Four12 is home to many people who love Jesus and the Bible but who disagree at times on certain debatable theological issues. I’m so grateful that we are able to keep unity even though we don’t agree entirely on everything, because our differences are worked through inside a family.
One of the areas of difference is between those who are Calvinist and those who are Arminian in their understanding of the texts. And it needs to be said that this disagreement is about how salvation works, between brothers who absolutely agree entirely on the One who saves.
If you read through our articles, you will find both Calvinist and Arminian lenses taken to Scripture as each group tries to best understand some of the wondrous mysteries which, at times, seem so far beyond our understanding.
The internet is presently loudly screaming about the Calvinist lens, and certainly Calvinists have taken the high ground when it comes to how to interpret matters. My concern is that some Calvinists seem to paint anyone who disagrees with them as a heretic, or not a genuine Christian. I thought it would be good to carefully explain why I am not a Calvinist and why I believe it is possible for genuine believers to fall away from Christ.
Now, I want to say that this is not something everyone in Four12 must believe – it is my own personal belief. I hope, in writing this, to help those who see things differently understand that the way I see it, may be more thoughtful and closer to Scripture than they realise.
I’m going to share how I personally read one of the key Calvinist texts in this debate. John chapter 6 is arguably one of the strongest Calvinist Scriptures, and I’m going to show why. After years of grappling with a myriad of contexts and concepts in this chapter, I’ve landed where the Arminian tradition lands (alongside greats such as Wesley) and have not landed on the Reformed position.
My concern is that some Calvinists seem to paint anyone who disagrees with them as a heretic, or not a genuine Christian.
John 6 is arguably one of the great Calvinist strongholds, where Jesus says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me” (John 6:37, ESV), and “This is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me” (verse 39, NIV). Read a certain way, these verses seem to settle that God sovereignly chooses who will be saved and that those who are saved can never fall away. I hope here to show you why I don’t believe the text is saying this. I’m actually using one of the more difficult passages in the Bible to make my point as I read it closely with you. Please note that I could have picked multiple verses which Calvinists would find hard to argue against, such as the many warnings of falling away, but that is not the point of this article.
Bringing Our Questions to the Text
One of the challenges we face is that, too often, we bring our questions to the text and read verses through our theological construct, instead of actually letting the text say what it means. This is the nature of the human brain, and we are all in danger of doing it – our minds have a way of blinding us to things we don’t want to see. We end up with a mix of motivated reasoning (whereby our brains twist what we are reading and blind us to what we don’t want to see or don’t believe) and confirmation bias (whereby our brain emphasises the parts that seem to confirm our bias while conveniently blinding us to what challenges our belief system).
This is dangerous and is warned about in Scripture consistently – Jesus warns sincere Bible scholars about being blinded by their traditions or being ever hearing but never perceiving. I hope this, at worst, helps you to see these verses differently than you have.
The Calvinist reading brings the question, “Can a true believer finally be lost?” And here is John 6’s answer: no. The elect are given, drawn, kept, and raised as a guarantee.
But I want to argue that we are looking at these verses through the wrong lens, and that the Bible is not actually trying to answer this question in this specific chapter. We are reading into it what it’s not trying to say, and therefore making it confirm something it’s not confirming.
What John 6 Is Actually About
Jesus has fed the 5,000. The crowd is following Him for all the wrong reasons, and now they are questioning His credentials: “What sign will you perform then, that we may see it and believe you?” – John 6:30, NKJV
Jesus responds, effectively, by saying that He is God, and the Jews begin to grumble amongst themselves (verses 41–42, NKJV): “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?” This is the framing of the chapter: it is Jesus defending who He is and what authority He carries, to an audience deciding whether to receive Him. The key verses we’re looking at were spoken specifically into a dispute about the Son’s identity and commission, not to answer how the mechanics of election or salvation work, but to emphasise that Jesus is in fact God.
Jesus explains that the Son perfectly does the will of the Father, and John 6:37–40 is not primarily a statement about the security of individuals. It is a statement about the unity of the Father and the Son.
Listen to how Jesus frames it: “For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me …” – John 6:38–39, NIV
Jesus is not trying to emphasise the “losing none” but rather explaining His own perfect unity with the Father as the Sent One. He is emphasising that He is not some rogue rabbi acting on His own authority, because He does nothing but His Father’s will, and He does the Father’s will flawlessly.
