Will you reach your destination if it is conditioned on your perseverance? Someone posted this statement and the brief exchanges took place:
http://www.heartcrymissionary.com/
1) In order to be saved and spend eternity enjoying Gods presence a person must persevere in faith to the end (1 Corinthians 15:2; Colossians 1:22,23; Luke 8:11-15; Matthew 10:22; Mark 13:13; Matthew 24:13; Hebrews 3:14; Romans 11:20-22; 2 Timothy 2:11,12; Revelation).
Sing F Lau
"In order to be saved and spend eternity enjoying Gods presence a person must persevere in faith to the end "
This is a MOST COMMON perversion of the biblical truth of perseverance.
There is very subtle and dangerous shift.
...
God, by His free and sovereign grace, EFFECTUALLY CALLS the elect out of their STATE of sin and death, in which there are by nature, into the STATE of grace and salvation.
A child of God will always in that STATE of grace and salvation - nothing, absolutely nothing can remove him from that STATE into which God's free and sovereign grace has accomplished. The free and sovereign grace that BROUGHT them into that STATE will be the same free and sovereign grace to keep them in that STATE.
The Bible does not say that every true child of God will persevere in faith - i.e. live a LIFE OF FAITH and HOLINESS.
Did Lot persevere to the end? Did Solomon persevere to the end?
Did those who make shipwreck of their faith persevere to the end?
It is true, that the Bible exhorts and commands God's children to pursue holiness and live godly.
It is a serious error to turn that into a statement of fact, and conclude that every child of God will therefore live holy and godly, and that to the end, and therefore whoever does not meet that criteria was never a child of God! This is just a big lie!
God's grace does not guarantee a life of faith and holiness. That's something a child of God must work out for himself with fear and trembling, in obedient response to God's grace working in him.
Shawne
If God through the work of the Holy Spirit changes our dead hearts and effectually calls us out from the world, then we are by definition regenerated. He has made us alive in Christ and will keep us to the end. He will by the spirits work...ing sanctify us until we will be glorified in him in heaven. The faith that we work out is the very faith that he gave to us when we were saved and brought to life. Christ righteousness is and only will be the measure in which the father sees us in Christ. The working out of our faith and holiness is the process that God is working in us in sanctification. Jesus said "All the Father gives me I will lose none". He holds us in his hands for all eternity.
Sing F Lau
"In order to be saved and spend eternity enjoying Gods presence a person must persevere in faith to the end"
This statement appears DAMNABLE because it NOT ONLY conditions the eternal bliss of a man on how well he persevere, BUT ALSO whether he perseveres to the end! It is just a subtle form of Arminianism trying hard to parade itself as Calvinism - and that is the Calvinism is embraced by many today.
Our eternal bliss is from beginning to end wholly, solely and completely purposed, applied, and to be consummated, by the free and sovereign grace of God.
The temporal bliss of God's children is CONDITIONED upon their obedience to the will of the Father.
Among God's children, there many Lots, but there are few Abrahams.
This is addressed to disciples:
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Their manner of discipleship determine whether they find life or destruction here as a pilgrim. This passage has NOTHING to do with eternal salvation, unless they want to make eternal salvation conditional upon how a man live.
Sa-mule
Matthew 24:
"9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
10And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
11And man...y false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
12And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
13But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved."
Seems to me that the grace of God certainly causes the child of God to persevere to the end. Solomon repented (as is evident from Ecclesiastes, and where Scripture tells us that God loved him), and Lot was also preserves (as is evident from his deliverance from Sodom). However, according to the sovereign predestination of God, the generations of both these men departed from the faith (as is evidenced by the abominable act of Lot's wicked daughters, and the division of the kingdom under Rehoboam), and even so, in their generations a remnant were saved (e.g. Ruth the Moabitess, and the godly kings of Judah, such as Hezekiah and Josiah).
All of sanctification is only by God's grace. And since it is of grace, it cannot be conditional - no grace is ever conditional, but solely according to the will of God.
Philippians 2:12-13
"Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."
Our election is obedience through the sanctification of the Spirit, and there is only one election, even though the measure of grace given to each saint may vary - for there are degrees of glory with which the saints will shine in heaven, just as the stars have different degrees of glory. The glory of God that will revealed in us will not be in the same measure as that of the apostles, for example.
I Peter 1:2
"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ:"
Sing F Lau
Sam @ "12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. 13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved."
The love of MANY shall wax cold? Just who are these? By you reckoning, they cannot possibly be God's children... else they will persevere in faith and holiness to the end. Quite obviously they didn't!
In any case, let it be reminded that these texts are Christ's words warning the Jews concerning the impending destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD... and the salvation spoken of was salvation from the destruction that the Roman army would rain upon Jerusalem. So, no eternal salvation spoken of. Their enduring will deliver them from the Romans' swords!
Sam @ "Our election is obedience through the sanctification of the Spirit, and there is only one election" - the sanctification here refers to that DEFINITIVE sanctification, i.e. the Spirit's work of separating an elect from the state of sin and death to that state of grace and salvation.
This sanctification, being wholly and solely the work of God, secures the SAME effects IN EVERY WAY in every elect. It is completed, once for all, in need of no improvement. Nothing will alter it. It is monergistic.
The farther sanctification in the life of those whom the Spirit has definitively sanctified is CONDITIONED upon a whole host of factors...
It is God's grace alone that determined, and made us His children.
How healthy and robust we are as His children is conditioned upon many factors. It is not God's grace that determined some of His children to be strong and robust, and other to be weak and sickly. God's children are help responsible for their well-being as God's children the exhortation towards that end is every where in the Scriptures.
There is this vain notion that every one of God's true children will live a life of faith and holiness.
To read all the exhortations to God' s children that they should persevere in a life of faith and holiness is QUITE DIFFERENT from making the statement that every child of God will persevere in a life of faith and holiness. The Bible declares the former, the Calvinists turn it into the latter - figment of their imagination.
No believer can finally fall from the STATE OF GRACE.
Many believe can finally fall from the faith.
And there is a vast difference between the two.
Confusion arises from the failure to distinguish the two.
