In a family setting, fathers must play many different roles in order to make family life function well. Some of these roles may include garbage man, plumber, handyman, TV repair man, chef, groundskeeper, and others.
But I think the role that fathers have really perfected is that of motivational speaker. These speakers talk sometimes for 30, 40, maybe 50 minutes, sometimes maybe an hour, and they expend a lot of words trying to inspire you and motivate you.
Fathers, on the other hand, have motivational speaking down to a science. All they need sometimes is one phrase to get their kids going in the right direction. Think about the motivational power in phrases like: “If I have to stop this car;” “If I have to get out of this chair;” “Don’t make me come in there!” Or what about the other side of things? Think about the motivational power in phrases like: “I’m proud of you, son;” “That’s my girl.”
Like a good coach, many fathers offer their children a combination of both positive encouragement and negative reinforcement to motivate them toward proper behavior. Since God refers to himself as our spiritual father, it should be no surprise that God offers us the same thing to motivate us to obey Him. He offers us the promise of rewards and the warning of discipline to spur us on to obey His commands.
It is important for us to address this matter as we conclude our study of eternal security, because many people criticize the idea of eternal security along these lines. They say that eternal security leaves us without a strong motivation to obey God. So if eternal security is true—as I have argued it is over the last several weeks—then what is our motivation to serve God?
As we will see today, we have many motivations to serve the Lord—both to enjoy positive blessings and to avoid negative experiences. Let’s talk about these negative experiences and get them out of the way!
What are the negative experiences that we may face for sinning against the Lord?
I. We may face the natural consequences of our sin
A. Punishment from legal authorities—Romans 13:1–5
If we choose to sin against the Lord, we may also find ourselves in trouble with the law. This won’t always be the case, because not everything that God considers sinful is necessarily illegal. For example—if we lie on the witness stand, that’s called perjury, and that’s illegal. But if we lie in our personal relationships with one another, that’s usually not illegal. But if we sin in a way that violates God’s law and the laws of our city, state, or country, we could find ourselves in trouble with the law. Notice what Paul had to say in Romans 13 [READ Rom 13:1–5]
What Paul says about human government here can be tough to swallow because human governments all have one major problem—they’re made up of humans! Humans are imperfect and sinful, so human governments face the same problems—they make mistakes and they may even pervert God’s standards of right and wrong. But nevertheless, the purpose of human government remains—they are to reward good and punish evil, so if we choose evil, we may face legal punishment as a consequence for our sins.
But Romans 13:5 brings up another consequence that we may face when it mentions the conscience…
B. Psychological suffering (guilt, anxiety, etc.)—Psalm 32:2–5, Proverbs 28:1
Look at Psalm 32:2–5 [READ Psalm 32:2–5]. David is describing here how he felt when he sinned against the Lord and failed to renew his relationship with the Lord by confessing that sin. He was riddled with guilt, which started to take a physical toll on him. We might experience the same thing—guilt may keep us up at night; it may increase our stress level as we worry about whether someone is going to find out about our sin. Proverbs 28:1 describes this kind of fear—“The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”
In addition to these natural consequences is the second experience that we may face for sinning against the Lord. Not only might we face the natural consequences of our sin, but…
II. We may face divine discipline (Hebrews 12:5-11; 1 Cor. 11)
The consequences that we just discussed flow naturally out of sinful choices; they are natural consequences that are to be expected. But in certain situations, God may choose to intervene directly in our lives to bring about some kind of consequence. Look with me at Hebrews 12:3–11 [READ Hebrews 12:5–11].
These verses compare God to a loving father, and for good reason. When he disciplines us for doing wrong, it is to help us grow, to help us learn so that we won’t pursue the same course of action again. God wants something better for us, so he lets us know that what we did was wrong. When we were young and we went out and played in the street, our parents disciplined us because they knew the danger involved, and they wanted something better for us. When we shoplifted that candy bar from the gas station, they disciplined us because they wanted something better for us. That is God’s motivation, too! The Bible says that God is love, so everything he does is tempered by an inclination to work for our good, not for our harm. This is how we need to view God’s discipline, because his discipline is kind of like a visit to the dentist—it doesn’t feel good, but it’s still good for us.
In extreme cases, God’s discipline may even involve sickness and death. That was the case in the church at Corinth, where some people were showing contempt for the Lord’s Supper in the way that they were treating their fellow Christians. 1 Corinthians 11:30 says, “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”
Some of you will remember The Cosby Show, where Bill Cosby played Dr. Cliff Huxtable. Dr. Huxtable had a line that he used to deliver to his kids when they were in trouble. He would give them a look, and then he would say, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out!” What we need to understand is that God really does have that right! Life and death both reside in the divine prerogative of God—the creator and giver of life.
Now if that seems pretty extreme, one thing we need to remember is that even after we become children of God, our sins are not somehow less offensive to God. Even though we have an eternal, saving relationship with God that he will not sever, his justice still points toward discipline for sin.
Now before we move on, please understand this—God does not long for opportunities to discipline us, nor should we think that every bad thing that happens to us is an act of discipline from God. The book of Job teaches us that that is simply not the case. God is a just God which means that he will always discipline in a way that is fair.
So we may experience these things today, and we may experience some other things down the road. We must never forget that the Lord Jesus is going to return someday, and if we choose to sin against God…
III. We may face shame at Christ’s return
Just like we felt shame if our parents caught us doing something wrong, we will feel ashamed if the Lord returns while we are on a sinful path. 1 John 2:28 says, “Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.”
But not only will we be ashamed at that moment—Christ will be ashamed of our actions, too. In Mark 8:38, Jesus says, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
How sad to think that the moment of the Lord’s return may actually be a moment of embarrassment and shame for us rather than a moment of great joy. As children of God, we have the privilege of looking forward to that day with great excitement and anticipation. We should be eagerly awaiting the Lord’s return, not worrying about whether he will come while we are walking a sinful path. How sad it will be if we stand ashamed before the Lord the first time we see him with our own eyes!
I think these motivations are very powerful in their own right, but there are also some positive motivations that should lead us to serve God.
What are the positive motivations that should lead us to serve God?
I. A desire to bring glory to God—Matthew 5:14–16
To glorify something means that you bring praise and honor to its name or reputation. When you glorify something, it has the potential to raise other people’s opinions of that object. With the choices that we make in life, that is exactly what we want to do in behalf of God. We want to show other people what makes God so great in the hopes that we might raise their opinions of God. Jesus describes this in Matthew 5:14–16 [READ Matt 5:14–16]
Now what Jesus is describing is not showing off or trying to look “holier-than-thou.” He is simply saying that there is an attractiveness to godly behavior that can be recognized by other people, and when people see that attractiveness in our lives, it may lead them to a higher opinion of God. It may lead them to glorify God because of what they have seen of him in us. What an awesome thought, to think that the people around us can be moved by what they see of God in us! The desire to see this response from others is a powerful motivation to serve God. If we believe that God is worthy of such high praise and honor, we should live in such a way that will lead others to acknowledge the same.
II. A desire to show gratitude to God—Colossians 2:6–7
Paul describes this motivation in Col 2:6–7 when he writes, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” I don’t think Paul is exaggerating here when he calls us to be “abounding in thanksgiving,” because we really do have so much to be thankful for. We can hardly thank God enough for all that he has done to provide us with forgiveness for our sins, and on top of that, God gives us new blessings each and every day. Every day that we have is a fresh gift from God. Every meal that we eat is a present from Him. Every little thing in our possession is a gift from his gracious hand.
This motivation is such a helpful one when we are going through difficult times. I think Johnson Oatman was right when he wrote, “When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed, when you are discouraged thinking all is lost, count your many blessings—name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.” I think God’s blessings are only surprising to us because we have received so many of them that it’s hard to remember them all. So all in all, we have much to be thankful for, so gratitude for God’s blessings should be a powerful motivation for us to serve him.
III. A desire to enjoy the normal fruits of godly behavior—Proverbs
The entire book of Proverbs is based on this observation—that there are natural consequences for sinful behavior, and normal fruits for godly behavior. The Proverbs tell us what the normal outcome of our behavior will be unless God chooses to intervene in a different way for His own reasons.
The normal fruit of godly behavior is always something that is desirable. According to Proverbs, the normal fruit of hard work and diligence is success. The normal fruit of wise, honest financial planning is prosperity. The normal fruit of humility is honor from God. The normal fruit of appropriate discipline for your kids is godly character. This is the way that God has established his world, so that we would have the motivation to choose godly behavior.
IV. A desire to reign with Christ in His future kingdom—Luke 19:11–27
I won’t elaborate much on this idea because we talked about it extensively a few weeks ago. Just remember the basic truth that we’re talking about here—according to the Bible, Jesus will return to the Earth someday to establish a kingdom of peace and godliness over which He will rule for 1,000 years. Since we are His servants and His spiritual siblings, He offers us the opportunity to rule under Him in His government, but this is not a guaranteed reward for all Christians—it will be given to us in response to our faithfulness in this life. We will all live in Jesus’ kingdom and enjoy it, but we will not all be given the opportunity to serve Jesus in this special way.
We have been given so many remarkable reasons to serve our God. With all of these things in mind, is it not worth it to serve the Lord? Is it not worth it to bring honor to his name by displaying the beauty of his character in our lives? Is it not worth it to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him? Is it not worth it to endure shame and disgrace and hardship for him today, knowing that if we do we will hear from him “well done, good and faithful servant?” It is worth it, and we will discover that if we make that choice today.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Blessed Assurance--Eternal Security series
There are certain things in life that you want to be absolutely sure of. If you’re married, you want to be sure to remember your anniversary—hopefully before your spouse surprises you with a present! If you’re going on vacation, you want to be sure that you left your house in good order. Have you ever been through an entire vacation with the nagging feeling that you forgot to close the garage door, or you forgot to turn off a hose that was running?
If you’re like me, you want to be absolutely sure that your alarm is set before you go to bed. My wife counted one evening as I checked the alarm 31 times before getting in bed! I’ll admit that was a little excessive, so I’ve cut that number down to a mere 7 or 8 times!
