Discipline. Endurance. Perseverance.
The New Testament often describes the Christian life as a marathon, a race set before us. But what exactly is the prize? Do all those completing the race share in it? And can the prize be lost?
Tackling these and other vexing questions, Thomas Schreiner and Ardel Caneday offer in this book a serious, exegetical wrestling with the biblical understanding of the nature of saving faith and its implications for the people of God. Here is a foundational study that considers all of the relevant New Testament texts and that weighs the meaning of those texts for both Christian living and pastoral ministry.
“Jesus does not speak of ‘temporary salvation,’ but Jesus does portray a kind of belief that is temporary” (Pages 219–220)
“‘receive the word’ is hardly a technical expression for conversion.” (Page 219)
“Thus, we now believe that biblical warnings are a crucial means God uses to protect his people for ‘the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time’ (1 Pet 1:5 niv).” (Page 38)
“In a seventh type of passage the New Testament explains that all who persevere in loyalty to Jesus Christ do so because God is at work in them by his grace, causing them to desire and to do what pleases him.” (Page 13)
“We make this crucial distinction between the objective basis and the subjective means of salvation to make it clear from the outset that what believers do in order to attain the prize of eternal life does not add to or nullify God’s grace in the saving work of Jesus Christ. The reward we receive by faith in Christ is based on grace alone; it is not grounded on our achievement.” (Page 89)
Caneday and Schreiner tackle a vital topic and succeed in mounting a convincing case. They engage the four major views on assurance and set forth a fifth. They exegete the full range of relevant biblical passages. They encourage readers with their conclusions, which offer both challenge and—by God’s grace—assurance. By refusing to give simplistic answers to complex questions, they have contributed richly to practical Christian living as well as to biblical-theological discussion. This should give new life to a discussion that had become polarized along predictable lines.
—Robert Yarbrough, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
This timely book on a perennial theological problem balances exegetical rigor with an irenic tone. The result is an attractive argument for reading all of the debated passages sympathetically, and for understanding their relationship in light of the eschatological tension that pervades the New Testament.
—Frank S. Thielman, Beeson Divinity School
Schreiner and Caneday have provided us what we have needed for a long, long time—a serious, exegetical wrestling with the biblical understanding of the nature of saving faith and its implications for the people of God. Finally, a place to see clearly the good news that perseverance is both the call and promise of God. At last, a treatment of the biblical warnings and admonitions within their eschatological framework as the very means God uses to deliver his people. The decisionism and easy believism of our day have met their match, as have all attempts to relegate obedience to the subsidiary roles of reward or evidence. This is a great book. I will recommend it to all my students and friends, not to mention every pastor I know.
—Scott J. Hafemann, Wheaton College
Thomas R. Schreiner is associate dean and James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. His books include commentaries on Romans and Galatians, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ, and The King in His Beauty: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments.
Ardel B. Caneday is professor of New Testament and Greek at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota.