Calvinism Examined: Do the Five Points Match Scripture?
I agree with Calvinists that sinners cannot save themselves and that salvation is entirely by grace. Our disagreement concerns what follows from those truths. Does Scripture teach that God gives a saving call only to people selected before creation, that Christ intended His saving death for those people alone, and that they must be born again before believing? I want to examine the passages used to support those claims without confusing disagreement with a theological system with rejection of God’s authority.
Calvinism and the Authority of Scripture
The familiar summary TULIP stands for Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. These are connected claims. Total depravity includes the teaching that fallen people cannot believe until God gives them spiritual life. Unconditional election identifies those who receive it as particular people chosen before creation, without foreseen faith or any other response being the condition of that choice.
Limited atonement, also called definite atonement, teaches that Christ’s death was intended to secure the salvation of the elect. Irresistible grace describes an inward call that certainly brings those chosen people to faith. Perseverance teaches that those God regenerates will continue in faith to the end because He preserves them. Reformed teachers explain some details differently, so a summary should not be mistaken for their entire theology.
John Calvin was a sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer who taught predestination and reprobation. Predestination concerns God’s determination of a person’s final destiny; reprobation concerns His passing over or rejecting those not chosen for salvation. Augustine’s later writings on grace and predestination were an earlier influence in this discussion.
The five-point arrangement developed through a later Dutch controversy. Followers of Jacob Arminius presented five articles in the Remonstrance of 1610, and the Synod of Dort answered them in 1618–1619. Its Canons addressed election, Christ’s death, human corruption and conversion, and perseverance. The Reformed Church in America’s historical introduction explains that setting. Calvin did not devise the English acronym TULIP, and the five points do not summarize everything he taught.
I do not think we establish the truth or error of these doctrines by tracing every possible philosophical influence on Augustine or Calvin. A speculative account of their origins cannot carry the biblical argument. Calvinism seeks to honor God’s rule, take sin seriously, and exclude human boasting from salvation. I affirm those concerns. The question is whether its explanation agrees with the passages in context.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
Paul warns against philosophy and human tradition that displace Christ. He does not forbid careful thought, honest historical study, or comparison of Scripture with Scripture. His warning should make us attentive to the passage itself before we require it to fit a theological definition. If our interpretation narrows an invitation God addresses to all, we need to examine how we reached that interpretation.
I reject Calvinism because I do not believe its connected claims withstand that examination. Salvation begins with God and leaves us no room to boast, but those truths do not settle every question about human inability, election, Christ’s death, and saving faith. We need to consider what Scripture actually says about each of them.
Sin, God’s Rule, and the Question of Ability
God knows the end from the beginning and accomplishes His counsel. He raises and removes rulers, restrains evil, hears prayer, judges nations, and directs history toward Christ’s kingdom. No creature can force Him to abandon His final purpose. Our ability to respond to Him does not make Him dependent on us or leave Him unsure of what will happen.
The Westminster Confession, chapter 3, says that God ordains everything that happens while expressly denying that He authors sin or coerces the creature’s will. A fair account of the confession must acknowledge those denials. My objection is to its claim that God’s rule involves an unchangeable decree determining every sinful choice. Scripture describes people resisting His commands and God restraining or redirecting their evil. He also gives persistent rebels over to the course they have chosen. He can govern these events without being morally responsible for the wickedness.
The cross brings God’s purpose and human responsibility together. Acts 2:23 describes Jesus being delivered according to God’s determined purpose and foreknowledge, then charges lawless people with taking and crucifying Him. Acts 4 names Herod, Pontius Pilate, Gentiles, and people from Israel among His opponents. God accomplished His saving purpose, while the hatred and violence remained the guilt of those who acted. That purpose did not make the Father the one who tortured or punished His Son.
Our response to God still depends on what He graciously provides. We could not know His truth unless He revealed it, and the gospel reaches us because He sends people to preach. His Word brings conviction, and Christ draws sinners to Himself. When we receive that help, we have earned nothing. His commands genuinely address people who can receive or resist the light He gives.
All people have sinned, and no one can justify himself before God. Sin corrupts our thinking, directs our desires away from Him, damages our relationships, and brings suffering throughout human life. Adam’s disobedience brought a corrupt nature and mortality, but we are guilty for our own sins rather than inheriting his personal guilt. We cannot erase that guilt, earn acceptance, or produce spiritual life within ourselves. I have no disagreement with teaching the depth of humanity’s ruin.