You may not be as concerned about your alarm as I am, but I suspect we share a mutual concern about our salvation. When we consider the stakes that are at play between going to heaven or going to hell, we want to have complete assurance that we will go to heaven.
Over the last several weeks, I hope you have grown confident in the belief that our salvation is secure—that once we have received it, we cannot lose it or forfeit it. That’s a comforting belief, however its one thing to believe that salvation is secure, but its another thing to be confident that I have salvation. No matter how secure we think salvation is, we will not have rest in our souls until we answer the question, “Am I truly saved?” This morning, we are going to address that question, and I hope that you will discover that you can have assurance of your salvation through the Holy Spirit.
1. What kind of question are we asking?
As we think about this question, we need to make sure that we understand what kind of question we are asking. When we deal with this question, we often commit what philosophers call a “category mistake,” which simply means that we put this question into a category in which it really doesn’t belong.
In our quest for absolute certainty, we often treat the question, “Am I truly saved?” the same way we treat the question, “What does 2 + 2 equal?” There is a very specific way to answer a mathematical question like that. You can place two oranges on a table, place two more oranges on the table, count them up, and then discover that you have four oranges. You can be certain about your answer because you’ve followed the correct mathematical procedure.
Sometimes we try to take the same approach to the question, “Am I truly saved?” We think to ourselves, “If I add up the good things I’ve done and subtract the bad things I’ve done and divide all of that by the bad thoughts I’ve had and then multiply by the number of people that I’ve witnessed to, then I can figure this thing out!”
But a mathematical procedure can’t answer a question like, “Am I truly saved?” because the question doesn’t belong in that category. This question is more like the question, “Does my spouse love me?” You can’t answer that question with a calculator, either, but in the context of a growing relationship with your spouse, you can come to a certainty about their love for you that you rarely—if ever!—doubt.
The same is true in our relationship with God. As we grow in our relationship with Him, we can enjoy an assurance of His love for us that is provided by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:16 says, “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” By walking with God and allowing His word to fill our hearts, we can come to an assurance of our salvation that we will rarely be tempted to doubt.
Nevertheless, our doubts do come, don’t they? Normally these doubts spring up from the presence of sin in our lives. We don’t walk with God perfectly, and when we fail Satan uses those opportunities to tempt us to doubt God’s love and forgiveness. So what can we look to in order to restore our assurance in those moments? I believe we have both a primary and a secondary path to assurance available to us.
2. The Primary Path to Assurance
We can walk the primary path to assurance simply by taking God at His word and resting in His promises. You might say that this is simply preaching the Gospel to yourself all over again. By bringing to mind the promises that God has made about salvation, we can defeat our doubts by faith through believing that God will be faithful to do exactly what He has said.
Just think again about the powerful promises of the Gospel. You may even want to write these references down in the front of your Bible:
• John 5:24—“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
• John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
• John 6:37—“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
Reminding yourself of God’s promises is the bedrock of assurance. After all—it is faith in Jesus that brings salvation in the first place, so to defeat doubts about your salvation, you simply need to look to Him again in faith. Focus on Christ—not on your feelings or your failures!
Now sometimes, we find ourselves wrestling with the question, “How do I know I’ve truly believed? I think I’ve believed, but how do I know I’m not fooling myself?” This question can drive us into a long discussion about philosophy and psychology and “how we know that we know” something, but let me simply say this—I believe that faith is a form of what philosophers call “knowledge by acquaintance.” In other words, since you are acquainted with what goes on in your mind, you know right away what you think, what you feel, and what you believe. You don’t have to search the depths of your soul in order to discover those things, because you already know them.
Think about this for a moment with the question that we used earlier—do you believe your spouse loves you? You might wish that they expressed their love more often, but that’s not the issue right now—the issue is what you accept to be true about their love for you. You know that right away—don’t you?—because you know what you think and what you believe.
I think our faith in Jesus falls into the same category. You know your own thoughts and beliefs, and you know if you believe in Jesus or not. Sometimes we’re tempted to put our faith in Jesus in a different category because the stakes are so high, but that’s not necessary. If you’re tempted to doubt the sincerity of your faith, the answer is not to take a long look at your faith, but to take a long look at the Savior! Look again at Jesus—remember what He has done and what He has promised. If you want to examine something, examine the message of the Gospel and renew your faith in it. Ultimately, our assurance isn’t based on our faith anyway; it is based on the faithfulness of God.
3. The Secondary Path to Assurance
There is a secondary path that can also provide a smaller measure of assurance. It will never provide the same kind of assurance that the primary path will, but I mention it for two reasons: 1) because it can help to calm our emotions when we’re dealing with doubt; and 2) because it is a very popular idea that is frequently mentioned by pastors and authors.
We walk down this secondary path by looking for God’s work in our lives. When our relationship with God is strong and healthy, we can see how the Lord is working in our lives by producing spiritual fruit and by using us to touch the lives of others. Galatians 5:22-23 lists the fruit that he will produce in our lives when it mentions love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When we see these qualities present in our lives, it gives us a small measure of assurance about our salvation. It can’t be more than a small measure of assurance, however, because we also see things in our lives that are displeasing to God, don’t we? Those are probably the very things that led us to doubt our salvation, so this examination of our lives can only be a secondary path to assurance, at best.
It is popular, however, among some pastors and authors to elevate this examination of your behavior to the position of the primary path of assurance. In other words, they say that I cannot personally rest in God’s promises until I see enough evidence of God’s work in my life. Thus, they encourage us to examine our behavior to see how closely it lines up to biblical standards. Our assurance is therefore tied to the outcome of this self-examination.
This is a very common idea that you will read in books and study Bibles and hear from radio preachers, but I cannot agree that such a self-examination is the primary path to assurance for several reasons. First—and most importantly—I think this idea is based on an incorrect interpretation of passages like James 2 (which talks about a dead faith) and 1 John 3 (which talks about sin and the child of God). I think some pastors and authors who have strongly emphasized a theology called Calvinism have read their theology into those passages rather than drawing the author’s meaning out of those passages.
Second, it is impossible to define how much holiness must be present in my life before I can conclude that I am a Christian. How holy must I be before I can have assurance? Some people would say that a true Christian could not have an habitual sin in his or her life, but what is an habitual sin? Is it a sin that I commit once a day? How about once a week, or does it have to be once an hour before it becomes habitual? What if regularly fail to do the good things that I know I should do? James 4:17 calls that sin. Would that mean that I am not a Christian?
Ultimately, we all end up defining an habitual sinner as “someone who sins a bit more often than me.” If we put too much emphasis on examining our behavior, we will be set adrift on a sea of uncertainty with a current that will always pull us away from having assurance of salvation.
Third, we are not saved by good deeds, so why should we look at our deeds to try and find assurance of our salvation? Some people would say that God will not fail to produce the fruit of the Spirit in us if we are truly saved, but why does God need to command us to love each other if He will automatically produce love within us? Why does He command us to rejoice if He will automatically produce joy within us? Why does He command us to put away anxiety and fear if He will automatically produce peace within us? If He commands us to do these things, I think we must conclude that they are not automatic results of salvation; rather they will come as we learn to draw strength from the Holy Spirit.
Fourth, our behavior is not solely the product of what we believe. There are other factors that influence our behavior, such as our desires; thus, your behavior is not a perfect representation of what you believe. For example, I firmly believe that it would be good for me to get some vigorous exercise every day, but often times I choose to follow other desires in the way that I actually behave. I may desire to sleep longer in the morning, so I choose to stay in bed rather than get up and exercise. Or I may desire to simply relax in the evening, so I’ll choose to turn on a ballgame and watch other people exercise!
Our behavior is to our beliefs what a light is to the contents of a room. A light can reveal the contents of a room when it is turned on, but the contents of the room are there whether the light is turned on or not. In the same way, your behavior can reveal what you believe, but you can genuinely believe something whether your behavior reveals it or not. We fail to reveal our faith in Christ every time we choose to sin, but that doesn’t mean we’re not saved. It simply means that we chose to follow the other factors that influence our behavior.
We should be very concerned about our behavior, but NOT for the purpose of trying to assure ourselves that we are saved. Our assurance is found on the primary path, which we follow simply by taking God at His word and resting in His promises.
Someone once asked Martin Luther, “Do you feel your sins are forgiven?” He replied, “No, but I’m as sure of it as heaven, for feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. My faith is in the Word of God; nothing else is worth believing.1 The stepping stones on the path to assurance are the promises that God has made. If we will walk through life on those promises, we can live with the assurance that we are saved.
Notes:
1. From Emery Nester, “Assurance of Salvation,” http://bible.org/seriespage/assurance-salvation-session-5. Accessed 11-29-11.
If you’re like me, you want to be absolutely sure that your alarm is set before you go to bed. My wife counted one evening as I checked the alarm 31 times before getting in bed! I’ll admit that was a little excessive, so I’ve cut that number down to a mere 7 or 8 times!
You may not be as concerned about your alarm as I am, but I suspect we share a mutual concern about our salvation. When we consider the stakes that are at play between going to heaven or going to hell, we want to have complete assurance that we will go to heaven.
Over the last several weeks, I hope you have grown confident in the belief that our salvation is secure—that once we have received it, we cannot lose it or forfeit it. That’s a comforting belief, however its one thing to believe that salvation is secure, but its another thing to be confident that I have salvation. No matter how secure we think salvation is, we will not have rest in our souls until we answer the question, “Am I truly saved?” This morning, we are going to address that question, and I hope that you will discover that you can have assurance of your salvation through the Holy Spirit.
1. What kind of question are we asking?
As we think about this question, we need to make sure that we understand what kind of question we are asking. When we deal with this question, we often commit what philosophers call a “category mistake,” which simply means that we put this question into a category in which it really doesn’t belong.
In our quest for absolute certainty, we often treat the question, “Am I truly saved?” the same way we treat the question, “What does 2 + 2 equal?” There is a very specific way to answer a mathematical question like that. You can place two oranges on a table, place two more oranges on the table, count them up, and then discover that you have four oranges. You can be certain about your answer because you’ve followed the correct mathematical procedure.
