They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
— 1 John 2:19
The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.
— Job 17:9
For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.
— Psalm 37:28
A Song of degrees. They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.
— Psalm 125:1-2
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.
— John 6:37-39
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.
— John 10:28-30
Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
— 1 Peter 1:2-5
Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:
— Jude 1:1
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
— Jude 1:24-25
Concerning the Perseverance of the Saints, by Jonathan Edwards. The following contains an excerpt from his work, “Miscellanies.”
84. Perseverance. There is just the same reason for those commands of earnest care and laborious endeavors for perseverance, and threatenings of defection, notwithstanding its being certain that all that have true grace shall persevere, as there is for earnest endeavors after godliness, and to make our calling and election sure, notwithstanding all that are elected shall undoubtedly be saved. For as the case with respect to this is the same, decree or not decree, everyone that believes shall be saved, and he that believes not shall be damned. They that will not live godly lives, find out for themselves that they are not elected. They that will live godly lives have found out for themselves that they are elected. So it is here: he that to his utmost endeavors to persevere in ways of obedience, finds out that his obedience and righteousness are true, and he that does not, discovers that his is false. In this respect, it is all one whether he that is once righteous must be always so or no. There is not at all the less diligence necessary for that, yea necessary in order to salvation.
327b. Assuring Grace. If grace implanted in the heart be not an infallible sign that a man shall have eternal life, how is the Spirit of God an earnest of glory? When a man may have the Spirit, and yet have no assurance that he shall be glorified. For everyone who has the grace of God implanted in his heart, has the Holy Spirit of God in his sanctifying influences.
415. Perseverance. Assurance. As persons are commanded and counseled to repent and be converted, though it is already determined whether they shall be converted or no; after the same manner and with the same propriety, persons are commanded and counseled to persevere, although by their being already converted, it is certain they shall persevere. By their resolutely and steadfastly persevering through all difficulties, opposition, and trials, they obtain an evidence of the truth and soundness of their conversion, and by their unstableness and backsliding, they procure an evidence of their unsoundness and hypocrisy. And it always happens that persons who have the most need of being cautioned and counseled against falling and apostasy, by reason of the weakness of their grace, have most need of an evidence of the truth of their grace. And those who have the least need of any evidence, by reason of the strength and lively exercise of grace, have least need of being warned against falling, they being least in danger of it. And so the same persons, when they are most in danger of falling — by reason of the languishing of their graces, their ill-temper and workings of corruption — have most need of evidence, and when in least need of care and watchfulness not to fall, by reason of the strength and vigorous actings of grace, they have least need of evidence. So that there is as much need of persons exercising care and diligence to persevere in order to their salvation, as there is as of their attention and care to repent and be converted. For our own care and diligence is as much the proper and decreed means of perseverance, as of anything else. And the want of perseverance is as much an evidence of the want of true conversion, as the want of conversion is a sign of the want of election. Labor and diligence to persevere is as rational a way to make sure of the truth of grace, as they are to make sure of the truth of election. God’s wrath and future punishment are proposed to all sorts of men, as motives to an universal and constant obedience, not only to the wicked, but also to the godly. Indeed, those that have obtained full assurance of their safe estate, are not capable of this motive, and they have no need of it. But when persons are most capable of the fear of hell, through their want of assurance — and their uncertainty, whether or no they are not exposed to damnation — by reason of the weakness of their grace, then they have most need of caution.
Corollary. — Here we may observe that it is not the scripture way of judging of the truth of grace, to be determined principally by the method and steps of the first work, but by the exercise and fruits of grace in a holy life.
428. Perseverance in faith is, in one sense, the condition of justification: that is, the promise of acceptance is made only to a persevering sort of faith, and the proper evidence of its being of that sort is actual perseverance. Not but that a man may have good evidences that his faith is of that sort, before he has finished his perseverance, yea, the first time that he exercises such a faith, if the exercises of it are lively and vigorous. But when the believer has those vigorous exercises of faith, by which he has clear evidences of its being of a persevering kind, he evermore feels most disposition and resolution to persevere, and most of a spirit of dependence upon God and Christ to enable him so to do.
