“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who will also do it.”
I Thessalonians 5:23-24
The final doctrine that Arminius struggled with is what became the “P” in TULIP: Perseverance of the saints. All the doctrines of grace overlap and are different aspects of one truth, that God is sovereign over our salvation. Perseverance of the saints means that those whom God has made alive, who were chosen solely based on His good will and not on any merit in the individual, whose atonement was accomplished by Jesus Christ, and whom the Holy Spirit ensured would answer the call by faith, are also by that same Spirit ensured that they will never truly fall away from that faith. They will “persevere” until the end.
This truth is wonderfully expressed here in I Thessalonians. God is the one who ultimately oversees and accomplishes our sanctification. It is He who promises to preserve us as blameless when we stand before the throne of judgement. Arminius was apparently undecided on this point, but his followers put forth the doctrine that at least there is a possibility that a truly saved, regenerated, born again, elect person, whose sins were atoned by Jesus Christ could lose that salvation and end up in eternal punishment anyway.
The obvious challenge to the doctrine of perseverance is that, unfortunately, we do see people reject the faith and leave the church. Doesn’t that mean they lost their salvation? However, this is simply a problem of perspective. From our human perspective, indeed, people lose their faith. People who seemed saved have also seemed to lose that salvation as it says in Hebrews 6:4-6. The warnings in scripture that command us to persevere are legitimate warnings because the human perspective is a legitimate perspective. But it is not the ultimate perspective.
Verses like I Thessalonians 5:23-24 give us the ultimate perspective, God’s perspective. From God’s perspective all those whom He has intended to save will be saved in the end. This means that throughout a person’s life there may be backsliding, falling into grievous sins, and even rejection of the faith in some degree, but the elect will never truly or completely fall away. Because the Lord requires His saints to put to death the deeds of the flesh and to put on righteousness there are always both successes and failures. But the Scripture is clear. The Holy Spirit is ensuring for all the elect that their sanctification will be completed, and they will be blameless before God.
Once again this is a tremendous encouragement for the saints at war with sin still present in their fallen human nature. Our battle is not in vain, it has already been won, and we can absolutely be assured of our salvation. If Arminius is correct, then there is no possibility of assurance. Salvation depends completely on man’s abilities instead of trusting in the promises and power of God. At the Synod of Dort, Arminius’ doctrine of no assurance was, of course, shown to be false and not consistent with the clear teaching of the scripture.
As I Peter 1:3-5 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Amen!
Fight the good fight!
His mercy endures forever!
Pastor Flynn