Persevering in the Perfecting Power of Jesus

A common caricature of the Reformed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is that it, supposedly, allows a person to spout some words, and then to live wickedly, assured that he is destined for Heaven. And I grant that the oft-used semi-Arminian version, "once saved-always saved," can be taken exactly that way. That is because the anti-Calvinists don't understand the difference. 

As I wrote here, once saved-always saved (hereafter, "OSAS") is the Calvinist doctrine transplanted into an otherwise Pelagian system of theology. It simply doesn't work. In contrast, perseverance holds that God will enable the believer to continue in faith and sanctification. That doesn't mean that the believer can never stumble; rather, it means that he will never ultimately stumble forever.

Consider this verse: "For by a single offering He [i. e., Jesus] has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14). Notice the sequence here. By His one offering of Himself on the cross, Jesus has perfected, i. e.,  legal standing, or justification, those are being sanctified, i. e., progressive sanctification. So the one-time cross work of Jesus saved the elect, so that we have immediate standing as perfect, or holy, and will increasingly experience that holiness in our lives. 

That which has already been perfected cannot fail to achieve its purpose! 

Jesus Contra "Soul Sleep": Absent from the Body, Present with the Lord

As we know, Jesus was a frequent target of the Pharisees, as they asked Him questions that they expected to baffle Him or to expose Him to punishment by the Romans. Their opponents, the Sadducees attempted to trip up Jesus, too, but only one time. In Mark 12, they asked Him whose wife a woman would be in the resurrection, after she had been married and widowed by seven brothers. This was actually a double trap, because the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection.

In His response, Jesus answered both challenges, the one spoken, while the other was a trap waiting silently. "Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong" (Mark 12:24-27). He rebukes their failure to believe the Scriptures, which tell us of the resurrection of the dead at the end of history (such as Job 19:26 and Daniel 12:2). Only then does He answer their surface question, denying that resurrected men will continue our social functions: "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25). 

But He also rebukes the Sadducees for supposing that God  is related to men only in this physical life and no more: "Have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong" (Mark 12:26-27).

I bring up this story because it addresses a modern heresy, that of "soul sleep." That doctrine, with some differences, is especially associated with the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists. They deny that the dead believers are conscious, and spiritually in Heaven with Jesus. This is the same doctrine for which Jesus rebukes the Sadducees.

The point of Jesus is the dead saints are alive now, enjoying fellowship with God now. They are not nonsexistent as the Sadducees believed, or nonexistent now to be recreated later as the Jehovah's Witnesses claim, or unconscious in the grave with their bodies as the Seventh-Day Adventists claim.

Instead, we can joyfully claim, as Paul did, "Away from the body and present with the Lord" (II Corinthians 5:8).