The Heart of the Gospel - Pt 24

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5 ESV).

God works to cause his elect to persevere. We are not left to ourselves in the fight of faith, and our assurance is rooted in the sovereign love of God to perform what he has called us to do. One of the most precious of all those promises relates the new covenant to God’s absolute commitment to cause us to persevere: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me” (Jeremiah 32:40). This promise recurs in many wonderful expressions in the New Testament. Our reading today is one of those. I sometimes ask people, “Why do you believe you will wake up a Christian tomorrow morning?” The biblical answer is not, “I know I will choose to believe tomorrow morning. I am committed to Jesus.” That is very fragile confidence. The answer is that God is faithful. God will work in me. God will keep me. God will finish his work to the end. The answer is God’s ongoing work, not my ongoing commitment. When I ask this question I am fishing to see if anyone has the view that eternal security is like a vaccination. We got our vaccination when we were converted and can’t catch the disease of unbelief. That is a misleading analogy because it implies that the process of preservation is automatic without the ongoing work of the great physician. Perseverance is not like a vaccination, but like a life-long therapy program in which the great physician stays with you all the way. He will never leave us (cf. Hebrews 13:5). That is the way we persevere. That is the way we have assurance. Therefore we can be zealous to confirm our calling and election. It is not that our calling and election are fragile and need to be propped up. We have seen plainly that calling and election are the most solid realities under God. They are links in a chain of salvation that cannot be broken (cf. Romans 8:29-39). However, we should be very intentional to maintain our assurance of them and to confirm them continually by walking in the joy of them. It is, after all, by God’s divine power that we grow in faith and virtue and knowledge and self-control and steadfastness and godliness and brotherly affection and love (cf. 2 Peter 1:5-7). In other words we make eager efforts to trust the promises and power of God so deeply that sin is put to death in our lives by the Spirit and the goal of love is joyfully pursued. That’s how we persevere! Don’t stop now, we’re almost there!