Perseverance of the Saints

God the preaching of thy word with the blessing of thy spirit granted insofar as it is true It shall be undergirded by thy power And so far as it is false that shall be quickly forgotten and do no harm In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit Amen Men used to argue About whether a man who was once saved was always saved. They disputed about the possibility of falling from grace. Today, such a question is remote from human experience, and we dismiss these questions as the peculiarity of a religious age. The remoteness of this question underscores our two-fold problem. On the one hand, we have the problem of the disparity between human experience in the 20th century and Christian faith as we have known it. When men debate about the death of God, other questions become trivial.

The Unfortunate Name of the Doctrine

But on the other hand we have the problem of the meaning of the faith itself. What does Christian faith mean for those of us who stand within the circle of faith within the church? This morning we shall deal with this internal problem of faith, in particular with the doctrine that our forefathers call the perseverance of the saints, and with the question about which they debated. If a man is once saved, is he always saved? The name of this doctrine is unfortunate, the perseverance of the saints. The word seems to suggest something about man and what man is going to do. Well, things ought to persevere. Most of us ought to persevere a great deal more than we do. But the perseverance of the saints is not about man, but about God and what God does.

The whole matter is set out in the words of Paul to the Philippians that are our text. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling or it is God that works in you both to will and to work. It is good pleasure. Historically and psychologically salvation is 100% the work of man. It is is what man does. But it is also 100% the work of God. And this morning our concern is with salvation as God's word. For God is at work in you both to will and to work is good pleasure. Let us now note three areas of life for which this affirmation of Paul has significance in everyday living and in everyday experience. And the first is the light that these words of Paul throw upon the inequities of human existence. A friend tells how his withered mother during the dark days of the depression hung a calendar beside the fireplace with this inscription, I can but trust that good shall fall at last far off, at last to all, as every one of changes to spray.

Now some, especially those who did not now the dark and difficult days of the depression, they dismissed this verse to sentimental nonsense, but in my judgment it was more in this home of faith and devotion. It was the expression of the hope and of the conviction that God some day and in some way would overcome the inequities of human existence, the hope that this lack of correlation between faith and goodness and trust and the actualities of life was not the final and permanent state of things. The inequities of life are a very troublesome problem for those of us who believe in God. The recollection of the brutality of the concentration camp is part of the death of God literature. The thesis is that the grim brutality of the concentration camp is a reality in our world that must be taken seriously in searching for the meaning and significance of the world in which we lived.

If there is a god, why was he silent? Why did he do nothing? While six million Jews were liquidated, much of contemporary atheism is rooted in the inequities and the absurdities that we continually discover in the everyday experience of life. We have to ask, what did the Psalmist mean when he wrote, a thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand but it will not come near you for he will give his angels charge of you to God you and all your way on their hands they will bear you up lest you dash your foot against the stone well in any literal sense it just isn't true it's not true in Vietnam, the incredible, horrible fact is that good boys who trust God are killed every day in Vietnam. And it's not true in the common experience of our life in North Carolina.

There simply is no easy correlation between goodness and one's fate in this world. And if anyone has not learned that, he will learn it sooner enough. Therefore, we have to set beside this word of the psalmist, the words of Jesus. Do you think he was asked that these Galileans were sinners, or worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered so? I tell you no, he said. There is no simple correlation between goodness and happiness, between faith and one's fate in this world. At best, there is only a relative correlation between goodness and happiness, between faith and one's fate in this world. A man who leads the dissolute life usually suffers a consequence, and goodness has its rewards, but there is no final equalization. This is a brute fact.

There was no final equalization in human history for the victims of Nazi concentration camps, there is no final equalization in human history for the dead in Vietnam. But the Psalmist was unwilling to acquiesce in the inequities of life before the rugged facts of existence. He starts to express his conviction that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus and this morning you and I are united by the conviction that ultimate reality is revealed not in the concentration camp but in the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord and therefore we set over against the inequities of existence the words of Paul for God is at work in you both to will and to work his good pleasure. Here is express the faith that this lack of correlation between goodness and happiness, between faith and the actualities of life, is not the final state of things.

Significance for Personal Salvation

We cannot this morning evade the cold and brutal facts of life, but we do express our faith that if we can have Romans 8, 28, Luke 24, and a mighty fortress is our God. We shall stand amid the facts and face the future with confidence and with great courage. Now let us come a step further and note that this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints has significance in the realm of personal salvation. It has of course been the basis of many foolish arguments about whether a man who was once saved is always saved, about the possibility of falling from grace. But this doctrine is not so much a boast, not so much an argument, as it is a confession, a prayer, a hope, that once a man has known God's grace, he shall never finally lose it. We can't at least say that it is a fact of experience, that once a man has stood within the circle of faith, he is always the man who has stood within that cycle, no matter what he does.

No matter what happens to him, he is always the man who at one point in his life has known the grace and the presence of God. Now no one can argue in an abstract and theoretical way that this experience is a simple and is a guarantee of a particular outcome of a man's life. Nevertheless, the indelibility of this experience of having once stood within the circle of faith has a significance that is far-reaching. In one of Dostoevsky's novels, Yvonne exclaimed, one good memory is perhaps the best education. And today we can say one memory of the experience of God's grace and presence is the best assurance that we have for the future. This becomes very clear, it seems to me, in those dark nights of the soul when faith fades, when God is absent.