The disagreement begins when Calvinism says that an unregenerate person, someone not yet born again, cannot believe until God first regenerates him. Calvinists ordinarily mean that regeneration produces faith; they do not necessarily put a measurable interval between the two. They locate the inability in the fallen person’s opposition to God. I understand the order differently: God graciously draws and enables the sinner through truth, and the one who believes receives new birth.
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Paul describes people dead in trespasses who nevertheless walk according to corrupt influences and act on sinful desires. Their spiritual death is real: they are separated from God, guilty before Him, and in bondage to sin. But we cannot assume that every feature of a physical corpse explains how a sinner responds to God’s Word. The people Paul describes need the life only Christ gives, and he says they are saved by grace through faith.
In John 5:25, Jesus says that the dead will hear the Son’s voice and that those who hear will live. The life comes from Him through His own powerful word. I do not find a statement here that the hearer must already be born again before believing the gospel. God’s revelation, the Spirit’s conviction, and the preaching of Christ all precede our response, without establishing that regeneration must precede faith.
Acts 17:30 says God commands all people everywhere to repent. I cannot treat that command as an empty invitation to people left without any possibility of responding to His grace. Creation bears His witness, conscience responds to what He reveals, and the gospel announces the Savior. God does not owe us salvation, but the help He gives and the call He makes are genuine.
Faith is not a meritorious work, an action that earns a reward. Paul contrasts faith with works that supply a reason for boasting. When I trust Christ, I abandon the attempt to save myself and receive the Savior God provided. I did not supply the light, produce the conviction, or provide the cross. Receiving His gift puts Him under no obligation to reward my achievement.
Election in Christ and Romans 9
Calvinism teaches that God chose particular fallen people for salvation before creation, without making foreseen faith a condition of that choice. Those people receive an effectual call, a call that certainly produces the intended faith. Scripture does teach election, or choosing, so rejecting Calvinism cannot mean setting that teaching aside. We need to determine whom God chooses in each passage and for what purpose.
God chose Israel for a national covenant purpose, appointed priests and kings to particular responsibilities, and chose apostles to serve Christ. Those uses do not all answer the same question. Scripture also identifies Christ as God’s chosen Servant and chosen cornerstone. When Paul describes believers’ election, we must attend to their relationship with Him.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth–in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
Every blessing Paul names belongs to us in Christ. God chose us in Him to be holy and without blame and predestined us to adoption through Him. Our redemption comes through His blood, and our inheritance belongs to the purpose God fulfills in Him. God also intends to gather all things together in Christ. As I follow Paul’s repeated emphasis on the Son, I understand him to be describing God’s eternal plan for a people united to Christ.
Paul then describes how the Ephesians heard the truth, believed in Christ, and were sealed with the Holy Spirit. Calvinists distinguish regeneration from sealing, and we should not pretend the terms are identical. The sealing described here follows faith, however, and the passage does not establish an earlier regeneration that makes faith possible. I read its sequence as consistent with receiving new life through faith in Christ.
Romans 8:29 identifies the destiny God determined for those He foreknew: conformity to the image of His Son. In 1 Peter 1:2, election according to foreknowledge is connected with the Spirit’s sanctifying work, obedience, and Christ’s blood. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13, God’s choice for salvation is joined to sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. These passages declare God’s eternal purpose for His people. I do not understand them to exclude other hearers from a genuine opportunity to receive Christ.
Romans 9 addresses the question raised by Israel’s unbelief. Paul grieves for his people, who received covenant privileges and from whom the Messiah came according to the flesh. If many rejected Him, had God’s word failed?
But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, "In Isaac your seed shall be called." That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. For this is the word of promise: "At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son." And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to her, "The older shall serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion." So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
Paul traces the promised line through Isaac rather than Ishmael and then through Jacob rather than Esau. Genesis 25 explicitly speaks of two nations in Rebekah’s womb. The later words, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated,” come from Malachi 1, which concerns Israel and Edom centuries after the brothers lived. That national and covenant setting guides my reading of Paul’s argument. I do not read these statements as an announcement of the eternal destinies of two infants.
Paul’s quotation about mercy comes from God’s words to Moses after Israel’s golden-calf rebellion, when the people deserved judgment. They could not demand mercy as payment for their conduct. Paul next cites Pharaoh to illustrate judicial hardening, God’s judgment confirming a persistent rebel in his chosen course. Exodus describes a ruler already oppressing Israel, repeatedly refusing God’s command, and hardening his heart. God displayed His power by hardening and defeating that rebellious ruler. He was not keeping a humble seeker from trusting Him.
