Genuine perseverance and assurance are sorely lacking among Christians today. The fruits of perseverance and assurance — the consistent and diligent use of the means of grace, perseverance in heartfelt obedience to God’s will, the desire for fellowship with God, yearn­ing for God’s glory and heaven, love for the church and intercession for revival — all appear to be waning in today’s church.

The need for a biblically based doctrine of perse­verance and assurance is compounded by our culture’s emphasis on feeling. How we feel often takes prece­dence over what we think, know, or believe. This attitude has infiltrated the church. The dramatic growth of the charismatic movement can be attrib­uted to this new emphasis on feeling. The movement offers emotion and excitement to fill the void created by a lack of knowledge of the truth and genuine per­severance and assurance of faith. Today we desperately need rich, doctrinal thinking about perseverance and assurance coupled with vibrant, sanctified living.

What really is “perseverance of the saints” and what is “assurance of faith”? How do perseverance and assurance assist each other in the Christian’s life?

Perseverance of the saints

To answer these questions we must first ask, who are the saints? Many would extend “eternal security” to all baptized persons, or to all who have made decisions for Christ at evangelistic meetings. Scripture and the Reformed Confessions speak only of the perseverance of saints, defined as those “whom God calls, according to his purpose, to the communion of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and regenerates by the Holy Spirit” (Canons of Dort, Fifth Head, Art. 1); and “they whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. XVII, Sec. I). A saint is someone who has been led to faith by the ministry of the Word, engrafted into Christ by the Spirit, regenerated and sanctified. By the preserving grace and faithfulness of the Triune God (1 Cor. 1:8-9), such a person will persevere in true faith, and in the works that proceed from true faith, so long as he or she continues in the world. So Paul at the end of his life could write, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).

Because of God’s central role in perseverance, some theologians want to speak of the preservation of the saints, rather than perseverance. These two notions are closely related, but not the same. The preserving activ­ity of God is the foundation or root of the saints’ perseverance. God preserves His saints. He keeps them in the faith, preserves them from straying from the faith, and ultimately perfects them (1 Pet. 1:5; Jude 24). We may be confident that God will finish the sav­ing work of grace which He has begun in us (Ps. 138:8; Phil. 1:6); Christ is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). Believers are preserved through the intercession of the Lord Jesus (Luke 22:32; John 17:5) and the abiding ministry of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16; 1 John 2:27).

Perseverance itself, however, is the saints’ life-long activity, confessing Christ as Savior (Rom. 10:9), bring­ing forth the fruits of God’s grace (John 15:16), enduring to the end (Matt. 10:22; Heb. 10:28, 29). True believers persevere in the “things that accompany salvation” (Heb. 6:9). God does not deal with them “as unaccountable automatons, but as moral agents,” says A. W. Pink. So believers are active in sanctification (Phil. 2:12). They keep themselves from sin (1 John 5:18). They keep themselves in the love of God (Jude 21). They run with patience the race that is set before them (Heb. 12:1).

Saints are equipped and empowered to do this, of course, by the preserving activity of God at work in them (Phil. 2:13). Without preservation, there can be no perseverance. Thus, perseverance includes and yet extends beyond preservation, underscoring the believer’s activity and responsibility.

Assurance of Faith

Assurance of faith is the conviction that one belongs to Christ through faith and will enjoy everlasting salva­tion. A person who has true assurance not only believes in Christ’s righteousness as his salvation but also knows that he believes, and that he is graciously loved by God.

Such assurance includes freedom from the guilt of sin, joy in communion with the Triune God, and a sense of belonging to the family of God. Assurance is also dynamic, varying according to certain conditions, and capable of deepening in force and growing in fruitfulness. As James W. Alexander said, assurance “carries with it the idea of fullness, such as of a tree laden with fruit, or of a vessel’s sails when stretched by a favouring gale.”

Assurance is known by fruits such as close fellowship with God, childlike obedience, thirsting after God, and longing to glorify Him by carrying out the Great Commission. Assured believers view heaven as their home and long for the second advent of Christ and their translation to glory (2 Tim. 4:6-8).

