063. How do you harmonize the Calvinistic view of the perseverance of the saints with the Ar...

How do you harmonize the Calvinistic view of the perseverance of the saints with the Arminian belief of falling from grace?

If I understand the Calvinistic view it does not teach the perseverance of the saints but the perseverance of the Savior.

While it teaches that the saints are utterly unreliable and might fall away any day or any hour, it also teaches that the Savior is ever watchful and ever faithful—for He ever liveth to make intercession for the believer (Hebrews 7:25)—and that He has pledged Himself that those who believe on Him shall never perish (John 10:28), and has given His word for it that He and His Father will keep us to the end, and that no man is able to snatch us out of the hand of Himself and the Father (John 10:28-29, R.V.). This does not mean that if a man is once born again and then lies down in sin, he will not be lost forever. It means that Jesus Christ will see to it that the one who is born again will not lie down in sin. He may fall into sin, he may fall into gross sin, but Jesus Christ has undertaken his recovery. He will go after the lost sheep until He finds it (Luke 15:4). There is no warrant here for one to continue in sin saying: “I am a child of God and therefore cannot be lost.” There is no comfort whatever here for such a one. If one lies down in sin and continues in sin, it is a proof that he is not a child of God, is not saved, never was regenerate (1 John 2:19).

What the Arminians object to is not the doctrine of the faithfulness of the Savior, that He will prove true even though we prove faithless; what they object to is such a doctrine of “once in grace, always in grace” as enables a man to go on sinning and seeking to justify himself by saying: “I have been saved, therefore I have been in grace and am in grace still.”

We need to be on our guard on the one hand against the doctrine that gives us comfort in continuance in sin. We need to be on our guard on the other hand against that distrust of Jesus Christ that makes us fear that some time we shall prove unfaithful and Jesus Christ will desert us. The position that we ought to hold is that held by the apostle Paul, where he asserts on the one hand: “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day” (2 Timothy 1:12), but which leads him on the other hand to keep his body under (to give his body a black eye) lest when he has preached to others he himself should become a castaway (1 Corinthians 9:27).