The potter and clay language that follows affirms God’s rights as Creator. In Jeremiah 18, God uses that picture to show His right to judge nations. He also says that if a warned nation turns from evil, He will relent from the announced disaster. By the end of Romans 9, Paul identifies Israel’s failure as seeking righteousness without faith and stumbling over Christ. We need to carry that conclusion into Romans 10, where he openly calls people to believe.
But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For "whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved."
The promise to whoever calls on the Lord gives the hearer a genuine invitation. Romans 10 closes with God stretching out His hands to a disobedient people, and Romans 11 says He has not cast Israel away. The nation’s hardening is partial and temporary, and its promised future remains. Gentiles enter through faith, while unbelievers remain responsible for refusing Christ. Read together, these chapters uphold God’s freedom and faithfulness without replacing Israel with the church or removing the hearer’s responsibility.
Christ Died for the Whole World
Definite atonement distinguishes the worth of Christ’s death from its intended saving effect. The second head of the Canons of Dort affirms its sufficiency for the world while teaching that it effectually redeems the elect. Calvinists are not saying Christ’s blood lacks sufficient value to redeem everyone. I object to their restricting His intended saving provision to a people selected beforehand.
Paul begins 1 Timothy 2 by urging prayer for all people, explicitly including kings and other rulers. He connects those prayers to God’s desire for all to be saved and to the one Mediator who gave Himself for all.
Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time,
Some Calvinists understand all here to mean all classes of people, including rulers, rather than every individual. Paul certainly includes rulers, whom believers might otherwise neglect. I understand his example to extend the reach of our prayers, rather than restrict God’s saving desire. He gives the broad command to pray, explains that God desires all to be saved, and says Christ gave Himself as a ransom for all. I do not see grounds in that argument for limiting the saving provision to the elect.
The same breadth appears in Hebrews 2:9, where Jesus tasted death for everyone, and in John the Baptist’s identification of Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The apostle John makes the reach of His sacrifice especially plain when he distinguishes believers’ sins from those of the world.
My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
Propitiation identifies Christ as the atoning sacrifice that deals with sin before God. John says that provision extends beyond believers to the whole world, and 2 Peter 2:1 even describes false teachers denying the Lord who bought them. I understand these statements to reject limited atonement without teaching universalism, the belief that everyone will be saved. Christ provided for the world, but the saving benefit is received through faith. Those who reject Him remain condemned in unbelief.
The perfection of the sacrifice rests in who Jesus is and what He gave for us. He is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and completely sinless. Wicked people tortured and crucified Him, while He voluntarily gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His saving work through His shed blood and death was complete before He was buried and rose bodily. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remained united, with no broken fellowship in the Godhead. We offer every sinner salvation through the blood of this crucified and risen Savior.
Grace Can Be Resisted and Christ Draws All
Reformed teaching distinguishes the outward gospel call, which people resist, from an inward effectual call given to the elect. The third and fourth heads of Dort affirm a sincere gospel invitation and describe God renewing the will to bring a willing response. Irresistible grace does not mean dragging someone to Christ against his unchanged wishes. It means that God’s inward work certainly changes those wishes and produces faith.
I disagree that Scripture establishes an inward call restricted in that way. God can powerfully overcome resistance, but we also need to account for people resisting His gracious work. Stephen confronted his hearers with that refusal, and their response was to silence him by killing him.
"You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it." When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, "Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not charge them with this sin." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Jesus also lamented over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37 because He desired to gather her children and they were unwilling. In John 5:40, He said, “you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” Luke 7:30 describes the Pharisees and lawyers rejecting God’s purpose for themselves. Proverbs 1 likewise describes people refusing God’s call and outstretched hand. In each passage, the refusal belongs to those addressed.
Calvinists answer that these passages concern resistance to the outward call, rather than the defeat of the effectual call. Stating that distinction does not establish it from the passages. I understand the invitations to express God’s genuine desire for the hearers to respond. His grace begins the work and supplies what a response requires, while those who refuse remain responsible for their refusal.
Acts 13:48 says as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. That statement about God’s work must stand; we should not explain it away. Yet the same account describes opponents rejecting the Word and judging themselves unworthy of everlasting life. We need to account for both responses, without using the appointment of those who believed to cancel the genuine appeal to those who refused.
John 6:44 likewise says no one can come unless the Father draws him. No sinner comes independently of God, and His drawing cannot be omitted from our explanation of conversion. The disagreement concerns whether He draws only selected people and necessarily overcomes every refusal.
And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day." The Jews then complained about Him, because He said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." And they said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, 'I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus therefore answered and said to them, "Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.
