Paul's Passing Thoughts

The key to being saved by faith alone is once saved always saved. My father in the faith, Pastor Richard Peacock, was most impressed with a rhetorical question that I asked him in one of our conversations when I was a young believer: “If you can lose your salvation, what do you have to do to keep it?” While beaming with approval at what his young mentoree said, he replied, “That is the question isn’t it?” If you have to do something to keep your salvation, that’s works salvation.

John Calvin’s gospel is a works salvation because you have to do something to keep your salvation. You must live by the same faith alone that saved you in your Christian walk (or life; ie., sanctification). You have to do something to maintain your salvation: do not add works to your faith in your Christian walk. Salvation by Christ plus (+) NOT WORKING. This ministry has described in detail how that supposedly works in real life for the Calvinist in False Reformation: Four Tenets of Luther and Calvin’s Egregious False Gospel.   

Hence, Calvin and Augustine believed the Sabbath rest was symbolic of the Christian life; working on the Sabbath would result in death. Therefore, to live is to not work. This is evident in the New Calvinist mantra that reflects the authentic Reformed gospel: “We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day.” This isn’t merely stating that the same gospel that saved us also sanctifies us; it is stating that we must do this to maintain our justification in sanctification. Salvation by Christ plus (+) preaching the gospel to ourselves every day. This is the crux of the perseverance of the saints, the “P” in TULIP. The idea is that the essence of our sin is the desire to

Delves into Calvin’s view of Law.

show ourselves righteous by works, so we must persevere against our Pharisaical tendencies that will damn us by constant appeal to the free grace of the cross.

But that’s not all; there is yet another thing that Calvinists must do to keep themselves saved: they must believe that a perfect keeping of the law is the standard for justification and that we are totally depraved. That’s the “T” in TULIP. Because the “believer” remains totally depraved, all of his works are “filthy rags” and will only bring

“condemnation.” But what makes total depravity all-important is the fact that Calvinism makes justification answerable to the law. A perfect keeping of the law must be maintained and imputed to us throughout our Christian life. If we live by faith alone in sanctification, the perfect works of Christ continue to fulfill the law for us. But at any given time that we add works to our faith, that’s not persevering.

I delve into these arguments in-depth in False Reformation and New Calvinism for Dummies which include citations from the Calvin Institutes, Scripture, and Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Both books can be found at tancpublishing.com

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