The proper relation of good works to the gospel is a common discussion in Christianity, especially since the Protestant Reformation which confirmed so powerfully the doctrine of justification by faith alone.  It’s been the subject of a recent controversy between several Reformed blogs- a letter from Pyromaniacs warning the White Horse Inn blogger Michael Horton about encouraging antinomianism, a response from Michael Horton, and some related thoughts from Professor R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary.

I have a great deal of respect and sympathy, really, for all of the people involved here.  There are, however, some important distinctions to be made and I think underlying this discussion truly is simply some real differences of opinion regarding the nature of the gospel itself.  Here is a video of Dr. Lane Tipton making this very point- demonstrating that we can make some pretty basic assumptions about the gospel without even realizing it, and those assumptions will very powerfully affect how we answer a whole bunch of questions.  Tipton asserts (and I agree) that the gospel is not simply justification by faith alone.  It includes that essential doctrine, of course.  But the gospel itself, he says, is the good news of union with Christ, meaning that the gospel is the fact of my union with Him, and all of the benefits associated with that- justification, adoption, sanctification and glorification, are all included. 

Jesus said He came to save His people from their sins.  If Dr. Tipton is correct, then the salvation which Jesus is offering is not just rescuing from the punishment of sins, but from the sins themselves.  The old hymn sang, “Be of sin the double cure; cleanse me from its guilt and power.”  So we are rescued from the condemnation, but also from the tyranny, of sin.

Heidelberg Catechism q. 86 says,
“Question 86. Since then we are delivered from our misery, merely of grace, through Christ, without any merit of ours, why must we still do good works?
Answer: Because Christ, having redeemed and delivered us by his blood, also renews us by his Holy Spirit, after his own image; that so we may testify, by the whole of our conduct, our gratitude to God for his blessings, (a) and that he may be praised by us; (b) also, that every one may be assured in himself of his faith, (c) by the fruits thereof; and that, by our godly conversation others may be gained to Christ. (d)”

I want to point out that phrase  “…that every one may be assured in himself of his faith, (c) by the fruits thereof.”  This teaches that one part of our assurance of faith is by our works.  Our sanctification is never the grounds of our merit before God.  But it does demonstrate that God is at work in us, and therefore shows that the promise of God is true.  God’s claim to be able to save me from my sins is shown to be true by the beginning of that process.  I think this points us to the fact that the gospel encompasses more than simply justification, that the gospel includes all of Jesus’ benefits, and that therefore an exhortation to good works as a thankful response to God’s forgiveness belongs properly to the preaching of the gospel.

Now one school of thought really downplays or outright denies this doctrine that good works have a role in assurance of faith.  They say that this breeds legalism on the one hand and despair on the other.  How good is good enough?  How many good works actually demonstrate that I have true faith?  My answer would be, how many apples growing on the tree does it take to show that the apple tree is alive?  Just one.  Any good work at all in the believer demonstrates the work of faith.  The unbeliever is incapable of good works.  Also according to the catechism, only those works which proceed from faith are truly good works.  The Pharisee, the outward religionist, cannot produce any true fruit, but only a fake version.

This doctrine is not in the least a burden to me.  It is a great comfort.  I can look at myself and see clearly that I am very far from what I ought to be.  I cannot claim to have the least merit to produce before God and say, I am worthy of salvation.  But I can look at myself and say, I am not what I was, and I am not what I would be without Jesus.  I know that I could not have done this good work in me by my own power, and therefore I recognize the work of the Spirit in me.  This gives me comfort when I am downcast over my sin.  The Spirit is at work in me, and God will finish the good work which He has begun.

We can therefore challenge ourselves and challenge each other, “O taste and see that the Lord is good!”  If you are plagued with doubt, despair and uncertainty about the gospel, my encouragement to you is, lay hold of the promises of the gospel and start striving to live in the light of that blessed freedom.  Bathe yourself in the word of God and prayer.  Remind yourself constantly of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And endeavor to live in a way that reflects that truth.  God will work in you.  God will grant you power and strength to overcome sin, when you have faith in Him.  You will taste God’s goodness in your life, and this will grant you a stronger assurance of the truth of God’s promises.

