Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

Written by: April J. Buchanan

When we misunderstand perseverance, much like when we confuse justification and sanctification, men once again begin to trust in works or merit alongside faith in order to complete the race and stand before God.

Yet Scripture makes clear that it is He who began a good work in us, and it is He who will complete what He has begun.

This does not mean we sit back and do nothing. Rather, it means that from beginning to end salvation is all of grace. And if it is all of grace, then even our good works, our sanctification, our obedience, our repentance, our overcoming, and our finishing well are evidences of grace at work within us, empowering us to obey, to walk worthy of the calling, to repent, to believe, to overcome, and to finish well.

These things are not works we accomplish so that we may keep ourselves saved. To think this way is to add something to what Christ has done. It suggests that His work is good but incomplete, sufficient to begin salvation but insufficient to bring His people safely to the end.

This does not mean that perseverance occurs apart from the means God has ordained. God preserves His people through His Word, through prayer, through repentance, through the ordinary means of grace, and through the Spirit’s continual work in them. Yet even these are gifts of grace and not grounds for boasting.

We are justified by faith in Christ. We who are in Christ are declared righteous before God. We are righteous by the righteousness of Another. We are righteous in Christ.

We are positionally sanctified, and we are progressively being sanctified. We must be careful not to confuse these truths. When we feel unworthy, when we feel the weight of our sins, and when we wrestle with assurance, we ought indeed to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith. Yet if we are in Christ, then we are justified. We have been declared righteous. It is a forensic declaration. We cannot become more or less righteous before God, for the righteousness of Christ is perfect.

This must not be confused with progressive sanctification. As we hear God’s Word, grow in knowledge, and mature in faith, we are being conformed more and more into the image of Christ by the gracious work of God within us. This adds nothing to our justification and takes nothing away from it. Rather, sanctification is evidence that our justification is real. God has declared us righteous in Christ, and He is sanctifying us accordingly, conforming us to the image of His Son.

We feel our sin more deeply now and become increasingly sensitive to it as we mature in the faith because we know Him, love Him, and long to put off these sinful bodies and be with Him. Yet we remain here for the glory of God.

That we finish well is no cause for boasting, as though we had contributed something to our salvation. From beginning to end it is all of grace. Our sanctification and glorification are as much works of divine grace as our justification. Our faith, our repentance, our daily dying to self, our growth in holiness, our putting off the deeds of the flesh and putting on what is holy and pleasing to God, our overcoming, and even our breathing our last in Christ are all of grace.

If at any point we begin to think of perseverance as our own efforts added to faith in order to keep ourselves saved, then we must return to the reality of our once dead hearts and remember that our beginning in Christ was entirely a work of grace. So it has always been, and so it will be to the end.

The man who believes he began in Christ by his own power, imagining faith to be something naturally existing within himself rather than a gift of grace, will always be unstable and fearful. He will constantly seek something to reassure himself that God still loves him. He will not deal honestly with his remaining sin, nor will he behold the beauty of the Word that sanctifies him, because he lives in fear that he may yet lose his salvation. He needs the Gospel. It is possible he has not begun well and neither shall it be possible for him to end well.

He disciplines himself, not from the freedom of grace, but from fear. He strives after holiness, not as one being transformed by looking into the perfect law of liberty and being conformed to Christ, but as one attempting to preserve himself. Such a man will often live either in pride or despair.

Yet the believer who understands grace rightly does not become careless toward holiness. Rather, he fights sin all the more because he loves Christ, because he has been set free, and because the Spirit of God is at work within him conforming him to the image of the Son.

If he were to read men like Martin Luther, he might come to see more clearly what kind of man he is, seeing in Luther something of his own striving. A man who disciplined his body, labored after holiness, and sought righteousness before God, yet found it impossible to attain. From there he came to know a grace he had not known, sufficient for all of life. A righteousness imputed through faith in Christ, whereby he is justified. The same grace also empowers godliness in Him. There can be no assurance or comfort in continuing where one has not begun well.

Many men are exhausted professors of faith, laboring endlessly to sustain what they have never truly understood: grace that not only brings life to dead hearts, but grace that results in faith and repentance, whereby men are justified, are being sanctified, and will one day be glorified.

For Christ, who began a good work in His people, will complete it. It is His power at work in those who belong to Him. He will not fail.

And if men fall away finally, they do not prove that faith has failed or that Christ has failed, for He cannot fail. Rather, they reveal that their faith was never genuine.

But where men persevere, that perseverance is the ongoing effect of God’s preserving grace working through faith, and it will be evidenced in sanctification, demonstrating that what has been declared about them in justification is true, and that it is God Himself who began and who will finish the work He began.

He has promised. He is faithful. It is all of grace.