Why Saints Persevere

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

There is a fear that keeps many people back from Christ, and Spurgeon met it constantly. It is not the fear that Christ will refuse them. It is the fear that, having come, they will not last. They have made good starts before. They have had seasons of earnestness that faded like morning mist. What if they trust Christ, and then fall away? In the closing chapters of All of Grace Spurgeon turns to this fear, and his answer is one of the most comforting things he ever wrote.

The fear that fulfils itself

He begins with a sharp observation. He believes, he says, that this fear is often the father of the fact. Some who were afraid to trust Christ for all of time did fall away — not because Christ failed them, but because they only half trusted Him. They looked to Him for the beginning and to themselves for the continuing, and so they set out on a faulty foundation. “If we trust to ourselves for our holding on we shall not hold on.”

This is a profound pastoral insight. Many Christians believe that God saved them by grace and now expect to keep themselves saved by effort. They live anxiously, measuring their spiritual temperature, afraid that a bad month might undo everything. Spurgeon says that this is to mix self with the mortar, and it will not hold. “If you look to Christ for your beginnings,” he writes, “beware of looking to yourself for your endings.” He is Alpha; make Him Omega also.

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? GALATIANS 3:3

God is faithful

Where, then, does the believer’s security lie? Spurgeon takes his answer from Paul’s words to the Corinthians: God is faithful, by whom ye were called. Notice, he says, what Paul does not say. He does not say, you are faithful. The faithfulness of man is a very unreliable affair. We are, in Spurgeon’s words, “variable as the wind, frail as a spider’s web, weak as water.” Nor does Paul say that they have faithful ministers to keep them. If we are kept by men, we shall be ill kept.

God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 CORINTHIANS 1:9

God is faithful to His love, which does not vary. He is faithful to His purpose, and does not begin a work and leave it undone. He is faithful as a Father who will not disown His children, and as a Creator who will not abandon the work of His hands. He is faithful to His covenant, sealed with the blood of His Son, and He will not let that blood be shed in vain. This, Spurgeon says, is the cornerstone of the whole doctrine: “The saints shall persevere in holiness, because God perseveres in grace.”

He adds, with evident pleasure, that this fits the title of his little book. Salvation is all of grace — free favour rings in its dawn, and the same bells sound through the whole of its day.

What God has already done

Spurgeon’s second argument is from what God has already done. He has called His people into the fellowship of His Son, and that call is not reversible. Paul’s chain in Romans 8 has no broken links: those He called, He justified, and those He justified, He glorified.

For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. ROMANS 11:29

He makes the same point in an earlier chapter about the new heart. When God takes away the heart of stone, the deed is done. Human reformations wear off; the dog returns to its vomit. But when God gives a new heart, it will not harden into stone again. He who made it flesh will keep it so.

And behind the call stands the eternal love that chose, the blood that bought, and the intercession of the living Christ.

Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. HEBREWS 7:25

Perseverance, not presumption

It would be easy to hear this as a licence for carelessness: once saved, always saved, so live as you like. Spurgeon abhorred that conclusion. The doctrine is the perseverance of the saints, not the preservation of people who once raised a hand and have shown no sign of grace since. The saints persevere in holiness. A person who claims to be secure while living in unrepentant sin has no warrant from this teaching for his confidence. He may never have been converted at all.

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. 1 JOHN 2:19

Spurgeon also took the warnings of Scripture seriously. He did not explain them away. He believed God uses the warnings as one of the means by which He keeps His people from falling. The believer who trembles at Hebrews 6 and flees to Christ is being preserved by that very trembling.

For those who read it differently

Many devout Christians in the Wesleyan and other traditions believe that a true believer can finally fall away, and they read the warning passages in that light. Spurgeon was blunt about his disagreement. In his early sermon Christ Crucified he declares that he cannot comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called. Readers of other traditions will not be persuaded by his vehemence, and need not be. But they may still profit from his central point, which almost every Christian shares in practice: that our hope of reaching heaven rests on Christ’s hold of us, not on ours of Him. Every believer who prays Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil is already confessing it.

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. JUDE 1:24

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask honestly whether you are trusting Christ for your beginning and yourself for your ending. What would change if you trusted Him for both?

2. Read Romans 8:28–39 aloud, and note every link in the chain that is God’s work rather than yours.

3. If you have been living anxiously, measuring your spiritual temperature, stop for a week. Look instead at the faithfulness of God.

4. If you have been presuming on grace while tolerating sin, let 1 John 2:19 search you, and return to Christ today.

5. Write out Jude 24–25 and pray it over yourself and one other believer who is struggling.

A PRAYER

Faithful God, I am variable as the wind and weak as water, and if my holding on depended on me, I would not hold on.

But You called me into the fellowship of Your Son, and You do not take back Your calling.

Keep me from careless presumption and from anxious self-reliance. Let me rest my whole hope, first to last, on You.

You began this good work. Finish it, and present me faultless before Your glory with exceeding joy. Amen.