The title of this article is language borrowed from the Canons of Dordt in head 5, article 6. The pertinent quotation is as follows: “God, who is rich in mercy, according to His unchangeable purpose of election, does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from His own people, even in their melancholy falls” (Confessions and Church Order, 174). And contained in the remainder of the article are several other acts of God’s mercy in the preservation of his people. However, the focus of the article is this truth: God does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from his own people. In a word, this is their preservation. If you want to know what God’s preservation of his church is, then you need only say this: the Holy Spirit remains in God’s people, or, negatively, as the Canons states, God does not wholly withdraw his Holy Spirit from his own people.

In order to understand what this means, we must understand the setting of article 6 in the fifth head of the Canons. The fifth head pertains to the truth of the preservation of the saints. The Synod of Dordt maintained the truth of preservation over against the Arminian error regarding this truth. To the Arminian, preservation is a matter of man and his own will to persevere. The Arminian, to put it briefly, preserves himself. The believer, an Arminian would say, can fall away from faith, from justification, and from salvation in its entirety. The believer can fall away. Against this error, Dordt taught that God preserves his people so that it is impossible that one who is regenerated, has faith, is justified, and so on, can fall away from salvation. Preservation, or perseverance, is a matter of election. The source of preservation is the eternal decree of election. That was the position of Dordt. That is our position.

The Canons is experiential in its treatment of preservation. This is immediately evident in the beginning articles of the fifth head. God’s people are sinners. They are the ungodly. By nature they are God-haters, covenant-breakers, devoid of all true knowledge, haters of the neighbor, lovers of self, lovers of iniquity, murderers, thieves, covetous, and adulterers. They are the ungodly. This is who God saves. This is who God calls “my people.” This is who Christ was sent to save. He was sent to die for the enemies of God. This is who we are by nature.

God’s people are sinners not only in name but also in deeds. This is abundantly clear not only from the Canons but also from the believer’s own experience. Daily the believer sins against God. Daily he breaks God’s covenant. Daily he transgresses God’s law. God’s people are sinners. Article 5 speaks of the consequences of their sins and especially of their grievous sins. By their grievous sins, God’s people “very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God’s favor for a time.” To this is added, “until, on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God’s fatherly countenance again shines upon them” (Confessions and Church Order, 174).

How then are we to understand all these things? There is the child of God, the sinner, who has sinned against God. The child of God has lost the sense of God’s favor. He has grieved the Holy Spirit, and the sinner has grievously wounded his own conscience. The matter at hand is subjective. Losing the sense of God’s favor is a subjective matter; it deals with one’s experience of the favor of God. Note, the believer does not and cannot lose the favor of God. God’s favor is an eternal favor. It is God’s eternal love and choosing of individuals in Jesus Christ. The elect person can never lose God’s favor. God does not flip-flop between favor and disfavor, between love and hatred. God is one. That, first of all.

But the believer can lose the sense of God’s favor. And the question is, how does the believer again experience that favor? Does the believer get that back by his repentance? Is repentance necessary for that sense to come back? Or to put it in other words, is there that which man must do to reacquire this experience of God’s favor? Is preservation a matter of man’s will?

The answer is an emphatic no! What? Does not article 5 of the Canons say that we must repent in order for the light of God’s countenance to again shine on us? The believer must repent from his sin. Of this there is no doubt. Turn ye, turn ye! This is the duty of man in the covenant. He is to love the Lord his God, serve his God, and obey his God. Oh, yes, but that is not the gospel. Or in other words, that is not how he gets the blessing of God. The gospel is that Jehovah saves, objectively and subjectively. Salvation is of the Lord, absolutely.

The main point here is not what man must do but what God does, specifically what the Holy Spirit does. And if we are so bold, we say what the Holy Spirit must do. The truth is that the Holy Spirit does not wholly withdraw himself from the child of God, although that child grieves the Holy Spirit by his sin. The reason for this is found in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which becomes ours. “The Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10). The one who is righteous is indwelt by the Spirit forever. It was the Holy Spirit’s work to regenerate that man, to unite that man to Christ by the bond of faith, and to apply the righteousness of Christ to that man. And the Spirit never departs from that man, not ever; it is impossible. God does not abandon the works of his hands, but he maintains them and brings them to their end.

Now, on account of sin, the Holy Spirit withdraws to a degree. Never does he withdraw wholly; the Spirit does not abandon the child of God but merely withdraws. This is why that loss of the sense of God’s favor occurs. The Spirit withdraws. He recedes in the believer. The believer’s exercise of faith is interrupted, and deadly guilt sets in. And the question is, why? Is it because the believer maintains the experience of his salvation in himself? Does the Spirit deal with the believer according to the believer’s own righteousness? No, the Spirit is life because of righteousness, true righteousness, the righteousness of Christ.

