Matt Chandler on Perseverance & eternal security

No — the genuinely saved will certainly persevere

THE POSITION

Answering a 2011 question about what to tell someone six months after a cancer diagnosis, he says victory is guaranteed for God's children even while pain and waiting go on. In the 2009 Piper interview he lists "If we're safe, we stay safe" among the doctrines he wants his church to take for granted. The 2009 sermon on 1 Timothy 4 presses false assurance hard, warning about people who think they are saved "because they got a bogus invitation", which is the usual Reformed pairing of perseverance with self-examination.

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ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Lead pastor of teaching at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, since 2002, and from 2012 president, later chairman, of the Acts 29 church-planting network. He is known for joining Reformed soteriology to openly continuationist practice, a pairing he has described as feeling like a theological orphan. This entry rests on his 2009 interviews and conference messages with Desiring God, a 2011 Tabletalk interview, his 2017 foreword to a book by Sam Storms, a 2024 podcast transcript, press reports of his sermons, The Explicit Gospel (2012, with Jared C. Wilson) as reviewers quote it, and his church's statement of faith, which is used only where a cell says so.