Perseverance of the Saints Part 2

The name of this chapter is Perseverance of the Saints. So let’s look at the definition.

Perseverance of the saints means that all those who are truly born again will be kept by God’s power and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again.

This definition has two parts to it. It indicates first that there is assurance to be given to those who are truly born again, for it reminds them that God’s power will keep them as Christians until they die and they will surely live with Christ in heaven forever.

On the other hand, the second half of the definition makes it clear that continuing in the Christian life is one of the evidences that a person is truly born again.

Last week, we covered a few foundational points to this topic.

We looked at scripture and asked who holds my salvation?

We read different passages that reveal that all three members of the trinity hold our salvation. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Then we sought to make sure that we understood the phrase, “Eternal life”.

Eternal meaning without ending. Can not end.

And Life describes the new life that the Holy Spirit breaths into us at salvation. We were dead, now we are alive in Christ.

We talked about when eternal life begins and it begins when we put our faith in Christ in this life. Its not something that starts after death.

Therefore, with the question of can a person lose their salvation? How can something begins at the moment of our salvation, that is eternal, without end… come to an end?

Does the Spirit cause us to become spiritually dead again?

What we saw was that Jesus was intentional when He called it eternal life throughout His ministry. And we have to believe that those words mean what Jesus meant it to mean.

We looked at one of the strongest verses that describes our eternal security.

There are other passages but this passage is the icing on the cake.

1 Peter 1:3–5 NASB95

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

This inheritance, that is sealed not by you but by the Holy Spirit is:

imperishable- not subject to decay or perishing, lasting forever

undefiled- pure, without flaw

unfading- does not diminish, or fade away

And it is guarded by God’s power in heaven for you!

Lastly, we talked about how the only person in scripture that we are to judge their salvation is ourselves. We must ensure that we are apart of the faith.

Grudem’s point of this whole chapter is that one of the evidences that a person is truly saved is that they will persevere in the faith until the end of their life.

Let’s go back to the original definition

Perseverance of the saints means that all those who are truly born again will be kept by God’s power and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again.

He argues that one of the evidences of being truly born again is that the person will persevere in the faith until the end. Not the only evidence, but one of the evidences.

John 8:31–32 NASB95

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Jesus is making a statement that on of the ways to know that you are truly a disciple of Jesus is that you will continue in His Word.

Twice in the book of Matthew Jesus says,

Matthew 10:22 ESV

and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Again, the emphasis of these verses is not on YOU enduring by your strength or your will power.

We already established in 1 Peter 1:3–5

1 Peter 1:3–5 ESV

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.

That it is the power of God that gives you the power to endure and persevere in the faith until the end.

The strength to continue, the strength to endure, the power to persevere doesn’t not come from us. Alone, we are all powerless.

So, the emphasis of these verses can not be on our endurance, but that our endurance from God’s power is evidence that we are truly saved.

Any questions or additional thoughts on this point?

There are other passages that carry this same idea of persistence and perseverance as being evidence of truly being born again.

Colossians 1:22–23 ESV

he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Read Grudem 159

And Hebrews 3:14 echos the same thought.

Hebrews 3:14 ESV

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

How do we know if “we have become partakers of Christ”?

One of the ways that we know that we have come to genuine faith in Christ is if we continue in the faith until the end of our lives.

What are you thoughts about our perseverance in the faith being an evidence of our true conversion?

It’s hard for us to tell if the people within our own churches or even families are truly saved. Again, its not for us to judge but when we love someone or a group of people, we care about their eternal salvation.

Now comes the tricky part.

I want to be cautious with the next part of this discussion.

Its going to be centered around the question, can a true Christian lose their salvation.

#2 Can a person who is truly saved, lose their salvation?

There are obviously a lot of opinions on this question, but more than that, when we talk about a person losing their salvation, for many of us, a person will come to mind.

A face. A mother or father.

A brother or sister.

A son or daughter.

Someone who is still alive. Or possibly someone who has already passed away.

So, I am going to do my best to be cautious in how I am going to word things to not speak in absolutes as much as possible, while at the same time looking at scriptures that might suggest hard things about people we love.

One thing that scripture is clear on is that were, are and will be unbelievers within the church itself. There will be people within the church body that are not truly saved.

They may even externally really look like they are too!

Can you name a famous example in the Gospels of this very things?

Judas looked like a disciple of Jesus to the point that when Jesus said that one of His disciples was from the devil, in John 6:70 that nobody suspected Judas.

And even at the end, at the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said that one of them would betray Him. They were all asking about themselves but nobody suspected Judas.

He had successfully convinced all the disciples that he was a true follower of Jesus but Jesus knew his heart was far from Him.

Paul speaks of “false brethren secretly brought in” in Gal 2:4. And in his journeys, he said that he had been “in danger of false brethren”.

2 Corinthians 11:15 ESV

So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

There are some within the church that externally appear to be good Christ followers but have no heart converted to the Lord.

Jesus, in His scariest statement of the sermon on the mount, said,

Matthew 7:21–23 ESV

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

A similar teaching is the seed that feel on the rocky soil.