467. Perseverance. As to passages of Scripture like that, Eze. 18:24, wherein are declared the fatal consequences of turning or falling away from righteousness, they do not at all argue but that there is an essential difference, in the very nature of the righteousness of those that persevere, and the righteousness of those that fall away. The one is of a lasting sort, the other not. And so falling away or holding out are in those places respected as natural fruits or discoveries of the nature of the righteous or of the wicked. If a man that had a prospect of being erelong in calamitous circumstances (of being poor and the object of general contempt), and should make this declaration concerning his friend or him that now appeared to be such, that if his friend would cleave to him through all his circumstances, he would receive him and treat him ever after as his true friend, but otherwise he would utterly desert him as a false friend: — this would not argue that he thought there was no difference between the love of friendship that was persevering and that which fails when it is tried, but only that those difficulties discover the difference and show whose love is of a lasting sort, and whose not. The promises in Scripture are commonly made to the signs of grace, though God knows whether men be sincere or not, without the signs whereby men know it.
695. Perseverance. Covenant of Grace. The following are some reasons why grace to persevere is promised in the covenant of grace.
1. God, when he had laid out himself to glorify his mercy and grace in the redemption of poor fallen men, did not see meet that those who are redeemed by Christ should be redeemed so imperfectly, as still to have the work of perseverance left in their own hands. They had been found already insufficient for this even in their perfect state, and are now ten times more liable than formerly to fall away and not to persevere, if in their fallen broken state, with their imperfect sanctification, the care of the matter be trusted with them. Man, though redeemed by Christ so as to have the Holy Spirit of God, and spiritual life again restored in a degree, yet is left a poor, piteous creature, because all is suspended on his perseverance as it was at first. And the care of that affair is left with him as it was then, and he is ten times more likely to fall away than he was then, if we consider only what he was in himself to preserve him from it. The poor creature sees his own insufficiency to stand, from what has happened in time past. His own instability has been his undoing already, and now he is vastly more unstable than before. The great thing wherein the first covenant was deficient was that the fulfillment of the righteousness of the covenant, and man’s perseverance, was entrusted with man himself, with nothing better to secure it than his own strength. And therefore, God introduces a better, which should be an everlasting covenant, a new and living way, wherein that which was wanting in the first should be supplied, and a remedy should be provided against that, which under the first covenant proved man’s undoing, viz. man’s own weakness and instability, by a Mediator being given, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever: who cannot fail, who should undertake for his people and take care of them. He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him, and ever lives to make intercession for them. God did not see it fit that man should be trusted to stand in his own strength a second time. It is not fit that in a covenant of grace, wherein all is of mere, free, and absolute grace, that the reward of life should be suspended on the perseverance of man, as dependent on the strength and stedfastness of his own will. It is a covenant of works, and not a covenant of grace that suspends eternal life on what is the fruit of a man’s own strength. Eternal life was to have been of works in those two respects, viz. as it was to have been for man’s own righteousness, and as it was suspended on the fruit of his own strength. For though our first parent depended on the grace of God, the influence of his Spirit in his heart, yet that grace was given him already, and dwelt in him constantly, and without interruption, in such a degree as to hold him above any lust or sinful habit or principle. Eternal life was not merely suspended on that grace that was given him, and dwelt in him, but on his improvement of that grace which he already had. For in order to his perseverance, there was nothing further promised beyond his own strength, no extraordinary occasional assistance was promised. It was not promised but that man should be left to himself as he was. But the new covenant is of grace, in a manner distinguishing from the old, in both these respects, that the reward of life is suspended neither on his own strength nor worthiness. It provides something above either. But if eternal life under the new covenant was suspended on man’s own perseverance, or his perseveringly using diligent endeavors to stand without the promise of anything farther to ascertain it than his own strength, it would herein be farther from being worthy to be called a covenant of grace than the first covenant, because man’s strength is exceedingly less than it was then, and he is under far less advantages to persevere. And if he should obtain eternal life by perseverance in his own strength now, eternal life would, with respect to that, be much more of himself than it would have been by the first covenant, because perseverance now would be a much greater thing than under those circumstances. And he has but an exceeding small part of that grace dwelling in him, to assist him, that he had then, and that which he has, does not dwell in him in the exercise of it by such a constant law as grace did then, but is put into exercise by the spirit of grace, in a far more arbitrary and sovereign way.
