Full text of Benjamin Keach’s Sermon on John 10:28
Particular Baptist Theological Society · May 15, 2026
Two Hands, Contoured by Chalcedon (Handout)
Seeing the Two Natures of the Son in Our Perseverance from Keach’s Sermon on John 10:28
David A. Attebury
Text: John 10:27–30
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.”
Driving question: Is it one hand or two hands?
Thesis: Benjamin Keach interprets the two hands of John 10:28–29 in the tradition of Chalcedonian categories: a Christian’s perseverance is founded upon the two distinct natures of Christ in one person. The hand of the Father is the Son himself (according to his divinity); the hand of the Son is his humanity and mediatorial office.
Keach’s Three Logical Moves
I. The hand of the Father is his power and wisdom.
- “Hand” as synecdoche for power (Isa. 9:1) and for God’s eternal purpose or counsel.
- Assurance rests on divine immutability — God’s counsel cannot change because his nature cannot change.
- Keach leans on Owen, Doctrine of the Saints’ Perseverance: affectio, not passiones.
II. The Son of God is the power and wisdom of God.
- Christ “is called the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).
- All divine attributes are united and shine forth in the Son — unlike any single act of creation or judgment.
- Eternal generation (ad intra) grounds his fitness to display God’s attributes in salvation (ad extra).
III. Believers are in the hand of the Son according to both natures.
- In the covenant of grace, the Son is Surety, Mediator, Sponsor (Heb. 7:22).
- As God: wisdom itself, power itself, riches in glory to give.
- As man: given wisdom, clothed with power, given the Spirit without measure.
- Chalcedonian grammar on display: unconfused, immutable, indivisible, inseparable.
A Reformational Distinctive
One hand (proof of homoousios only): Augustine, Ambrose, Hilary, Lombard, Aquinas.
Two hands (divine nature and mediatorial humanity): Calvin, Keach.
Takeaway: The hand of the Father is the Son; the hand of the Son is his humanity. A Christian’s eternal security is uniquely accomplished by both of the Son’s natures, working in concert in one person — unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, and inseparably.
Primary source:
- Benjamin Keach, A Golden Mine Opened: Or, The Glory of God’s Rich Grace Displayed in the Mediator to Believers: And His Direful Wrath against Impenitent Sinners. Containing the Substance of Forty Sermons upon Several Subjects (London: William Marshall, 1694), 269–284.
Secondary sources (in order presented):
- John Owen, The Doctrine of the Saints’ Perseverance, London: Leon Lichfield, 1654, Chapter III §9, 52.
- Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, 2nd ed (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 19.
- Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John 41–124, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: NCP, 2020),
- Homily 48, 102–3.
- Homily 53, 159.
- Peter Lombard, The Sentences, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto, Canada: PIMS, 2007),
- Distinction II, Ch 5(8.2), 1:17–18. See Ambrose, De fide, bk 1 c1 nn8–9;
- Distinction XXXIV, Ch 1(145.5), 1:188. See Hilary, De Trinitate, bk 8 nn27–28;
- Distinction XXXV, Ch 5(149.2), 1:193. See Augustine, Contra Maximinum, bk 2 c14 n3.
- Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, trans. Fabian R. Larcher (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1998), John 10:30, Lecture 5, 1450. https://isidore.co/aquinas/John10.htm
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John Thomas McNeill, trans. John Baillie (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006),
- 3.15.5, 1:793.
- 3.22.7, 2:941.
- Calvin, Commentary on John, John 10:30, https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom34/calcom34.xvi.v.html
Contact: davidattebury@gmail.com
David Attebury 