Steve Stanley’s Reviews > Salvation > Status Update

Christians must persevere in holiness if they are to be finally saved. Salvation is by faith, not by pursuing holiness. But true saving faith ‘works’; it produces good works [Gal 5:6]. . . . Salvation is not based on works, but true salvation results in good works [Eph 2:8-10].

The Bible teaches that making an initial profession of faith in Christ is insufficient. True believers persevere to the end in trusting Jesus. . . . Saving faith involves more than an initial profession; it also involves perseverance to the end [Col 1:21-23]. (292-293)

God’s preservation of his saints is correlative to their perseverance. Because he keeps them, they continue in the faith. This underscores divine sovereignty in salvation. Scripture also teaches genuine human responsibility, and this means that believers must persevere to be finally saved. Every part of the NT teaches the necessity of perseverance for final salvation [Mt 24:13; Acts 14:21-22; Heb 10:36; Rev 14:12].

[The] warnings are *prospective*, admonishing believers about the danger of falling away. . . The retrospective texts, however, clarify that those who fell away were never truly believers in Jesus Christ.

[We] find warnings and admonitions repeatedly that threaten believers with final judgment if they fall away. Such warnings aren’t the exception but the rule...The warnings, however, don’t cancel the promises of final salvation. Final salvation is given to those who heed the warnings, to those who take them seriously, for the warnings are the means God uses to preserve his elect from eternal harm.

The warning passages in the NT are *prospective*, warning believers about the future consequences that would occur if they fell away. It is crucial to understand, however, that we also find *retrospective* texts that look back on those who have fallen away [Matt 7:21-23; 1 Cor 11:19; 2 Tim 2:18-19; 1 John 2:19]. . . . Looking back *retrospectively*, we see that those who departed never truly knew God.

There are actually a number of examples of warnings functioning in this way in the NT [Mark 13:21-23, 37; Jude 1, 21, 24-25]. Believers are to pray for deliverance from Satan as the evil one (Matt 6:13), but God promises they will be delivered from the evil one (2 Thess 3:3). Why should we pray if the Lord promises to protect us from the evil one? The answer is that our prayers are the means God uses to preserve us.

[We] would argue that the warnings [in Hebrews] are a means by which the elect are preserved until the end and are always effective in the lives of true Christians.

Hebrews is famous for its warning passages, and admonitions permeate the letter . . . We must remember that Hebrews is a sermon, an exhortation (13:2), with one main point: its hearers/readers should not fall away. It is thus vital to see that, since the letter has one main point, the warnings all make the same point. The warnings in the letter should be read synoptically; they mutually inform one another.

The warning, as noted earlier, is deadly serious but it doesn’t negate one whit the promises of assurance. The warning becomes the means by which those who truly belong to God are preserved and kept until the end.