Christians believe because they have been called efficaciously by the Holy Spirit through the external call of the gospel, i.e., through the preaching of the Gospel. That is good news. We did not come to faith because we freely chose to respond or because we freely met the conditions of the New Covenant (in the Remonstrant view) but because God sovereignly gave us new life and true faith.

Under this head of doctrine we have considered the errors that Synod rejected—the Remonstrants turned the perseverance into a covenant of works—so now we turn to what Synod confessed positively about how Christ graciously preserves his people through their pilgrimage in this world. Make no mistake, according to Scripture as understood and confessed by the Reformed churches, this Christian life is a pilgrimage. This image or metaphor is important and though it might seem self-evident it needs to be reinforced in our age when varieties of Christian triumphalism seem to abound. Consider the popularity of the so-called “health and wealth” gospel. Benny Hinn is an outrageous charlatan and fraud but he remains a very popular and influential con man. Joel Osteen is merely a more mainstream packaging of the same lust for worldly success. Triumphalism comes in other forms too. Christian perfectionism—the doctrine that it is possible to achieve “entire sanctification” in this life—remains a widely held view of the Christian life.

The Reformed understanding of Romans chapter 7 (see below) is rather different and we see it reflected right at the beginning of the Reformed response to the Remonstrant revision of the doctrine of the Christian life. Remember, the Remonstrants were unhappy with the Augustinian and Reformed view of the Christian life. They wanted more sanctification and they agreed with the Romanist critics of the Reformation that the Protestant doctrine of salvation (including sanctification) by grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide) was inadequate.

The first thing the Reformed said about perseverance was that Christians are fallen, sinful people who are regenerated by the Holy Spirit:

Those people whom God according to his purpose calls into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord and regenerates by the Holy Spirit, he also sets free from the reign and slavery of sin, though in this life not entirely from the flesh and from the body of sin (Canons of Dort, 5.1.)

Christians believe because they have been called efficaciously by the Holy Spirit through the external call of the gospel, i.e., through the preaching of the Gospel. That is good news. We did not come to faith because we freely chose to respond or because we freely met the conditions of the New Covenant (in the Remonstrant view) but because God sovereignly gave us new life and true faith.

Not only have we been given new life but we have been called into fellowship with the Son of God. By grace alone, through faith alone, the Spirit has united us to Christ, with whom we now have a living communion with the risen Christ. The Reformed faith is not cold orthodoxy. It is a vital doctrine and a vital relationship with Christ.

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