A dialogue, between  John and David:

John:  Consider a fictional character, one who is well-developed by a master of his trade.  Someone like King Lear.  Is King Lear real?

David:  No, naturally not.  King Lear doesn’t exist.  He was invented by William Shakespeare.

J:  OK, so tell me something about King Lear.

D:  He was a vain and foolish king, who succumbed to the flattery of his two evil daughters and was angered by the truth-telling of his one wise daughter, with disastrous results.

J:  Now, you have just predicated things about King Lear.  You have made statements about attributes which King Lear possesses.  How is that possible if he doesn’t exist?  How can you say things about something that is nonexistent?

D:  Well, I meant that he doesn’t exist in history, in reality.  He only exists in our minds.

J:  So if something only exists in our minds, then it doesn’t exist?  Does Beethoven’s 9th Symphony exist?  Would it exist even if every written copy and audio recording of it were destroyed, but people still remembered it?  Would it be real then?

D:  Sure, but you’re talking about the work as a whole.  Beethoven’s 9th exists just like the play “King Lear” exists.  That doesn’t mean that the actual person, King Lear, really exists.  He’s a fiction, invented.  He’s not a real person.  You can’t touch him.

J:  I can’t touch my dead grandfather either.  Is he real?

D:  Yes, but in a different sense.  He existed once.  There was a point in time when he existed.  King Lear never existed.

J:  I can’t touch the Holy Spirit either.  Is the Holy Spirit real?

D:  Of course, but again, in a different sense.  God exists spiritually.  King Lear does not exist spiritually.  There is not a soul or a spirit out there called “King Lear”.

J:  But when I think “King Lear”, if I am familiar with the play, a whole set of ideas pops into my mind.  I think of the choice he made to give his kingdom to the two older daughters who flattered him, and his rejection of his younger daughter who told him the truth.  We think of Lear having done that.  How can something that isn’t real do anything?  How can a nonexistent thing call into my mind all of these ideas and associations?  King Lear is such a popular and classic play because it so beautifully illustrates the foolishness of vanity and the importance of listening to hard truths, and the destruction that flattery causes.  I am a wiser person for having known the character King Lear, and so are many others.  How can something unreal affect people like you and I?

D:  OK, so in a sense perhaps he exists.  King Lear exists in the sense that he is a real character in a fictional work, who has characteristics and does things within that fictional work.  But he is only real in that sense.  Normally when you ask if someone is real, you are asking whether the person is an actual historical figure or whether he is merely the product of fiction.  Like Odysseus, for example- was he an actual person about which Homer wrote exaggerated accounts, or was Odysseus entirely invented?  We don’t really know the answer to the question yet, though we suspect that the first assertion may very well be true.  So you still can’t really say that King Lear was real.  King Lear was created by a man, just invented out of nothing.

J:  I was created out of nothing as well, by God.  Am I real?

D:  Of course you’re real.  You’re sitting right there.  I know you.

J:  But as we’ve established, we know King Lear as well.  We know his characteristics and personality.  We know the choices he made and the results of those choices.

D:  As you said, God created us.  We are real, but we are not real in the same sense that God is real.  God exists of Himself.  We are created by Him for His purposes.  In that sense I guess you could draw an analogy between the relationship of our existence and God’s existence on the one hand, and the relationship of King Lear’s existence to William Shakespeare’s existence as well.  Both are real, but not in the same sense.