The Shaliach: One Will, One Hand, One Work
This is exactly how a first-century Jew would have heard it. Behind John’s whole “sending” theology stands the Jewish concept of the shaliach – the maxim of the rabbis, a settled, quotable principle in rabbinic law, a one-liner everyone knew and applied: “a man’s agent is as the man himself.”
John’s Gospel is full of this maxim, emphasising the oneness of Christ with the Father: “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19, NIV); “I live because of the Father” (John 6:57, NIV); “For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.” (John 12:49, NIV).
In rabbinical understanding, the proof of an agent’s legitimacy is that he carries out the sender’s will without deviation or loss. In other words, John is showing that Jesus is the messenger sent from the Father, representing Him perfectly and doing the Father’s will without deviation or loss.
I would argue, Jesus is therefore not talking about unconditionally elected individuals in this narrative; rather, He is emphasising His perfect oneness with the Father.
John 6:37–40 is, therefore, Jesus presenting His credentials to His audience. John picks this up again in John 10:28–30 (NIV): “No one will snatch them out of my hand … no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” And the climax is, “I and the Father are one.”
I would argue, Jesus is therefore not talking about unconditionally elected individuals in this narrative; rather, He is emphasising His perfect oneness with the Father. In effect, we see one will, one hand, one work – He and the Father are one.
Therefore, it is logical that those who remain in the Father, the Son will never cast out and will never lose, because the Son cannot fail the Father – they work as one. A hint of what’s coming, though, is the “those who remain in the Father” part.
Who Are the Given Ones?
Okay, we’ve established what the passage is about. But the passage does make some theological arguments, one of them being that Jesus will not lose one of the given ones. Therefore, logically, the question we must consider is: who are the given ones?
Now the Calvinist will say the given ones are the unconditional elect – those chosen sovereignly by the Father. But is that what this text is saying?
Jesus makes it very clear in this text how this drawing works. He tells us, “Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me” (John 6:45, NIV). Here Jesus makes it clear that those who have heard the Father and are learning or have learned from Him will be naturally entrusted to the Son. The drawing here is the Father’s teaching – and teaching, by its nature, can be heard and learned, or refused and resisted, which is part of Jesus’ argument in this entire discourse. In fact, Israel’s entire history is the proof of this: “I have stretched out my hands all day long to a rebellious people …” (Isaiah 65:2, NKJV)
Jesus says exactly this to the same generation in the previous chapter: “You study the Scriptures diligently … yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39–40, NIV). So, it is possible to hear the Father or hear the Son, and not come to Him. But those who hear the Father and learn from Him will come to Jesus. The human response to the Father is what brings people to the Son.
This is echoed in Jesus’ priestly prayer of John 17:6 (ESV): “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” So those who are given to the Son are not unconditionally elected individuals in this discourse. Rather, they are the Father’s faithful ones – Israelites who were already responding to the Father under the Old Covenant, who now are handed over to the Son as the covenant reaches its fulfilment.
They were the Father’s, and they kept His word, and so the Father gave them to Jesus. It is this giving – this handover from covenant to covenant, from the Father to the Son – that is being spoken about, not some secret election from eternity past. And this same pattern continues beyond Israel: Jesus speaks of “other sheep that are not of this sheep pen” (John 10:16, NIV). Those responding to the Father’s drawing, Jew and Gentile alike, are entrusted to the Son.
So, Jesus is saying here that some of the Jews responded to the Father’s teaching (verse 45) and learned from the Father. The prior human response is to the Father, and it is these who are given and drawn to the Son. They come to Him because they belong to the Father.
This chapter does not speak about anything being unconditional. In fact, the condition is the human response to the Father. Now, again, this response is only possible by grace, but that is not what this verse is trying to emphasise.
Jesus will not lose one of the given ones. Therefore, logically, the question we must consider is: who are the given ones?
This concept is echoed throughout John in multiple places (John 8:42; 8:47), where Jesus tells His hearers, “If God were your Father, you would love me.” (John 8:42, NIV) For Jesus, their refusal of Him exposes that they were not, in fact, rightly responding to the Father.
Jesus does the same thing when He says that many of the Jews do not truly believe Moses, because if they believed Moses, they would believe in the one he wrote about (John 5:46–47). Their refusal of the Son exposes that they were not responding rightly to Moses or to Scripture.