Mark 4:5–6 ESV

Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.

So, if perseverance in the faith an evidence of our true conversion, then what does it mean for those who do turn away or “fall away” from the faith?

There will be some people who appear to be true believer, but do NOT persevere. They turn away from the faith.

Scripture calls people like that apostates or fallen away. Grudem argues that if God holds our salvation in His hands and it is His power that holds us, then those who do turn away, or apostate, were not truly saved from the beginning.

1 John 2:19 ESV

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

John is stating that when people fall away, when they turn away from the faith, when they reject believing in Christ any more, it shows that their faith was not real in the first place, and they were never part of the body of Christ.

Now, one of the hardest to interpret passages that pertains to this passage is Hebrews 6:4-8. It directly addresses what an apostate is and what happens with them.

Hebrews 6:4–8 NASB95

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.

So, at first glance, you could say that this verse contradicts everything that we have been saying.

If those who are truly saved will remain saved, and those who fall away were not truly saved, then what is this verse saying?

So, I could spend the rest of our time dividing this passage, word by word but I’m not. It is a deep and heavy passage and there are a ton of opinions on it. I’m going to do my best to do this briefly but to help us see it clearly.

But let’s take a good look at it to see how it actually says the same thing as what we have been saying.

Let’s break it down into two parts, vs 4-6 and vs 7-8.

Hebrews 6:4–6 NASB95

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

So, what does the passage say about the person?

They were enlightened.

Enlightened means, to know, to have knowledge illuminated to them. It means that the gospel was made known to them. The truth was revealed to their minds.

But as we know, it is not about your head knowledge but has your heart been changed. There will be many who know the true gospel but who have never put their faith in it.

They tasted of the heavenly gift, the good Word of God and His power.

Tasted means a temporary taste but does not imply accepting. The same word is used when they gave sour wine to Jesus on the cross. He tasted it and spit it out. He tasted it but rejected it.

This is talking about someone have experienced the presence of God, been touched by His Word and even seen or experienced the power of God.

There are plenty of people who have been to church and felt the presence of the Lord and are not saved.

There are plenty of people who has been effected and convicted by the Word, but not saved.

There are plenty of people that have seen the power of God and not saved.

The pharisees are right in all three of these. They were around Jesus. They experienced the authority and power of His Word. They witnessed the power of God to perform miracles.

And yet they rejected all of it!

The last things the verses said about the person in Hebrews is they were partakers of the Holy Spirit.

Another word for partaker is shared or associated with. This is not the same as thing as indwelt by or sealed by the Holy Spirit.

It is possible to be associated with or used by the Holy Spirit and not be saved.

First, ask Baalum’s donkey.

Or Matthew 7, did we not cast out demon and heal the sick?

The person that I keep thinking about with all of these things is Judas.

He was enlightened with the truth of the Gospel from Jesus’ mouth.

He lived with the Word of God.

He was used by the Holy Spirit to heal and cast out demons.

And yet, Judas never gave himself to Jesus. He never put His faith in Jesus. On the outside, he looked like the rest of the disciples but he willfully decided to reject Jesus and oppose His ministry.

And that is the meaning of the word “fall away” or apostate.

To fall away or apostate is not to slip into sin, backslide or have a season of doubt.

Apostasy means a deliberate, total and conscious decision to permanently abandon the Christian faith, reject all of the knowledge they have received, to deny all that they experienced, and completely reject Christ.

This is after being enlightened with the gospel, experienced the power of God through His Word and through the Holy Spirit.

Even after all of that, they willfully choose to reject Jesus Christ.

Can you see how that is not a true believer losing their salvation, but a person who was exposed to the truth, the Word and the Spirit of God and choosing to reject it?

This passage says that it is impossible to that person to be renewed again to repentance.

This is not a condemnation or a promise. This is an acknowledgment of reality.

Read Grudem big book Page 508.

Is there any thoughts or questions about this?

In verses 7-8, the writer of Hebrews uses a familiar parable to explain this whole thing another way.

Two soils, both get rain (which is all of the things in verse 4 and 5) one produces fruit for God and they will be blessed.

The other produces thorns and thistles and they are cures and end up being burned.

Jesus taught this same principle using the same parable in Matt 3, Matt 7, Matt 12, and John 15.

You will know them by their fruits. And those who produce no fruit or bad fruit are not saved.

So, I want to bring this back around to the main points.

God holds our salvation. Our deeds didn’t earn our salvation, and our deeds can’t unearn salvation.

One of the evidences that a person is saved, is they experience the power of God to give them the faith to persevere to the end.

There are and there will be people within the church that look good on the outside but will not enter in to heaven.

And there are people who will know the truth, experience the presence and power of God in their lives and still choose to reject Jesus.

Perseverance of the saints means that all those who are truly born again will be kept by God’s power and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again.

Again, the application here is to examine yourself to ensure that you are in the faith.

Pray for those who have left the faith.

Call back those who are back who are prodigal or backslidding.