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Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea; and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he taught them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it had not much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil; and when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold … The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown; when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word which is sown in them. And these in like manner are the ones sown upon rocky ground, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”(1)
This passage from St.Mark’s gospel is one of the most famous and enlightening of Jesus’ parables. Its meaning is very adequately exposed here by Jesus and any further attempt to elaborate upon it would be unnecessary, even unhelpful. My interest with it here is rather that it is a passage from the Bible which can sometimes concern a Christian who can be anxious as to whether he(2) will persist in the faith, or whether he will perhaps end up falling away as result of worldly desires, severe persecution or even having the truth stolen from him by Satan. Other Biblical texts, such as the solemn warnings against apostasy(3) and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit(4), seem to reinforce these concerns. Indeed, there are a number of recorded cases which seem to confirm the real, urgent nature of these warnings(5).
Is a Christian then, in light of passages such as this, able to have any sort of security as to his final fate, or must he be continually worried by the possibility of his falling from his position of grace? I believe, in spite of these passages alluded to above, that he indeed can. My argument is based on the following section of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans:
And we know that God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed into the likeness of His Son, that he might be firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified(6).
I believe this section explains how, before time (or rather outside time (7) ), God, in some mysterious way, already knew the nature of each person’s spirit; whether or not he would follow in His way. Thus then, knowing this, he was able, without any loss of free will, to predestine the lives of those He knew would love Him so that they would finally be justified and glorified. What God has predestined must come to pass; as it is written, “Who can oppose Him, He does whatever He pleases.” (8) Hence, those who truly love God, and have chosen to follow Him, have no need to fear; they will not, cannot and indeed will never want to turn their hearts completely away from God. They will end up being drawn inexorably into God’s saving grace and the eternal life this brings.
St. Paul seems to reinforce this argument in the following passage of his second letter to the Corinthians:
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (9&10)
The corollary of this passage is that a true Christian (one who truly loves and accepts in his deepest heart the risen Christ as his one redeemer from his sin and will confess the fact(11)) cannot possibly fall away from salvation as they are continuously being transformed into God’s likeness. (The obvious difficulty of marrying the concept of a Christian committing an act of sin and still at that moment being transformed into the likeness of a sinless Christ I will try to deal with later.)
The Bible often uses the terms ‘the elect’ or ‘the chosen ones’ to describe those who are saved12. The absolute certainty of the elect’s final state of glory can be gleaned from a verse from Jesus’ apocalyptic vision recalled in the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark:
For false prophets and deceivers will appear and perform great miracles to deceive even the elect, if that were possible.(13)
In a similar way to the opening parable, a Christian can worry when faced with these passages, despite a belief that he truly loves God, as to whether he is among those elected. He can sometimes be hindered in his plight by certain schools of theological thought(14) which state that God arbitrarily chooses, according to His sovereign powers of decree, who to and not to elect, and that there is nothing at all that he can do about it. This theology, in my opinion, is simply not true and is most inconsistent with the God we find in the Bible. For example, from the book of Ezekiel:
Do I have take pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Lord. Rather am I not pleased when they turn from their own ways and live?(15)
Rather to syllogise (or in other words to make a simple deduction) from the previous conclusion made in this article that those who truly love God are certain of achieving salvation: those who love and worship God “in spirit and in truth” (16) are, in fact, the elect; they are one and the same thing. (This is perhaps an obvious truth for many Christians, but one that people sometimes stumble over due to what I see as a misunderstanding of the usage of the word ‘elect’.)