J:  Yes, I think you’re on to something there.  At the same time, we should be careful, since the analogy is inexact.  Everything that is bears that relationship to God.  Everything was created by God- William Shakespeare and the plays that Shakespeare wrote.  But man was created in the image and the likeness of God, so it should not disturb us to think that man can create real things in some sense out of nothing, bearing that image of God in his creation, though of course because he’s not God, he could not do so in the same way that God creates out of nothing.  In a relative sense, though, cannot man create real things (like King Lear) simply out of his own mind, which yet do not rise to the level of his own existence, in the same way that God creates real things that nonetheless can never rise to God’s own level of existence?

D:  So you’re saying that our relationship to God is in some sense analogous to King Lear’s relationship to Shakespeare?  Wouldn’t that have troubling implications for the freedom of our choices?  King Lear is just a predetermined play.  Are our lives like that?

J:  Well, we judge the morality of characters in the play, don’t we?  Earlier you referred to King Lear’s two evil daughters and her one wise and good one.

D:  Yes, but that’s just within the play.

J:  King Lear and his daughters only really exist within the play though.  So of course it is only within the play that they can be said to be good or evil.  And yet we judge them as such.  On what basis to we judge a character in a play to be good or evil if the character was simply doing what he or she was written to do?

D:  Well, that’s the purpose of the play, or one of them.  In the play and in most works of fiction, there are heroes and villains.  Good guys and bad guys.  Sometimes their characters are complex- there are tragic heroes and anti-heroes and sympathetic villains.  But their actions and choices in the play shows whether they are good or bad or some mixture of the two.

J:  Choices?  How can they be said to have choices?  Their lives were written in a play, made up by a playwright.  Did King Lear have a choice whether to listen to his evil daughters or his good one?

D:  Well, not in an absolute sense of course.  Shakespeare made those choices.  But within the context of the play, which is the only context in which the characters actually exist, they have choices.  Within the play, Lear had a choice, and his bad choice reveals his tragic flaw and leads to his doom.  If he had no choice, then the play reveals nothing about right or wrong at all.  If he was forced or tricked to do what he did, then the play would reveal nothing about his character, and really have no purpose at all.

J:  So you’re telling me he had a real choice, but one which only had reality within the limited context of his own limited existence, and that his real choice (within that context) revealed his character, for which he is rightly judged.  And all of this is true, within that context, even though looking at it from another perspective, from the higher and more truly real perspective of his creator, William Shakespeare, every aspect of Lear’s existence was entirely predetermined according to Shakespeare’s own purposes and designs for creating him. 

D:  Yes, I guess that’s right.

J:  Interesting.

Acts 17:33 So Paul departed from among them.

This passage comes at the end of Paul’s address to the Athenians at the Areopagus.  After his sermon to them, specifically preaching of the resurrection of the dead, a concept foreign and ridiculous to Greek philosophy and religion, we read that some mocked Paul and some said, “We will hear you again on this matter.”  What was Paul’s reaction?  He left.

Why didn’t he continue debating or arguing?  Why didn’t he “take every thought captive”?  Why didn’t he “give a defense”?

There are several examples of Paul doing just that, after all.  Acts 18:4 tells us that Paul reasoned daily in the synagogue, persuading Jews to accept Christ.  There are several similar passages in Acts.  Jesus reasoned with the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Several of Paul’s letters are essentially disputes regarding proper theology.

But all of those passages relate interactions with people within the covenant community regarding proper doctrine.  When dealing with unbelievers, as in Acts 17, we see an entirely different approach.  He simply announces the gospel and leaves, dealing only with those who accept the message.  He doesn’t try to convince anyone of anything.

The Biblical teaching on salvation is that it is the Holy Spirit that prepares the heart of the hearer.  And in fact, this is the approach we see Paul taking here.  He simply pronounces the gospel, and those who have been prepared by the Spirit believe.  Some mock him; some wish to debate further.  But he shows no interest in either one of these groups.  The only group that interests him are those that accept the word of God.

