Book Recommendation on the Doctrine of Perseverance

Sunday’s message afforded us the opportunity to consider the doctrine of perseverance. We will continue to revisit this issue as we study Hebrews.  However, for those who would like additional, more comprehensive help understanding these things, I wanted to recommend a great resource: The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance by Tom Schreiner and Ardel Caneday.  As the title suggests, it tackles not only perseverance, but the associated doctrine of assurance.  

The authors rightly recognize the tendency of many bible students to shrink perseverance and/or assurance down to just one aspect of what the Bible teaches about them.  Schreiner and Caneday not only acknowledge that the Biblical material is vast and variegated, they do well to recognize eight major categories of passages on perseverance/assurance.  They look at each category in turn, interpreting key passages and offering insight regarding how to integrate such passages into a larger understanding of these doctrines.   

These categories are:

1. Passages offering eternal blessings conditioned upon initial and continuing faith (Acts 16:31; Rev 2:7, 11; 3:5)
2. Passages containing God’s promise to preserve His people unto final salvation (John 6:40; 11:25-26)
3. Passages containing warnings and exhortations requiring believers to persevere in faithfulness to be saved (Matt 10:22; Mark 13:13; Rev 22:18-19)
4. Passages announcing that believers need to persevere in faithfulness to Christ because they will face opposition and hatred from the world (Rom 5:3-5; 2 Tim 3:12)
5. Passages calling us to examine whether our behavior matches what the gospel requires of believers (1 John 2:3-6)
6. Passages indicating that those who fail to remain faithful to Christ were never true believers (1 John 2:18-19)
7. Passages explaining that those who persevere do so because God is at work in them (John 3:19-21; Phil 2:12-13)
8. Passages teaching that everyone who believes in Christ and perseveres in faithfulness does so strictly by the grace of God (Eph 2:8-10)

The authors not only give careful attention to these passages, but survey four popular approaches to the warnings and exhortations in Scripture before showing how a fifth view makes the most sense of the biblical material.  The introduction contains this final paragraph:

“As we integrate the eight kinds of biblical passages throughout this book, our paramount concern is faithfulness to Scripture.  With pastoral concern we appeal to our readers to submit to the coherent biblical message, which simultaneously assures us (that God secures all who are in Jesus Christ) and admonishes us (that we must persevere in loyalty to Jesus Christ or else enter into eternal death).  We hope to demonstrate, through careful attention to the biblical text, that assurance and admonition function in harmony, for God’s promise grounds God’s warning.  This is a crucial and ever timely message for believer and unbeliever alike, for the matters we address are of the essence of the gospel’s call for faith in Jesus Christ” (17).  

Schreiner and Caneday are two of the most careful exegetes and articulate writers in the evangelical world today.  They are ideally suited to handle such a nuanced set of issues.  I highly recommend their book.