If God elects us, then only he can un-elect us. If he has
completely justified us, then we remain forever justified. If he sanctifies us
by his Spirit, then our sanctification is guaranteed. However, if our salvation
depends on us in any measure, then we are lost. If God has not chosen us
individually, then why would he mind if any individual perished eternally? If
our justification depends on our righteousness, then how sure can we be that we
will live with Christ in eternity?
Does God guarantee our salvation? Or does he require us to
stand in faith in order to abide with him in eternity? Yes, to both. Most
Arminians believe that a Christian, once genuinely saved, justified,
regenerated, and sanctified (whether entirely or not), can lose his salvation
and perish in hell forever. This believer has no idea about the exact amount of
sin that ends his relationship, though Wesley believes that the slightest doubt
will do it, and Walls and Dongell seem to confirm this.
God
did not elect this believer individually, he did not give him faith—other than
some amount of external influence that he gives to everyone—and he does not
guarantee his justification any more than what the believer can maintain for
himself.
Thankfully, scripture does not teach that we can lose our
salvation. Scripture often warns against falling away, but it also teaches that
God keeps us. We are his children, after all.
Paul tells the church at Ephesus not to grieve the Holy
Spirit (Ephesians 4.30), but what exactly does he mean? Wesley interpreted this
to mean to offend God so deeply that he abandons us. He says that there is
nothing more important “than to consider with what temper of soul we are to
entertain his divine presence, so as not either to drive him from us, or to
disappoint him of the gracious ends for which his abode with us is designed.”
Wesley mentions two results here—in one we completely forfeit our salvation and
drive away the Spirit, and in the other we merely “disappoint” him, yet he
fails to distinguish the causes of either or to otherwise separate the two
effects, leading readers to conclude that he intends them to be interpreted as
a single, identical result. By “grieve,” Paul means that God hates sin. This is
nothing new, but does this mean that Paul also means that God abandons us at
any sin, or does Paul mean that God abandons us only when we commit certain
sins?
In the chapter in question, Paul lists numerous sins, but he
does not tell Ephesus that these sins “provoke God to withdraw from [them],” as
Wesley contends.
Paul tells them to “walk no
longer just as the Gentiles also walk” (4.17). He encourages them to “lay aside
the old self, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self”
(4.23-24). He contrasts their new life in Christ with the life of the
unbelievers. They have hard hearts (4.18), have given themselves to sensuality
(4.19), but the believer lives his life in a completely different way. “You did
not learn Christ in this way,” he tells them (4.20). He tells Ephesus to speak
truth, control their anger and their tongue, put away bitterness, wrath, anger,
clamor, slander, and malice, and to be kind and forgiving (4.25-32). Nowhere
does he tell them that God will abandon them if they do not do these things.
Certainly, our sin grieves the Holy Spirit, even after he has redeemed us, but
does God leave us when we sin?
While in other sermons, Wesley plainly says that Christians
do not sin,
here he says that the
believer can frustrate the work of the Holy Spirit so that as he “pours out the
riches of his grace upon us, he finds them all unsuccessful.”
Wesley again contradicts himself. Regardless, he believes that the Spirit pours
out his grace on the Christian to no avail. “By all the wise methods of his
grace, he cannot reform” some of us, and therefore we “provoke him to withdraw
from us.”
The
Holy Spirit finds that his work in our hearts has proved unfruitful, and so he
leaves us. We are too evil for him, our hearts too sinful, even though we are
no more sinful—we should be less—than when he redeemed us, and our sin has
overcome his grace. Wesley compares the Spirit to a man who
Will forgive his friend a great many imprudences, and some
willful transgressions, but to find him frequently affronting him, all his
kindness will wear off by degrees, and the warmth of his affection will die
away.
In all of this, Wesley uses not a single scripture to
support his claim that the Spirit abandons us when we sin. Nothing supports Wesley’s
beliefs but his assumptions about the nature of God and his analogy that
compares the infinite grace of the Holy Spirit to the finite patience of a man.