2. Again, Christ came into the world to do that in which mere men failed. He came as a better surety, and that in him those defects might be supplied, which proved to be in our first surety, and that we might have a remedy for the mischief that came by those defects. But the defect of our first surety was that he did not persevere. He wanted stedfastness, and therefore God sent us, in the next surety, one that could not fail, but should surely persevere. But this is no supply of that defect to us, if the reward of life be still suspended on perseverance, which has nothing, as to ourselves, greater to secure it still, than the strength of mere man. And the perseverance of our second surety is no remedy against the like mischief, which came by failure of our first surety. But on the contrary, we are much more exposed to the mischief than before. The perseverance on which life was suspended, depended then indeed on the strength of mere man, but now (on the supposition) it would be suspended on the strength of fallen man.
In that our first surety did not persevere, we fell in and with him, for doubtless, if he had stood, we should have stood with him. And therefore when God in mercy has given us a better surety to supply the defects of the first, a surety that might stand and persevere, and one that has actually persevered through the greatest imaginable trials, then doubtless we shall stand and persevere in him. After all this, eternal life will not be suspended on our perseverance by our own poor, feeble, broken strength. Our first surety, if he had stood, would have been brought to eat of the tree of life, as a seal of a confirmed state of life in persevering and everlasting holiness and happiness, and he would have eat of this tree of life as a seal of persevering confirmed life, not only for himself, but as our head. As when he eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he tasted as our head, and so brought death on himself and all his posterity. So if he had persevered and had eat of the tree of life, he would have tasted of that as our head, and therein life and confirmed holiness would have been sealed to him and all his posterity. But Christ, the second Adam, acts the same part for us that the first Adam was to have done, but failed. He has fulfilled the law, and has been admitted to the seals of confirmed and everlasting life. God, as a testimony and seal of his acceptance of what he had done as the condition of life, raised him from the dead, and exalted him with his own right hand, received him up into glory, and gave all things into his hands. Thus the second Adam has persevered, not only for himself, but for us, and has been sealed to confirmed and persevering and eternal life, as our head: so that all those that are his, and who are his spiritual posterity, are sealed in him to persevering life. Here it will be in vain to object that persons’ persevering in faith and holiness is the condition of their being admitted to the state of Christ’s posterity, or to a right in him, and that none are admitted as such till they have first persevered. For this is as much as to say that Christ has no church in this world, and that there are none on this side the grave admitted as his children or people, because they have not yet actually persevered to the end of life, which is the condition of their being admitted as his children and people, which is contrary to the whole Scripture.
Christ having finished the work of Adam for us, does more than merely to bring us back to the probationary state of Adam, while he had yet his work to finish, knowing his eternal life uncertain, because suspended on his uncertain perseverance. That alone is inconsistent with Christ’s being a second Adam. For if Christ, succeeding in Adam’s room, has done and gone through the work that Adam was to have done, and did this as our representative or surety, he has not thereby set us only in Adam’s probationary, uncertain state, but has carried us, who are in him, and are represented by him, through Adam’s working probationary state, unto that confirmed state that Adam should have arrived at, if he had gone through his own work.
3. That the saints shall surely persevere, will necessarily follow from this, that they have already performed the obedience which is the righteousness by which they have justification unto life (or it is already performed for them and imputed to them), for that supposes that it is the same thing in the sight of God as if they had performed it. Now when the creature has once actually performed and finished the righteousness of the law, he is immediately sealed and confirmed to eternal life. There is nothing to keep him off from the tree of life. But as soon as ever a believer has Christ’s righteousness imputed to him, he has virtually finished the righteousness of the law.
To suppose that a right to life is suspended on our own perseverance, which is uncertain, and has nothing more sure and stedfast to secure it than our own good-wills and resolutions (which way soever we suppose it to be dependent on the strength of our resolutions and wills, either with assistance, or in the improvement of assistance, or in seeking assistance), is exceedingly dissonant to the nature and design of the gospel scheme. For if it were so, it would unavoidably deprive the believer of the comfort, hope, and joy of salvation: which would be very contrary to God’s design in the scheme of man’s salvation, which is to make the ground of our peace and joy in all respects strong and sure. Or else, he must depend much on himself, and the ground of his joy and hope must in a great measure be his own strength, and the stedfastness of his own heart, the unchangeableness of his own resolutions, etc., which would be very different from the gospel scheme.
