J. Ramsey Michaels

Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus

Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO 6580

            The text most commonly introduced in support of the so-called “security of the believer,” or “perseverance of the saints” is John 10:28-30. There Jesus speaks about those whom he calls his “sheep,” defined as those who, he says, “hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me” (v 27). He then adds, “And I give to them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one” (vv 28-30, NRSV; on v 29 see also the NIV margin, the Good News Bible, and Richmond Lattimore’s translation).

The more familiar reading of verse 29 begins “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all” (NIV), but the notion that God the Father is “greater than all” is surely one that goes without saying. The Greek text acknowledges this by placing “my Father” first in the sentence, but the Greek word for “greater” (mei=zon) and the pronoun that goes with it (o(/) are neuter, and can therefore not refer to “Father,” which is masculine. Thus, a literal translation of the Greek text of verse 29 would be, “My Father, that which he has given to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch [it] out of the Father’s hand.”[1]   The point is that because God the Giver is “greater than all,” his “gift” (that is, ‘what he has given’) is also “greater than all.”  The context makes it clear that the Father’s “gift” consists of Jesus’ “sheep,” who “hear his voice,” whom he knows and who follow him (see v 27) – in short, all who believe. They are secure in Jesus’ hand because they were first of all secure in the Father’s hand, and, as he concludes, “I and the Father are one” (v 30). The text views them individually (‘no one will snatch them out of my hand,’ v 28), and also corporately (‘no one can snatch [it] [2] out of my Father’s hand – ‘it’ referring to the Christian community as a single entity, v 29).

            This classic promise of “eternal security” must be set in a still wider context within John’s Gospel. The principle on which it is based comes first from the lips of John the Baptist, who, when his disciples reminded him that Jesus was baptizing and that “everyone is coming to him” (John 3:26), replied:  “A person can receive nothing  unless it is given him from heaven” (3:27). The broad principle he expressed has a variety of applications. First of all, he meant that he, John, could receive only what God gave him, for he added, “You yourselves can testify that for me that I said I am not the Christ, but that I am sent on ahead of him” (v 28). But more than that, it implied that even Jesus could receive only what God the Father gave him “from heaven.”  If  Jesus was baptizing and people were flocking to him in great numbers, it was because God wanted it so, and it was not John’s place to question God. Moreover, the principle applies to everyone, for no one can receive salvation or eternal life unless God gives it. As Paul would later ask the Corinthians,  “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7).

            Three chapters later, Jesus himself states exactly the same principle: “All that  the Father gives me will come to me, and the person who  comes to me I will never cast out” (6:37, italics added). “All” in Greek (pa=n) is neuter and singular (literally ‘everything’), referring to all believers corporately, while the participle, “the person who comes” (o( e)rxo/menoj) is masculine singular, focusing on individuals who “come to Jesus” in the sense of believing in him, or giving him their allegiance.[3] God decides who they are, for they are God the Father’s gift to Jesus, and they prove it precisely by “coming to him.” Jesus will make the same point negatively a few verses later (‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,” v 44), and yet again further on in the chapter (‘This is why I have told  you that no one can come to me unless it is given him from the Father,’ v 65, italics added).  Thus when Jesus promises that “the person who comes to me I will never cast out” (v 37b), he is not issuing a generalized “Whosoever Will.” The title of the old gospel song is based rather on Revelation 22:17,  “And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (KJV).[4]  Here in John’s Gospel, Jesus is referring not to those who come on their own whim or initiative, but quite specifically to those whom the Father has “given” or “drawn” to him.[5]  Earlier he said that the person who “practices wicked things hates the Light and does not come to  the Light, for fear his works will be exposed” (3:20), while the person who “does the truth comes to the Light, so that his works will be revealed as works wrought in God” (3:21). In this Gospel, coming to Jesus in faith is clear evidence that a person has been “drawn” to him by the Father’s love.

            Those who are so “drawn” are the Father’s gift to the Son, and this gift, Jesus insists, is an irrevocable gift. It cannot be “lost” or wasted. “And this is the will of the One who sent me,” he continues, “that of all he has given me I might not lose any of it, but raise it up at the last day” (6:39).[6]  These verses in John 6 form the essential background for the startling notion in 10:29 that “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.” The “security” of the believer is clear in both these passages, but what is surprising in the second is the phrase “greater than all else,” with its strong accent on the immense value, or worth of the Father’s gift to the Son, that is, on the value or worth of Christian believers. The doctrines of grace have taught us that in ourselves we are worthless sinners – and “in ourselves” this is true. But value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and in this case the Beholder is God.[7]  

            Jesus picks up the thread of this notion again in his long prayer to the Father in John 17, where he enumerates several things the Father has “given” him, including “authority over all flesh” (17:3), “words” to pass along to his disciples (v 8), God’s own “name” (vv 11, 12), and God’s own “glory” (vv 22, 24).  Among these gifts from God, not surprisingly, are the disciples themselves, and ultimately all Christian believers. “I have revealed your name,” he recalls, “to the men[8] whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word” (17:6,).  And again, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom you gave me, because they are yours (and everything that is mine is yours, and yours mine), and I am glorified in them” (17:9-10). The words in italics add something new to the equation: that Christian believers belonged to the Father before they belonged to the Son (‘They were yours,’ v 6), and that in being given to the Son they nevertheless still belong to the Father (‘they are yours,’ v 9).  Finally, Jesus prays, “Father, that which you have given to me, I choose that where I am, they may also be with me,[9] that they may see my glory which you have given me, because you have loved me before the creation of the world” (v 24, italics added). 

            Jesus affirms in this last great prayer that his stated intention “that of all he has given me I might not lose [mh\ a)pole/sw] any of it” (see 6:39) has in fact been realized, for “none of them is lost [a)pw/leto] except the son of destruction” (that is, Judas Iscariot), and the only reason for that single exception was “so that the scripture might be fulfilled” (17:12).[10]  Jesus’ prayer confirms that both the principle itself (that ‘none of them is lost’) and the one exception to it (Judas) are grounded in the eternal plan of God.  When Jesus is arrested in the following chapter, he tells the arresting officers, “I told you that it is I, so if you are seeking me, let these [that is, his disciples other than Judas] go” (18:8). He did this, we are told, “so that the word he had spoken, that ‘I have not lost any of those you have given me’ might be fulfilled” (18:9).  In John’s Gospel, the temporal safety of the disciples God had given Jesus  becomes a sign of their eternal safety in the Father’s hand.[11]

            What conclusions can be drawn from this brief survey of the evidence?   First, the so-called “security of the believer” does not emerge in a vacuum in the Gospel of John. Rather, it is a corollary of the often-repeated claim that believers are God the Father’s gift to Jesus the Son.  They belonged to God even before they belonged to Jesus. Without using the verb “to choose,” or the noun “election,”[12] John’s Gospel makes the point that God has taken the initiative in human salvation. Those who “come to the Light” do so not because they are sinners. Sinners in fact habitually avoid the light (John 3:19, 20). They come rather despite being sinners, because at some point in their lives they “do the truth” (3:21).  They do so because God the Father is already at work in them, drawing them to his Son (see 6:44).  Coming to Jesus merely reveals this “work of God” in a person’s life (again, see 3:21).  A prime example in the Gospel is the man who was born blind in order that “the works of God might be revealed in him” (9:3) – not by the restoration of his sight so much as by coming to believe in Jesus and worshiping him (9:38).  Turning Reformation theology on its head, one could say that they prove their good works (not their good works exactly, but God’s work in them), by their faith.  A second conclusion is that those so drawn and so given to Jesus are of immeasurable worth and value (‘greater than all,’ 10:29), not in themselves or on their own merits, but in the eyes of God who loved them and made them his own.  This value, however, is their intrinsic value; what could be more “intrinsic” than the value assigned to a person by God the Creator and Redeemer?

            Having looked closely at the relevant passages in John 3, 6, 10 and 17, it is legitimate at the end of this essay to allow ourselves a bit more range and our imagination a bit more room. Take for example Jesus’ parables (in Matthew, not in John) about the “treasure hidden in the field” which a man discovered, and sold all that he had in order to buy the field and the treasure in it (Mt 13:44), or the “one precious pearl” which a merchant admired so much that he sold everything in order to make it his own (Mt 13:45-46). These are commonly understood as incentives to Jesus’ hearers to seek the “highest good,” the Kingdom of Heaven. But what if the pearl or the treasure, or both, represent rather those whom God the Father loves, redeems, and entrusts to his Son?[13] If that were the case, it would not be so different from the way in which Jesus in John’s Gospel views believers as “greater than all,” a gift of matchless worth from the Father who sent him. And it may not be accidental that one of the first of Jesus’ disciples, and the first who was said to “believe” in him (John 1:50) was named “Nathanael,” a name that means “gift of God.”  Jesus recognized Nathanel’s worth as a gift from the Father when he addressed him as “a true Israelite in whom is no deceit” (1:47), and told him, “ Before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (1:48). With this, he echoed the prophet’s words about God’s joyful discovery of his people Israel long ago: “Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruits on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your ancestors” (Hosea 9:10, NRSV).

Such random thoughts “outside the box” are admittedly speculative and by no means capable of proof, yet they are consistent with the main point that in John’s Gospel the “security” of Christian believers rests on their profound value in God’s sight, and on the Father’s work in their lives long before they ever came consciously and willingly to the Son in faith.