Perseverance of The Saints - Reformed Doctrine

Reformed Doctrine

The Five Points of Calvinism
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints

The Reformed tradition has consistently seen the doctrine of perseverance as a natural consequence to predestination. According to Calvinists, since God has drawn the elect to faith in Christ by regenerating their hearts and convincing them of their sins, and thus saving their souls by His own work and power, it naturally follows that they will be kept by the same power to the end. Since God has made satisfaction for the sins of the elect, they can no longer be condemned for them, and through the help of the Holy Spirit, they must necessarily persevere as Christians and in the end be saved. Calvinists believe this is what Peter is teaching in 1st Peter 1, verse 5 when he says, that true believers are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation". Outside Calvinist denominations this doctrine is widely considered to be flawed.

Calvinists also believe that all who are born again and justified before God necessarily and inexorably proceed to sanctification. Failure to proceed to sanctification in their view is considered by some as evidence that the person in question was never truly saved to begin with. Proponents of this doctrine distinguish between an action and the consequences of an action, and suggest that after God has regenerated someone, the person's will has been changed, that "old things pass away" and "all things are become new", as it is written in the Bible, and he or she will therefore persevere in the faith.

The Westminster Confession of Faith has defined perseverance as follows:

They whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved. ─Westminster Confession of Faith (chap. 17, sec. 1).

This definition does not deny the possibility of failings in one's Christian experience, because the Confession also says:

Nevertheless may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and for a time continue therein; whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve his Holy Spirit: come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts; have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves (sec. 3).

Theologian Charles Hodge summarizes the thrust of the Calvinist doctrine:

Perseverance…is due to the purpose of God, to the work of Christ, to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and to the primal source of all, the infinite, mysterious, and immutable love of God.

On a practical level, Calvinists do not claim to know who is elect and who is not, and the only guide they have is the verbal testimony and good works (or "fruit") of each individual. Any who "fall away" (that is, do not persevere in the Christian faith until death) is assumed not to have been truly converted to begin with, though Calvinists do not claim to know with certainty who did and who did not persevere.

Essentially, Reformed doctrine believes that the same God whose power justified the Christian believer is also at work in the continued sanctification of that believer. As Philippians 2:13 says, "It is God who is at work in you, both to will and work for His good pleasure."

Thus, all who are truly born again are kept by God the Father for Jesus Christ, and can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace, but will persevere in their faith to the end, and be eternally saved. While Reformed theologians acknowledge that true believers at times will fall into sin, they maintain that a real believer in Jesus Christ cannot abandon one's own personal faith to the dominion of sin. They base their understanding on key scriptural passages such as Christ's words, "By their fruit you will know them" and "He that endures to the end will be saved." Similarly, a passage in 1 John says, "This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God." The person who has truly been made righteous in Jesus Christ did not simply have faith at some point in life, but continues to live in that faith ("the righteous will live by faith." This view understands that the security of believers is inseparable from their perseverance in the faith.