the temptations of sin and of the world,” but because “God is faithful.”5

The confession grounds perseverance in five things: the “immutability of the decree of election,” the “unchangeable love of God the Father,” the “efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ and union with him,” “the abiding of his Spirit, and the seed of God within them,” and “the nature of the covenant of grace.”3 None of these depend on the believer’s own will, which is why the doctrine attaches to God’s own faithfulness rather than the strength of the saint’s resolve.

The confession is equally direct that this security coexists with real falls into sin. Through “the temptation of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of means of their preservation,” true believers may fall into “grievous sins, and for a time continue therein,” incurring God’s displeasure, grieving his Spirit, and hardening their own hearts and consciences, before they “renew their repentance and be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end.”2 The Canons of Dort describe the same pattern in the case of David and Peter specifically, naming their sins as real, not merely apparent, and their restoration as God’s own doing.6

Biblical Basis

Scripture states the doctrine directly: Christ gives his sheep eternal life, and “no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28); Paul declares that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29) and that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6); Peter writes of those “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5).7

The certainty these texts assert follows from several other doctrines taken together, not from this one claim standing alone. Election grounds it: God’s choice does not merely offer salvation but secures it (Rom. 8:30). The covenant of grace grounds it: the Father gave a people to the Son as the reward of his obedience, so their number cannot come up short (John 17:2, 6). Union with Christ grounds it in two ways at once: federally, Christ is the believer’s surety, so that what secures him secures them (Rom. 8:1); vitally, believers abide in him as a branch abides in the vine, so that because he lives they will live also (John 14:19). The atonement grounds it: Christ discharged every obligation his people owed the law, so if one for whom he died should finally perish, the payment made on their behalf would have failed of its purpose (Isa. 53:6, 11). Justification grounds it: the justified stand under grace rather than law, and so cannot fall back under the condemnation from which they were released (Rom. 6:14). And the indwelling Spirit grounds it as both seal and down payment, marking believers as God’s own and guaranteeing what he has promised to complete (Eph. 1:14; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 5:5).7

Historical Development

The doctrine became a formal point of controversy after followers of Jacobus Arminius presented the Five Arminian Articles (the Remonstrance) in 1610, the last of which offered an alternative to the Reformed doctrine of certain perseverance.8 The Synod of Dort convened in 1618-19 to judge the Remonstrant articles and answered with the Canons of Dort’s Fifth Head of Doctrine, stating without qualification that God “does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from his own people, even in their melancholy falls,” and does not permit them “to plunge themselves into everlasting destruction.”9 A later, fuller statement of the Remonstrant position, the Remonstrants’ own Confession, made the position explicit: those once justified and regenerated may, through neglecting grace and grieving the Holy Spirit, fall into sins inconsistent with true justifying faith and finally perish.10 The Westminster Assembly (1646), the framers of the Savoy Declaration (1658), and the Particular Baptist authors of the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession all adopted the Synod of Dort’s position in the same chapter position within their own confessions, treating it as settled Reformed teaching rather than a live question to reargue.4

Opposing Views

Roman Catholic. The Council of Trent (1545-63) anathematized the claim that a justified person cannot lose grace: “If any one saith, that a man once justified can sin no more, nor lose grace, and that therefore he that falls and sins was never truly justified … let him be anathema.”11 On this view, justifying grace, once received, can be forfeited by mortal sin and is not guaranteed to be restored.

Arminian. The Remonstrants held that those once regenerated and justified can, by neglecting grace and grieving the Holy Spirit, fall into sins inconsistent with true justifying faith, and dying in that state, finally perish.10 Arminian theology roots this in a libertarian account of free will: since God does not determine the individual’s choices, he cannot guarantee that any regenerate person will not ultimately choose to reject faith.12

Lutheran. Lutheran confessional statements agree with the Arminians that a truly regenerate and justified person can fall away, against the Reformed doctrine that such a person cannot: “That false opinion is to be earnestly confuted and rejected, which certain feign, that faith, and realized justification, and salvation itself, can not be lost by any sins or crimes whatsoever.”13 Lutherans and Arminians agree on this specific point (the regenerate can apostatize) while continuing to disagree on election: both hold that God’s “elect,” properly speaking, cannot finally apostatize, since he chose them on the basis of foreseen perseverance; the dispute with the Reformed is over whether the regenerate and the elect are the same group.10