Sometimes we try to take the same approach to the question, “Am I truly saved?” We think to ourselves, “If I add up the good things I’ve done and subtract the bad things I’ve done and divide all of that by the bad thoughts I’ve had and then multiply by the number of people that I’ve witnessed to, then I can figure this thing out!”
But a mathematical procedure can’t answer a question like, “Am I truly saved?” because the question doesn’t belong in that category. This question is more like the question, “Does my spouse love me?” You can’t answer that question with a calculator, either, but in the context of a growing relationship with your spouse, you can come to a certainty about their love for you that you rarely—if ever!—doubt.
The same is true in our relationship with God. As we grow in our relationship with Him, we can enjoy an assurance of His love for us that is provided by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:16 says, “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” By walking with God and allowing His word to fill our hearts, we can come to an assurance of our salvation that we will rarely be tempted to doubt.
Nevertheless, our doubts do come, don’t they? Normally these doubts spring up from the presence of sin in our lives. We don’t walk with God perfectly, and when we fail Satan uses those opportunities to tempt us to doubt God’s love and forgiveness. So what can we look to in order to restore our assurance in those moments? I believe we have both a primary and a secondary path to assurance available to us.
2. The Primary Path to Assurance
We can walk the primary path to assurance simply by taking God at His word and resting in His promises. You might say that this is simply preaching the Gospel to yourself all over again. By bringing to mind the promises that God has made about salvation, we can defeat our doubts by faith through believing that God will be faithful to do exactly what He has said.
Just think again about the powerful promises of the Gospel. You may even want to write these references down in the front of your Bible:
• John 5:24—“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
• John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
• John 6:37—“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
Reminding yourself of God’s promises is the bedrock of assurance. After all—it is faith in Jesus that brings salvation in the first place, so to defeat doubts about your salvation, you simply need to look to Him again in faith. Focus on Christ—not on your feelings or your failures!
Now sometimes, we find ourselves wrestling with the question, “How do I know I’ve truly believed? I think I’ve believed, but how do I know I’m not fooling myself?” This question can drive us into a long discussion about philosophy and psychology and “how we know that we know” something, but let me simply say this—I believe that faith is a form of what philosophers call “knowledge by acquaintance.” In other words, since you are acquainted with what goes on in your mind, you know right away what you think, what you feel, and what you believe. You don’t have to search the depths of your soul in order to discover those things, because you already know them.
Think about this for a moment with the question that we used earlier—do you believe your spouse loves you? You might wish that they expressed their love more often, but that’s not the issue right now—the issue is what you accept to be true about their love for you. You know that right away—don’t you?—because you know what you think and what you believe.
I think our faith in Jesus falls into the same category. You know your own thoughts and beliefs, and you know if you believe in Jesus or not. Sometimes we’re tempted to put our faith in Jesus in a different category because the stakes are so high, but that’s not necessary. If you’re tempted to doubt the sincerity of your faith, the answer is not to take a long look at your faith, but to take a long look at the Savior! Look again at Jesus—remember what He has done and what He has promised. If you want to examine something, examine the message of the Gospel and renew your faith in it. Ultimately, our assurance isn’t based on our faith anyway; it is based on the faithfulness of God.
3. The Secondary Path to Assurance
There is a secondary path that can also provide a smaller measure of assurance. It will never provide the same kind of assurance that the primary path will, but I mention it for two reasons: 1) because it can help to calm our emotions when we’re dealing with doubt; and 2) because it is a very popular idea that is frequently mentioned by pastors and authors.
We walk down this secondary path by looking for God’s work in our lives. When our relationship with God is strong and healthy, we can see how the Lord is working in our lives by producing spiritual fruit and by using us to touch the lives of others. Galatians 5:22-23 lists the fruit that he will produce in our lives when it mentions love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When we see these qualities present in our lives, it gives us a small measure of assurance about our salvation. It can’t be more than a small measure of assurance, however, because we also see things in our lives that are displeasing to God, don’t we? Those are probably the very things that led us to doubt our salvation, so this examination of our lives can only be a secondary path to assurance, at best.
It is popular, however, among some pastors and authors to elevate this examination of your behavior to the position of the primary path of assurance. In other words, they say that I cannot personally rest in God’s promises until I see enough evidence of God’s work in my life. Thus, they encourage us to examine our behavior to see how closely it lines up to biblical standards. Our assurance is therefore tied to the outcome of this self-examination.
This is a very common idea that you will read in books and study Bibles and hear from radio preachers, but I cannot agree that such a self-examination is the primary path to assurance for several reasons. First—and most importantly—I think this idea is based on an incorrect interpretation of passages like James 2 (which talks about a dead faith) and 1 John 3 (which talks about sin and the child of God). I think some pastors and authors who have strongly emphasized a theology called Calvinism have read their theology into those passages rather than drawing the author’s meaning out of those passages.
Second, it is impossible to define how much holiness must be present in my life before I can conclude that I am a Christian. How holy must I be before I can have assurance? Some people would say that a true Christian could not have an habitual sin in his or her life, but what is an habitual sin? Is it a sin that I commit once a day? How about once a week, or does it have to be once an hour before it becomes habitual? What if regularly fail to do the good things that I know I should do? James 4:17 calls that sin. Would that mean that I am not a Christian?
Ultimately, we all end up defining an habitual sinner as “someone who sins a bit more often than me.” If we put too much emphasis on examining our behavior, we will be set adrift on a sea of uncertainty with a current that will always pull us away from having assurance of salvation.
Third, we are not saved by good deeds, so why should we look at our deeds to try and find assurance of our salvation? Some people would say that God will not fail to produce the fruit of the Spirit in us if we are truly saved, but why does God need to command us to love each other if He will automatically produce love within us? Why does He command us to rejoice if He will automatically produce joy within us? Why does He command us to put away anxiety and fear if He will automatically produce peace within us? If He commands us to do these things, I think we must conclude that they are not automatic results of salvation; rather they will come as we learn to draw strength from the Holy Spirit.
Fourth, our behavior is not solely the product of what we believe. There are other factors that influence our behavior, such as our desires; thus, your behavior is not a perfect representation of what you believe. For example, I firmly believe that it would be good for me to get some vigorous exercise every day, but often times I choose to follow other desires in the way that I actually behave. I may desire to sleep longer in the morning, so I choose to stay in bed rather than get up and exercise. Or I may desire to simply relax in the evening, so I’ll choose to turn on a ballgame and watch other people exercise!
Our behavior is to our beliefs what a light is to the contents of a room. A light can reveal the contents of a room when it is turned on, but the contents of the room are there whether the light is turned on or not. In the same way, your behavior can reveal what you believe, but you can genuinely believe something whether your behavior reveals it or not. We fail to reveal our faith in Christ every time we choose to sin, but that doesn’t mean we’re not saved. It simply means that we chose to follow the other factors that influence our behavior.
We should be very concerned about our behavior, but NOT for the purpose of trying to assure ourselves that we are saved. Our assurance is found on the primary path, which we follow simply by taking God at His word and resting in His promises.
Someone once asked Martin Luther, “Do you feel your sins are forgiven?” He replied, “No, but I’m as sure of it as heaven, for feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. My faith is in the Word of God; nothing else is worth believing.1 The stepping stones on the path to assurance are the promises that God has made. If we will walk through life on those promises, we can live with the assurance that we are saved.
Notes:
1. From Emery Nester, “Assurance of Salvation,” http://bible.org/seriespage/assurance-salvation-session-5. Accessed 11-29-11.
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Gift vs. The Prize--Lessons From the Old Testament
Judging from the contents of the Bible, I think I would have to say that God likes a good story—especially if you think about the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the first two-thirds of the Bible, and much of it records the story of Israel in ancient times, and frequently the narrative zooms in on certain individuals. Most of us are intrigued by the Old Testament, but we’re not sure that its all that important for us. After all, the people in the Old Testament lived in very different times and places, and they lived under different commands from God than we live under today.
So why do we even have the Old Testament in the Bible? Why don’t we just focus on the New Testament, which records the commands from God that we are supposed to follow today? Well, according to 1 Corinthians 10:11 the events recorded in the Old Testament “happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”
So the Old Testament is here to instruct us, to give us examples to follow and examples to avoid as we seek to live out God’s commands. It has been said that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, so God has recorded sacred history for us so that we can be instructed by it.
Last week, we talked about some ideas that may have been very new to you—like the idea of being rewarded for the way that we live for Jesus today, and particularly the idea of being rewarded with the privilege of reigning with Him in His earthly kingdom. I stressed that God has offered us both a gift and a prize. The gift is eternal life, which we receive by faith, and prize is a special role of service for Jesus, which we receive by faithfully following His commands.
This idea may have been somewhat new to you, but its not new to Scripture at all, because the Old Testament tells us that God related to Israel in the same way—through a gift and a prize. Today we’re going to focus on God’s relationship with Israel and how it provides a pattern for the way that God relates to us. As with our own lives, we will see a gift that is secure and a prize that can be won or lost. Let’s begin with the gift, which is redemption.
1. Israel’s Redemption
Israel’s redemption took place when God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. This act was a very fitting picture for the word “redemption” because the word refers to paying a ransom for someone or rescuing them from bondage. In the first message that Moses delivered from God to the people of Israel, God spoke in terms of redemption. Turn with me to Exodus 6:2-6, and follow along with me as I read [READ Ex. 6:2-6].
Later, in the book of Deuteronomy, when Moses is looking back on what God had done, he again describes their rescue as redemption. Let’s read Deut. 7:6-8 [READ Deut. 7:6-8]. Notice how these verses highlight the reason why God gave the people this gift of redemption. It wasn’t because of anything special in the people; it wasn’t because they were a great and mighty nation, because they were just the opposite. No—God redeemed them simply because He chose to set His love on them and because He had made promises to Abraham, their ancestor and the founder of the nation.
And in the rest of the Old Testament record, we see that the people hadn’t earned their redemption in any way; it wasn’t any sort of reward. God hadn’t appeared to them and said, “Do this for me and then I will redeem you.” He simply did it because He chose to love them and He made promises to Abraham about a future for His descendents.
The only response required from the Israelites to escape from slavery was a response of faith in God, which they demonstrated on the night of the Passover when they put the blood of a sacrificial animal on their doors to escape death. That response of faith was all that God required for the people to leave their slavery in Egypt, and once they were gone, they were gone—never to return.
