As I have said before, the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints is very precious to me. I am very conscious of my weakness, so I am glad that my unfaithfulness never cancels the faithfulness of God (II Timothy 2:13). That is an important distinction: my perseverance is because Of God's faithfulness, not mine. So the common caricature of the doctrine as an expression of pride is no more than a pejorative, void of any true basis.
We find this short statement from Jesus in Matthew 7:21-23: "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and do many mighty works in Your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness.'" Notice that He is talking about men who claim to be His people. Yet He rejects them, because He had never known them! That is an important statement. They are professing believers, members of the visible church. Yet He doesn't say to them, "I now kick you out." Rather, He tells them, "I never knew you." So, while they had claimed to be believers, members of the visible covenant community, the profession of Jesus was that their profession had been false. They had never been members of His invisible church, regenerate and redeemed. The Apostle John put this in more-explicit form in I 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."
Are there men who go to church and claim to be Christians, who, later, fall into grievous sin or even deny the faith that they had once professed? Of course. Does that mean that true Christians can become unbelievers? Absolutely not. Rather, they have demonstrated that their profession was a lie, and that Jesus had never known them.
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