by Dr. Tom Stegall
Centuries ago, the slave trader turned preacher, John Newton, penned the now famous words to the classic hymn “Amazing Grace”: “How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.” The hour Newton first believed was a moment that changed his eternal destiny. This is true of all who believe in Jesus Christ for salvation from the penalty of sin and are born again into the family of God from that moment forever. While many professing Christians happily sing the lyrics to “Amazing Grace,” few stop to consider their theological implications and even whether they agree with Scripture.
Does the Bible teach that eternal salvation is conditioned on the moment of initial faith in Christ or on continual belief throughout one’s lifetime? In Acts 16:30, an unsaved Gentile poses the ultimate question to Paul and Silas, saying, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Their authoritative reply was simple: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household” (v. 31). Paul and Silas did not answer by commanding him to “Believe, and continue to believe” or “believe and persevere in your faith to the end, and you shall be saved.” But that is exactly what we would expect Paul and Silas to say if they held to the doctrine of many leaders and teachers in evangelicalism today who require ongoing faithfulness and good works in a person’s life either to get saved, stay saved, or prove that one is really saved. For example, one popular author, Reformed theologian, and professor at Westminster Seminary states:
The New Testament lays before us a vast array of conditions for final salvation. Not only initial repentance and faith, but perseverance in both, demonstrated in love toward God and neighbor…1
Likewise, John Piper has written in one of his best-selling books:
Saving faith is no simple thing. It has many dimensions. “Believe on the Lord Jesus” is a massive command. It contains a hundred other things. Unless we see this, the array of conditions for salvation in the New Testament will be utterly perplexing.2
In contrast, the Bible repeatedly teaches that belief in Jesus Christ for everlasting life occurs at a moment in time; it is not an ongoing condition that must be fulfilled to guarantee everlasting life. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself used several pictures or metaphors to demonstrate the instantaneous nature of belief in Him for eternal life. These include the single acts of a look, a drink, and eating bread.
Actions Illustrating the Single Moment of Belief
There is perhaps no better book in the entire Bible for illustrating the meaning of the word “believe” than the Gospel of John. Believing in Christ for eternal life was in fact the very reason this Gospel was written according to its purpose statement in John 20:30-31. The various forms of the Greek verb and participle for “believe” (pisteuō) occur 241 times in the New Testament with 98 of these occurring in the Gospel of John. This means that over 40 percent of all New Testament occurrences of pisteuō as a verb or verbal part of speech are found in John’s Gospel alone. No wonder John is often referred to as the “Gospel of Belief.” John’s Gospel uses primarily three metaphors for believing that demonstrate the momentary nature of belief in Christ for eternal life.3
Belief Illustrated by Looking
In John 3, Jesus Christ uses a basic Old Testament object lesson from Numbers 21:5-9 to explain to the religious Pharisee Nicodemus how to be born again. In John 3:14, Christ refers to Numbers 21, where many Israelites complained about Moses’s leadership and God’s provision for them as they wandered in the desert. Consequently, the Lord judged the Israelites with serpents so that many died. In Numbers 21, the Lord gives to Moses the remedy for this snake problem.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Num. 21:8-9)
From this episode in Israel’s history, the Lord Jesus illustrates for Nicodemus what it means to believe in Him for everlasting life. He says to Nicodemus,
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)
Just as the Israelites had to acknowledge their sinful, snake-bitten condition and look in faith to the bronze serpent, which was God’s symbol of judgment upon their sin, even so lost people today must look in faith to Christ-crucified as God’s provision for their own snake-bitten, sinful condition. All that was required of the Israelites was a look of faith, and they were instantaneously and permanently healed. They were not required to keep on looking at the brass serpent for the rest of their lives in order to stay healed (Arminianism) or to prove that they were truly healed initially (Calvinism). When a lost sinner places his faith in Christ for salvation, at that instant, he receives God’s gift of eternal life by grace and is instantaneously born again (John 5:24). Robert Gromacki explains well that ongoing faith is not required to complete the heavenly transaction: “How many times did the people have to look at the serpent to be healed? Just once. One look prompted by faith was enough. So it is with Calvary. How many times must one look at Christ in faith to be saved? Just once. The faith that heals or saves is an act, a completed event, not an attitude.”4
However, some perseverance advocates cannot let the simplicity of Christ’s statement in John 3:14-15 stand as it is written. Amazingly, one famous Calvinist author and Bible teacher transforms the simple look of faith described by Christ into a meritorious human work:
A more careful study of Numbers 21 reveals that Jesus was not painting a picture of easy faith. . . . In order to look at the bronze snake on the pole, they had to drag themselves to where they could see it. They were in no position to glance flippantly at the pole and then proceed with lives of rebellion.5
This caricature completely distorts the biblical account of Numbers 21 and Jesus’ use of it in John 3 as an illustration of faith in Him for eternal life. Nowhere does Numbers 21 say that the Israelites “had to drag themselves” to where they could see the bronze serpent. In fact, the reason for setting the serpent on a pole (vv. 8-9) was to elevate it so that all could see it, thereby picturing Christ’s own lifting up on the cross to make salvation available to all, just as it says in John 12:32-33: “‘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.”