I think its important for the question of eternal security to note that even when the people were unfaithful to God later on, God never reversed their redemption. He never sent them back into Egypt to live as slaves. They certainly faced some severe discipline from God, but their status as God’s redeemed people never changed.
So God redeemed Israel by His grace, and after He did, He gave them a task to carry out, with a reward that was promised to them if they would be faithful in carrying out their task.
2. Israel’s Task
Israel’s task can be summarized in two parts, both of which can be found in Deuteronomy 6. Why don’t you turn there with me? First, as we see in verses 16-17, the people were to live before God and worship Him according to the Law of Moses, which consists of all the commands that God communicated to the people through Moses. Let’s read vv. 16-17 [READ vv. 16-17].
God had given the people a very specific way to worship Him and some very specific commands for life, which covered many, many different situations that they might encounter. Thus, if they wanted to live a lifestyle that pleased God, they knew exactly what to do.
Second, God also commanded the people to conquer the land of Canaan and take possession of it. Look at vv. 18-19 [READ vv. 18-19]. Many years before this, God had promised Abraham that He would give the land of Canaan to His descendents, for two reasons. First, it was a good, fruitful land. It is part of what archaeologists have called “the fertile crescent,” because it was a well-watered oasis compared to the desert areas southwest of it. Second, the people who were living in the land of Canaan were evil in the sight of God. Remember—cities like Sodom and Gomorrah were there, and the nations that lived there worshiped their gods with child sacrifices and various sexual acts. So by giving Israel the land, He was not only blessing the children of Israel—He was also judging the nations who lived in the land.
So the people had a clearly defined task, and God offered a reward to them if they would faithfully complete their task.
3. Israel’s reward
The reward that God promised them was an abundant life in the land of Canaan. He promised to bless them in every facet of life if they would be faithful to their task. Turn with me to Deuteronomy 28, and let’s see the blessings that were promised to the people [READ 28:1-14]. What an incredible set of blessings that the Israelites had offered to them! Every general area of life was covered in that set of verses, and God said He would bless them in every area.
But remember—the people would only receive these blessings if they were faithful to obey God. These blessings were generous, certainly, but they were not a gift—they were a reward, and the next section states that the people would miss out on this reward if they failed to obey God. In fact, they would receive just the opposite of all the blessings that were just mentioned—their land would be unproductive, their health would be poor, and their enemies would subdue them.
But again, its important to note that their redemption was secure. God would not and did not sever the relationship with them that He established through their redemption. All throughout the prophetic books, as the prophets were scolding the people for their rebellion against God, they kept talking about a day when God would renew their hearts to follow Him so that He could give them their reward. But the generations who were unfaithful to God failed to receive the reward, and that is still true of Israel to this day, which is a sobering and humbling thought.
But this example from the Old Testament sets a precedence of sorts, because it turns out to be the same way that God deals with us.
4. Our redemption
We see in the New Testament that God’s gift to us is also described in terms of redemption, but our redemption of course is in a spiritual sense. In our redemption, God delivers us from the debt of our sins. Ephesians 1:7 states, “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” Colossians 1:13-14 speaks of our rescue in very dramatic terms when it says, “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Like Israel in the Old Testament, all that God requires from us to receive this gift of redemption is a response of faith in Him to deliver us from the bondage and danger that our sins have put us in. His gift is nothing that we have to earn, its nothing that we have to prove ourselves worthy of—it is truly a gift that He has given us in His love.
But now that God has redeemed us and adopted us into His family, He has given us a task to carry out with a reward that is promised for faithfulness.
5. Our task
Our task can also be summed up in two parts. First, we are called to live before God and worship Him according to the law of liberty. James 2:12 tells us to speak and to act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. This refers to all of the commands that we read in the New Testament for the church age that we live in today.
We are no longer required to live under the Law of Moses today because it fulfilled its purpose with the coming of Jesus. The Law of Moses was meant to teach people about sin and the need for a sacrifice to atone for sin, and as Jesus said in Matthew 5, He came to fulfill the Law and He offered Himself as the true sacrifice for sin once and for all.
So we no longer live under the Old Testament laws today even though we can still learn some valuable things from them. Rather, we are to live under the commands of the New Testament, and some of those commands comprise the second part of our task, which is to serve as representatives of Jesus to make disciples throughout the world. The final command that Jesus gave before He returned to heaven was for us to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). 2 Corinthians 5 says that now that we have been reconciled to God, He has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation, making us ambassadors for Christ. We are now on a spiritual peacemaking mission to present God’s terms of peace to the rest of the world.
If we will be faithful to represent Jesus well today, then He will allow us to represent Him as an official in His government during His earthly kingdom. That is the reward that is held out to us—the privilege of reigning with Jesus in His kingdom on Earth.
6. Our reward
Jesus has returned to heaven for the time being, but one day He will return to establish a kingdom in this world, and He will reward us if we have been faithful to our task. This truth is expressed very clearly in a parable that Jesus tells in Luke 19. In this chapter, Jesus used the backdrop of a current event to teach us a lesson about His return and His kingdom [READ Luke 19:11-27].
In that parable, Jesus used an event from the people’s recent past to teach them a lesson about their present and their future. Likewise, we can learn from the distant past some lessons for our present and our future. Just as God redeemed Israel by His grace, gave them a task, and offered them a reward, He has done the same for us. His gift of redemption was a free gift to us from His grace and mercy, and now, with the foundation of that gift firmly in place, He offers us a reward for the way that we build on that foundation. The hope of a reward for faithfulness should be a powerful motivation for us to be faithful to Christ today, no matter what comes our way. There is a reason to endure suffering for Christ’s name; there is a reason to press forward when we feel like giving up. The finish line is just ahead, and there is a prize to be had if we will follow the Judge’s rules. Let us never give up in the race!
So why do we even have the Old Testament in the Bible? Why don’t we just focus on the New Testament, which records the commands from God that we are supposed to follow today? Well, according to 1 Corinthians 10:11 the events recorded in the Old Testament “happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”
So the Old Testament is here to instruct us, to give us examples to follow and examples to avoid as we seek to live out God’s commands. It has been said that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, so God has recorded sacred history for us so that we can be instructed by it.
Last week, we talked about some ideas that may have been very new to you—like the idea of being rewarded for the way that we live for Jesus today, and particularly the idea of being rewarded with the privilege of reigning with Him in His earthly kingdom. I stressed that God has offered us both a gift and a prize. The gift is eternal life, which we receive by faith, and prize is a special role of service for Jesus, which we receive by faithfully following His commands.
This idea may have been somewhat new to you, but its not new to Scripture at all, because the Old Testament tells us that God related to Israel in the same way—through a gift and a prize. Today we’re going to focus on God’s relationship with Israel and how it provides a pattern for the way that God relates to us. As with our own lives, we will see a gift that is secure and a prize that can be won or lost. Let’s begin with the gift, which is redemption.
1. Israel’s Redemption
Israel’s redemption took place when God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. This act was a very fitting picture for the word “redemption” because the word refers to paying a ransom for someone or rescuing them from bondage. In the first message that Moses delivered from God to the people of Israel, God spoke in terms of redemption. Turn with me to Exodus 6:2-6, and follow along with me as I read [READ Ex. 6:2-6].
Later, in the book of Deuteronomy, when Moses is looking back on what God had done, he again describes their rescue as redemption. Let’s read Deut. 7:6-8 [READ Deut. 7:6-8]. Notice how these verses highlight the reason why God gave the people this gift of redemption. It wasn’t because of anything special in the people; it wasn’t because they were a great and mighty nation, because they were just the opposite. No—God redeemed them simply because He chose to set His love on them and because He had made promises to Abraham, their ancestor and the founder of the nation.
And in the rest of the Old Testament record, we see that the people hadn’t earned their redemption in any way; it wasn’t any sort of reward. God hadn’t appeared to them and said, “Do this for me and then I will redeem you.” He simply did it because He chose to love them and He made promises to Abraham about a future for His descendents.
The only response required from the Israelites to escape from slavery was a response of faith in God, which they demonstrated on the night of the Passover when they put the blood of a sacrificial animal on their doors to escape death. That response of faith was all that God required for the people to leave their slavery in Egypt, and once they were gone, they were gone—never to return.
I think its important for the question of eternal security to note that even when the people were unfaithful to God later on, God never reversed their redemption. He never sent them back into Egypt to live as slaves. They certainly faced some severe discipline from God, but their status as God’s redeemed people never changed.
So God redeemed Israel by His grace, and after He did, He gave them a task to carry out, with a reward that was promised to them if they would be faithful in carrying out their task.
2. Israel’s Task
Israel’s task can be summarized in two parts, both of which can be found in Deuteronomy 6. Why don’t you turn there with me? First, as we see in verses 16-17, the people were to live before God and worship Him according to the Law of Moses, which consists of all the commands that God communicated to the people through Moses. Let’s read vv. 16-17 [READ vv. 16-17].
God had given the people a very specific way to worship Him and some very specific commands for life, which covered many, many different situations that they might encounter. Thus, if they wanted to live a lifestyle that pleased God, they knew exactly what to do.
Second, God also commanded the people to conquer the land of Canaan and take possession of it. Look at vv. 18-19 [READ vv. 18-19]. Many years before this, God had promised Abraham that He would give the land of Canaan to His descendents, for two reasons. First, it was a good, fruitful land. It is part of what archaeologists have called “the fertile crescent,” because it was a well-watered oasis compared to the desert areas southwest of it. Second, the people who were living in the land of Canaan were evil in the sight of God. Remember—cities like Sodom and Gomorrah were there, and the nations that lived there worshiped their gods with child sacrifices and various sexual acts. So by giving Israel the land, He was not only blessing the children of Israel—He was also judging the nations who lived in the land.
So the people had a clearly defined task, and God offered a reward to them if they would faithfully complete their task.
3. Israel’s reward
The reward that God promised them was an abundant life in the land of Canaan. He promised to bless them in every facet of life if they would be faithful to their task. Turn with me to Deuteronomy 28, and let’s see the blessings that were promised to the people [READ 28:1-14]. What an incredible set of blessings that the Israelites had offered to them! Every general area of life was covered in that set of verses, and God said He would bless them in every area.
