God's Preservation: Assurance of Eternal Faithfulness

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I believe, of course, that saints do persevere in faith and that those who have been effectually called by God and have been reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit endure to the end, so that they do persevere. But they persevere not simply because they are so diligent in their making use of the mercies of God, but the only reason we can give why any of us continues on in the faith even till the last day is not because we have persevered so much as that is because we have been preserved. [00:03:02]

Now what does Paul write to the Philippians? He says that "He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it to the end." Therein is the promise of God that what God starts in our souls He intends to finish. And so the old axiom in Reformed theology about the perseverance of the saints is this: If you have it, that is if you have genuine faith and are in a state of saving grace, if you have it, you will never lose it. And if you lose it, you never had it. [00:05:08]

Even after we're regenerated we still lapse into sin, and not only into sin but into serious sin. And we say that it is possible for a Christian to be engaged in a very serious fall. And we talk about backsliding; we talk about moral lapses and so on. I can't think of any sin, other than blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that a truly converted Christian is not capable of committing. [00:08:51]

We look for example at the model of David in the Old Testament where David was surely a man after God's own heart. He was certainly a regenerate man. He had the Spirit of God in Him. He had a profound passionate love for the things of God, and yet this man not only committed adultery but he also was involved in a conspiracy to have his lover's husband killed in war, which was conspiracy really to murder. [00:09:29]

And so his fall was for a season. And that's why we say that true Christians can have radical and serious falls but never total and final falls from grace. Even in the church when people profess faith and become involved in very serious and egregious sin, sin so serious that they are involved in church discipline. And even with the process of church discipline that goes through several stages, the final stage of which is what? Excommunication. [00:12:05]

Even that act of excommunication is done with the hope that the person is a true believer who is now engaged in a very persistent state of sin and that this final discipline of being cut off from fellowship in the body of Christ will be that which the Spirit of God uses to bring them to repentance. And we see that example found in the New Testament in the Corinthian situation with the incestuous man. [00:13:24]

But God does read the heart. And when God says that a certain person never was in a true state of faith, we can rest assured that that person never was in a true state of faith. Now but what about if we happen to encounter somebody who is in the midst of a serious, protracted fall where they have repudiated the faith publicly? Can we then know that they're not Christians? No, because we don't know tomorrow. [00:15:35]

The whole purpose of God's election is to bring His people safely to heaven, so that what He starts He promises to finish. And He not only just initiates the Christian life, but the Holy Spirit as the sanctifier, the convictor, and the helper is there to help in our preservation. Now two important terms are told with respect to the work of the Spirit in the Christian's life that are related to this idea of the preservation. [00:17:09]

The term earnest of the Spirit is drawn from the commercial language of Biblical days, and the only thing I can think of that's a parallel in our own day would be what we call earnest money when somebody is going to purchase a home that when you make the initial contract you give a little bit of money as pin money or as a down payment, which is a promise that you intend to get your loan and close the deal and pay the rest of the balance due. [00:17:55]

When God the Holy Spirit is given to you by the Father as an earnest, when the Spirit Himself who is indwelling you is the Father's earnest for your future, do you really doubt that the Father is going to fail to bring the final payment? We possess not a handful of dollars but the indwelling Holy Spirit of God Himself as God's promise to finish the job. [00:18:41]

Somehow we have a tendency or sometimes, I think, we have the tendency to think that when Jesus came and lived His life of perfect obedience and fulfilled all of the demands of the law that we have failed to fulfill and then by His passive obedience paid the price for our sins with His perfect atonement that He's done everything that we ever need Him to do for us, but we forget that when He ascended into heaven and was seated at the right hand of God and enthroned as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, He was not just going for His royal realm, but He also entered into heaven as our great High Priest. [00:20:01]

My confidence in my preservation is not in my ability to persevere, but my confidence rests in the power of Christ to sustain me with His grace and by the power of His intercession for us that He is going to bring us safely through. [00:22:21]

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