Assurance, Then Perseverance

The fruits of assurance promote perseverance. “Of the preservation of the elect to salvation and of their per­severance in the faith, true believers for themselves may and do obtain assurance, according to the meas­ure of their faith, whereby they arrive at the certain persuasion that they ever will continue true and living members of the church; and that they experience for­giveness of sins, and will at last inherit eternal life” (Canons of Dort, Fifth Head, Article 9).

The Canons affirm here that believers “may and do” obtain assurance of their perseverance. That assurance, however, is grounded in “the preservation of the elect unto salvation.” Take away those words, and every conscientious believer would despair. For if the believer grounds assurance solely in his own activity, he must confess that he so often fails in his duty to God and to his neighbor, that such activity would more often lead to doubt than to assurance.

By speaking first of God’s election and preservation, the Canons of Dort show that assurance and its fruits are rooted in God’s sovereign grace and promises­ yes, in God Himself. These promises are the foundation of both perseverance and assurance.

Assurance helps the believer persevere, first by encouraging him to rest on the objective ground of God’s sovereign grace and His promises in the gospel; and second, by presenting these as a powerful motive for Christian living. As Puritan Thomas Goodwin said, assurance “makes a man work for God ten times more than before.” It “causes the heart to be more thankful, and more fruitfully and cheerfully obedient; it perfects love, opens and gives vent to a new stream of godly sorrow, adds new motives, enlarges and encourages the heart in prayer, winds up all graces to a new and higher key and strain, causing a spring tide of all” (Works of Goodwin, 1:251; 8:347).

Assurance serves perseverance through sanctification. The Canons of Dort affirm this in the Fifth Head of Doctrine, Article 10, saying that assurance is fostered not only by faith in God’s promises and the witnessing testimony of the Holy Spirit, but also “from a serious and holy desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works.”

Perseverance, Then Assurance

The Westminster Confession of Faith also teaches the close relationship between assurance and perseverance; however, it works from the perseverance of the saints (Chapter 17) to the assurance of grace and salvation (Chapter 18). This order implies several things:

First, perseverance paves the way for assurance. Objective perseverance, rooted in God’s grace, makes possible subjective assurance, rooted in the believer’s conscience. If a person does not believe in the perse­verance of the saints, he cannot know with assurance that he is going to heaven. He may know that he is in a state of grace, but he has no way of knowing whether or not he will fall from that state and utterly perish. Thus, assurance is grounded in the doctrine of perse­verance. As the Dutch theologian, Frans Burmann (1628-1679), wrote,

Upon certainty of perseverance follows certainty of salvation; the latter does not exist without the former. Unless he perseveres, no one is saved. Some wickedly tear them apart and while upholding the certainty of salvation, deny that of per­severance. This is a claim to assert subjective certainty without objective certainty.

Second, perseverance makes the believer confident about a victorious future. As believers persevere in bringing forth fruits of grace, their assurance will grow (WCF, 18.3). They become increasingly confident of victory in Christ and their ultimate homecoming with Him (Rom. 5:1-11). As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The perseverance of the saints is unbreakably connected with the assurance of faith, in which the believer faces the future with confidence not with the idea that all dangers and threats have been removed, but rather with the assurance that they shall be conquered indeed.” Without perseverance, the believer is subject to the daily fear that his own weakness may so betray him as to cause him to forfeit everything Christ has done for him.

Third, perseverance serves as a check and balance to assurance. Those who persist in high levels of obedience will normally enjoy high levels of assurance (cf. WCF, 17.2 to 18.2, 17.3 to 18.4).

Some people claim to maintain a high degree of assurance without manifesting the fruits of assurance, such as obedience. They misconstrue the doctrine of perseverance by saying glibly, “once saved, always saved,” regardless of how they live. Such people are deceiving themselves. The Baptist theologian John Dagg rightly declared, “It is a wretched and fatal per­version if men conclude that, having been once converted, they will be saved, whatever may be their course of life.”