But remember—the people would only receive these blessings if they were faithful to obey God. These blessings were generous, certainly, but they were not a gift—they were a reward, and the next section states that the people would miss out on this reward if they failed to obey God. In fact, they would receive just the opposite of all the blessings that were just mentioned—their land would be unproductive, their health would be poor, and their enemies would subdue them.
But again, its important to note that their redemption was secure. God would not and did not sever the relationship with them that He established through their redemption. All throughout the prophetic books, as the prophets were scolding the people for their rebellion against God, they kept talking about a day when God would renew their hearts to follow Him so that He could give them their reward. But the generations who were unfaithful to God failed to receive the reward, and that is still true of Israel to this day, which is a sobering and humbling thought.
But this example from the Old Testament sets a precedence of sorts, because it turns out to be the same way that God deals with us.
4. Our redemption
We see in the New Testament that God’s gift to us is also described in terms of redemption, but our redemption of course is in a spiritual sense. In our redemption, God delivers us from the debt of our sins. Ephesians 1:7 states, “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” Colossians 1:13-14 speaks of our rescue in very dramatic terms when it says, “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Like Israel in the Old Testament, all that God requires from us to receive this gift of redemption is a response of faith in Him to deliver us from the bondage and danger that our sins have put us in. His gift is nothing that we have to earn, its nothing that we have to prove ourselves worthy of—it is truly a gift that He has given us in His love.
But now that God has redeemed us and adopted us into His family, He has given us a task to carry out with a reward that is promised for faithfulness.
5. Our task
Our task can also be summed up in two parts. First, we are called to live before God and worship Him according to the law of liberty. James 2:12 tells us to speak and to act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. This refers to all of the commands that we read in the New Testament for the church age that we live in today.
We are no longer required to live under the Law of Moses today because it fulfilled its purpose with the coming of Jesus. The Law of Moses was meant to teach people about sin and the need for a sacrifice to atone for sin, and as Jesus said in Matthew 5, He came to fulfill the Law and He offered Himself as the true sacrifice for sin once and for all.
So we no longer live under the Old Testament laws today even though we can still learn some valuable things from them. Rather, we are to live under the commands of the New Testament, and some of those commands comprise the second part of our task, which is to serve as representatives of Jesus to make disciples throughout the world. The final command that Jesus gave before He returned to heaven was for us to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). 2 Corinthians 5 says that now that we have been reconciled to God, He has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation, making us ambassadors for Christ. We are now on a spiritual peacemaking mission to present God’s terms of peace to the rest of the world.
If we will be faithful to represent Jesus well today, then He will allow us to represent Him as an official in His government during His earthly kingdom. That is the reward that is held out to us—the privilege of reigning with Jesus in His kingdom on Earth.
6. Our reward
Jesus has returned to heaven for the time being, but one day He will return to establish a kingdom in this world, and He will reward us if we have been faithful to our task. This truth is expressed very clearly in a parable that Jesus tells in Luke 19. In this chapter, Jesus used the backdrop of a current event to teach us a lesson about His return and His kingdom [READ Luke 19:11-27].
In that parable, Jesus used an event from the people’s recent past to teach them a lesson about their present and their future. Likewise, we can learn from the distant past some lessons for our present and our future. Just as God redeemed Israel by His grace, gave them a task, and offered them a reward, He has done the same for us. His gift of redemption was a free gift to us from His grace and mercy, and now, with the foundation of that gift firmly in place, He offers us a reward for the way that we build on that foundation. The hope of a reward for faithfulness should be a powerful motivation for us to be faithful to Christ today, no matter what comes our way. There is a reason to endure suffering for Christ’s name; there is a reason to press forward when we feel like giving up. The finish line is just ahead, and there is a prize to be had if we will follow the Judge’s rules. Let us never give up in the race!
Monday, November 14, 2011
"But What About..."--Eternal Security series
Over the last few weeks, I have presented what I believe is a strong case for the belief that a Christian can never lose his or her salvation. Along the way, I’ve mentioned a few times that there are Christians who disagree with me over this issue, and I’m sure many of you knew that before we ever started this series. People whom I consider brothers and sisters in Christ have come to a different conclusion about this subject, and I think our disagreement is sad and unfortunate, but nevertheless, it is the reality that we face today.
Now, as I’ve mentioned this disagreement, perhaps you’ve thought to yourself, “What’s led to all of this? Why do Christians disagree about whether or not we can lose our salvation?” Well, to put it simply, as we read through the Bible, we encounter verses that seem to give us every reason to believe that our salvation is secure, but we also encounter verses that give us strong warnings about the possibility of losing something through disobedience or unbelief. Let me show you what I mean through the words of a few of the authors of Scripture:
From Jesus
• John 6:37—“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
• John 10:27-28—“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.”
• John 15:6—“If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
• Matthew 10:33—“Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
From Paul
• Romans 8:38-39—“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor power, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• 1 Corinthians 9:26-27—“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
From Peter
• 1 Peter 1:4-5—“…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.”
• 2 Peter 3:17—“You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.”
You can probably see for yourself why there have been disagreements over the question of eternal security. Most of the time, people gravitate toward either the “security” verses or the “loss” verses. We tend to emphasize one set of these verses, and then we try to pretend like the other verses don’t exist because they make us uncomfortable!
Various attempts have been made over the years to reconcile the security verses and the loss verses. On the one hand, some of those who believe that we CAN lose our salvation have said that all of the security verses should be read with an unspoken condition in our minds. That is to say that God will never cast us out of His family unless we choose to leave; then, under that condition, He would choose to cast us out. I said last week, however, that I don’t think an unspoken condition does justice to the security verses because their wording is so emphatic.
On the other hand, some of those who believe we CANNOT lose our salvation have said that the loss verses are merely hypothetical. In other words, God is telling us how terrible it would be if He ever cast us out—even though He will never do it! I can’t agree with that solution, however, because I don’t think it does justice to the loss verses. I think the loss verses are meant to warn us about a real danger, and they would lose their power to motivate us if they were only hypothetical. If I tell my daughter someday that I will hypothetically ground her if she doesn’t listen to me, I don’t think that warning will be very motivating for her!
So how can we reconcile the security verses and the loss verses? It will not do to minimize or ignore one set of verses because they are both in the Bible. So how can we reconcile them? By remembering an easily-forgotten observation from Scripture.
1. There is more to our future destiny than heaven or hell!
So often, when we think about our future destiny, our thoughts turn immediately to heaven and hell. That’s understandable in a way, because we all want to be really, really sure that we don’t go to hell. Once we’re sure that we’re not going to go to hell, we kind of breathe a deep sigh of relief and then forget to ask whether there’s anything more to our destiny than escaping hell and going to heaven.
But when we study Scripture, we find that there is more to our destiny than simply escaping hell and going to heaven. In fact, as believers, there is a period of time that we will all go through before we settle into our eternal home in heaven, and that period of time is known as the Millennium. This is a period of time in which Jesus will return to the earth to set up a kingdom over which He will reign for a thousand years. The Millennium and our eternal home in heaven are both described at the end of the book of Revelation.
Revelation 21-22 describes our eternal home in heaven, but before we arrive there, we as believers will go through the events of Revelation 19-20. Revelation 19 describes an event known as the marriage supper of the Lamb, which will be a celebration of the union between Jesus and Christians, because Christians as a group are described in the New Testament as the bride of Christ.
After this, Revelation 19 says that Jesus will return to the Earth—with all of us in tow—to fight against an alliance of armies that will be gathered against the Jewish people at Jerusalem. This is the battle known as the Battle of Armageddon. Jesus will destroy this alliance of armies, and then according to Revelation 20, He will establish a kingdom on this earth that will last for a thousand years. Other prophetic passages tell us that this kingdom will usher in a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity in the world.
We are also told in other passages that we have the opportunity to serve as officials in Jesus’ government if we are faithful to Him in our lives today. However, we are also warned that we can lose the opportunity to reign with Christ if we are unfaithful to Him. In my opinion, this observation is the key to reconciling the security verses in Scripture and the loss verses in Scripture. I believe these verses are talking about two different aspects of future destiny. The security verses are talking about our eternal home in heaven, because that is a gift from God. He gives us that blessing as a gift when He forgives us, as we learned a few weeks ago. But the loss verses, on the other hand—at least the vast majority of them—are talking about the danger of losing the privilege of reigning with Christ during His earthly kingdom. This privilege is never described as a gift in the Bible—it is always described as a reward for faithfulness, a prize that we can win by living for Christ today.
Let me direct your attention to a small set of verses which summarize these two different aspects of our future destiny. Turn with me to 2 Timothy 2:11-13.
2. A summary of the Christian’s life and destiny
Follow with me as I read vv. 8-13 [READ vv. 8-13]. Many translators and interpreters have detected a poetic feel in vv. 11-13 which has led them to believe that these verses may have been part of a hymn that first-century Christians sang, or perhaps some kind of creed that they recited prior to baptism. Whatever they may have been, they give us a concise summary of the Christian’s life and destiny in just four statements.
A. The promise of life with Jesus
The first statement says, “If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” Notice that the words “have died” are in the past tense. They are referring to the spiritual unity that we have with Christ and His death when we accept Him as our Savior. As Colossians 3:3 taught us last week, “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
So our lives are now hidden in Christ, which gives us the assurance that we will live with Him in the future, as this verse says. And notice that the only condition for living with Jesus in the future is dying with Him, which happened to us spiritually when we accepted Christ. So if you have accepted Christ, you have the assurance that you will live with Him. However—notice that there is more to our destiny than just living with Christ!
B. The prize for living for Jesus
The second statement says, “If we endure, we will also reign with him.” In addition to living with Jesus in the future, we have held out to us here the opportunity of reigning with Him in His kingdom on earth. But notice that this privilege will be ours only if we endure, which refers to faithfully living for Jesus through the ups and downs of life. In our lives, we face many difficulties from temptations, the sins of others, and world events in general. Here we have the promise that if we will endure all of these things as faithful representatives of Jesus, then He will allow us to represent Him in His future kingdom as well.
