The Heart of the Gospel - Pt 22

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6 ESV).

God’s elect cannot be lost. This is why we believe in eternal security; namely, the eternal security of the elect. The implication is that God will so work in us that those whom he has chosen for eternal salvation will be enabled by him to persevere in faith to the end and fulfill, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the requirements for a new kind of life. We have seen before the ironclad chain of divine work (cf. Romans 8:30). What is evident from this verse is that those who are effectually called into the hope of salvation will indeed persevere to the end and be glorified. There are no dropouts in this sequence. These are promises of God rooted in unconditional election in the first place and in the sovereign, converting, preserving grace of God. The links in this chain are unbreakable, because God’s saving work is infallible and his new covenant commitments are irrevocable. Our reading today is the Apostle Paul’s direction in this sequence. It follows Jesus’ instruction to the disciples: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one (John 10:27-30). We have seen before that being a sheep of Jesus means being chosen by God and given to the Son. In other words, the promise of Jesus never to lose any of his sheep is the sovereign commitment of the Son of God to preserve the faith of the elect for whom he laid down his life. This truth is essential to our hope. None of us, the elect of God, can have any assurance if we are responsible for the ultimate outcome of our redemption. If we must depend on our perfection and obedience to gain the ultimate end of our redemption, we are lost indeed. We can KNOW that we will be safely brought to our final destination in heaven because we are tethered to the Lord Jesus (cf. Hebrews 6:19). Our anchor is firmly set safely there and we cannot be torn away by any storm of life whether by our own making or another’s. That gives me reason to persevere through the storm!