The
final point point, the letter “P” in the acronym, TULIP, stands
for the Preservation of the saints or the Perseverance of the saints.
It's the idea that once a person is saved, he can never lose his
salvation and is sometimes referred to by the phrase, “once saved,
always saved.” It's the single point in 5-point Calvinism that I
absolutely agree with 100%.
This isn't exclusive to Calvinism and the idea of “eternal
security” could be debated separately from the doctrine of Calvin.
Many Christians who don't consider themselves Calvinists will still
believe in the doctrine of eternal security. I've written about this
subject on a few occasions and I'm sure I will write about it again
in depth. However, in this post we will discuss the issue primarily
from the perspective of Calvinism.
In the
light of Calvinism, the key to eternal security lies in the fact that
our salvation is entirely the work of God. That is, He elects us, He
gives us the desire and ability to believe, and He preserves us in
our salvation. Just like we could do nothing to come to Him,
neither are we capable of turning away once we're saved. Such a
notion is supported by more than a few Scriptures. Here are three
examples:
Therefore
you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He
will also keep you firm to the end,
so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(1 Cor 1:7-8)
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)
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)
These
verses seem to make it clear that God does not save us then send us
on our merry ways. He saves us and then He keeps us.
Arguments
that I've heard contrary to the doctrine of preservation all seem
rather weak. Some of them, for example, will take a passage where
God promises to not take away our salvation and then use them as
evidence that we could lose our salvation. Consider this example:
He
that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I
will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will
confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
(Rev 3:5)
Now,
when I read this passage, I understand it to mean that those who
“overcome” (i.e. “are saved”) will not be removed from the
Book of Life. However, one person commenting on this passage said
the following:
“Notice
that God's pencil, which wrote your name in the Lamb's book of life,
also has an eraser at the other end. The name can be erased from the
book of life if you don't overcome.”
I
think it's rather bizarre when God promises to not do something, some
people understand it to mean He might do it! Yet these same people
often take passages like this and use them to argue the reverse of
what they're saying. They are making sort of a negative argument
where they focus on what could have happened rather than what
is being promised. Negative arguments aren't necessarily a bad
thing. I've used them myself. For example, the Bible commands us to
study to show ourselves approved (2 Timothy 2:15); I guess that means
if we don't study, God doesn't approve. I'm arguing the negative of
what the Bible says.
Here
are similar, negative verses “free will” advocates use to defend
that it is possible to lose our salvation.
But
Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if
we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto
the end. (Heb 3:6)
For
we are made partakers of Christ, if
we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
(Heb 3:14)
These
verses say that we are made partakers of Christ and are of His house.
Yet some people focus on the negative of the condition and say our
salvation is conditional. That is, we are partakers of Christ only
as long as we continue in the faith.
Another
person used this analogy:
Someone
might argue and say, "You are teaching that salvation must be
earned through good works." No, I'm not. Salvation is free, but
keeping it is costly. Suppose a friend gave me a brand new car which
he paid out of his own money, and simply gave me the title and keys
and said, "It's yours, Tom. Enjoy it." All I can do is
reach for the keys and title and say, "Thank you!" Let me
ask you a question. Is the car a free gift to me or did I have to
earn it? It's free, right! But let me ask another question. Is it
going to cost me money to keep and maintain the car? Sure it is. I'm
going to have to put gas, change the oil, give it tune-ups, wax the
car, and so on. The car is costly to keep, but it was free when I
received it.
First
off, the analogy is flawed. If someone gives me a car, sure it costs
me to maintain it; if I don't, then the car might stop running.
However, even if it stops running it is still my car! If the
giver could came back to me and take it away, then the car was never
really mine, was it? But besides that, as we have already seen, God
not only saves us but also keeps us. I am confident that I will
continue in the faith because it is God who works in me and not
anything that I'm doing.
Negative
arguments and analogies are the first resort when people argue that
we can lose our salvation. Since that is the bulk of their argument, I believe their position is very weak.
As I've already said, I could write more
about this but this post has already gone on long enough. I'm
getting off the subject of Calvinism anyway. I'll conclude by saying
that the preservation of the saints is not only the fifth point of
Calvinism, I also believe it is correct doctrine.
The point, I think, is that there are also verses in the New Testament that seem to imply that salvation can be lost. Matthew 24:13, which famously declares that he who perseveres to the end shall be saved, is pointless if the world is divided without remainder into those who never become Christians and those who never fall away. Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 9:27 that he does not wish, himself, to be disqualified for the prize implies either that he isn't yet a Christian, or that he thinks one can be a Christian and still fall away. Hebrews 6:4-6 has often be declared to be discussing a purely counterfactual possibility (the spiritual equivalent of "what if the South had won the Civil War?", which doesn't imply that one thinks it actually did), but it at least equally reasonably can be taken as referring to actual converts who have left the faith. And of course Jesus' parable of the sower strongly suggests (at least to me) that sometimes the faith takes root in a person before dying out.
ReplyDeleteI've noted that several of these passages have alternate, Calvinistic interpretations. But it seems to me that so do some of the passages you cite. Revelation 3:5, for example, might imply that one does not overcome unless one not only starts to be but remains faithful, with no implication that everyone who does the first will do the second. The point of this, and 1 Peter 1:3-5 is less that one cannot lose one's salvation as that God will not renege on His promise or be unable to keep it if the believer does remain faithful.
Of course, the issue is untestable: the obvious converse of perseverance of the saints is that no one who does not persevere was ever really a saint, no matter how indistinguishable from true saints he might be up to the time of his apostasy.