But as you can see, this privilege is conditional, and it is based upon whether or not we are faithful to Christ. So what happens if we are unfaithful to Him? That’s the point of the third statement.
C. The penalty for denying Jesus
The third statement says, “If we deny him, he also will deny us.” At first glance, we might think that “denying Christ” refers to totally rejecting Him. But this word is used in the Gospels in the story of Peter’s denials of Christ, which were not a complete rejection, but unfaithfulness in the face of temptation.
I think that’s what we’re talking about here, especially since this statement is contrasted with the statement about enduring. So if we do not endure, if we don’t remain loyal to Christ in the face of temptation, then the last part of the statement says “he also will deny us.” Here, at first glance, we may ask if this is talking about the loss of our eternal home in heaven, but I think the first statement and the fourth statement prevent us from drawing that conclusion. I think this third statement is just the opposite of the second statement—if we are faithful to Christ, we will be allowed to reign with Christ; if we are not faithful to Him, He will deny us that privilege.
But if we are unfaithful to Him, how will He respond in light of His promises to us? That’s the subject of the fourth statement.
D. The promise of faithfulness from Jesus
The fourth and final statement says, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” The second and third statements have raised the possibility that we may not be faithful to Jesus in our lives in the face of temptation, so what then? Will He back out on His promises to us?
The fourth statement assures us that He never will. He cannot be unfaithful to the promises that He has made to us. We may lose the reward, but we will never lose the gift. The reward is the right to reign with Christ in His earthly kingdom; the gift is the life that we will enjoy with Jesus during His kingdom and on into eternity.
So how are we to deal with the loss verses in the Bible? By remembering that there are two aspects to our destiny—the place that you will spend eternity, and the role that you will play for Christ during His earthly kingdom. In my opinion, this is the only way to make sense of both the security verses and the loss verses. If we try to relate both the security verses and the loss verses to our home in heaven, we will have contradictions in our doctrine that can never be solved. In that case, its no surprise that Christians disagree about this subject, because we’re simply picking sides of a debate that has no solution to it! But if we remember that there are two aspects to our destiny, then as our AWANA theme verse puts it, we can rightly divide the word of truth and thus be a worker who does not need to be ashamed.
Now some people would say that this solution to the subject of eternal security does not do justice to the loss verses that I have mentioned. They would say that the loss being described is far too great to simply be the loss of a privileged role in Christ’s future kingdom. But consider this—when God put human beings on this planet, he put us here to reign! He told Adam and Eve to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Gen. 1:28). We were made to reign over this planet as God’s representatives. Jesus now holds out to us a second chance—an opportunity to share in the authority that He will one day have over this world. But if you and I are unfaithful to Him today, we could miss out on a chance to do the very thing that humanity was created to do. In my opinion, that is a bitter, bitter loss—one that should not be underestimated.
Our life with Jesus is secure, but our role for Jesus is being determined every day with every choice that we make. Don’t let the reward slip out of your grasp!
Now, as I’ve mentioned this disagreement, perhaps you’ve thought to yourself, “What’s led to all of this? Why do Christians disagree about whether or not we can lose our salvation?” Well, to put it simply, as we read through the Bible, we encounter verses that seem to give us every reason to believe that our salvation is secure, but we also encounter verses that give us strong warnings about the possibility of losing something through disobedience or unbelief. Let me show you what I mean through the words of a few of the authors of Scripture:
From Jesus
• John 6:37—“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
• John 10:27-28—“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.”
• John 15:6—“If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
• Matthew 10:33—“Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
From Paul
• Romans 8:38-39—“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor power, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• 1 Corinthians 9:26-27—“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
From Peter
• 1 Peter 1:4-5—“…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.”
• 2 Peter 3:17—“You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.”
You can probably see for yourself why there have been disagreements over the question of eternal security. Most of the time, people gravitate toward either the “security” verses or the “loss” verses. We tend to emphasize one set of these verses, and then we try to pretend like the other verses don’t exist because they make us uncomfortable!
Various attempts have been made over the years to reconcile the security verses and the loss verses. On the one hand, some of those who believe that we CAN lose our salvation have said that all of the security verses should be read with an unspoken condition in our minds. That is to say that God will never cast us out of His family unless we choose to leave; then, under that condition, He would choose to cast us out. I said last week, however, that I don’t think an unspoken condition does justice to the security verses because their wording is so emphatic.
On the other hand, some of those who believe we CANNOT lose our salvation have said that the loss verses are merely hypothetical. In other words, God is telling us how terrible it would be if He ever cast us out—even though He will never do it! I can’t agree with that solution, however, because I don’t think it does justice to the loss verses. I think the loss verses are meant to warn us about a real danger, and they would lose their power to motivate us if they were only hypothetical. If I tell my daughter someday that I will hypothetically ground her if she doesn’t listen to me, I don’t think that warning will be very motivating for her!
So how can we reconcile the security verses and the loss verses? It will not do to minimize or ignore one set of verses because they are both in the Bible. So how can we reconcile them? By remembering an easily-forgotten observation from Scripture.
1. There is more to our future destiny than heaven or hell!
So often, when we think about our future destiny, our thoughts turn immediately to heaven and hell. That’s understandable in a way, because we all want to be really, really sure that we don’t go to hell. Once we’re sure that we’re not going to go to hell, we kind of breathe a deep sigh of relief and then forget to ask whether there’s anything more to our destiny than escaping hell and going to heaven.
But when we study Scripture, we find that there is more to our destiny than simply escaping hell and going to heaven. In fact, as believers, there is a period of time that we will all go through before we settle into our eternal home in heaven, and that period of time is known as the Millennium. This is a period of time in which Jesus will return to the earth to set up a kingdom over which He will reign for a thousand years. The Millennium and our eternal home in heaven are both described at the end of the book of Revelation.
Revelation 21-22 describes our eternal home in heaven, but before we arrive there, we as believers will go through the events of Revelation 19-20. Revelation 19 describes an event known as the marriage supper of the Lamb, which will be a celebration of the union between Jesus and Christians, because Christians as a group are described in the New Testament as the bride of Christ.
After this, Revelation 19 says that Jesus will return to the Earth—with all of us in tow—to fight against an alliance of armies that will be gathered against the Jewish people at Jerusalem. This is the battle known as the Battle of Armageddon. Jesus will destroy this alliance of armies, and then according to Revelation 20, He will establish a kingdom on this earth that will last for a thousand years. Other prophetic passages tell us that this kingdom will usher in a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity in the world.
We are also told in other passages that we have the opportunity to serve as officials in Jesus’ government if we are faithful to Him in our lives today. However, we are also warned that we can lose the opportunity to reign with Christ if we are unfaithful to Him. In my opinion, this observation is the key to reconciling the security verses in Scripture and the loss verses in Scripture. I believe these verses are talking about two different aspects of future destiny. The security verses are talking about our eternal home in heaven, because that is a gift from God. He gives us that blessing as a gift when He forgives us, as we learned a few weeks ago. But the loss verses, on the other hand—at least the vast majority of them—are talking about the danger of losing the privilege of reigning with Christ during His earthly kingdom. This privilege is never described as a gift in the Bible—it is always described as a reward for faithfulness, a prize that we can win by living for Christ today.
Let me direct your attention to a small set of verses which summarize these two different aspects of our future destiny. Turn with me to 2 Timothy 2:11-13.
2. A summary of the Christian’s life and destiny
Follow with me as I read vv. 8-13 [READ vv. 8-13]. Many translators and interpreters have detected a poetic feel in vv. 11-13 which has led them to believe that these verses may have been part of a hymn that first-century Christians sang, or perhaps some kind of creed that they recited prior to baptism. Whatever they may have been, they give us a concise summary of the Christian’s life and destiny in just four statements.
A. The promise of life with Jesus
The first statement says, “If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” Notice that the words “have died” are in the past tense. They are referring to the spiritual unity that we have with Christ and His death when we accept Him as our Savior. As Colossians 3:3 taught us last week, “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
So our lives are now hidden in Christ, which gives us the assurance that we will live with Him in the future, as this verse says. And notice that the only condition for living with Jesus in the future is dying with Him, which happened to us spiritually when we accepted Christ. So if you have accepted Christ, you have the assurance that you will live with Him. However—notice that there is more to our destiny than just living with Christ!
B. The prize for living for Jesus
The second statement says, “If we endure, we will also reign with him.” In addition to living with Jesus in the future, we have held out to us here the opportunity of reigning with Him in His kingdom on earth. But notice that this privilege will be ours only if we endure, which refers to faithfully living for Jesus through the ups and downs of life. In our lives, we face many difficulties from temptations, the sins of others, and world events in general. Here we have the promise that if we will endure all of these things as faithful representatives of Jesus, then He will allow us to represent Him in His future kingdom as well.
But as you can see, this privilege is conditional, and it is based upon whether or not we are faithful to Christ. So what happens if we are unfaithful to Him? That’s the point of the third statement.
C. The penalty for denying Jesus
The third statement says, “If we deny him, he also will deny us.” At first glance, we might think that “denying Christ” refers to totally rejecting Him. But this word is used in the Gospels in the story of Peter’s denials of Christ, which were not a complete rejection, but unfaithfulness in the face of temptation.
I think that’s what we’re talking about here, especially since this statement is contrasted with the statement about enduring. So if we do not endure, if we don’t remain loyal to Christ in the face of temptation, then the last part of the statement says “he also will deny us.” Here, at first glance, we may ask if this is talking about the loss of our eternal home in heaven, but I think the first statement and the fourth statement prevent us from drawing that conclusion. I think this third statement is just the opposite of the second statement—if we are faithful to Christ, we will be allowed to reign with Christ; if we are not faithful to Him, He will deny us that privilege.
But if we are unfaithful to Him, how will He respond in light of His promises to us? That’s the subject of the fourth statement.
D. The promise of faithfulness from Jesus
The fourth and final statement says, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” The second and third statements have raised the possibility that we may not be faithful to Jesus in our lives in the face of temptation, so what then? Will He back out on His promises to us?