“Once saved, always saved” is only true in the bib­lical sense of the word saved. As Romans 5:21 says, saving grace reigns through righteousness and holiness unto eternal life. The problem with “once saved, always saved,” as taught by men like Robert T. Kendall in his book Once Saved, Always Saved, is that it teaches an incomplete notion of salvation, as if the justification of the sinner were the whole salvation of God, to the exclusion of the “things that accompany salvation,” such as repentance unto life and growth in grace. So Kendall concludes, “All that is required of us in terms of works was provided by Christ.” Kendall asserts that we distort Scripture in saying that a person should aim at godly living either to prove that he is saved or to keep himself saved. Christians should not test their profession by their lives; nothing subjective, apart from faith, can provide evidence of the reality of salvation. This view denies that one impor­tant aspect of assurance is to be able to say, “Yes, I do belong to Christ because I find in myself changes which he alone can work and changes which only his unbought love prompted him to work” (Dabney, Discussions, 1:173ff; cf. WCF, 18.2 and Canons, 5:10). Ultimately, it teaches that faith can function in a vac­uum and that the believer doesn’t need the law as a rule of life. That is the essence of antinomianism (anti=against; nomos=the law).

The Reformed faith has always taught that doctrinal antinomianism is unbiblical, for without holiness, “no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14); and that practical antinomianism, i.e., living lawlessly while claiming grace, is even worse (Rom. 6:1-2). The prac­tical antinomians may profess to believe and be saved, but the fruits of their lives indicate otherwise. Tested by the words of the Lord Jesus, their profession is exposed as false: “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matt. 7:20).

Perseverance of the saints therefore does not mean that everyone who professes to be saved, claims to have received Christ as his Savior, participates in Christian work, and manifests various gifts is “eternally secure” (Matt. 7:21-23). The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches three important truths: the possibility of false assurance and self-deception (18.1), the perse­verance of genuine believers, who can “neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace” (17.1), and the serious consequences of sin. Even for true believers, sin incurs God’s displeasure, grieves the Holy Spirit, diminishes comfort and assurance, hardens the heart, wounds the conscience, hurts others, and brings temporal judgments (17.3).

The Confession is clear. A Christian cannot enjoy assurance while he is disobedient to God. As Anthony Burgess, one of the Westminster Divines, said, “Noth­ing will darken thy soul more than dull, lazy and negligent walking.” If assurance remained steady while obedience faltered, the believer would take for granted the great privilege of salvation through Christ and grow spiritually lazy.

Backsliding destroys assurance, and rightly so. Doubts and fears then prompt fresh desire for renewed assurance. They urge self-examination, repentance, and acts of faith that renew assurance and promote perseverance, moving us to run anew the race that is set before us (Heb. 12). As Thomas Chreiner and Ardel Candeday wrote, “Those who desire assurance while they are turning away from the Lord are like runners who quit running in the middle of the race but inquire of the official if they will still receive a prize for run­ning. Our assurance in the faith is strengthened as we continue to run the race, persevering until the end to receive the prize” (The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance & Assurance, p. 311).

Either Way, It’s by Grace

Heinrich Heppe put it this way, “The other side of the perseverance of believers is the assurance of salvation.” Perseverance and assurance are two sides of one coin. They enrich each other. You cannot persevere in faith without growing in assurance, and you cannot grow in assurance without persevering in faith.

This growth isn’t always easily attained, but it is made possible through God’s grace. “The Scripture moreover testifies that believers in this life have to struggle with various carnal doubts and that under grievous temptations they are not always sensible of this full assurance of faith and certainty of persever­ing. But God, who is the Father of all consolation, does not suffer them to be tempted above that they are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that they may be able to bear it (2 Cor. 10:13), and by the Holy Spirit again inspires them with the comfortable assurance of persevering” (Canons of Dort, Fifth Head, Art. 11).

With this “comfortable assurance of persevering,” we, with John Newton, can sing of God’s “amazing grace”:

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come:
}‘Tis grace that brought me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.

Likewise, we can say with the singer of Psalm 73, who came through a long dark night of struggle to a place of full assurance, both of God’s preservation of him, and of his own perseverance in faith:

In sweet communion, Lord, with Thee
I constantly abide;
My hand Thou holdest in Thy own
to keep me near Thy side.
Thy counsel through my earthly way
shall guide me and control,
And then to glory afterward
Thou wilt receive my soul.