711. Perseverance of the Saints. It is evident the saints shall persevere, because they are already justified. Adam would not have been justified till he had fulfilled and done his work, and then his justification would have been a confirmation. It would have been an approving of him as having done his work, and as standing entitled to his reward. A servant that is sent out about a work is not justified by his master till he has done, and then the master views the work, and seeing it to be done according to his order, he then approves and justifies him as having done his work, and being now entitled to the promised reward, and his title to his reward is no longer suspended on anything remaining. So Christ having done our work for us, we are justified as soon as ever we believe in him, as being, through what he has accomplished and finished, now already actually entitled to the reward of life. And justification carries in it not only remission of sins, but also being adjudged to life, or accepted as entitled by righteousness to the reward of life: as is evident, because believers are justified by communion with Christ in his justification. But the justification of Christ did most certainly imply both these things, viz. his being now judged free of that guilt which he had taken upon him, and also his having now fulfilled all righteousness — his having perfectly obeyed the Father, and done enough to entitle him to the reward of life as our head and surety — and therefore he then had eternal life given him as our head. That life which was begun when he was raised from the dead, was eternal life. Christ was then justified in the same sense that Adam would have been justified, if he had finished his course of perfect obedience, and therefore implies in it confirmation in a title to life, as that would have done. And thus, all those that are risen with Christ, and have him for their surety, and so are justified in his justification, are certainly in like manner confirmed. And again, that a believer’s justification implies not only a deliverance from the wrath of God, but a title to glory, is evident by Rom. 6:12, where the apostle mentions both these as joint benefits implied in justification: “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. By whom also we have access into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” So remission of sins and inheritance among them that are sanctified are mentioned together, as what are jointly obtained by faith in Christ: Acts 26:18, “That they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified, through faith that is in me.” Both these are undoubtedly implied in that passing from death unto life, which Christ speaks of as the fruit of faith, and which he opposes to condemnation: John 5:24, “Verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.”
726. Persevering Holiness. It is one act of faith to commit the soul to Christ’s keeping in this sense, viz. to keep it from falling. The believing soul is convinced of its own weakness and helplessness, its inability to resist its enemies, its insufficiency to keep itself, and so commits itself to Christ, that he would be its keeper. The apostle speaks of his committing his soul by faith to Christ, under great sufferings and trials of his perseverance, 2 Tim. 1:12, “For which cause also I suffer these things. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day.” And we are commanded to commit our way and our works unto the Lord, Psa. 37:5; Prov. 16:3. Faith depends on Christ for all the good we need, and especially good of this kind, which is of such absolute necessity in order to the salvation of our souls. The sum of the good that faith looks for, is the Holy Spirit. It looks for spiritual and eternal life: for perfect holiness in heaven and persevering holiness here. For the just shall live by faith.
