I was at Disney World’s Galaxy’s Edge a couple of years ago, standing before a life-size Millennium Falcon with Storm Troopers patrolling nearby. The menacing breathiness of Darth Vader could be heard as he marched in behind them. I was a mid-50s fanboy utterly captivated.
As I looked around, I noticed that the teenagers present were focused on the portals of infinite allurement in the palms of their hands. Kids today are screen slaves, and adults are not much different. As soon as we wake up, we check texts, emails, and alerts. We cannot live without our phones, yet, our social anxiety only increases the more time we spend comparing ourselves to others and absorbing the toxicity of social media.
We are more connected than ever, yet never have we felt so isolated. In fact, in 2018 the U.K. established the Ministry of Loneliness, with Tracey Crouch as its head. According to an article in Time, Crouch was to tackle the “sad reality of modern life” as “countries around the world are increasingly examining loneliness—typically defined as the feeling of lacking or losing companionship—as a public health concern.”
Anti-anxiety medication is a multi-billion dollar industry with no signs of abating. Never have we consumed more pills, yet never has anxiety had such a grip on our lives. We have fears about the present and concerns about the future. Instead of freeing us, technology seems to only amplify the issues.
Anxiety is rooted in an unfounded fear of the future. In our time, we have trained people to believe that there is no sovereign creator, and that creation has no goal to which it is being directed and governed. It is easy to understand why such a worldview breeds anxiety. The world is impersonal, and the future is unknowable.
Calvinism is controversial because it makes a claim that seems radical: we can have assurance that God loves us now and will love us for all eternity. It is what Christians sometimes refer to as eternal security.
When we think of the Calvinism and Arminianism debates, we have to consider that Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) was only four years old when John Calvin (1509-64) died. After Arminius’ death, a group of his disciples sought to popularize and propagate their master’s theology. When it came to the “perseverance of the saints,” they taught that man could, indeed, lose his salvation. A century later, John Wesley reiterated that man could backslide to such a grievous point that he would forfeit his salvation.
The Biblical Witness
Can we have assurance of God’s love for us? The short answer is that the Christian can no more lose his salvation than the Savior can lose the saved. Jesus said, “You are held in my hand and the hand of the Father, no one will snatch you away” (John 10:28-29). Paul reiterated this point, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
God causes our salvation, carries our salvation, and completes our salvation. His commitment to the fulfillment of the covenant of grace cannot and will not allow a true believer to fail to persevere. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ because God won’t permit it.
We are called to persevere (2 Peter 1:10) while we are also being preserved. We have been made new by God’s sovereign power and his work cannot be undone. As J.I. Packer once observed, “This sovereign regenerative work cannot be reversed, as if a believer can be regenerated, only later to have their union with Christ terminated. Ezekiel’s heart-of-stone-turned-heart-of-flesh, cannot be turned back again to its rock-hard dead spiritual existence.”
The Bible offers good news to our anxious age. There is a God who has made himself known and has sent his Son as a sacrifice for sin. Because of Jesus, we can be certain about the future. Jesus saves us to the uttermost (Hebrews 7:25). He has destroyed him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and delivers us from our fear of death, which held us in lifelong bondage (Hebrews 2:10-18).
We can cast all our anxieties upon him because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). All things – the happy things and the hard things – will work together for our good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). Even suffering does not have the right to leave us heaving with anxiety, for our suffering makes us more like the Suffering Servant (Romans 8:29). This process of sanctification and the perseverance it requires is so certain that Paul speaks of our glorification as if it has already happened (Romans 8:30).
A Calvinistic Calm in the Storm
Years ago when my son Luke was around 6 years old, we put him into swimming lessons. One day, a couple invited my family to enjoy an afternoon in their fabulous pool. I jumped into the deep end while Luke remained at the shallow end where his feet could touch the bottom of the pool. I called for him to swim down to the deep end to show everyone what he had learned in his swim class. He promptly informed me he was not coming down to the deep end. I swam down to where he was, grabbed him gently, and began working my way backward toward the deep end. With his trembling hands holding onto my forearms, he declared again, “Daddy, I don’t want to go to the deep end of the pool!”
His anxiety made the pool appear to him a vast, bottomless ocean. I asked him, “Son, why don’t you want to go to the deep end of the pool?” He said, “Daddy, because I don’t have a good grip on you!” I assured him, “Son, that’s ok, because Daddy has a good grip on you.” At that moment, his tense little body melted into the strength of my ability to keep hold of him. And together we swam to the deep end of the pool. He swam as I held him up. He really swam. And I really held him up.
Similarly, we persevere and mature as disciples of Christ because our Father securely holds us by the power of the Spirit.
Several years ago, I taught a two-year expositional study through Calvin’s “Institutes.” We went line-by-line through all four books. A dear sister brought snacks every Tuesday evening, which we missed for a short season as she recovered from cancer treatments. She healed quickly and we welcomed her and her brownies back to our study of Calvin with open arms. The cancer returned six weeks later, and I began a rhythm of visiting her at her home. She would ask me to read to her from the Bible and Calvin’s “Institutes.”
When the time came for her funeral, I was not surprised to see that she had selected the following passage to be printed in her funeral service bulletin:
Yet, when that light of divine providence has once shone upon a godly man, he is then relieved and set free not only from the extreme anxiety and fear that were pressing him before, but from every care. For as he justly dreads fortune, so he fearlessly dares commit himself to God. His solace, I say, is to know that his Heavenly Father so holds all things in his power, so rules by his authority and will, so governs by his wisdom, that nothing can befall except he determine it.
Good theology is like cool water on sore feet. When our hearts are filled with concerns about the future, we need a little therapy session with Zacharias Ursinus, author of the “Heidelberg Catechism.”
Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
Into our noise-filled, anxiety-riddled culture, we hear the voice of the Shepherd, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-29).
Rest. Who wouldn’t want to get in on that?
David Filson is interim senior pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and the president’s professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.
Read the other articles in our Calvinism for a New Generation series here:
Irresistible Grace in an Age of Individualism
Limited Atonement in an Age of Shamelessness
Unconditional Election in an Age of Inclusivity