Second, the Israelites’ look at the raised bronze serpent in Numbers 21 was deliberate in response to God’s prescription spoken through Moses. There was nothing “flippant” or superficial about it. Facing one’s sin and its judgment in the symbol of the serpent and then accepting God’s prescribed remedy and substitute required at that moment personal accountability, humility, and trust—not strenuous activity.
Third, the Israelites actually did “proceed with lives of rebellion” against the Lord after their look of faith at the bronze serpent in Numbers 21. In fact, the wilderness generation of Israelites was infamous for its ongoing idolatry, unbelief, and rebellion against the Lord, despite having initially believed in Him and His Word. Read the Bible’s own description of that generation in Exodus 14:31: “Thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt; so the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord and His servant Moses” (Ex. 14:31). This is consistent with the testimony of Psalm 106, which says that the wilderness generation initially believed God’s Word but afterward departed from Him: “Then they believed His words; they sang His praise. They soon forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel, but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tested God in the desert” (Ps. 106:12-14). Consequently, a few chapters after the incident of the brass serpent in Numbers 21, the book of Numbers goes on to say that the Israelites “began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab . . . and bowed down to their gods,” so that “Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel” (Num. 25:1-3). Those who died in that plague were 24,000 Israelites (v. 9). This sad account demonstrates that genuine believers do not necessarily persevere to the end of their lives in faith and holiness (1 Cor. 11:28-32). However, this account also illustrates that God in His sovereignty and grace is still willing to save (Ex. 4:31; 14:31) and heal (Num. 21:5-9), simply on the basis of a one-time look of faith, knowing full well in His omniscience that rebellion and sin leading to death may transpire afterward.
The incident in Numbers 21 is used by the Lord in John 3 to illustrate the true requirement for eternal life—a simple look of faith in Jesus Christ and His work on the cross in dying a substitutionary death for one’s sins, rather than relying upon one’s own human goodness or works. This solitary act of trust in Christ and His finished work would have been humbling for a moral and religious man such as Nicodemus, but it was necessary. Whether a person is moral (like Nicodemus in John 3) or immoral (like the Israelites in Numbers 25 and the Samaritan woman in John 4), the sole condition for eternal life today is the same—a single act of belief in Jesus Christ.
Belief Illustrated by Drinking
When the Lord Jesus encountered the sinful Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar, He used the analogy of drinking physical water to picture believing in Him for eternal life.
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” 15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” (John 4:13-15)
In this passage Christ equates believing in Him with drinking from the well. According to John 6:35, drinking is used as a metaphor for appropriating eternal life by faith. People had to keep drinking from the well of Sychar to satisfy their physical thirst, and thus they would “thirst again” (4:13). But Jesus offered this woman a drink that would leave her spiritual thirst quenched for eternity. Gromacki captures again the essence of Christ’s teaching in John 4, stating that a person “just has to have one spiritual drink of Christ and he will have spiritual life. There is a contrast in thirsts. Men are always thirsty for natural water, but Jesus said that one spiritual drink will forever quench man’s spiritual thirst.”6 Jesus Christ is not teaching in John 4 that we must keep on drinking, and drinking, and drinking in order to either maintain the gift of eternal life (Arminianism) or prove that we possess it (Calvinism).
In John 4, Jesus is also not requiring the woman at the well to make some sort of costly commitment to serve Christ before He would grant her eternal life, as one Lordship Salvation teacher proposes:
Some people hold the view that saving faith involves no idea of obedience or commitment. . . . Can we concede that the verb “drink” conveys the idea of appropriation apart from commitment? Certainly not. Matthew 20:22 (“Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?”) and John 18:11 (“the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”) both use drink in a way that clearly implies full compliance and surrender. Furthermore, to attempt to define faith with a metaphor is unwarranted selectivity.7
There is nothing unwarranted about using the very metaphors of looking, drinking, and eating that the Lord Jesus Himself used to illustrate the act of believing in Him for eternal life. However, it is completely unwarranted to use Christ’s own drink from the cup of God’s wrath as a comparison with freely drinking the water of eternal life. In Christ’s case, the cup He drank amounted to His unique, once-for-all, sacrificial, substitutionary death in the place of sinners. In the case of the woman at the well of Sychar, the cup Jesus was offering her to drink was not the cup of God’s wrath that required her own work of dying to pay for sin but was in fact the water of life that was without cost to her because it would be purchased in full by the Offeror Himself (John 19:30). To equate drinking the water of life that Jesus offers sinners to Christ’s drinking the cup of wrath merely proves that perseverance advocates are adding the believer’s works to Christ’s work as a condition for salvation. In contrast, the Lord Jesus’ offer of eternal life in John 4:10 is described as the “gift of God”; and it was conditioned only upon a single drink—a single act of belief in Him. This is perfectly consistent with the gracious invitation to salvation found at the end of Revelation (which John also wrote): “And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17, KJV).
Belief Illustrated by Eating
In John 6, the Lord Jesus contrasted the Israelites’ continual eating of manna in the desert to receiving Him by faith as the Bread of eternal life.
31 Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” 32 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always [pantote].” 35 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.” (John 6:31-35)
The contrast could not be more evident. The Jews first failed to realize that Christ was the Bread from heaven. Furthermore, they mistakenly thought that repeated consumption of this Bread was necessary to sustain life as with the Israelites’ collection of manna in the desert for forty years (Ex. 16; Josh. 5:12). Their confusion is seen in John 6:34 where they ask Christ to “always” give them this Bread. The Greek adverb pantote in verse 34 modifies the verb “give.” This Greek word means “always” (NKJV), “evermore” (KJV), or “at all times.”1 The Jews who followed Jesus presumed that this Bread must be constantly, repetitiously given and constantly, repetitiously received in order to meet their need. They were still thinking of their ancestors who had to consume manna daily because of their unsatisfied physical hunger. Yet, in verse 35, Christ promises that if they would believe in Him, they would “never hunger.” The Jews missed Jesus’ point that eternal life and satisfaction of spiritual hunger were not received by repeated consumption of some spectacular “Wonder Bread” but instead by a solitary act of eating or believing in the Lord Jesus Christ—the Bread of eternal life.
Regarding the metaphor of eating as a picture of believing in Christ for eternal life, there is an ironic contrast between the first Adam and “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45). Once again, Gromacki insightfully states, “How many times did Adam have to eat to bring condemnation upon himself and the human race? Only once! One eating brought death. So it is with salvation; one eating brings eternal life.”9 But many perseverance advocates reject this conclusion and claim that Jesus teaches in the Bread of Life Discourse that eternal life is guaranteed only through perpetual eating (i.e., believing). Calvinist James White claims:
Throughout this passage [John 6:35-45] an important truth is presented that again might be missed in many English translations. When Jesus describes the one who comes to Him and who believes in Him, He uses the present tense to describe this coming, believing, or, in other passages, hearing or seeing. The present tense refers to a continuous, ongoing action. . . . The wonderful promises that are provided by Christ are not for those who do not truly and continually believe. The faith that saves is a living faith, a faith that always looks to Christ as Lord and Savior. . . . The true Christian is the one continually coming, always believing in Christ. Real Christian faith is an ongoing faith, not a one-time act. If one wishes to be eternally satiated, one meal is not enough. If we wish to feast on the bread of heaven, we must do so all our lives. We will never hunger or thirst if we are always coming and always believing in Christ.10
Do the biblical metaphors in John’s Gospel for believing in Christ really require ongoing belief? The present tense certainly does not indicate this, as will be explained later in this chapter;11 nor do the contexts of the metaphors themselves. According to the original context of Numbers 21 referred to in John 3:14, continual looking at the brass serpent was not required either to get healed or stay healed. In John 4, Jesus promised the woman at the well that she would “never thirst” (4:14a) again if she believed in Him. This quenching of her thirst was not because of the continuance of the act of drinking but because of the permanence of the water within the one who believes: “But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (v. 14b). The perpetual wellspring of eternal life does not continue to flow within a person because it is continually being fed from outside by the believer’s perpetual acts of drinking or ingestion. According to Jesus Christ Himself, one drink initiates eternal hydration and satiation from the Lord Himself within the believer.