Can the Father’s Will Be Refused?
This brings us to the perceived promise of keeping. Jesus says in John 6:39 (NIV), “This is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none.” The question, then, is: doesn’t the will of God settle it? Can God’s will fail?
Now, good Calvinists distinguish God’s decretive will from his preceptive will, because Calvinists acknowledge the many texts where God’s will seems to be resisted. So, the point here is this: the fact that the Father wills that the Son should lose none doesn’t, by itself, give us a guarantee – because even to the Calvinist, God’s will can at times be resisted.
Jesus makes it very clear that the divine will is resisted when He says: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted (ēthelēsa — willed) to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” – Matthew 23:37, NKJV
We see this again in places like Luke 7:30 (ESV): “but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him”. God’s purpose, or will, humanly refused and thwarted.
This is actually the thread of the whole story of Israel: God plants her to be his people, but they stubbornly resist. God does not want them to die and takes “… no pleasure in the death of anyone” (Ezekiel 18:32, NIV), and is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, NIV). Indeed, God wants “all people to be saved …” (1 Timothy 2:4, NIV).
So, when Jesus tells us that the Father wills that the Son will “lose not one,” what Jesus is effectively telling us is that He and the Father have the same heart, purpose and desire. Israel’s history, and the multiple warnings of the New Testament, sadly show that this will can be tragically refused.
Looking and Believing: An Ongoing Response
John 6:40 (NIV) defines God’s will exactly in these terms: “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” In the Greek, both “looks” and “believes” are present participles – language that sits very comfortably with an ongoing gaze of faith. Now, I won’t hang the argument on the tense alone, because Greek participles can’t carry that much weight by themselves. The real weight comes from John’s own “remain” language: in John 15, it is the branches that remain in Jesus that bear fruit, and the branches in Him that do not remain that are cut off, thrown away, wither and are burned (John 15:2–6).
Therefore, the promise of being raised up on the last day is attached to a living, ongoing response – continuing in the gaze of faith, looking to Jesus. And yes, surely those who continue to look to Jesus, because they belong to the Father, will find the Son faithful, because he represents the Father perfectly.
Judas: The Given One Who Was Lost
Jesus ends this discourse talking to the Twelve, who are “given” to Him by the Father, after many disciples are offended and leave Him. Note the language of John 6: Jesus actually says that He chose Judas – “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” – John 6:70, ESV
In John 17:12 (NKJV), Jesus says, “Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition.” Judas is included in the “chosen” and the “given,” and is therefore included in the keeping language. He is guarded with the rest but lost from among them. That Jesus tells us He “lost” Judas clearly means Judas was, at some point, found – he belonged to Christ. If it’s impossible to fall away, how could Jesus lose one? One man breaks the system.
Now, let me be fair to my Reformed brothers here, because they have answers to Judas, and I want to respond to them.
First, they will point to John 6:64 (NIV) – “Jesus had known from the beginning … who would betray him” – and conclude that Judas was never a believer at all. But foreknowledge is not the same as decree. That Jesus knew where Judas would end does not mean Judas never began. Jesus also knew Peter would deny Him (John 13:38), and nobody concludes from that foreknowledge that Peter was never His.
Second, they will quote John 13:18 (ESV) – “I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen.” – reading Jesus as excluding Judas from the chosen in a saving sense. But the point of 13:18 is not a hidden category of election; the point is the betrayal: “But this is to fulfill this passage of Scripture: ‘He who shared my bread has turned against me.'” (John 13:18, NIV) Jesus is saying the betrayal does not catch Him off guard. And we must let John interpret John: in John 6:70 (ESV) Jesus explicitly includes Judas in his choosing – “Did I not choose you, the Twelve?” Fulfilled Scripture foretells; it does not coerce. Peter’s denial was also foretold, and no one argues Peter was thereby predestined to be lost.
Third, some will read the “except” of John 17:12 as meaning Judas was never among the guarded at all. But that is not how the sentence most naturally reads – and more simply: you cannot lose what was never yours. Judas was not snatched, not neglected, not cast out, and he did not merely drift. He was guarded with the rest, and he chose to walk away. So, Jesus can say with complete integrity, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37, ESV) Jesus willed to keep Judas, but Judas refused to remain.
So we learn that Jesus, in keeping with the Father, wills to keep everyone – and Judas shows that the kept can still refuse to remain.
