Baptist Theology and Distinctive Doctrines — Unit 9: The Security of the Believer and Perseverance

Key Verse

"And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand." (John 10:28, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. State the question of security and define eternal security and perseverance of the saints.

2. Describe the Free Will Baptist view fairly, with its main texts and its pastoral concern.

3. Give the biblical case for the security of the believer.

4. Explain how Baptists who hold security understand the warning passages, especially Hebrews 6.

5. Explain how security, perseverance and assurance fit together, and apply them in pastoral care.

The Voice of This Unit

This unit is written from inside the Baptist tradition, for Baptist students. It is conservative and evangelical. In Unit 8 the course set out two views without choosing. On this question the course does take a position. It follows the larger body of conservative Baptists today, who teach the eternal security of the believer, as the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) does. We state the other Baptist view first and fairly, as its holders would state it. Free Will Baptists are brothers who love the Bible and who preach the gospel at great cost. Their view is an honorable Baptist position, and it is answered here with respect.

Scripture says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

The Question

If a person is truly saved, can he lose his salvation? Baptists have given three answers.

Perseverance of the saints. This is the teaching of the Particular Baptists. The Second London Confession (1689) has a chapter on it. God preserves all whom He has saved, and they will continue in faith to the end. Their continuing is itself God's gift and proves the reality of their faith.

Eternal security. This is the teaching of most Southern Baptists and many other Baptists. It is sometimes called by the popular shorthand "once saved, always saved." The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Article V, teaches that true believers endure to the end, and that those whom God has accepted in Christ will not fall away finally from the state of grace. Many who hold this view do not accept the Reformed doctrine of election in Unit 8. Both Reformed and Traditional Baptists agree on the security of the believer.

Conditional security. This is the teaching of Free Will Baptists. A believer is kept by God's power as long as he continues in faith, but he may turn from Christ and be lost.

The first two views are closely related. The New Hampshire Confession (1833) also has an article on the perseverance of the saints. The third view is different.

The Free Will Baptist View, Stated Fairly

Free Will Baptists hold salvation by grace through faith alone, just as the other groups do. They do not teach that a believer is saved by good works, or that he loses salvation by a sin of weakness or a time of doubt. Their teaching is that the believer's relation to Christ is a living relation of faith, and that faith can be abandoned. The believer is secure in Christ, and he remains secure as long as he remains in Christ. They stress that God's keeping is "through faith" (1 Peter 1:5), and that faith is something a person continues in.

They find support in many warnings. Their chief passages are these.

• Hebrews 6:4-6, which speaks of people who were enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, shared in the Holy Spirit, and then fell away, so that it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.

• Hebrews 10:26-29, which warns of judgment on those who go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth.

• John 15:1-6, where Jesus says that branches in Him that do not bear fruit are taken away, and that if anyone does not abide in Him he is cast out as a branch and withers.

• Colossians 1:21-23, where reconciliation is "if indeed you continue in the faith."

• 1 Timothy 4:1, where some will depart from the faith.

• 2 Peter 2:20-22, which speaks of those who escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and were again entangled.

• Galatians 5:4, where those who seek to be justified by law have fallen from grace.

Their pastoral concern is serious. They fear that to teach unconditional security may lead careless persons to rest in an old decision while living in sin. They say the warnings of Scripture would be empty if they could not be carried out. Those who fall away, they teach, can return by repentance, for God is merciful, and the door is open.

The Case for the Security of the Believer

We hold that Scripture teaches that those whom God has truly saved are kept by Him and will be saved forever. We give reasons.

1. God's promises and God's power

Jesus said of His sheep, "they shall never perish," and that no one can snatch them out of His hand or the Father's hand (John 10:27-30). He said that He will lose none of all that the Father has given Him, but raise them up at the last day (John 6:37-40). Paul asks who can bring a charge against God's elect, and then declares that nothing in creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Romans 8:33-39). Paul is "confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). Peter says believers are "kept by the power of God through faith for salvation" (1 Peter 1:5), and Jude closes by praising Him who is able to keep us from stumbling (Jude 24). The Lord who began the work will finish it.

2. The nature of salvation

The Bible calls the new life eternal life. If it can end, it is not eternal. The new birth comes from imperishable seed (1 Peter 1:23). Justification is a verdict, and Paul says there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Adoption does not end when a child misbehaves. The Spirit is the seal and the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of God's own possession (Ephesians 1:13-14; 4:30). Christ lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25), and His prayer does not fail.

3. Salvation is by grace, not by our ability to hold on

If we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), we cannot be kept by our own strength. Paul asks the Galatians whether, having begun in the Spirit, they are now made perfect by the flesh (Galatians 3:3). To say that God saves us but our own endurance keeps us would come close to making the end of salvation a work. We are kept by the same grace that saved us.

How Baptists Who Hold Security Read the Warnings

The warnings in Scripture are real and serious, and the Baptist who believes in security does not set them aside. There are several accepted ways of reading them, and Baptists differ on which to choose in each passage.

The warnings describe those who are not truly regenerate. The Bible knows many who seemed to follow Christ but were not His. Judas had left the upper room before Jesus spoke of the vine in John 15 (John 13:30). Simon the magician "believed" and was baptized, yet Peter said his heart was not right (Acts 8:13-23). John writes, "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (1 John 2:19), and says that if they had been of us they would have continued. Persevering is the proof of reality, not the price of it. On this reading, the branches in John 15 that are taken away are branches that never bore life. In 2 Peter 2:22 the proverb of the dog and the sow suggests that the nature had not changed.