Jesus connects coming to Him with believing in Him. He promises that all the Father gives Him will come, and everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to the Son. I read His promise of resurrection alongside verse 40, where He speaks of those who see the Son and believe, and verse 45, where He describes hearing and learning. The Father draws and teaches, but the passage does not say that He first regenerates selected people before they believe.
Later in the same Gospel, as Jesus approached the cross, He spoke of His drawing in terms that reach beyond Israel.
"Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name." Then a voice came from heaven, saying, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again." Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, "An angel has spoken to Him." Jesus answered and said, "This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself." This He said, signifying by what death He would die.
“All peoples” cannot mean everyone will be saved, because John also records persistent unbelief. It does show that Christ’s drawing through the cross reaches beyond one nation. I do not read His words as restricting that drawing to a hidden group of elect people. He acts first in drawing sinners, while those who reject the light He brings remain responsible for that rejection.
When Lydia heard Paul preach in Acts 16, the Lord opened her heart to heed his message. Luke does not say she was born again before faith or that the other hearers were denied grace. I understand God to be enabling her through the truth she heard, and Lydia to be responding to that truth.
Eternal Security Without Calvinism
Perseverance of the saints teaches that those genuinely elected, called, and regenerated will be preserved and continue in faith to the end. I agree that everyone truly born again is eternally secure. Our agreement about God’s keeping His people does not establish the other four points or require me to accept the Calvinist system.
When a person repents and believes in Christ, God justifies him, declaring him righteous, and gives him new birth. The believer becomes a new creation, indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit, who is a divine Person. Eternal life does not become temporary whenever our performance falters. Jesus explained the security of His sheep when people pressed Him to say plainly whether He was the Christ.
Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, "How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone 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 My Father's hand. I and My Father are one."
Jesus gives His sheep eternal life and says they will never perish. They hear His voice and follow Him, while their safety rests in His care and the Father’s power. Ephesians 1:13–14 identifies the Spirit’s seal as the guarantee of the inheritance. Regeneration means that God really makes us new, rather than giving us a label He removes whenever His child fails.
Security never gives permission for lawlessness, and it does not establish that every profession of faith is genuine. In 1 John 2:19, people departed because they had never truly belonged. God warns and disciplines His children, calls them to holiness, and corrects them through His Word. Their obedience is evidence of the life He gives; it neither purchases nor maintains salvation. Nor does new birth make believers sinlessly perfect.
We should also distinguish the Reformed confessions from presentations that make assurance depend chiefly on measuring performance. The Westminster Confession, chapter 18, appeals to God’s promises, the Spirit’s testimony, and inward evidence of grace. My concern is with an emphasis that leaves someone endlessly inspecting his perseverance to discover whether he was secretly chosen. Our confidence must rest first in Christ’s promise and completed work, together with the Spirit’s seal. Growing obedience follows new birth; it is not the foundation holding salvation in place.
Rejecting Calvinism does not require accepting forms of Arminian teaching that allow salvation to be lost. A person can resist Christ’s call before salvation, but once genuinely born again, he belongs to the One who gives eternal life and keeps His children. We can receive both the invitation and the promise of security with confidence in God’s truthfulness.
God foreknows every person and event. He established His saving plan in Christ and guarantees the final destiny of everyone in His Son. His rule over nations and judgment of hardened rebellion do not cancel a genuine human response to grace. We remain unable to manufacture salvation, while He provides the Savior, brings the truth, gives conviction, and makes our response possible.
Because Christ died for every person, we can honestly offer the gospel to everyone. If Calvinism has left you wondering whether He died for you, listen to the invitation Scripture gives. Jesus tasted death for everyone, God desires all people to be saved, and the one Mediator gave Himself as a ransom for all. You do not need to discover a hidden decree before repenting and believing in Him.
Believing does not make salvation your achievement. God sent His Son, Christ shed the blood that purchases redemption, and God raised Him from the dead. You could neither accomplish those things nor give yourself eternal life. Even the message you heard came from Him. Faith receives what He supplies and leaves you no ground for boasting.
If you are born again, you can rest in Christ and receive the correction His Word brings. The Shepherd will not lose His sheep, and the Spirit who seals you also works to make you holy. Assurance should encourage us to live as the new creation God has made. It cannot honestly become an excuse to disregard the One who saved us.
My Final Thoughts
I reject the five points as an explanation of the passages examined here, without questioning that salvation begins with God and comes entirely by grace. Christ died for the whole world, and His gracious call can be resisted. We are responsible to believe, but faith receives what God provides and gives us no reason to boast. Once truly born again, we are kept by the Father and the Son. I can trust the Savior who shed His blood and died, was buried, and rose bodily, without searching for a hidden decree or making the strength of my performance the basis of His promise.