Wesley uses one scripture from Isaiah 5, the parable of the vineyard, but the
parable does not say that God casts off or destroys Israel, but instead speaks
of judgment for her sins. In Jeremiah, even after God judges Israel, he says to
them
Is Ephraim my dear son?
Is he a delightful child?
Indeed, as often as I have spoken against
him,
I certainly still remember him.
Jeremiah adds
Thus says the Lord,
Who gives the sun for light by day
And the fixed order of the moon and the
stars for light by night,
Who stirs up the sea so that its waves
roar;
The Lord of hosts is His name:
“If this fixed order departs
From before Me,” declares the Lord,
“Then the offspring of Israel also will
cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”
“If the heavens above can be measured
And the foundations of the earth searched
out below,
Then I will also cast off all the
offspring of Israel
For all that they have done,” declares the Lord.
Wesley condemns the believer at the slightest doubt.
If it be said, “But sometimes a believer in Christ may lose
his sight of the mercy of God.” … I answer, supposing him not to see the mercy
of God, then he is not a believer. Therefore, as any one loses his light, he,
for the time, loses his faith. A true believer in Christ may lose the light of
faith. He may, for a time, fall again into condemnation.
The Arminian god does not suffer a single doubt. He does not
suffer even the slightest tinge of carelessness from his children before
casting them away.
The first I shall mention, as being more especially grievous
to the Holy Spirit, is inconsiderateness and inadvertence to his holy motions
within us. There is a particular frame and temper of soul, a sobriety of mind,
without which the Spirit of God will not concur in the purifying of our hearts.
… This consists in preserving our minds in a cool and serious disposition, in
regulating and calming our affections, and calling in and checking the
inordinate pursuits of our passions after the vanities and pleasures of this
world.
I am amazed that Wesley can so fervently declare the “holy
love” of God, yet also claim that we lose our salvation as soon as the cares of
the world distract us from God in the slightest. Of course we will doubt from
time to time and lose sight of our great Redeemer and his work for us. We are
human. We live in a world corrupted by sin and we carry about a nature
corrupted by sin. To say, as Finney did, that our standing before God requires “present,
full, and entire consecration of heart and life to God for His service”
is
to say that without a doubt at some point every single one of us will lose our
salvation.
But Finney and Wesley are correct. If it is possible to lose
our salvation, every sin condemns us. Every sin separates us from God’s love.
If God does not consider Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, then every
doubt, every selfish thought, every moment where we do not devote every bit of
ourselves to him will undoubtedly reaffirm our eternal death sentence and
forfeit the blood Christ shed for us.
Arminians like to champion their religion as the true
message of God’s love, but their message does not actually begin with God’s
love but with their will. Men elect themselves; men love God rather than
receive his love, and men keep themselves in right standing before God. These
notions follow logically from each other and only the logically inconsistent
Arminian (a “Calminian”) believes that men choose God, but then God keeps men
in contradiction to their sinful choices and against their will.
Arminius confirms the fragility of Arminian salvation. He
says that the believer can grieve the Holy Spirit so that he does not “exert
his power and efficacy in them,” and that “if David had died in the very
moment in which he had sinned against Uriah
by adultery and murder, he would have been condemned to death eternal.”
Arminius also explicitly says that fear keeps us in Christ rather than the
grace of the Holy Spirit or our love for God.
The persuasion by which any believer assuredly persuades
himself that it is impossible for him to decline from the faith, or that, at
least, he will not decline from the faith, does not conduce so much to
consolation against despair or against the doubting that is adverse to faith
and hope, as it contributes to security, a thing directly opposed to that most
salutary fear with which we are commanded to work out our salvation.
Assurance of salvation does not keep us from falling away.
Instead it provides security, and security opposes the fear that Arminius believes
motivates us to work out our salvation. God forbid we believe our salvation is
secure. Arminius continues by saying that this fear “inspires consolation and
excludes anxiety.”
Fear
prevents fear.
