Another perceived tension that often boils down to the one between divine sovereignty and human responsibility is that of assurance and perseverance. There are several passages in the bible that assure Christians that once they are saved, they cannot be unsaved (John 10:28; Romans 8:38-39; Philippians 1:6) but there are also very real warnings in the Bible not to fall away (John 15:6; Philippians 2:12; Hebrews 4:11). Which is it? Is a Christian’s salvation guaranteed by God or is it up to us to persevere as Christians?
Again the question draws a false dichotomy between the will of a Christian and the will of God. Whether or not your will is aligned with God’s will or not, it never acts instead of God’s will. It is God who keeps us, but the way he keeps us is by our own volition. If you think of God’s salvation as being placed on top of a building and falling away as jumping off, then God doesn’t need to build a giant fence around the roof to keep Christians from jumping off, he simply shows them how far down the drop would be.
Those without the Holy Spirit will always want to push the boundaries, this is why the Old Testament law was spelled out in such great detail. But once someone has received the Holy Spirit they are changed inwardly so that they will not want to jump off of God’s salvation or push the boundaries of God’s law. In fact, the boundaries don’t need to be spelt out in such great detail if the person is changed so that they stay in the centre of God’s moral will, that is, if they are changed to love God and love others, they will not go near the boundaries (which may look different in different cultures and situations).
One of the few errors the puritans made was to look to themselves instead of to Christ, to discern whether they were Christians. They knew that Christians are saved by faith alone but faith is never alone, so they went looking for the deeds that accompany faith in order to gain assurance of salvation. But this is effectively putting faith in faith, that is, they were trusting in whether or not they had faith rather than trusting in Christ alone. To be assured that God has you, you need to look at God who is faithful, rather than yourself who may not always be faithful, even though you’ve been given the faith which enables you to be. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at your saviour.
In the parable of the four soils (Matthew 13:1-23 // Mark 4:1-20 // Luke 81:15) Jesus warns us not to be the first soil who rejects God’s word or the second soil who falls away. Just as God is sovereign in whom he chooses, he is sovereign in his choice coming to fruition. In both cases we are not encouraged to be passive, but to actively grow as the seed sown in the good soil. God graciously uses us to bring about his kingdom in ourselves as well as in the world, but if Christians could fall away then salvation would rest on our commitment to God rather than his commitment to us. Christians are chosen by grace, and if by grace then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace (Romans 11:5-6).