Consider also the Philippian jailer.  What is it that convinces him?  Not debates or discussions with Paul and Silas.  No, it is the witness of their own lives.  They sing hymns in the jail, rejoicing in God even while they are in stocks after being beaten.  The earthquake comes and breaks their bonds.  The jailer is sure that the prisoners have escaped, and prepares to kill himself.  But Paul tells him not to hurt himself because they are all still there.  Recognizing clearly that these men have something he doesn’t, he asks them, “What must I do to be saved?”  Paul’s answer?  Believe.  The Holy Spirit has prepared this man, and provided all the evidence needed- the miracle, the sanctified lives of other Christians, and the internal, mysterious preparation.  All that is needed for Paul is to wait for the opportunity and present the gospel, and the man is converted.

This corresponds to my own experience as well.  I have studied many different arguments and evidences for the truth of Christianity.  I have examined the presuppositional approach as well as the classical and evidential approach.  But none of these have ever played much of a role in the conversions that I have seen and been involved with.  In each case, a person was prepared by the Holy Spirit in different ways to hear the truth, and then the Holy Spirit created an opportunity for them to hear that truth.  There were often questions that needed to be resolved, but essentially a person heard the truth and believed it.  No debate, no proof, no evidence was really necessary.  The Holy Spirit provided all the evidence needed, not me.

These arguments and evidences are not without value.  They strengthen the faith of those already believing.  They shore us up against the attacks of the world.  But even here there is a risk.  If the strength of my faith is built on evidences or rational arguments, there are always better arguments.  There are always other facts calling into question the evidences.  Our own faith is going to be strengthened ultimately the same way we got that faith- by the witness of the Holy Spirit.

So Paul, completely consistent with his teaching on the preeminence of the Spirit of God in salvation, and the need for a man to be regenerated before he will ever understand or accept the truth of the gospel, simply announces the truth of the gospel to a pagan world.  Most don’t believe, and true to their philosopher roots wish to ridicule his belief (skeptical philosophy) or engage in debate to ascertain its truth (Platonic, Stoic or Epicurean).  But some believe.  These are the ones Paul cares about.  With them he will argue, persuade, convince.  With them, he will go to great pains to strive for true doctrine, true understanding.  For the rest of them, he just leaves.

What a comfort!  This shows us we don’t need to master all the perfect arguments for Christianity, be up on all the latest scientific or archaeological discoveries, engage in all the latest philosophical developments.  These things aren’t entirely without value.  But they don’t bring the sinner to Christ.  The witness of the Spirit brings sinners to Christ- the witness of the Spirit in the Scriptures, in the lives of believers, in the heart of the lost sheep.  The Spirit provides all the apologetic needed.  We just witness, just proclaim the truth.  The Lord brings the harvest.

In response to a question regarding the meaning of Luke 13:24 “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”

Does this passage teach that people had faith in Christ but didn’t try hard enough, and so were not saved?

People desire salvation. They desire the benefits of Christianity. They desire happiness, peace, forgiveness. But they want to gain those things on their own terms. They want to gain them in a way that satisfies their pride, their lusts, their desires. They don’t want to repent and submit to God.

The passage in question essentially means, I think, that the only thing necessary to go to hell is for people to just keep doing what they’re doing, to do what comes naturally. To find life, a change is necessary. We have to do what is hard for us- to repent, to renounce our ability to save ourselves, to renounce our right to govern our own lives. People want to just do some ceremonies, to profess the right things, to check off the right boxes and go to heaven. But true salvation comes when we surrender, when we confess Jesus as Lord. If Jesus is Lord, then He’s the boss, He tells us what to do, and we do it.

A lot of people in the Gospels believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but they wanted Him to be the Messiah they wanted Him to be, to serve their selfish ends. They never surrendered to Him, and when He disappointed their expectations, they left Him. True salvation is never accomplished by a half-way effort. Jesus said that if you put your hand to the plow and look back, you’re not worthy of the kingdom of heaven. We’re not saved by our works, we’re saved by our faith. But we’re not saved by a belief that if we just do the minimum, just check off the right boxes, then God will get off our backs and leave us free to do what we want. The faith that is worked by the Holy Spirit works a complete surrender to Jesus as Lord.