Paul does indeed tell believers to “work out [their]
salvation with fear and trembling,” (Philippians 2.12) but this is not a fear
of eternal punishment. Indeed, Paul immediately tells the Philippians that God
works in us. We work out our salvation while he works within us, and the true
work does not depend on us but on God. We know that there is no condemnation
for us (Romans 8.1, 34) and that nothing separates us from his love (Romans
8.35-39). Paul exhorted the Philippians to fear the magnificence of Christ,
highly exalted by God (2.9), at whose name every knee will eventually bow, and
every tongue confess that he is Lord (2.11). Paul wanted the Philippians not to
fear eternal damnation, but Christ himself. We fear Christ and we love him not
because he will condemn us, but because he is God and he died for us.
We love, because he first loved us.
Jerry Walls and Joseph Dongell believe that believers can
lose their salvation. They say, “An initial response of faith and obedience doe
not guarantee one’s final salvation. It is possible to begin a genuine relationship
with God but then later turn from him and persist in evil so that one is
finally lost.”
Obviously Finney believes
that a Christian can fall from grace. Explaining what he does not believe about
perseverance, he says
It is not intended that saints, or the truly regenerate,
cannot fall from grace, and be finally lost, by natural possibility. Saints on
earth and in heaven can by natural possibility apostatize and fall, and be
lost. Were not this naturally possible, there would be no virtue in perseverance.
Finally, we see the ultimate motivation for Arminian
theology. We know that will provides the cornerstone, but what drives the
Arminian? What provides the determination, the perseverance, or the strength of
the Arminian believer? He wants to be virtuous. Though Finney admits to
some reliance on the grace of God to meet his conditions for perpetual
justification, as he otherwise refers to it, he refuses to believe that God
guarantees his salvation, for that would exclude “virtue.” There must be the
possibility of failure for there to be the possibility of virtue. There is no
scripture he can use to support this position. God does not praise virtue on
its own merit, but only as it proceeds from his grace and his Spirit to glorify
him. Paul says that God works in us (Philippians 2.12-13), and that he provides
our work and we walk in it (Ephesians 2.10). God grants repentance (Acts 5.31;
11.18; 2 Timothy 2.25). Christ says that apart from him, we are nothing (John
15.5). With God, we repent and we work out our salvation, and without him, we are
nothing. In everything, God is glorified.
Why is the desire to be virtuous such a problem? Read this
again:
Saints on earth and in heaven can by natural possibility
apostatize and fall, and be lost. Were not this naturally possible, there would
be no virtue in perseverance.
Finney believes that saints, glorified in heaven, eternally
present with Christ can lose their position and be damned to hell forever. He
needs this to be a possibility to uphold his notion of virtue. This
demonstrates pride of the most ignominious and blasphemous degree. He wants the
possibility of eternal damnation so that his virtue is real. If virtue
is guaranteed, then it is not true virtue. If Finney is virtuous not merely by the
passive grace of God, but by his active work in Finney’s heart, then Finney is
not truly virtuous. If Finney perseveres because God guarantees it, then Finney
is not virtuous because he has not persevered, but God has kept him. Finney
wants to be able to fail so that his success has meaning, in his perception.
This is not a scriptural position but a profoundly arrogant philosophical one. The
Arminian craves personal glory.
I do not blame the Arminian for this. I love glory, to win
awards, to earn honor, or to defeat opponents. Personal glory is amazing. I do
not blame the Arminian for being proud. No one is more proud than myself. I
blame the Arminian for not admitting to this and for pretending this theology
somehow brings honor to God. It does not. God is glorified when everything we
are depends on him and every good work originates from him and is secured by
him.
By their own sword they did not possess the land, and their
own arm did not save them, but your right hand and your arm and the light of
your presence, for you favored them.
Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his
strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them
by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses
or horsemen.
God is not just the provider of grace who only shores up our
weaknesses. He does not sit in the background as we endure trial and temptation
and cheer us on, occasionally propping us up or even carrying us in his arms. He
gives us life. He is our life. He is our strength and hope and everything
we need because we are nothing. We are flesh and weakness and without him we
have no hope, no strength, and no love or faith of our own.
Scripture gives us many reasons to know our salvation is
secure. To show that our salvation rests on God and not on us, Puritan minister
John Owen names a minimum of three supports for the perseverance of the saints
being God’s work and not ours, these including God’s character, purpose, and
covenant.