The Strongest Reformed Replies
Before concluding, let me respond to the strongest Reformed replies.
1) John 6:44 (ESV) – “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”
Good Arminians affirm, alongside Calvinists, that humans are totally unable to respond to God apart from grace. It is impossible to come to Jesus outside of God’s effective drawing. So yes, we agree on this. But verse 44 shows the _necessity _of the drawing, not its irresistibility. As we’ve already seen from John 5:39–40, the Father’s voice in the Scriptures can be refused. To make my point, in John 12:32 (NIV) Jesus says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The exact same word is used here – helkō. If drawing is irresistible, then “all people” will be saved. We all know this won’t happen, which shows us that drawing is real and necessary but is also resistible, as we read in John 5:40 (NIV): “you refuse to come to me to have life.” It is refusal of the drawing which is Scripture’s explanation for unbelief.
Now, some will respond that “all people” in 12:32 means “all kinds of people” – Jew and Gentile – since the Greeks have just arrived asking to see Jesus (12:20–21). Fine. But even on that reading the argument stands, because the drawing demonstrably does not result in all of those drawn believing. Either way, the drawing is not irresistible.
Jesus’ record is perfect, and He doesn’t get tired of holding us. We learn that He wills for us to be saved.
So when Jesus tells us in John 6:65 (NIV), “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them,” Jesus is not teaching unconditional election. He is explaining that those who have not heard and learned from the Father (verse 45), who do not have God as their Father (John 8:42, 47), and who did not believe Moses (5:46–47), were the ones resisting the Son. Those who have a relationship with the Father are the ones given and enabled to love the Son. Jesus is telling his hearers – who assume they are true Israel – who actually is. He is not explaining how God sovereignly elects who will be saved.
2) Doesn’t John tell us that apostates were never genuine when he says, “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us”? (1 John 2:19, NIV)
John is specifically talking about the “antichrists” who departed from the churches. He is not necessarily talking about all apostates – only this group. Let me make it clear: I agree that some in the church are not genuine believers. But this example is not a universal principle about all apostates, only this specific group. John himself shows that genuine branches can be cut off: in John 15, the branches “in me” are “cut off,” “thrown away,” “wither … and burned” (John 15:2, 6, NIV). These branches were in the vine and, like Judas, were part of Christ, yet were lost. Yes, some who left were never truly Christians, but the many warnings throughout Scripture, such as Hebrews 3:12–14, 6:4–6 and 10:26–29, are warnings to genuine believers, who can fall away.
The Keeper Doesn’t Change
So we learn from all of this that the Son perfectly reflects the Father and faithfully executes the Father’s saving will. While this portion of John was not primarily written to comfort us, there is a byproduct of comfort we can find in its beautiful wording. John 6 guarantees us that Jesus will do everything to save us and keep us, and if we remain in Him, we are guaranteed that He will raise us up on the last day.
John 6 tells us that the Keeper doesn’t change. It is not telling us that, if we are unwilling, we cannot turn and walk away. We can know that we will never be driven away, and that nothing in creation can separate the faithful from His hand or the Father’s hand, because they are one. If we remain in Christ, we have nothing to fear.
Jesus’ record is perfect, and He doesn’t get tired of holding us. We learn that He wills for us to be saved. The text here does not teach that we cannot cease to be sheep if we choose to depart. John 15 is very clear that genuine branches can refuse to remain and be cut off, and many warnings in the New Testament say just this. Hebrews 3:12 (NIV) says, “See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” These warnings are not scare tactics to keep the elect, who are guaranteed eternal security. They are given to us to encourage us to take our remaining seriously.
So, in closing, I write this not to pick an argument with my Calvinist brothers within Four12. I love and honour you – your love for the text, your desire to honor our God and to make much of Him and little of us. I love building alongside you. I just can’t find your doctrine in this, arguably your strongest, chapter. What I find here is Jesus telling us that He is the Father’s representative, and that He does the Father’s will flawlessly. I see a Father who wants none to perish, and a promise to all who listen and come to Him: He will never cast us out.
Note also that I’m not writing this to pick a fight – the internet is already ablaze with far too many fights arguing your position predominantly! This article is to help you see that those who see Scripture from a position different from yours are also desperately trying to be faithful to the text. May we guard our unity as we keep the main thing central and preach our Christ, crucified for all nations.