The fourth statement assures us that He never will. He cannot be unfaithful to the promises that He has made to us. We may lose the reward, but we will never lose the gift. The reward is the right to reign with Christ in His earthly kingdom; the gift is the life that we will enjoy with Jesus during His kingdom and on into eternity.
So how are we to deal with the loss verses in the Bible? By remembering that there are two aspects to our destiny—the place that you will spend eternity, and the role that you will play for Christ during His earthly kingdom. In my opinion, this is the only way to make sense of both the security verses and the loss verses. If we try to relate both the security verses and the loss verses to our home in heaven, we will have contradictions in our doctrine that can never be solved. In that case, its no surprise that Christians disagree about this subject, because we’re simply picking sides of a debate that has no solution to it! But if we remember that there are two aspects to our destiny, then as our AWANA theme verse puts it, we can rightly divide the word of truth and thus be a worker who does not need to be ashamed.
Now some people would say that this solution to the subject of eternal security does not do justice to the loss verses that I have mentioned. They would say that the loss being described is far too great to simply be the loss of a privileged role in Christ’s future kingdom. But consider this—when God put human beings on this planet, he put us here to reign! He told Adam and Eve to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Gen. 1:28). We were made to reign over this planet as God’s representatives. Jesus now holds out to us a second chance—an opportunity to share in the authority that He will one day have over this world. But if you and I are unfaithful to Him today, we could miss out on a chance to do the very thing that humanity was created to do. In my opinion, that is a bitter, bitter loss—one that should not be underestimated.
Our life with Jesus is secure, but our role for Jesus is being determined every day with every choice that we make. Don’t let the reward slip out of your grasp!
Monday, November 7, 2011
Just in Case--Eternal Security Series
In the world of engineering, there is a practice known as “redundancy” that is used to keep machines running and buildings standing. Engineers sometimes choose to duplicate certain parts of a system in order to keep the whole system running even if one of the duplicated parts fails.
You actually use redundancy all the time if you back-up the files on your computer. All of the work we do on our computers is normally saved on the hard drive, but just in case the hard drive crashes, we also save the files on a CD or a jump drive or with some kind of online service so that we have multiple copies of our files. I often e-mail things to myself so that I have a copy in my e-mail account as well. That’s the idea of redundancy at work!
Now, I mean no disrespect or irreverence by what I’m about to say, but from a certain perspective, it seems like God has built some redundancy into His work to secure our salvation. Last week, we looked at what God the Father does to secure our salvation, and we learned some impressive things. I think the Father’s work alone is enough to let us conclude that our salvation is secure, but as if that wasn’t enough, the Bible tells us that God the Son and God the Spirit also work to keep our salvation secure. Today we’ll look at these two persons of the Trinity to see how they work to secure our salvation.
1. How does God the Son secure our salvation?
A. He has promised eternal life to all who believe in Him
By His own words, Jesus has staked His reputation on whether or not believers will ultimately arrive in heaven. On numerous occasions in the Gospel of John, Jesus stated that those who believe in Him have escaped from judgment, will never perish, and will never be cast out. Let’s look at some of His promises:
• John 5:24—“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Notice that the words “has passed” are in the past tense; Jesus is saying that this action has already happened. The verb tense that is used in Greek describes action that has been completed yet which has ongoing results. The believer has passed from death to life, and is still in the realm of eternal life.
• John 6:37-40—“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” In the Greek text, Jesus uses one of the strongest possible ways of saying no to something when He says, “I will never cast out.” Now to v. 38—“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
• John 10:27-29—“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.”
• John 11:25-26—“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believe in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
So with these statements—and even a few others—Jesus has confidently proclaimed that whoever believes in Him will not perish, will not be lost, and will not be cast out. Now some of my brothers and sisters in the Lord who do believe that you can lose your salvation have said that these promises have an unspoken condition attached to them. In other words, these statements tell us that Jesus will never cast us out as long as we are faithful to Him.
But the problem that I have with unspoken conditions is that they are just that—unspoken. They are not found in these verses. Now I know my brothers and sisters are attempting to interpret these verses in light of other statements that Jesus made, and that is good. We ALL have to reckon with some other statement that Jesus made if we’re going to be true to the Bible, but I don’t believe that adding an unspoken condition to these promises is the proper approach. Because of the strength of the wording in these statements, I think we should take them as promises from Jesus that He will not fail to carry out.
B. He is serving as a priest and an advocate for us in heaven
Have you ever wondered what Jesus is up to these days? He returned to heaven 40 days after He rose from the dead, and He left with the promise that He will return someday. But what is doing in heaven right now? Well, the Bible says that He is serving as a priest for us. A priest is simply someone who represents other people before God, and according to the book of Hebrews in particular, Jesus is representing us in the presence of God today.
There is a significant statement in Hebrews about Jesus’ priestly activity that is relevant for our discussion of eternal security. Why don’t you turn with me to Heb. 7:23-25? Here the author is contrasting Jesus with the priests of the Old Testament, and he writes [READ vv. 23-25]. There is an interesting word picture with this adjective “to the uttermost” (or your translation may say “forever” or “completely”). This same Greek word was used in Luke 13 to describe a woman who couldn’t stand up straight because she was possessed by a demon. The text says that she couldn’t stand up completely; she was always hunched over. Well, that poor lady couldn’t stand up completely, but Jesus is able to save us completely—not just part of the way or even most of the way, but completely.
The Bible also says that Jesus is in heaven acting as an advocate or a defense attorney for us. 1 John 2:1 states, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The apostle Paul pictures Jesus in the courtroom setting that we looked at last week in Romans 8. Why don’t you turn there with me? Last week we focused on v. 33, now let’s continue to v. 34 [READ Rom. 8:33-34]. Paul pictures a courtroom scene in which God is our judge and Jesus is our defense attorney. That’s even better than having Matlock on your side!
And as we noted last week, who could possibly win a case against us in that courtroom? If we could lose our salvation, that would mean that Jesus either failed in His defense of us, or He chose not to defend us. But 1 John 2:1 seems to give us the assurance that Jesus will always take up our case! And remember, its not as though God the Father could be persuaded to rule against us anyway. He has already ruled in our favor. That’s why I mentioned the idea of redundancy when we started this morning. God the Father has ruled in our favor, and God the Son is defending us.
So we are doubly safe in the courtroom of God. But we even get a third layer of protection when we consider the work of the Holy Spirit.
2. How does God the Holy Spirit secure our salvation?
A. He acts as a seal to secure our salvation
The purpose of a seal is to keep something safe and secure. The idea is to keep whatever is inside the seal from getting out and whatever is outside the seal from getting in. For example, if you seal up a letter in an envelope, your intention is to keep the letter safely inside the envelope until it arrives at its destination. You are also intending to keep other people out of the envelope to protect the privacy of the letter.
Or, if you seal your windows, the intent is to keep wind and rain from coming in and to keep the hot or cold air in your house from getting out. Or, you may encounter a safety seal on food packaging at the grocery store. The idea of the safety seal is to keep the product in the package and to keep anyone from tampering with the product from the outside.
The idea of security is the same idea behind this ministry of the Holy Spirit. Let’s look together at Ephesians 1:13-14. Notice the word picture in v. 13 [READ v. 13]. The picture is that when we believed, we were placed into Christ, and then the Holy Spirit was placed upon us to seal us in, to keep us safe and secure. And then as we learned a few weeks ago, v. 14 says that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance. He is like a down payment that we’ve received from God until God gives us everything that He has promised—like a heavenly body and a home with Him.
Paul writes about all of this again in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, where he says, “It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”
Now as stated a moment ago, a seal is meant to keep things that are outside from getting in, and things that are inside from getting out. I believe the Holy Spirit functions the same way with respect to our salvation—He protects us to keep anyone else from tampering with our salvation, and He keeps us from ever losing it or rejecting it. Now I realize that if this conclusion is true, then, as Ricky Ricardo used to say, I’ve got some ‘splainin to do, because there are many verses in the Bible that speak of the possibility of a Christian losing something. We will start to talk next week about what to make of those verses, but please hear me out and consider with me one final work of the Holy Spirit.
B. He places believers into the body of Christ
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul compares our connection to Jesus and to each other to the connection that exists between different parts of the human body. The parts of our body have their differences—the hand is not the same as the eye or the foot, for instance—but they are all connected to form just one body. There is a unity to them that joins them all together.
Well, the Bible says that we have a spiritual unity with Christ that is very similar. Colossians 1:18 states that Jesus is the head of this spiritual body, and all of us are like the various parts of His body. So we enjoy a unity with Christ, one that is so close that Paul can say in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Our lives are now wrapped up in His life, and that includes our destiny as well. Turn with me to Colossians 3:1-4. Notice how these verses describe your connection to Christ [READ Col. 3:1-4].
Pastor F. B. Meyer once wrote about two German thrill-seekers who wanted to climb the Matterhorn. They hired three guides and began their ascent at the steepest and most slippery part. The men roped themselves together with the two amateurs between the guides, so they climbed in this order: guide, traveler, guide, traveler, guide. They had gone only a little way up the side when the last man lost his footing. He was held up temporarily by the other four, because each had a toehold in the niches they had cut in the ice. But then the next man slipped, and he pulled down the two above him. The only one to stand firm was the first guide, who had driven a spike deep into the ice. Because he held his ground, all the men beneath him regained their footing. F. B. Meyer concluded his story by drawing a spiritual application. He said, “I am like one of those men who slipped, but thank God, I am bound in a living partnership to Christ. And because He stands, I will never perish.”1
As Jesus said in John 14:19, “Because I live, you also will live.” My friends, does Jesus live today? Praise God that He does! And if you are certain of that, you can be just as certain of your salvation. The Holy Spirit has united us to Christ, so that “[our lives are hidden] with Christ in God.” Your life and destiny are bound up with Jesus, so you can be certain that “you also will appear with him in glory.”
Notes:
1. From http://bible.org/illustration/because-he-stands-i-will-never-perish. Accessed 10-26-11.
You actually use redundancy all the time if you back-up the files on your computer. All of the work we do on our computers is normally saved on the hard drive, but just in case the hard drive crashes, we also save the files on a CD or a jump drive or with some kind of online service so that we have multiple copies of our files. I often e-mail things to myself so that I have a copy in my e-mail account as well. That’s the idea of redundancy at work!