God tells the Israelites many times in the Old Testament
that, despite their unfaithfulness, he remains faithful. Obviously not
dependent on their righteousness, their relationship does not change because
God does not change. Owen says, “He hath laid the shoulders of the
unchangeableness of his own nature to this work: Malachi iii. 6, ‘I am the
Lord, I change not: therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’”
God’s love for us does not change because he does not change.
Unless himself and his everlasting deity be subject and
liable to alternation and change, it could not be that they should be cast off
for ever and consumed.
James says, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift
is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no
variation or shifting shadow” (James 1.17). God gives gifts that he does not
take back (Romans 11.29). Arminians logically conclude that since God gives
gifts based on our faith, any lack of faith necessitates that he remove these
gifts, but since they begin with false assumptions, they arrive at false
conclusions.
Speaking of Romans 11.29 (“The gifts and the calling of God
are irrevocable”), Owen continues, “The words are added by the apostle to give
assurance of the certain accomplishment of the purpose of God towards the
remnant of the Jews according to the election of grace.”
Sanctification and justification are the gifts Paul refers to, and we keep
these gifts “from the unchangeableness of the love of election, wherewith the
Lord embraced them from eternity.”
God gives not his gifts to men because they please him, but
because it pleaseth him to do so, Jeremiah xxxi. 31, 32; he does not take them
away because they displease him, but gives them so to abide with them that they
shall never displease him to the height of such a provocation.
The believer will sin, and by his sin will prove himself
unfaithful and unworthy of election, justification, sanctification, etc., but
God does not choose us because we have proven ourselves worthy, but because he
seeks to glorify himself. God has chosen us so that he is glorified (Romans
9.23), and his purpose will not change.
[Israel] rebelled against me; they did not walk in my
statutes, nor were they careful to observe my ordinances...so I resolved to
pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the
wilderness. But I withdrew my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that it
should not be profaned in the sight of the nations.
God chose us so that he is glorified as we conform to the
image of Christ; that Christ be “the firstborn among many brethren”; that we
are predestined, called, justified, and glorified (Romans 8.28-30). Owen says, “God
hath purposed the continuance of his love to his saints, to bring them
infallibly to himself, and this purpose of God, in particular, is unchangeable.”
God
will not change his purpose because he does not change, and neither can any
other person, force, or circumstance compel him to change.
Remember this, and be
assured;
Recall it to mind, you
transgressors.
Remember the former
things long past,
For I am God, and
there is no other;
I am God, and there is
no one like Me,
Declaring the end from
the beginning,
And from ancient times
things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose
will be established,
And I will accomplish
all My good pleasure.’
The Arminian does not believe that God is omnipotent because
they do not believe he is sovereign. They either believe God cannot override
the will of men or he chooses not to. Either way, man is sovereign over God and
he establishes his purposes, not God. That salvation is not
secure is a necessary conclusion to their theology. Every day we fail to trust
God as we ought, so why wouldn’t our salvation fail? Our purpose changes from
day to day. We set out to complete a task, but we lack strength, or we remember
something else that is more important, or some obstacle blocks our way. None of these can apply to God.
The counsel and purposes of the Lord are set in opposition to
the counsel and purposes of men, as to alteration, change, and frustration. ...
This antithesis between the counsels of men and the purposes of God upon the
account of unchangeableness is again confirmed, Prov. xix. 21, “There are many
devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall
stand.”
His power, wisdom, knowledge, the perfection of his
character—all of these demand the unchangeableness of his purpose, including
his love for us.
As neither his character nor his purpose change, so neither
does his covenant. God tells Abraham that he will establish an “everlasting
covenant” with Abraham and his descendants, and Owen explains:
The effectual dispensation of the grace of the covenant is
peculiar to them only who are the children of the promise, the remnant of
Abraham according to election.
Paul explains that God promised spiritual blessing to
Abraham through the covenant (Galatians 3.6-9; compare Genesis 12.3). What is
this spiritual blessing?