Application in Christian Nurture

In these moments, we know that faith is no simple human achievement, but we know also that the experience of having known God's presence is indelible, and we have the hope, and we utter the prayer that the God who has worked within us will bring to completion that which he has begun, and this doctrine has its application in Christian nurture. No one can guarantee the outcome of the baptism of a little child, and no one can guarantee the outcome of nurture in the Christian home and in the fellowship of the Christian church. But again, baptism and Christian nurture are indelible experiences. No matter how violently a teenager or young adult may rebel against and seek to deny the fact he is always the person who is no life within the Christian community.

Two-thirds of university students in our day we are told are in rebellion and in particular in rebellion against the faith in which they were read. But this morning I think it is safe for us to say that in the end that against which they rebelled is likely to be more significant in shaping their future than their rebellion. Having known the grace in the presence of God, we dare in dark and difficult moments in our own lives and in the lives of those whom we love to utter the prayer and to express the hope that God who has begun a good work within us will bring it to completion beyond our imagines. And now let us know the third area in which this doctrine has significance. The word of Paul has its application to world history. After all, what is the faith and the significance of the human history of which we are a part?

This universe, at least in the present episode of its existence, has been here for four, five billion years man has been around breath for 20 million years. Is man's history in the universe simply an accident? A chance happening shall man someday disappear from this planet, leaving no living memory that he ever was. As one of the poets of darkness has put it, Praise ye from your heart the unmindfulness of heaven, since it, no it not, either your name or your face. No one knoweth if you still are. Praise ye the cold, the darkness, and corruption. Look beyond. If he is you not one just, unmoved, you may do your dying. This is one possible faith in our world. But it is a faith too frightful to contemplate. And more significantly, it is a faith that does violence to our experience of the love of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and to our experience of the meaningfulness and the significance of human life and experience.

And this morning, we affirm that there is another faith. It is a faith that was embodied in the vision of Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit scientist and priest, whose works were not allowed publication by his church until after his death. Teilhard saw in a great vision that God had been at work from the primeval sludge to the appearance of man who can think and who knows that he can think and who therefore works with God in moving toward the Omega point when God's purposes shall be fulfilled. Teilhard did not know how God's purposes would be fulfilled. He did not know how everything fits together, Even while he was giving written expression to his faith, he suffered bitterly during the Japanese invasion of China. The important point is that he had a great vision of God at work in his world fulfilling his purpose.

And this is the important point for us. A vision of God at work in the confused and sometimes terrifying history of our time, fulfilling his eternal purposes, and we ought not to overestimate our ignorance of those purposes. We have seen Jesus Christ and it is our faith that he stands at the end of our history. It is somewhat as though we were at a football game and the first quarter and knew the final score. We know what stands at the end of history and we know that every deed done and every word spoken for humanity, for truth, for love, for the dignity of human existence is part of God's purposes for all mankind. For God is work in you both the will and the work is good pleasure. Now two protests may be made to what I've said. One is that we live in a desperate day when life is short.

Two Protests Considered

Will not this trust that God is going to work out his purpose is undercut our human efforts? Have we not been reminded from Karl Marx to John Dewey, and men are encouraged to endure injustice by the promise of high in the sky by and by. If this is a danger, then we have to recollect the first part of the text, work out your own salvation. But this morning, our point is that we need also to be delivered from a sort of frenzy, A sort of fanaticism that hurries too much, that takes too many shortcuts, that destroys our patience. The Bible speaks about the long suffering, the patience of God. God put a sign upon Cain when impatient men wished to kill him. gave to Cain. Space and time, that impatient man were unwilling to allow him. Patience is his willingness to give to us space and time that we do not deserve for the working out of his divine purposes.

One quality of the Christian life in our time must surely be patience. Patience with the working out of the divine purposes and the revolutionary history of our day and patients with the working out of the divine purposes in individual lives. The old doctrine of the perseverance of the saints gave to us a foundation for patience, for power, for freedom from frenzy and fanaticism that we need very much today. And a second protest is the question, is this faith, is this faith that God is working out his purpose as possible in our world in the face of the facts of human existence? Can we really believe that God will work out his purposes in individual lives and in human history? Well an answer we can say that every act of belief involves a decision about what in human experience is to be taken as the criterion of what is real and true and lasting.

Saved by Hope, Faith, and Love

And this conviction that we have, that God is going to fulfill his purposes in individual lives and in human history, is based upon our experience of God's presence in Jesus Christ. And on the basis of this experience, perhaps the leading experience, we dare to affirm that he shall complete that which is the God. This is the faith that distinguishes the Christian from the humanist, from the good man. The humanist, the good man, the Christian act very much alike, but the Christian believes that what he does is underguarded by the ultimate power in the universe. The conclusion of the whole matter is the perseverance of the saints is far from being a boast about what any man or church is going to do. The perseverance of the saints is the conviction that the purposes to which we have committed our lives are undergirded by the power of the eternal God who made heaven and earth.

And this is our hope of salvation. Reinhold Niebuhr, in very remarkable words, has put it very well. Nothing, he says, that is worth doing can ever be done in one lifetime. therefore we are saved by hope. Nothing that is true and good and beautiful ever makes complete sense in any particular historical context, therefore we are saved by faith. Nothing we do have a virtuous can ever be done alone, and therefore we are saved by love, but in the end there is no faith, no hope, and no enduring love. Apart from God, did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing. Let goods and kindred go. This mortal life, also, the body they may kill, God's truth, abide it still. His kingdom is forever. Amen. Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the communion of the Holy Spirit, abide with each one forever.