Well of course. But you can have eternal security without knowing it or not believing it. In such a situation, you are eternally secure, but unassured.
I can hardly believe this. Only ONE person addressed the OP, and that was @Iconoclast.
Can you guys please stop bickering and help me out by answering the OP?! Please.
I'll let the Calvinists answer your question.
However, I think it's worth mentioning that Calvin's God can also trick and deceive you into thinking you are elect.
Calvin's God can illumine your mind into thinking you are elect, giving you a taste of his mercy, only to pull the rug out from under you at the end...
Calvin, Institutes, 3.2.11 ---> “Nor do I even deny that God illumines their [reprobates] minds to this extent, that they recognize his grace; but that conviction he distinguishes from the peculiar testimony which he gives to his elect in this respect, that the reprobate never attain to the full result or to fruition. When he shows himself propitious to them, it is not as if he had truly rescued them from death, and taken them under his protection. He only gives them a manifestation of his present mercy.”
Thanks for noticing what the Op. was actually getting at. I have to confess years ago I had someone put this whole issue to me and I argued like many are that no it's Jesus it's the cross it's the blood all good answers and all good gifts but I could not get around what this pastor was bringing out to me and I think it's a good exercise to Think Through It
the Holy Spirit only can give real eternal life in Christ, so any so called counterfeit faith has come to someone by Satan as an Angel of light, thru one of His "pastors/teaching" spreading demonic heresies!
A. Augustine, "Rebuke and Grace," Chapter 40.
B. Calvin taught that the elect can have certainty, as outlined in the above quote from Institutes. Assurance of Salvation
So God doesn't expect you to stop sinning in Mathew 5:48?
If God expects you to stop sinning why haven't you, and why do you consider yourself "not sinless"?
If you haven't stopped sinning, why do you expect others to stop sinning like a hypocrite?
Jesus commanded to be perfect as the Father is perfect. But you break that commandment of God in His word and demand the couple practice what God commands in His word, you hypocrite!
After repenting, yeshua1 has not returned to "sinlessness" but again to the same old "not sinless" state. But he is lying by saying he has returned to God! None can return to God through works but only by grace. But he pretends to have returned to God through his works.
Supreme irony one evolutionist false teacher who is also an agent for gifted healers, disobeys God's command in Mathew 5:48 and goes around lecturing
others to "stop sinning"!
☺☺☺☺
Never stated that we are to stop sinning perfectly, but that anyone in position of leadership needs to live as they ought as a testimony to Jesus Christ!