All the blessings that from God are conveyed in and by his
seed, Jesus Christ. … If perseverance, if the continuance of the love and
favour of God towards us, be a spiritual blessing, both Abraham and all his
seed, all faithful ones throughout the world, are blessed with it in Jesus
Christ.
Sin separates us from God in two ways, Owen says. Sin
separates us by its guilt, as God should cast off the sinner upon the account
of justice. Sin also separates us by its power and deceitfulness, as we yield
to temptation and “depart from God, until, as backsliders in heart, [we] are
filled with our own ways.”
But
if God removes these two, “there is no possible case imaginable of separation
between God and man once brought together in peace and unity.”
For
the first, God has removed our guilt in Christ, for he says to Jeremiah, “I
will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah
31.34). For the second, he removes the possibility of us falling away by our
own devices, as he says, “I will put my law within them and on their heart I
will write it” (Jeremiah 31.33). We see also in the New Testament ample
evidence for Owen’s claims.
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who
comes to me I will certainly not cast out.
I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and
no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword? … But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who
loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
But Jesus, on the other hand, because He continues forever,
holds His priesthood permanently. Therefore He is able also to save forever
those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make
intercession for them.
Our salvation does not depend on our works or our continued
faithfulness, but only on God.
Arminians take great pains to prove that we lose our
salvation. Walls and Dongell confuse believers with unbelievers.
Wesley adds lengthy assumptions to the definition of “grieving the Holy Spirit.”
Both Wesley and Finney remove the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to
believers and maintain that we must earn our own righteousness in order to be
accepted by God. Though the Arminian case for a fragile salvation proves no
less fragile than the salvation itself, they do have many verses that seem to
indicate that the believer can perish eternally.
So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh,
to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh,
you must die.
Though Paul addresses this to the entire church at Rome, he
clarifies who “we” and “us” refers to at the beginning of the chapter:
He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the
Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but
according to the Spirit. For those who are according to the flesh set their
minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit,
the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind
set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is
hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is
not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
The believer does not walk according to the flesh. His mind
is set on the Spirit and not the flesh because those whose mind is set on the
flesh cannot please God. This describes the notion of all the verses that seem
to teach that the believer can fall away. These passages do not in fact
describe the believer, but the unbeliever. They describe someone who may even
have some experience in the Church, and some knowledge of the Word of God, but
they do not believe in Christ and have not received his Spirit.
Quite right, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you
stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare
the natural branches, He will not spare you, either. Behold then the kindness and
severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if
you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.
“You stand by your faith,” Paul says. Again, the Arminian
maintains that faith does not originate from God but from men, and since men
change from day to day, faith changes from day to day. One day faith lives, and
the next, it dies. Faith does not originate from men, however. God gives faith.
Yes,
if the “believer” does not continue in his faith, God will not spare him, but
the believer will. Only the false believer will fail to believe. Paul also says
Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own
master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him
stand.
Every similar verse makes the same point—if you do not
continue in faith, you will perish.
Calvinists do not deny this, but they believe that God grants the believer
faith and strength to continue. The Arminian must also ignore or pervert John’s
words:
They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if
they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so
that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
Owen asks
Doth not the main weight of the doctrine turn on this hinge,
that God hath promised to his saints, true believers, such supplies of the
Spirit and grace as that they shall never degenerate into such loose and
profane courses as are destructive to godliness?
Christ explains the situation in the parable of the sower
(Matthew 13.1-23). He describes four types of soil, and in only one does his
word bear fruit. In the rest, there may be some indication of faith, but no
fruit which proves it. In the same chapter, Christ tells the parable of the
wheat and the tares. Both true and false believers blend together, and only at
the end can we tell the difference (13.24-30). In verse 10-17, Christ explains
the situation without a parable—God has opened the eyes of those that belong to
him, and the rest remain blind.
God chose us because we could not have chosen him. He
justified us completely. He grants us grace and faith to persevere in holiness.
The Arminian does not believe in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit to
overcome our sinful nature, and therefore he must use fear to motivate us to
holiness. He believes in the will of men above the will and power of God and to
his will he consistently worships.
