In our culture Baptists may be the loudest proclaimers of the teaching, but it’s rooted in the Calvinist/Augustinian teaching of the “Perseverance of the Saints.” If salvation is ONLY a matter of what God does, if God’s grace is irresistible, then it is pure logic that someone who is now saved is someone God wanted saved and also someone God wants to be saved forever. There is nothing a person can do to resist God’s effectual will.

That reasoning is very attractive. It’s simple, it attributes maximal power to God, it comforts us regarding not merely ourselves but our friends and loved ones who were (so we believe) “saved” at one time, but later seem to turn away.

Wesleyans have, for the most part, not only failed to be heard in the wider Christian culture, but we’ve also failed to shape the theology of our own people. We’ve failed to show how salvation as pictured in Scripture is more (not less) than flipping a switch regarding our eternal destination. Sanctification (holiness, Christian perfection) is PART of salvation, not just something that may or may not come on top of it, like sprinkles on a cupcake. Too often in recent generations we’ve either preached a tepid moralism (since the stringent moralism of previous generations seemed mean) or preached a message of salvation that was just like we might hear from our Baptist neighbors.

The phenomenon of a person who at one point appears to be “saved” but who later doesn’t is common to all theological traditions. Those in the Methodist tradition may say the person “backslid” or “lost their salvation.” Those who adhere to the Calvinist/Augustinian tradition may say the person “was never really saved to begin with,” or “they were just playing games with God.”

There is no comfort in this “once saved, always saved”/”they were never really saved to begin with” teaching. Assurance of salvation is impossible, since at any given moment it might be that whereas I THINK I am sincere in my faith, I am REALLY just “playing games with God” or “fooling myself.” This is why the evangelistic appeals that demand that we “know that we know that we know” that we are saved are ultimately not very helpful.

My confidence is in Jesus and his promises, not in my own faith or in my self knowledge. I’m a sinner. I know I can be wrong (my sin has epistemic consequences, as some would say). I KNOW Jesus will never cast me away, decide he’s tired of me, or reject me. If I waver, or turn away, I have scriptural evidence that he’s not giving up on me, that he’s never comfortable in my walking away. But I also have scriptural evidence that he doesn’t compel or coerce me to go the right way.