The Reign of the Servant Kings, A Study of Eternal Security And the Final Significance of Man by Joseph Dillow.
What do we make of a man who claims to have placed his trust in Jesus Christ but whose present life-style is a complete contradiction of the faith he once acknowledged? The Westminster divines had the ready answer that he was never a Christian to begin with, because the ultimate test of the reality of faith is perseverance in the faith. The Remonstrants, on the other hand, speaking from the Arminian tradition, viewed the matter differently. To them... it was also possible that he was genuinely born again but, due to his falling into sin or unbelief, lost his justification.
Is there a view of these warnings and other in the New Testament which maintains, with the Calvinist tradition that justification can never be forfeited and at the same time, allows, with the Wesleyans, that justification and sanctification are not inextricably united and that there is indeed something conditional in the believer's ultimate destiny?
The answer to that question is yes. The danger is not loss of heaven but loss of our reward there and severe divine discipline in time. The issue of whether or not the saints will necessarily persevere and whether or not true faith is indestructible is a complex interpretive issue involving numerous passages in the New Testament, indeed one's whole system of theology as well. An entire view of the Christian life is under consideration in the following chapters.