The warnings are the means God uses to keep His people. God keeps believers by working through their faith and through the warnings of Scripture. A father who warns his child away from a cliff does not expect the child to fall. The warnings are not a sign that the child may be lost, but the way the father keeps him. Hebrews 6:9 expresses this: the writer is persuaded of better things for his readers, "things that accompany salvation."

Some warnings concern loss of reward or severe discipline rather than loss of salvation. Paul says that a man's work may be burned up and "he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15), and that a sinning member may be delivered to Satan "that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (1 Corinthians 5:5). God disciplines His children, as sons (Hebrews 12:5-11), and some at Corinth became sick or died for abusing the Supper (1 Corinthians 11:30-32).

Some passages are not about loss of grace at all. Galatians 5:4 addresses those who return to the law as a way of justification. They have left the sphere of grace as their ground of confidence. Paul still addresses them as brothers and hopes for their return.

Hebrews 6 is the hardest of these passages. Baptists who believe in security have explained it in different ways: as a description of professing but unregenerate persons, as a warning about a hypothetical danger, or as a warning about the folly of turning back from Christ to the old covenant sacrifices. We should admit that it is hard, and honor those who have wrestled with it. It does not outweigh the plain promises of the Good Shepherd.

Security, Perseverance and Assurance

These three words are related but not the same.

Security is God's side: He keeps those who are His.

Perseverance is the believer's side: he continues in faith and in obedience. Perseverance is not perfection. Believers can fall into serious sin, as David and Peter did. But they do not remain there. David repented (Psalm 51), and the Lord restored Peter (John 21:15-19). God disciplines and brings back His own.

Assurance is the believer's confidence that he is saved. John wrote his first letter "that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13). Peter urges us to be diligent to make our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10). Assurance rests first on God's promise in Christ, and then on the evidence of a changed life, love for the brothers, and the witness of the Spirit (Romans 8:16; 1 John 3:14).

Objections and Answers

Objection 1 (Free Will): The doctrine of security leads to careless living. A man could say, "I am saved," and live in sin.

Our answer. Paul meets this directly in Romans 6:1-2: shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. Grace teaches us to deny ungodliness (Titus 2:11-12). A person who lives in unbroken, unrepentant sin without sorrow has no ground to say he is saved, whatever decision he made long ago. We do not teach "once prayed, always saved." We teach that once a person is truly born again, God keeps him, and that the new birth shows itself in fruit. The same Bible that promises security commands self-examination (2 Corinthians 13:5).

Objection 2 (Free Will): If God keeps the believer no matter what, the believer's will is overridden, and his freedom is taken away.

Our answer. God does not drag believers against their will. He works in them "both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13), so that they continue willingly. A man who is kept by the love of Christ does not want to leave it. What God keeps is a renewed will.

Objection 3 (Free Will): Your reading of the warnings makes them unreal.

Our answer. They are not unreal. They are the means by which God keeps His people awake, they expose the false, and they call everyone who professes Christ to examine his faith. A warning can be real and also be the means of the very preservation that God promises.

Objection 4 (Reformed or other critics): Some people who seem to be believers fall away completely. This shows that security is false.

Our answer. When someone falls away completely and permanently, we conclude with 1 John 2:19 that his faith was not saving, though no one can see the heart. Only God knows. Until the end, we call the wanderer to repent, because we do not know whether he is a straying child or one who never knew the Father.

Pastoral Application

A mother comes to her pastor in tears. Her son made a profession of faith and was baptized at twelve. Now at twenty-five he lives far from home, mocks the faith, and lives openly in sin. She asks: "Is my son lost? Was it all false?"

First, the pastor listens and does not hurry to give a verdict. He cannot see the young man's heart, and neither can she.

Second, he does not offer false comfort. He does not say, "He is saved because he prayed a prayer." He says that the Bible teaches that true believers are kept by God, and that a life of continued rebellion is a reason for serious concern.

Third, he gives her hope in God's character. The Good Shepherd seeks the wandering sheep (Luke 15:4-7). He reminds her that God disciplines His own children and that the prodigal son came home. God can and does bring back His own.

Fourth, he points her to action: prayer, a faithful and loving contact with her son, and a clear invitation to him to repent and trust Christ, whatever his past decision. He asks the church to pray with her.

Fifth, he teaches the church that this is why we preach the whole gospel, with both the promises and the warnings.

Summary

Baptists give three answers to the question of whether a believer can be lost: perseverance of the saints (Particular Baptists), eternal security (most Southern Baptists and others), and conditional security (Free Will Baptists). Free Will Baptists hold salvation by grace through faith but teach that a believer may fall away by abandoning faith, and they cite Hebrews 6, Hebrews 10, John 15, Colossians 1 and other warnings. This course follows the larger body of conservative Baptists and teaches security, for three reasons: the promises and power of God (John 10:28; Romans 8:38-39; Philippians 1:6), the nature of eternal life, and the fact that salvation is by grace. The warnings are answered in four ways: they describe the unregenerate, they are the means of preservation, some concern reward or discipline, and some do not concern loss of grace. Security is God's keeping, perseverance is the believer's continuing, and assurance is his confidence. Security is no license for sin, and the pastor teaches both promise and warning.

Further Reading

• The Second London Confession (1689), chapter on the perseverance of the saints.

• The New Hampshire Confession (1833), the article on the perseverance of the saints.

• The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Article V.

• The Free Will Baptist Treatise, for the Free Will Baptist view.

• John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857).

• Garrett, Baptist Theology (2009).

• Hobbs, The Baptist Faith and Message (1971).

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