If God saves by grace, through faith, because of Christ alone, thereby securing our eternal salvation for us, can we fall away from the faith and be lost? No. Were it not for the preserving grace of God would we fall away from the faith? Yes. This begs the question, “If God is doing the saving and preserving, why then do we as Christians need to struggle against sin and persevere in the faith?”
Like many other mysteries in the Scriptures the preservation of God and the perseverance of the saints are held in tension. We are perfectly righteous through the imputed righteousness of Christ yet still unrighteous in many of our ways. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus yet still part of the Church Militant on this earth. We are eternally secure in Christ yet we are warned to make our calling and election sure. We have a salvation finished in Christ and a salvation being worked out in us. How then are we to understand this tension?
The “called, chosen and faithful” are between the cross and heaven, between the “already” and the “not yet”, secure in our positional standing in Christ yet struggling with the practical holiness God expects from His chosen people. The Latin phrase for all of this is simul iustus et peccator; “At the same time righteous and a sinner” or saints and sinners at the same time.
If this makes you a bit spiritually schizophrenic you’re not alone. John Stott in his commentary of Romans identified in Chapter 7:21-25 two egos, two laws, two cries, and two slaveries working in Paul at the same time. He says of the two egos, When I want to do right, evil lies close at hand (v.21). Of the two laws Paul says, For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law . . . the law of sin (vs. 21, 23). Paul cries out, What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul’s final words of struggle are I myself (autos ego, the authentic regenerate Paul) serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh (sarx, the false and fallen Paul) I serve the law of sin.
Regeneration happens in an instant and justification in a moment - sanctification takes a lifetime. In the time it takes blink an eye one supernatural touch from the Holy Spirit awakens us from the dead that we might hear and believe the gospel. It takes the means of grace ministered to us every seven days our whole lives for us to grow up into Christ by dying to sin that we might live unto God.
On this trip from earth to heaven from Sinai to Calvary to Zion “The only haven of safety is in the mercy of God, as manifested in Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete.” John Calvin
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