729. Congruity of Justification and Perseverance. Perseverance is acknowledged by Calvinian divines, to be necessary to salvation. Yet it seems to me that the manner in which it is necessary has not been sufficiently set forth. It is owned to be necessary as a sine qua non; and also that though it is not that by which we first come to have a title to eternal life, yet it is necessary in order to the actual possession of it, as the way to it; that it is as impossible we should come to it without perseverance, as it is impossible for a man to go to a city or town, without traveling throughout the road that leads to it. But we are really saved by perseverance, so that salvation has a dependence on perseverance, as that which influences in the affair, so as to render it congruous that we should be saved. Faith (on our part) is the great condition of salvation, and it is that by which we are justified and saved. But in this faith, the perseverance that belongs to it is a fundamental ground of the congruity that faith gives to salvation. Faith is that which renders it congruous that we should be accepted to a title of salvation, and it is so on the account of certain properties in, or certain things that belong to it. And this is one of them: viz. its perseverance. Without this, it would not be fit that a sinner should be accepted to salvation. Perseverance indeed comes into consideration, even in the justification of a sinner, as one thing on which the fitness of acceptance to life depends. For God has respect to perseverance as being virtually in the first act of faith. And it is looked upon as if it were a property of that faith by which the sinner is then justified. God has respect to continuance in faith, and the sinner is justified by that, as though it already were, because by divine establishment it shall follow. And so it is accepted, as if it were a property contained in the faith that is then seen. Without this, it would not be congruous that a sinner should be justified at his first believing, but it would be needful that the act of justification should be suspended till the sinner had persevered in faith. There is the same reason why it is necessary that the union between Christ and the soul should remain in order to salvation, as that it should be begun, for it is begun to the end that it might remain. And if it could be begun without remaining, the beginning would be in vain. The soul is saved no otherwise than by union with Christ, and so is fitly looked upon as his. It is saved in him, and in order to that, it is necessary that the soul now be in him, even when salvation is actually bestowed, and not merely that it should once have been in him. In order to its being saved, it must now be one of Christ’s, and in order to being fitly or congruously looked on as now one of Christ’s, it is necessary it should now be united, and not solely that it should be remembered that it was once united to Christ. And there is the same reason why believing, or the quality wherein the unition consists, should remain, in order to the union’s remaining, or why the unition should once be, in order to the union’s once being. The first act of faith gives a title to salvation, because it does virtually trust in God and Christ for perseverance, among other benefits, and gives a title to this benefit with others, and so virtually contains perseverance. Otherwise it would not be congruous that the sinner should be justified in the first act of faith. And therefore God, in justifying a sinner, even in the first act of faith, has respect to the congruity between justification and perseverance of faith. So that perseverance is necessary to salvation, not only as a sine qua non, or as the way to possession, but it is necessary even to the congruity of justification….
That perseverance is thus necessary to salvation, not only as a sine qua non, but by reason of such an influence and dependence, seems manifest from Scripture, as particularly, Heb. 10:38-39, “Now the just shall live by faith. But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe unto the saving of the soul.” Rom. 11:20, “Well, because of unbelief they were broken off. But thou standest by faith. Be not high minded, but fear.” John 15:7, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Heb. 3:14, “For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.” Heb. 5:12, “Be ye followers of them, who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” So that not only the first act of faith, but subsequent acts of faith, and perseverance in faith, do justify the sinner, although salvation is in itself sure and certain after the first act. For the way in which the first act of faith justifies, is not by making the futurition of salvation certain in itself, for that is as certain in itself by the divine decree, before the first act of faith, as afterwards. But it is only in these two ways that any act of ours can connect salvation with the subject. First. As it may give a congruity. Second. As it gives such a divine manifestation of the futurition of salvation to us, that we can lay hold of and depend on the divine truth and faithfulness, that we shall have salvation. Salvation is in some sense the sinner’s right, before he believes. It was given him in Christ, before the world was. But before a sinner believes, he has not anything from God that he can lay hold of, so as to either challenge it, or on good grounds hope for it. He cannot be said to have any right, because he has no congruity, and as to the promise made to Christ, he has no hold to that, because that is not revealed to him. If God had declared and promised to the angels that such a man should be saved, that would not give him any right of his own or any ground of challenge. A promise is a manifestation of a person’s design of doing some good to another, to the end that he may depend on it, and rest in it. The certainty in him arises from the manifestation, and the obligation in justice to him arises from the manifestation being made to him, to the effect that he might depend on it. And therefore subsequent acts of faith may be said to give a sinner a title to salvation, as well as the first. For from what has been said, it appears that the congruity arises from them, as well as the first: they in like manner containing the nature of unition to Christ as mediator, and they may have as great, nay, a greater hand in the manifestation of the futurition of salvation to us for our dependence, than the first act. For our knowledge of this may proceed mainly from after-acts, and from a course of acts. This is all that is peculiar to the first act, that so far as the act is plain, it gives us evidence from God for our dependence: both for continued acts of faith, and also the salvation that is connected with them. So that so far as this act is plain to us, we can challenge both these as our right. The Scripture speaks of after-acts of faith in both Abraham and Noah, as giving a title to the righteousness which is the matter of justification. See Rom. 4:3; Heb. 11:7.
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