Jay Adams

Can Christians lose their salvation? Jesus said no, and that promise is repeated in the New Testament epistles. Yet anecdotes abound of those who have abandoned the faith. Many of us know someone who we believed to be saved, but has gone back to the world. Calvin said “it happens daily.” Is this proof that salvation can be lost? Jay Adams writes:

When, for instance, preachers from the heretical denomination called the Churches of Christ speak of “the possibility of apostasy,” they mean that those who are truly saved may leave the faith, lose their salvation, and turn against the Lord Jesus Christ. Plainly, the Bible speaks about apostasy, but that is not what it means by the word. A very important verse that makes the truth about apostasy clear is 1 John 2:19: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
   In this verse, John is addressing the fact that certain gnostic teachers who had been in the fold had left and had begun teaching their heresy. Previously, they had seemed to be true Christians, because they gave no outward indication of their heretical belief. But their false views of the nature of Christ solidified and came to the fore, and they found that they could no longer fellowship with genuine Christians. So they apostatized and denied that Christ died for our sins.
   In this verse, two important facts emerge. First, those who apostatized were never true believers. John says that by leaving they made it clear that this was so (“they were not of us”). While they had been a part of the visible church, they had never belonged to the invisible church. Their profession of faith was false. This problem of a false profession of faith in Jesus Christ, which we so often encounter in our churches today, was a problem in apostolic times and in the sixteenth century as well. In fact, Calvin describes it as a “daily” occurrence:

Yet it daily happens that those who seemed to be Christ’s, fall away from him again, and hasten to destruction. Indeed, in that same passage, where he declares that none of those whom the Father had given to him perished, he nevertheless excepts the son of perdition [John 17:12]. True indeed, but it is also equally plain that such persons never cleaved to Christ with the heartfelt trust in which certainty of election has, I say, been established for us. [Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.24.7.]

   Those who teach that believers may apostatize from the church disregard John’s plain explanation of the facts. We must not do so. Instead, we must maintain that those who denounce the faith never had true faith in the first place. They may have been among believers, but they were not of them. Otherwise, as John says, they would not have failed to persevere with them.
   Second, note the corollary: John affirms that “if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” True believers remain in the faith and in the church. They endure to the end. It is certainly possible for a believer to defect for a time, but, like Peter or John Mark—who both had temporary lapses—in the end they repent and return.

—Jay E. Adams, John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology, ed. Burk Parsons (Reformation Trust, 2008), 184–185.

Years ago, the doctrine of “once saved, always saved” was a big stumbling block for me as I approached the doctrines known as “Calvinism.” Having read and heartily agreed with The Gospel According to Jesus (ironically, I thought, by a Calvinist), I abhorred the notion that one could “accept Jesus” and be secure in his salvation while living an unchanged life; and I still do. The doctrines known as “Free Grace Theology” are no less than anti-gospel heresies. But isn’t that the logical conclusion of Calvinism?

If you have been taught the “once saved, always saved” doctrine, you may think that there is no difference between that teaching and the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. But while it is certainly true that those who are once saved will always be saved, the concept of the perseverance of the saints encompasses a vitally important truth that is rarely emphasized by people who teach the “once saved, always saved” view. That missing emphasis is the fact that a person is saved through perseverance, not apart from it. The “once saved, always saved” view may lead those who hold it into quietistic thinking. That is to say, they may think that they have little or no part to play in maintaining their salvation, but that God does it all for them. While a person is not saved by works (as Romanists believe) and does not remain saved because of works (as the Churches of Christ believe), God saves only those who persevere in the faith.
   In a section of the Institutes of the Christian Religion titled “Perseverance is exclusively God’s work; it is neither a reward nor a complement of our individual act,” Calvin writes:

Perseverance would, without any doubt, be accounted God’s free gift if a most wicked error did not prevail that it is distributed according to men’s merit, in so far as each man shows himself receptive to the first grace. But since this error arose from the fact that men thought it in their power to spurn or to accept the proffered grace of God, when the latter opinion is swept away the former idea also falls of itself. However, there is here a twofold error. For besides teaching that our gratefulness for the first grace and our lawful use of it are rewarded by subsequent gifts, they add also that grace does not work in us by itself, but is only a co-worker with us. [Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.3.11.]

Perseverance is the result of the work of the Spirit in believers’ hearts. Nevertheless, it is a work that enables them to keep on believing, as Peter says. God does not believe for them. Rather, they are “guarded” through faith.
   In John 15, we read about the sanctification that is necessary for a believer to be saved. [I.e., the sanctification that is always present, giving evidence of the fact that one is saved.] A so-called “abiding” condition, which some Higher Life adherents take to mean a special sort of holiness, is not taught in the passage. That idea distorts the apostle’s teaching. The Greek word meno, which the King James Version translates as “abide,” means “remain, continue, stay.” It does not refer to some special state of “resting” in Christ that only super saints achieve. Rather, this abiding is equivalent to persevering in the faith. And it is true not of a select few, such as the apostles only, but of all Christians. Indeed, persevering in one’s faith in Christ is necessary not only for bearing “much fruit,” as the passage teaches, but also for salvation.
   Unless one remains in the vine, “he is thrown away like a branch and withers,” eventually to be burned up (v. 6). Jesus, therefore, commands, “Abide [or remain] in my love” (v. 9b). The apostles had to persevere in their faith or be cast aside like a branch broken off the vine, and the same is true for all believers. Christ, the Vine, requires every professed Christian to remain in Him by genuine faith or eventually be thrown into the fire.
   So perseverance is the result of true faith, nourished and maintained by the Spirit. But the believer himself must continue to exercise it. He may never sit back and say, “I’m saved, I may do as I please, since I can never be lost.” To think that way indicates either that he has received very faulty teaching or that he is not a believer. No one who is truly converted can think that way for very long, if at all. True Spirit-given and Spirit-nourished faith leads to biblical thinking. A professed Christian must persevere—remain, continue, stay—in the Vine.
   Jesus spoke not only of believers remaining in Him, but also of His “words” remaining in believers (v. 7). Moreover, in verse 14 He said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” After justification, by means of divinely guarded faith, one remains in salvation by the work of the Spirit, who, through that faith, enables him to continue obeying Jesus’ words and commandments. That is perseverance.
   This precious doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, coming down to us from the Reformation, must be preserved at all costs. We may neither abandon it nor compromise with those who would do so. The certainty of salvation, which Calvin so dearly wished his congregation to know and which he bequeathed to subsequent generations, must not be lost.

—Jay E. Adams, John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology, ed. Burk Parsons (Reformation Trust, 2008), 187–189.