Will a Christian, once saved, stay saved? Or do people have the capacity to reject the salvation they once chose? Can they turn from Jesus after having embraced Jesus? Calvinists do not believe so. If a person has truly been regenerated by an act of God, then they will continue in salvation to the very end of their lives. This is called “perseverance of the saints.” Arminians believe that Christians can persevere, but don’t believe they are guaranteed to never fall away.
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We’ve talked about the Calvinist T-U-L-I-P, an acronym that summarizes the main points of Calvinist theology. Calvinists like to joke that the Arminian flower is not a tulip, but a daisy. They imagine someone picking the petals off a daisy, saying, “He loves me. He loves me not.” This uncertainty about salvation is a misrepresentation of Arminian thinking. If a Christian is to lose their salvation, it is not because God is fickle or withholds his love.
Like in so many other areas of this debate, at the heart of this issue is human choice. If a person initially chose to respond to God’s invitation, what would prevent that person from changing their mind and rejecting God’s invitation, at a later date?
The question is not: “Can Christians lose their salvation because they sin?” Some people wonder if they can fall out of God’s grace by living a worldly life, or by committing some kind of unpardonable sin. But generally, neither Calvinists nor Arminians believe that a genuine Christian will ever be disqualified by God from salvation based on how well he or she lived up to God’s law or lived a holy life.
The real question is whether a person, once saved, can choose to not be saved. Having embraced Jesus Christ by faith, can a person later choose to reject Jesus Christ and thus be eternally lost?
The Calvinist view is that perseverance to the end is a promise of God. Because God is the author and finisher of our faith, we cannot fall away from salvation. Since God’s will cannot be changed or influenced, not a single one whom God has chosen, for whom Christ died, and who were drawn and transformed by God’s irresistible pull of grace, can ultimately be lost. All of them will be glorified when Christ returns. Based on the direct gift of grace from God in their lives, all those who are delivered by God’s grace in this way will show evidence of it by living a life of perseverance in faith and obedience to the Word. They may have ups and downs in their intimacy with and obedience to God. They may have times of wandering. But because believers are kept in faith by the power of God, the elect will ultimately persevere in righteousness and will never lose their salvation.
Calvinists argue this conclusion from the sovereign nature of God. If God is king of the universe, his will cannot be successfully opposed. What God chooses will come to pass. Thus those whom he...