Jesus goes on in that passage to talk about those who claimed the right to enter heaven based on the fact that they showed up when religion was going on- “Lord, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.” They participated in religious activities. But Jesus rejects them, calling them workers of “iniquity”, that is, lawlessness. There was no repentance, no desire to change their lives to conform to God’s truth, and therefore there was no faith, no relationship. There was just a desire to jump through a few hoops to gain the blessings of salvation.

That is the broad and easy way. The narrow way, the way that few find, is the way repentance, of surrender to the rightful Lord of creation.

The Calvinist / Arminian debate is often seen from the perspective of “free will”.  I am not sure this is really the best way to characterize the true nature of the debate, to ask the question whether man has a free will or not.  Better to ask what “will” is, how it functions, and where it comes from?  What is it that determines the choices we make?

Most Reformers are comfortable using the term “free will”, in fact.  We have to define it properly, of course.  I don’t think it’s best to discuss predestination at the point of man’s decisions frankly, because man is truly called to make a choice constantly in Scripture.  Predestination rightly understood takes place a step back from the will, at the point of man’s nature from which will arises.  So man’s will is free in the sense that he is not compelled from any outside source from ultimately choosing to follow God or not to follow God. The will then is free to be what it is- the faculty by which, when confronted with choices in my life to make, I prioritize those choices based on my values and my understanding of how those values will be best served by those choices, and then take action based on my perception of what will best serve my values.  People do this all the time, and do it well.  The emphasis in predestination is therefore properly on the nature, and how the nature of man can become something capable of choosing good, or even desiring to choose good.  This is the problem- our natures are corrupt, desiring bad things, and our will reflects this.  It’s not that the will is malfunctioning, or restricted in some way.  Our will is properly reflecting our values.  A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.

This helps us address the fact that God constantly calls on man to choose to obey God.  Ezekiel 33:11, for example- “Turn, turn from your evil ways!  Why would you die, O Israel?”  This should not be a challenge for the Calvinist, because as the rest of Ezekiel makes clear, the unbeliever cannot, will not turn from his ways until the stony heart is taken out of his flesh and he is given a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:25).  Only then will he hear the word of God and do it. Once the nature is changed, the will follows.

As the quotes above show, the Scriptures talk frequently about the choices we make and where those choices come from.  Choices we make simply are not made in a vacuum.  They come from our nature, which is completely corrupt in Adam.  We hate God, hate his image in others, and our choices reflect this.  This is why regeneration is necessary, why a transformation of the nature is necessary.  “You must be born again”, as the Scriptures tell us.  Only with the transformation of the nature can different choices begin to happen.

In Hosea 2:16, we read:

 16 “And it shall be, in that day,” Says the LORD, “That you will call Me ‘My Husband,’ And no longer call Me ‘My Master,’ 17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, And they shall be remembered by their name no more.

In the first three chapters of Hosea, God has used the figure of an unfaithful marriage extensively to describe his relationship with Israel.  Israel has consorted with foreign gods, and is therefore guilty of adultery against her true husband, Jehovah.  Judgment is promised for this.  But restoration is also promised.  God says that He will put Israel in the wilderness, with a double purpose- to punish her for her unfaithfulness, but also to cut her off from her temptations in order to allure her back to Him.  It is in this context that verses 16 and 17, quoted above, appear.

The startling thing that we see in this passage is that the foreign gods that Israel worshiped were not even the real problem.  The real problem was that Israel’s relationship with Jehovah was wrong from the beginning, in a way that guaranteed idolatry.  The word “master” in Hebrew is “Ba’al“, which is what they called the foreign gods as well.  A “ba’al” was a master, a superior from which one could gain certain benefits if one propitiated or pleased him in the right way.  It is evident from our text, and evident from Israel’s history, that this is the way they viewed their relationship with Jehovah.  But if they worship Jehovah in this way, then it is essentially self-centered; they worship God for what they can get out of Him.  If they do that, then idolatry is inevitable.  They will seek to maximize their benefit and control by worshiping other gods as well.  Israel is like the girl that keeps several suitors on the hook at once, keeping them competing with one another, because she gets the most gifts and luxuries that way.