Having concluded therefore that to love Christ is to achieve assurance of final salvation, how does a Christian know that he does indeed love “the Lord with all his soul and with all his mind and with all his strength.”(17) As Jesus is recorded as saying in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the Father’s will.”(18) This indicates that there will be many who will believe that they are followers of Christ but are actually deceiving themselves. Indeed, the prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and is exceedingly corrupt; who can know it?”(19) How then does he know whether he is not to be counted as one of these? I believe the answer is to be found by the adaptation of a reply the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Michael Ramsay, gave in response to a question he was asked when he gave a lecture at the London School of Economics. The question asked was: “How do I know when I am truly praying?” The Archbishop replied, “First you have to want to pray. Then, you have to want to want to pray. Then, you have to want to want to want to pray … .” After continuing in this vain for a few more iterations he concluded, “It is when you begin to do this that your heart is really beginning to pray in truth.” It is a method of probing self-examination similar to this I would advocate as a way of testing the integrity of a someone’s Christian faith. It is when he says to himself questions such as “Let me strive to increase my knowledge and love of God, surrender my self totally to His will, and put aside completely my worldly desires.” and then still is not satisfied that he is striving sufficiently and says to himself, “Let me strive to strive to increase my knowledge and love for God, surrender myself yet more to His will, and put aside even more completely my worldly desires”, it is then that he begins to realise he is indeed acting in truth, and his love, though not yet perfect by any means, is indeed sincere. I believe that St. Peter was alluding to this sort of state of mind when he called upon Christians to make certain their salvation with the following words:
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us His great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For of you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being effective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them , he is short-sighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do all these things you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ.(20)
It is when a Christian is completely assured of his final salvation (although Satan will still tempt him to doubt it, of course) that he can begin to fully appreciate the Biblical passages which speak of God as not giving him up despite the many faults and weaknesses that he still has. He can then fully realise that without God having striven for him first, having come “while we were still sinners.”(21) ; having freely given to him His righteousness through the sacrifice of His incarnate self - Jesus Christ; and then taking the leading role in striving with him to rid him of his sinful nature; he could not be counted as part of God’s chosen people Israel (which just so happens to be Hebrew for “one who strives with God”)(22). In my opinion, an excellent verse telling of God’s persistence in us is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
I thank my God every time I remember you . In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this , that he will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.(23)
So then, what are we to make of the passages in the Bible where the dangers of apostatising or falling away are mentioned and the seemingly actual cases are recorded? My idea is that the verses warning of falling away are meant to be an encouragement to the elect to make their salvation certain as St. Peter himself implores, and that the sections recording apostasy are rather recording cases of those people who called themselves believers but were actually deceiving themselves (in their heart if not from their lips(24)) all along, and are hence represented in the opening parable by the seeds falling among thorns, or onto rocks, or the path. To say that at times in their lives they perhaps were in grace is in my opinion very wrong. For if they were they would have been shown to have been increasing in Christ’s likeness as is mentioned above in St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and the Romans. This view is reinforced by the following section from the first letter of St. John:
They went out from us but were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out , that it might be plain that they all are not of us. (25)
It is important to remember that even though a Christian may
be saved and knows in his deepest heart that he does not wish
to sin, he still will do so throughout his life; he will never
reach perfection: this much is certain(26) . He still possesses a wanton,
impure nature that often lets him down. God however, to His
great glory, patiently endures his sin. For sadly, it is very
often it seems only by his acts of sin and their resulting
consequences that he can be made aware of a particular sinful
part of his nature which he is seeking to destroy and can then
attempt to deal with it by giving it consciously over to God(27). (Although, as a Christian,
this aspect of his nature would have already been forgiven and
paid for through the one, free, and atoning sacrifice of Jesus
Christ on the cross.) Hence, the Christian’s sins, though
destructive in isolation and still abhorrent to God, are used
by Him in the ongoing process of sanctification (or
purification) so that he can indeed be “transformed into
His (God’s ) likeness with ever increasing
glory.”(9)
I have attempted through this exposition to be as honest and true to God’s revealed Scripture, the Bible, as possible(28). However, please don’t trust my interpretation without question for any reason. Rather, test it with your minds, through the power of the Holy Spirit, in the light of God’s written Word, the Bible. And finally, I shall finish with what I think to be a particularly reassuring passage from St. John’s Gospel for those who truly believe:
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life , and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no-one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.
N.B. Bible references: RSV — Revised Standard Version. NIV — New International Version. Otherwise the reference given is just a general allusion made in the text to a particular passage.
With particular thanks to Louis Berkhof’s book A Summary of Christian Doctrine for its invaluable help in finding relevant Biblical texts — although I’m not sure he would appreciate my basically non-Calvinistic theology. Ironically however, the doctrine of the perseverance of believers that I am advocating is for the most part peculiarly Calvinistic, although, in fact, they reach this conclusion using a different approach to myself.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005
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