What’s So Great About the Doctrines of Grace? Perseverance of the Saints

February 24th, 2026
by Pastor Josh Hayward

Beloved Kinney,

Today is the last reflection on “The Doctrines of Grace.” Salvation is a work of God from
beginning to end. Before trusting Christ, we were totally depraved in that every aspect
of our being was tainted by sin making us unable to come to God on our own, and
therefore we needed God the Holy Spirit to effectually call us to himself by drawing our
attention to the particular redemption of Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins and
giving us the ability to choose to believe in Jesus, knowing we would never have chosen
God if he had not first unconditionally chosen us before the foundation of the world.

Salvation is of the Lord from beginning to end. To close our reflection on the doctrines of
grace, I want to focus on those words: to the end. God will keep us saved to the
end—the end being glorification when we make it to heaven. To put it bluntly: you
cannot become UN-saved if you were truly saved in the first place.

Listen to Jesus’ words in John 10:27-30, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them,
and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will
snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

God the Father and God the Son have divine grip on your soul so tight that nothing can
pry it open. Think about it: if God unconditionally chose you before the foundation of the
world, and if the Son paid the penalty specifically for you on the cross, and if the Spirit
awakened your dead heart to the beauty of Christ effectually drawing you to believe in
Jesus…what makes you think any of that that can be undone?

Consider how prideful it is to believe true Christians can lose their salvation. To lose
one’s salvation means that such a person has the ability to undo what God did. That’s
very prideful! You do not have that kind of ability!

Let that be of great assurance to you when you doubt: God will keep you. He will finish
what he started.

God did it all, therefore he gets all the glory, and we get all the joy. Amen.

Love,
Pastor Josh