Instead of this, God is calling Israel to a different kind of relationship.  He says, “You will call me ‘my husband'” instead.  This is the term ishi in Hebrew, also meaning “man”.  My man, my husband- this is the relationship Israel is called to have with God.  It is a personal, intimate, and loving relationship.  It is a relationship of delight, desire and selflessness.

God told Abraham, “I am your exceeding great reward.”  God’s people pursue Him rightly for the beauty and glory of what He is, not because of what He can give us.  If we’re in it for the benefits, then we will always stray.  We will seek to maximize those benefits, in the foolishness of our minds, by dipping one toe in this pond and another in that.  Of course the result of this is, as we all know, that we end up with nothing.  The girl keeping all the different suitors interested in her, and never committing to any of them, will eventually lose them all.  They will figure out that she is just using them.  Such a selfish, self-serving approach is disastrous in our personal lives, and it is disastrous for our religious lives as well.  As long as God is ba’al to us, our relationship is wrong.  Because we’re still trying to be in the driver’s seat, trying to be in control, deciding what to give God in return for which benefits, always holding myself back from total commitment.  Syncretism and faithlessness is a given when this is the approach I take to God.

God will not be “ba’al” to us, a sugar daddy that gives us what we want, and we just have to jump through a few hoops, subscribe to the right creeds, go to the right church, in order to keep Him propitiated.  He will be “ishi“, husband to us, and bless us with Himself first and foremost.  Many wonderful things come to us in that relationship.  But we need to learn to desire God for who He is, not for what He can give us.

Revelation 21 and 22 list many wonderful things in heaven.  Streets of gold, no sickness or hunger, no conflict and the like.  But the first thing that’s mentioned, the first wonderful thing in heaven, is this:

Revelation 21: 2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
 3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.

The best thing about heaven is that God is there.  All the rest of it is just icing on the cake, or to look at it another way, just a description of what it is like to be in the presence of God.  As John Piper said most memorably in _God is the Gospel_, would you want to be in heaven if God were not there?

Of course not, because without God, it wouldn’t be heaven.  Put away the ba’als from your mind.  There’s no such thing.  God will never be made to serve us, no matter how many religious observances we perform or how many good works we do.  But if we are His, He will allure us back to Him, teaching us to love Him, delight in Him and desire Him above all else.  He is the true reward.  Without Him, nothing else matters.

I am teaching through the book of Ezekiel again with a different group, and we looked at the first chapter last night.  I found myself once again amazed at this incredibly dramatic picture of God and His power.

The vision Ezekiel sees is a vision of a cosmic chariot, pulled by angelic beings.  These four living creatures are representative of ultimate power within creation, and they are God’s agents.  The four living creatures can go in any direction, see in any direction and act in any direction.  They are connected to four wheels, and the wheels support a platform, on top of which is a throne, and on the throne is “an appearance of a likeness of a man”, glowing like amber and surrounded with a rainbow from the waist up, and from the waist down a pillar of fire.  It is the chariot of God, and it is coming from the north, toward Israel, in the posture of an enemy.

Israel’s great mistake was their attempt to define God down.  They wanted to compartmentalize Jehovah, look to him for help for certain aspects of their life, but to leave other parts of their life ungoverned by God.  In those days that took the form of the worship of other gods as well.  They committed syncretism, the mixing of religions.  But the heart of that sin is the sin of self-worship, that I will decide what God is good for and limit Him to what I give Him.  It is the desire to manage God, negotiate with God, contain and control God.

But this vision of God at the beginning of Israel absolutely blows away any idea of such a God.  The God that Ezekiel sees cannot be managed.  The only possible response to such a figure is surrender, unconditional surrender.