Likewise in John 6:35, when Jesus promises that “he who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst,” the satisfaction of hunger and thirst is because of the perpetual nature of what is consumed (the eternal food and drink—Jesus Christ), not because of the perpetual faithfulness of the believer in eating and drinking. To conclude otherwise is to destroy the intended contrast in each passage between the insufficient physical-temporal metaphor and the spiritual-eternal meaning of the metaphor. In other words, the Lord Jesus uses an intentional contrast between the repeated consumption of bread and water to keep satisfying one’s physical hunger and thirst versus the one act of appropriating Him by faith to eternally and permanently satisfy one’s spiritual need. In the physical realm, a person must eat and drink continually because physical food and water is only temporal in duration and satisfaction. By contrast, the Bread of Life and the Living Water that Christ gives never ceases, and therefore it needs to be received only once. But to say that this Bread and Water must be continually and repeatedly consumed by the believer in order to either maintain or guarantee salvation ends up contradicting Christ’s statements about “never” hungering or thirsting again. After all, why would a person have to eat and drink again if that person was “never” hungry and thirsty anymore?
Moreover, to interpret John’s metaphors of believing in Christ for eternal life as requiring ongoing appropriation of Christ actually reflects the very same works-oriented thinking as the unregenerate Jews whom Jesus is correcting in John 6. This reveals what is ultimately behind the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints—a doctrine of salvation that is not solely by God’s grace but leaves room for human merit. Notice how A. W. Pink uses John 6 to teach the necessity of laboring in one’s continual appropriation of Christ for final salvation.
God has purposed the eternal felicity of His people and that purpose is certain of full fruition, nevertheless it is not effected without the use of means on their part, any more than a harvest is obtained and secured apart from human industry and persevering diligence. God has made promise to His saints that “bread shall be given” them and their “water shall be sure” (Isa. 33:16), but that does not exempt them from the discharge of their duty or provide them with an indulgence to take their ease. The Lord gave a plentiful supply of manna from heaven, but the Israelites had to get up early and gather it each morning, for it melted when the sun shone on it. So His people are now required to “labour for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life” (John 6:27).12
This interpretation misses the whole point of Christ’s metaphor of eating the Bread of Life by simply believing in Him rather than working for it. Jesus is not teaching in John 6:27 that the Jews should work for eternal life or that faith in Him inherently includes good works or “the use of means.” The Lord Jesus uses the term “labor” (v. 27) because the Jewish crowd had been traveling around the Sea of Galilee to diligently “seek” Him out (v. 26) because of the sign-miracle He performed of multiplying the loaves and fishes (vv. 1-15). Yet, in seeking out a mere miracle worker, they sought or labored for the wrong thing. They misunderstood Christ’s reference to “labor” (v. 27) and thought in terms of works, saying, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God?” (v. 28). Mankind naturally thinks in terms of meriting the favor and salvation of God. Consequently, Christ corrects them in verse 29, replying, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” Christ clarifies that God is not requiring them to “work” but to “believe” in Him. We do not “labor” or “work” to receive the “gift of God” (John 4:10), otherwise we turn His gift into an earned reward, thereby nullifying grace (Rom. 11:6).
According to the Gospel of John—the Gospel of Belief—believing in Christ is described as a non-meritorious look, drink, or act of eating. In these three metaphorical illustrations of belief, the Lord Jesus Christ consistently portrays belief in Him for eternal salvation as a simple, momentary act rather than an ongoing activity. ■
1. Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 182.
2. John Piper, Desiring God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986), 65. This quote also appeared verbatim in the 1996 reprinting of Desiring God, but it was rephrased in the 2003 and 2011 editions.
3. The Gospel of John also uses the metaphors of coming to Christ (5:40; 6:35, 37, 44, 65; 7:37), entering through a door (10:9), and the act of accepting or receiving (1:12; 5:43) to depict the nature of belief in Christ for eternal life as a momentary, instantaneous act rather than a continual process.
4. Robert Gromacki, Salvation Is Forever (Schaumburg, IL: Regular Baptist Press, 1989), 88.
5. John F. MacArthur, Jr., The Gospel According to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 46.
6. Gromacki, Salvation Is Forever, 89.
7. MacArthur, Gospel According to Jesus, 52-53.
8. One lexicon defines pantote as “duration of time, with reference to a series of occasions—‘always, at all times, on every occasion’” (Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Nida, eds. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains [New York: United Bible Societies, 1988], 1:641, §67.88).
9. Gromacki, Salvation Is Forever, 90.
10. James White, Drawn by the Father (Lindenhurst, NY: Great Christian Books, 2000), 19-20.
11. This article is adapted from the author’s book, Must Faith Endure for Salvation to Be Sure? A Biblical Study of the Perseverance versus Preservation of the Saints (Duluth, MN: Grace Gospel Press, 2016). A future article will address the false assumption that the present tense of believe here and elsewhere (like John 3:16) necessarily means continual action.
12. A. W. Pink, The Saint’s Perseverance (Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace, 2001), 65-66.
Tom Stegall is an associate pastor at Duluth Bible Church and publications director for Grace Gospel Press.