I decided to place this in the DEBATE forum because I have no expectations that
@Curtis will engage in anything approaching a brotherly discussion on the Calvinist teaching from the Doctrines of Grace commonly called “Perseverance of the Saints”.
The apostle Paul warns us against having a puffed-up view of our own spiritual strength. He says, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). We do fall into very serious activities.
The Apostle Peter, even after being forewarned, rejected Christ, swearing that he never knew Him—a public betrayal of Jesus. He committed treason against His Lord. When he was being warned of this eventuality, Peter said it would never happen. Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, Satan would have you and sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, so that when you turn, strengthen the brothers” (Luke 22:31-32). Peter fell, but he returned. He was restored. His fall was for a season. That’s why we say that true Christians can have radical and serious falls but never total and final falls from grace.
I think this little catchphrase,
perseverance of the saints, is dangerously misleading. It suggests that the perseverance is something that we do, perhaps in and of ourselves. I believe that saints do persevere in faith, and that those who have been effectually called by God and have been reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit endure to the end. However, they persevere not because they are so diligent in making use of the mercies of God. The only reason we can give why any of us continue on in the faith is because we have been preserved.
So I prefer the term
the preservation of the saints, because the process by which we are kept in a state of grace is something that is accomplished by God. My confidence in my preservation is not in my ability to persevere. My confidence rests in the power of Christ to sustain me with His grace and by the power of His intercession. He is going to bring us safely home.
Writing to the Philippians, Paul says, “He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it to the end” (Phil. 1:6). Therein is the promise of God that what He starts in our souls, He intends to finish.
I admit I haven't read the replies in this thread yet, but I hope it's OK with you if I jump in here. I agree with everything you say above, but I have a different view of predestination than (from what I understand) Calvin had: Peter tells us that Christ is foreknown before the foundation of the world:
"Foreknown before the foundation of the world, but revealed in the last times for you" (1 Peter 1:20).
"Father, I desire that those whom You have given Me, that they may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me, for You have loved Me before the foundation of the world." (John 17:24).
We know that those who have faith in Christ are in Christ, and He in them (John 14:16-20). So to me, it is only because He is
before the foundation of the world that those who are in Him through faith in Him are chosen in Him before the foundation of the world:
"According as He chose us in Him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love." (Ephesians 1:4)
"Chosen in Him
before the foundation of the world" = predestined to salvation, but
no man had been created before the foundation of the world, so only
from the foundation of the world was the Kingdom prepared for those who were chosen in Him
before the foundation of the world:
"Then the King shall say to those on His right hand, Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world." (Matthew 25:34).
The Kingdom existed
from the foundation of the world (Eden). This is also why our names are written in the Book of Life
from the foundation of the world:
"The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend out of the abyss and go into perdition. And those dwelling on the earth will marvel,
those whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is." (John 17:8).
So the old axiom in Reformed theology about the perseverance of the saints is this: If you have it—that is, if you have genuine faith and are in a state of saving grace—you will never lose it. If you lose it, you never had it.
We know that many people make professions of faith, then turn away and repudiate or recant those professions. The Apostle John notes that there were those who left the company of the disciples, and he says of them, “Those who went out from us were never really with us” (1 John 2:19). Of course, they were with the disciples in terms of outward appearances before they departed. They had made an outward profession of faith, and Jesus makes it clear that it is possible for a person to do this even when he doesn’t possess what he’s professing. Jesus says, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me” (Matt. 15:8).
Jesus even warns at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that at the last day, many will come to Him, saying: “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do this in your name? Didn’t we do that in your name?” He will send them away, saying: “Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). He will not say: “I knew you for a season and then you went sour and betrayed Me. No, you never were part of My invisible church.” The whole purpose of God’s election is to bring His people safely to heaven; therefore, what He starts He promises to finish. He not only initiates the Christian life, but the Holy Spirit is with us as the sanctifier, the convictor, and the helper to ensure our preservation.
The reason I have a problem getting my mind around that, is because there is still free will. No one who is saved is a robot.
Let's take a hypothetical example: Say a man is a genuine believer, and he's still young. Say he meets a beautiful Jewish girl from an Orthodox Jewish family, falls hopelessly in love and desperately wants to marry her, but she tells him she will only marry him if he converts to Judaism, letting him know he only has x amount of time to make up his mind.
So he feels torn in two, but he marries her, thinking, "I'll secretly keep following Jesus anyway, God will understand", but over time, life in his new family causes him to have to compromise more and more, until he loses the sense of the guidance and presence of the Spirit of Christ within him, and eventually winds up in total apostasy, no longer a believer.
It's a hypothetical scenario, I know, but it could happen (and probably already has). There was free will involved, and it was a test which he failed.
That is the problem I have with getting my mind around the idea that once a person is saved, he's always saved, and this is exactly what I think the author to the Hebrews meant when (probably to Jewish believers) he wrote:
Hebrews 6
4 "For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit,
5 and have tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come,
6 and who have fallen away; it is impossible, I say, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify the Son of God afresh to themselves and put Him to an open shame.
7 (For the earth which drinks in the rain that comes often upon it, and brings forth plants fit for those by whom it is dressed, receives blessing from God.
8 But that which bears thorns and briers is rejected and is near cursing, whose end is to be burned.)
It's a warning - and the above verses make it too obvious that it's not being spoken to unbelievers who were never saved.