This is why repentance is an absolutely fundamental and necessary element of  salvation.  Salvation simply isn’t possible without it.  Repentance is another word for surrender.  Until I stop trying to run my own life according to my own rules, I am not dealing with the God that exists.  He’s not some kindly old man with a big beard and his hands held out offering just as much of Himself as we’re willing to take at the time.  He’s a consuming fire, a conquering king.  Accepting His salvation means accepting His rule.

In Luke 14:22-33, Jesus calls us to count the cost of discipleship.  He talks about the one who only goes halfway in an endeavor and therefore fails entirely.  He also talks about a king who has ten thousand soldiers and is being attacked by a king with twenty thousand.  Recognizing he cannot win the fight, he makes peace and asks for terms.  Whatever he must surrender and give up to his enemy is better than what he will lose if he fights and is defeated.  So he asks for terms.  Whatever the cost, he must make peace.

Jesus says, so it is with us.  We must forsake all, or we cannot be His disciples.  Because that is who God is.  There is no half-way salvation.  The idea of accepting Jesus as our savior but not as our lord is utter nonsense, asking God to lie about who He is, which He will never do.  We must forsake all.  Because anything God requires of us, anything we lose, is nothing compared to what we will lose if we keep fighting against God.  And by God’s grace, it is nothing compared to what He will bestow on those who surrender and accept His glorious and gracious rule.

This quote is from John Calvin’s commentary on Hebrews chapter 6, discussing the “falling away” issue.  

But here arises a new question, how can it be that he who has once made such a progress should afterwards fall away? For God, it may be said, calls none effectually but the elect, and Paul testifies that they are really his sons who are led by his Spirit, (Romans 8:14😉 and he teaches us, that it is a sure pledge of adoption when Christ makes us partakers of his Spirit. The elect are also beyond the danger of finally falling away; for the Father who gave them to be preserved by Christ his Son is greater than all, and Christ promises to watch over them all so that none may perish. To all this I answer, That God indeed favors none but the elect alone with the Spirit of regeneration, and that by this they are distinguished from the reprobate; for they are renewed after his image and receive the earnest of the Spirit in hope of the future inheritance, and by the same Spirit the Gospel is sealed in their hearts. But I cannot admit that all this is any reason why he should not grant the reprobate also some taste of his grace, why he should not irradiate their minds with some sparks of his light, why he should not give them some perception of his goodness, and in some sort engrave his word on their hearts. Otherwise, where would be the temporal faith mentioned by Mark 4:17? There is therefore some knowledge even in the reprobate, which afterwards vanishes away, either because it did not strike roots sufficiently deep, or because it withers, being choked up.2

And by this bridle the Lord keeps us in fear and humility; and we certainly see how prone human nature is otherwise to security and foolish confidence. At the same time our solicitude ought to be such as not to disturb the peace of conscience. For the Lord strengthens faith in us, while he subdues our flesh: and hence he would have faith to remain and rest tranquilly as in a safe haven; but he exercises the flesh with various conflicts, that it may not grow wanton through idleness.

 This is an outstanding discussion of what it means for someone to fall away from the grace of God.  And clearly, anyone who thinks that denying God’s grace or falling away from that grace is inconsistent with “Calvinism” would properly be accused of being more “Calvinist” than Calvin himself.

Note that last paragraph in particular- the doctrine of eternal security must be properly understood or can very easily become a cloak for antinomianism and pride.  God warns us constantly of the danger of self-reliance.  Calvin warns us against “security and foolish confidence.”  God’s elect will never fall away from the grace of Jesus Christ, but God works through means, and one of His means are warnings such as we see in Hebrews 6.  The elect of God will hear these warnings and listen.  The elect of God will never say, “I’m elect, and therefore that warning doesn’t apply to me.”

And once we understand that truth, we will never again feel any conflict between the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, and the warnings that Scripture constantly gives us against falling away.