Why, then, does the Spirit withdraw from the elect believer? For the believer’s chastisement and instruction. The elect believer in this life is never free from sin. He is yet totally depraved. He yet complies with the lusts of his flesh. He yet departs from the Lord, his God. He yet offends God by his sin. And this is no surprise to God. God is not shocked when the believer sins. God does not hang his head in disappointment or hide his face in shame. But God knows the weaknesses and frailties of the believer. God remembers when he formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. God remembers when Adam sinned and the whole world sinned with him. God knows his own operation in the believer, and he knows the believer’s depravity. God could make his people perfect in this life, no doubt. But he does not.

And God does not simply overlook sin. Sin highly offends God. Sin grieves the Holy Spirit. Thus God chastises his people. God turns his face for a little while. His countenance grows dim. God does so not without good purpose. His purpose in this is for our instruction. Sin is no light thing. God does not dwell with sinners. God does not bless the unrighteous, but he blesses the righteous. To sin is not the place of man in God’s covenant, but man is to love God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. So by God’s chastisement we are instructed by God regarding our duty and obligation to obedience in God’s covenant.

However, this must not be conceived of as cruelty on God’s part but as an act of love. God chastens whom he loves.

6. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

7. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? (Heb. 12:6–7)

And certainly, this belongs to the testimony of the Spirit that remains in the children of God despite their sins. Though the chastisement seems not to be joyous but grievous, yet you are God’s sons. The Holy Spirit is not withdrawn. And the Holy Spirit is not without a word of comfort: “Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees” (v. 12). And this on account of that which is yielded, even “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (v. 11).

And in such chastisements and falls into sin, the children of God are preserved by God. God again “by His Word and Spirit” not only “effectually renews them to repentance” but also works in them that they “may again experience the favor of a reconciled God” (Canons of Dordt 5.7, in Confessions and Church Order, 174). And here we must say that the forgiveness of sins and the experience of God’s favor, or, if you will, the experience of our salvation, is not in the way of our good works or specifically here by our repentance. Nor does God work in us that which is good by “his Word and Spirit” in order that he may bless us with the sense of his favor.

First, such teachings are absurd. We are reconciled to God, and we have the remission of sins in our mediator, Jesus Christ. Then for repentance to be necessary, so that God may do something only after man does something first, is absurd and does away with the cross. For God deals with us not according to our works (which are all sinful) but as we are righteous in Christ. There is nothing more to be done. Besides, it is the will of God to bless the elect, and man’s will and activity cannot stand in the way, nor does God need man’s repentance to work in man. God is God.

Second, our repentance is at best half-hearted and polluted with sin. God does not bless that which is not perfect according to the standard of his own righteous and holy being. And to say that God accepts by grace our imperfect works is to make God half-rate.

Rather, God again causes his people to experience his favor by his Word and Spirit. And this experience of God’s favor is full and free. It is the Word as applied by the Spirit to the believer that causes him to again experience God’s favor. And this is unimpeded by all activities of man. God’s Word to his people is that they are reconciled to God, atonement has been made for their sins, they are loved by God from eternity to eternity, and salvation is of the Lord and does not depend on them. That is God’s Word, and the Spirit applies that Word to the believer so that he believes that Word and is assured by that Word. Or we could simply say that the Word is Jesus Christ, and the Spirit applies Christ to us. That is our comfort.

And the Spirit also renews us to repentance and causes a sincere and godly sorrow for our sins. I have already stated that God does not need our repentance. Why then must we repent? The answer is to be found in who the Spirit is. Is he not the Holy Spirit? The Spirit of God is holy and righteous. The Holy Spirit is God. Holy and righteous are his works and that which the Spirit works in man. To state it briefly, what this means is that repentance is inevitable. It is as inevitable as the believer’s experiencing the favor of God again by the Word and Spirit.

Holiness is consecration to God. The one who is holy loves God perfectly with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength at all times. God is holy in himself. The Father loves and is consecrated to the Son. The Son loves and is consecrated to the Father. And that love and consecration is the Holy Spirit. He is the Breath from the Father to the Son who makes known the love of the Father to the Son and who consecrates the Son to the Father. The Son breathes back the Spirit in love for the Father and consecrates the Father to the Son.

And now the Comforter is given to God’s people. The Comforter is sent with this missive, to make known God’s love for his people and to consecrate them to God. That is the work of the Spirit in the children of God. He is the Spirit of adoption, and the Spirit is life in the child of God, so that he minds the things of the Spirit and walks in the ways of God.

This is why man’s experience and man’s obedience are always close together and why man’s experience of the forgiveness of sins and his repentance are always close together. These are worked by the same person in God, the Holy Spirit, who works in man both the experience of man’s salvation and man’s obedience. Not because the blessing needs the works but because the Holy Spirit, the worker, works both the blessing and the fruit.