ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED (3)
The “once saved always saved” doctrine does not rest on some texts like John 10:28 which says Christ’s sheep will never perish or be plucked out of Jesus’ protection. Certainly the text is used to support the doctrine but the arguments go on about the identity of his sheep (they are those who continue to hear his voice and follow him) and if “sheep” (a metaphor for a follower) can cease to be what the metaphor stands for.
No, the “once saved always saved doctrine” is one essential element in a theological construct and system. Joseph Henry Meeter taught the system for more than thirty years and insisted that you either take the entire Calvinistic system or you reject it all. He was absolutely right!
The teachers of “once saved always saved” teach it because they believe other things that compel them to believe “once saved always saved”.
Here’s how it works as seen in people like Augustine, Calvin and their modern popular students like Piper.
Since it’s the very essence of “Godship” that nothing…nothing…nothing outside himself in any way shapes his will and purpose then salvation and damnation have nothing whatever to do with humans and how they might or do respond to God. Their destiny is already fixed before ever they were created.
[If a man fathered a large number of children purposing to bless and protect a few and push the rest out on to the prolonged misery of the street, and then in fact carried out his purpose, we’d despise him for the villain he is.] It’s hardly surprising, then, that it’s only when they’re pressed that Calvin and his followers talk about what they say God did and is doing to multiple billions of humans whose fate he changelessly decided and sealed without their knowledge and completely apart from anything they would think or do (WC, 6). In Calvinism, of course, people only think and do what God foreordained that they think and do.
These Calvinists want to stress how “gracious” God is to give some humans eternal life and blessedness despite the fact that he is arbitrarily graceless to countless of their fellows. It’s a bit like praising the father mentioned above as “gracious” even though he ordains and damns the majority of his helpless children to lifelong misery. Oh well.
But that is the essential prologue to the main agenda. The main Calvinistic agenda deals with an existing sinful human family that is in dire need of salvation. How does it come that the human family is sinful and commits an endless stream of specific sins? The Calvinistic answer is that God foreordained it. The Westminster Confession (3.1) puts it like this:
“God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”
Choke on that for a while. God unchangeably foreordained whatever comes to pass so he unchangeably foreordained human sin. It isn’t that he merely knew that we would sin and acted in response to his foreknowledge—he foreknew we would because he foreordained that we would. Here’s how the Westminster Confession puts it:
“Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”
God unchangeably ordained Adam and Eve to sin before they were created and what he willed he brought to pass. Because Adam and Eve were the root of humanity we’re told that God imputed “the guilt of this sin” to the entire human family.
But more than “guilt” was involved. We’re told that in that sin Adam became morally corrupt and that that moral corruption is passed on to all humans in and at their birth. The ethical and moral corruption is so pervasive and imbedded that when we are born “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” (Westminster
It is from this original corruption that all specific sins proceed (WC) but since we were born spiritually dead in Adam’s sin and since we inherited a nature so corrupt that we are opposite to all that’s good and entirely inclined to all that’s evil, everything—without exception—we do or choose or think is corrupt and sinful.
A human family like that is in dire need of saving and cannot even think of wanting to be right with God. God decided to bring the human family into existence via Adam, decided that it should fall in Adam, decided that it should be guilty by Adam’s sin, decided that it should be absolutely corrupted via Adam so that it could want no good thing and want only evil.
Out of those sinful billions he would create, God purposed to give the gift of eternal life to some and eternally torture the rest. But how could he give eternal life to corrupt and impenitent lovers of evil who had “earned” nothing but destruction and eternal misery? If they were to be brought to eternal salvation and life their “guilt” would have to be taken care of (enter penal substitution). But their guilt couldn’t be obliterated if they remained in utter evil, holding God in contempt and since they couldn’t and wouldn’t change themselves God would have to do it. That’s where “prevenient grace” enters. God extends prevenient grace to that lucky group he elected before he created the world and it is such grace that it cannot be resisted. (In the T.U.L.I.P acronym that summarizes Calvinism it is called “irresistible grace”.)
God’s grace has to be irresistible here because otherwise no one will receive it because they’re incapable of receiving it. So if it isn’t irresistible no one would be saved. But if this saving grace is irresistible then the one God moves on will come to Jesus, he will be made to love Jesus; when God does to him what he does, the person will want to love Jesus.
It’s clear from this teaching that in some way God can make a person love Jesus without violating his humanness or over-riding his capacity to choose. [Of course, if he could do it for one he could do it for all his human children. Why would he not do it for all of them? Many have told me that God doesn’t “owe” anyone anything and if he chooses not to be gracious to us all that’s his right. They say there’s nothing “unjust” about it since we’ve all “earned” damnation and he is gracious to allow any of us in. I take it then that if he had chosen to show grace to none of us we should still think him to be a gracious God. Oh well; I suppose that’ll satisfy some people.]
Meanwhile, back at God’s saving purpose. We’re told, since God unchangeably ordained to bring some sinners to eternal life with himself and had Jesus come to die for that very purpose and since God’s unchangeable will cannot be thwarted those he set his grace on will come to him and will gain eternal life that issues in glory and immortality.
This means that a person whom God has set his grace on before the world began cannot resist that grace either in coming to him or staying with him. He cannot keep from being saved and he cannot so act as to be finally lost. If he could keep from being saved when God wanted him saved then God is not truly Almighty God. If Jesus died for a specific number of “elect” (WC: 3.4) on whom God set his grace before the world began we can’t have one of them defying God and succeeding to be lost. If Jesus died to take all the elect to glory and immortality we cannot have some of them thwarting God by finally missing it.
So in working with the “once saved always saved” doctrine it isn’t just a matter of arguing about certain specific texts.
(To be continued, God enabling.)
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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