Objections and Responses

The doctrine encourages carelessness, since final salvation is already secure. Believers who are certain of their perseverance still have “constant watchfulness, and diligence, and prayer” commanded of them, and Scripture treats God’s powerful working within the believer as itself “a powerful reason not for sloth, but for diligence.”14 Assurance of the end does not remove the means by which God has appointed to bring it about: Joshua, though assured of victory over his enemies, still took every precaution against them, and Paul, though assured that all aboard his storm-wrecked ship would be saved, still directed the crew to stay in the ship and use the ordinary means of survival (Acts 27:22-31).15

Scripture’s warnings and exhortations to persevere assume a real danger of falling away. These warnings come to all who hear the gospel as a class, including the merely nominal professors, “those who think they stand,” some of whom really are self-deceived and in danger; God secures the perseverance of his true people precisely by these means, not apart from them, addressing them as rational, moral agents who must diligently cleave to his grace even though its outcome is certain.16

Ezekiel 18:24 says the righteous man who turns from his righteousness shall die. The chapter concerns Israel’s temporal tenure in the land of promise, not a soul’s final salvation: the “righteous man” in view is one accounted righteous by outward, moral conformity to the law, not one justified by Christ’s own righteousness imputed to him by faith; a man righteous only in that outward, legal sense can indeed turn to wickedness and be cut off, without this being a case of a truly justified person falling from grace.15

Hebrews 6:4-6 and 10:26 describe a real falling away that cannot be restored. These texts, along with similar warnings (Ezek. 18:24; Matt. 13:20-21; 2 Pet. 2:20-21), are best read either as hypothetical warnings meant to prevent apostasy by showing its consequences, or as descriptions of those who experienced the influences of common grace without undergoing a genuine change of nature.17 Hebrews 10:38-39 itself draws the needed distinction in its own next verse: “the just,” who live by faith, are set apart from “them that draw back unto perdition”; those who finally draw back were never of the first group.15

David, Solomon, and Peter all fell into serious sin, which shows a true saint can fall totally. None of these was a total or final fall. David’s own words after his sin with Bathsheba show the Spirit had not been taken from him (“restore to me the joy of your salvation … then I will teach transgressors your ways,” Ps. 51:12-13), and Peter’s faith did not ultimately fail because Christ had already prayed for him that it would not (Luke 22:31-32); in each case Scripture records the fall together with the believer’s restoration by repentance.15

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 17, “Of The Perseverance of the Saints,” para. 1. ↩ ↩2

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 17, para. 3. ↩ ↩2

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 17, para. 2. ↩ ↩2

  4. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 17, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints,” para. 1; The Savoy Declaration (1658), chap. 17, para. 1 (identical wording). ↩ ↩2

  5. Canons of Dort (1619), Fifth Head of Doctrine, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints,” art. 3. ↩

  6. Canons of Dort, Fifth Head, art. 4. ↩

  7. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 36, “Perseverance of the Saints,” Q. 2. ↩ ↩2

  8. Samuel Eldon Waldron, Faith, Obedience, and Justification: Current Evangelical Departures from Sola Fide (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 117: the Canons of Dort answered “The Five Arminian Articles put forth in 1610,” which “presented the Arminian alternatives to the Reformed doctrines of absolute predestination (Article I), limited atonement (Article II), irresistible grace (Article III and IV), and the certain perseverance of true believers (Article V).” ↩

  9. Canons of Dort, Fifth Head, art. 6. ↩

  10. Hodge, chap. 36, Q. 4, quoting the Remonstrants’ Confession, art. 11.7. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. Hodge, chap. 36, Q. 3, quoting Council of Trent, sess. 6, can. 23. ↩

  12. Hodge, chap. 36, Q. 5. ↩

  13. Hodge, chap. 36, “Authoritative Statements of Church Doctrine, Lutheran Doctrine,” quoting Formula Concordiae, 705. ↩

  14. Hodge, chap. 36, Q. 6. ↩

  15. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book VI, chap. 15, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  16. Hodge, chap. 36, Q. 7. ↩

  17. Hodge, chap. 36, Q. 8. ↩