Now, I mean no disrespect or irreverence by what I’m about to say, but from a certain perspective, it seems like God has built some redundancy into His work to secure our salvation. Last week, we looked at what God the Father does to secure our salvation, and we learned some impressive things. I think the Father’s work alone is enough to let us conclude that our salvation is secure, but as if that wasn’t enough, the Bible tells us that God the Son and God the Spirit also work to keep our salvation secure. Today we’ll look at these two persons of the Trinity to see how they work to secure our salvation.
1. How does God the Son secure our salvation?
A. He has promised eternal life to all who believe in Him
By His own words, Jesus has staked His reputation on whether or not believers will ultimately arrive in heaven. On numerous occasions in the Gospel of John, Jesus stated that those who believe in Him have escaped from judgment, will never perish, and will never be cast out. Let’s look at some of His promises:
• John 5:24—“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Notice that the words “has passed” are in the past tense; Jesus is saying that this action has already happened. The verb tense that is used in Greek describes action that has been completed yet which has ongoing results. The believer has passed from death to life, and is still in the realm of eternal life.
• John 6:37-40—“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” In the Greek text, Jesus uses one of the strongest possible ways of saying no to something when He says, “I will never cast out.” Now to v. 38—“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
• John 10:27-29—“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.”
• John 11:25-26—“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believe in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
So with these statements—and even a few others—Jesus has confidently proclaimed that whoever believes in Him will not perish, will not be lost, and will not be cast out. Now some of my brothers and sisters in the Lord who do believe that you can lose your salvation have said that these promises have an unspoken condition attached to them. In other words, these statements tell us that Jesus will never cast us out as long as we are faithful to Him.
But the problem that I have with unspoken conditions is that they are just that—unspoken. They are not found in these verses. Now I know my brothers and sisters are attempting to interpret these verses in light of other statements that Jesus made, and that is good. We ALL have to reckon with some other statement that Jesus made if we’re going to be true to the Bible, but I don’t believe that adding an unspoken condition to these promises is the proper approach. Because of the strength of the wording in these statements, I think we should take them as promises from Jesus that He will not fail to carry out.
B. He is serving as a priest and an advocate for us in heaven
Have you ever wondered what Jesus is up to these days? He returned to heaven 40 days after He rose from the dead, and He left with the promise that He will return someday. But what is doing in heaven right now? Well, the Bible says that He is serving as a priest for us. A priest is simply someone who represents other people before God, and according to the book of Hebrews in particular, Jesus is representing us in the presence of God today.
There is a significant statement in Hebrews about Jesus’ priestly activity that is relevant for our discussion of eternal security. Why don’t you turn with me to Heb. 7:23-25? Here the author is contrasting Jesus with the priests of the Old Testament, and he writes [READ vv. 23-25]. There is an interesting word picture with this adjective “to the uttermost” (or your translation may say “forever” or “completely”). This same Greek word was used in Luke 13 to describe a woman who couldn’t stand up straight because she was possessed by a demon. The text says that she couldn’t stand up completely; she was always hunched over. Well, that poor lady couldn’t stand up completely, but Jesus is able to save us completely—not just part of the way or even most of the way, but completely.
The Bible also says that Jesus is in heaven acting as an advocate or a defense attorney for us. 1 John 2:1 states, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The apostle Paul pictures Jesus in the courtroom setting that we looked at last week in Romans 8. Why don’t you turn there with me? Last week we focused on v. 33, now let’s continue to v. 34 [READ Rom. 8:33-34]. Paul pictures a courtroom scene in which God is our judge and Jesus is our defense attorney. That’s even better than having Matlock on your side!
And as we noted last week, who could possibly win a case against us in that courtroom? If we could lose our salvation, that would mean that Jesus either failed in His defense of us, or He chose not to defend us. But 1 John 2:1 seems to give us the assurance that Jesus will always take up our case! And remember, its not as though God the Father could be persuaded to rule against us anyway. He has already ruled in our favor. That’s why I mentioned the idea of redundancy when we started this morning. God the Father has ruled in our favor, and God the Son is defending us.
So we are doubly safe in the courtroom of God. But we even get a third layer of protection when we consider the work of the Holy Spirit.
2. How does God the Holy Spirit secure our salvation?
A. He acts as a seal to secure our salvation
The purpose of a seal is to keep something safe and secure. The idea is to keep whatever is inside the seal from getting out and whatever is outside the seal from getting in. For example, if you seal up a letter in an envelope, your intention is to keep the letter safely inside the envelope until it arrives at its destination. You are also intending to keep other people out of the envelope to protect the privacy of the letter.
Or, if you seal your windows, the intent is to keep wind and rain from coming in and to keep the hot or cold air in your house from getting out. Or, you may encounter a safety seal on food packaging at the grocery store. The idea of the safety seal is to keep the product in the package and to keep anyone from tampering with the product from the outside.
The idea of security is the same idea behind this ministry of the Holy Spirit. Let’s look together at Ephesians 1:13-14. Notice the word picture in v. 13 [READ v. 13]. The picture is that when we believed, we were placed into Christ, and then the Holy Spirit was placed upon us to seal us in, to keep us safe and secure. And then as we learned a few weeks ago, v. 14 says that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance. He is like a down payment that we’ve received from God until God gives us everything that He has promised—like a heavenly body and a home with Him.
Paul writes about all of this again in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, where he says, “It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”
Now as stated a moment ago, a seal is meant to keep things that are outside from getting in, and things that are inside from getting out. I believe the Holy Spirit functions the same way with respect to our salvation—He protects us to keep anyone else from tampering with our salvation, and He keeps us from ever losing it or rejecting it. Now I realize that if this conclusion is true, then, as Ricky Ricardo used to say, I’ve got some ‘splainin to do, because there are many verses in the Bible that speak of the possibility of a Christian losing something. We will start to talk next week about what to make of those verses, but please hear me out and consider with me one final work of the Holy Spirit.
B. He places believers into the body of Christ
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul compares our connection to Jesus and to each other to the connection that exists between different parts of the human body. The parts of our body have their differences—the hand is not the same as the eye or the foot, for instance—but they are all connected to form just one body. There is a unity to them that joins them all together.
Well, the Bible says that we have a spiritual unity with Christ that is very similar. Colossians 1:18 states that Jesus is the head of this spiritual body, and all of us are like the various parts of His body. So we enjoy a unity with Christ, one that is so close that Paul can say in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Our lives are now wrapped up in His life, and that includes our destiny as well. Turn with me to Colossians 3:1-4. Notice how these verses describe your connection to Christ [READ Col. 3:1-4].
Pastor F. B. Meyer once wrote about two German thrill-seekers who wanted to climb the Matterhorn. They hired three guides and began their ascent at the steepest and most slippery part. The men roped themselves together with the two amateurs between the guides, so they climbed in this order: guide, traveler, guide, traveler, guide. They had gone only a little way up the side when the last man lost his footing. He was held up temporarily by the other four, because each had a toehold in the niches they had cut in the ice. But then the next man slipped, and he pulled down the two above him. The only one to stand firm was the first guide, who had driven a spike deep into the ice. Because he held his ground, all the men beneath him regained their footing. F. B. Meyer concluded his story by drawing a spiritual application. He said, “I am like one of those men who slipped, but thank God, I am bound in a living partnership to Christ. And because He stands, I will never perish.”1
As Jesus said in John 14:19, “Because I live, you also will live.” My friends, does Jesus live today? Praise God that He does! And if you are certain of that, you can be just as certain of your salvation. The Holy Spirit has united us to Christ, so that “[our lives are hidden] with Christ in God.” Your life and destiny are bound up with Jesus, so you can be certain that “you also will appear with him in glory.”
Notes:
1. From http://bible.org/illustration/because-he-stands-i-will-never-perish. Accessed 10-26-11.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Safe in the Father's Arms--Eternal Security series
Most children feel a natural sense of security when their father is around. They feel safe from whatever threats and dangers might come their way. There is something about masculinity that communicates strength, and children pick up on that and take comfort in it.
Dad’s strength can also give a child a certain measure of boldness and confidence in what their Father can do. You’ll probably never hear two children fight about whether “my mom can beat up your mom,” but you just might overhear them fighting about who’s dad is the strongest.
Now, in the same way that we look to our earthly fathers for a sense of security, we can also look to our heavenly Father for a sense of security in our salvation. We’ve learned over the last few weeks that salvation is a gift from God—He has done the work to provide it, and He gives it to us as a gift when we repent of our sins and accept Jesus as our Savior by faith. And since salvation is a work of God, He also does the work to keep our salvation secure.
Over the next two weeks, we’re going to look at each person of the Trinity and focus on that person’s work to secure our salvation. This morning we will consider the work of God the Father, and we’ll answer the question:
How does God the Father secure our salvation?
I. He has chosen us and given us a certain destiny
This point refers to a doctrine known as the doctrine of election, which attempts to explain verses which state that God has chosen believers to be His own people and has marked out a clear destiny for them. This doctrine has been fiercely debated among Christians over the years, but its important to realize that no one really disputes the fact that God has chosen believers—they disagree over how God made His choice. Did He look down through the corridors of time and choose those whom He knew would choose Him, or did He make the choice of His own will and then lead those chosen people to faith?
The question of how God made the choice is open to debate, but we should recognize that the Bible plainly tells us that believers have been chosen by God. Take a look at just a few of the verses that state this doctrine:
• Eph. 1:3-4—“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…”
• 1 Thess. 1:4-5—“For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction.
• 2 Thess. 2:13—“But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.”
• 1 Peter 1:1-2—“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappodocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…”
These are just a few of the verses that mention this doctrine of election, and I mention this doctrine today because of the implications of it that are stated in Romans 8:28-30. Turn there with me if you would and let’s look at these verses [READ Rom. 8:28-30].
This is an incredible set of verses that gives us a summary of a plan that stretches from eternity past to eternity future. So when God chose believers, He chose us with a definite plan and destiny in mind for them. Notice two things about these verses that apply to all that we’ve been discussing about eternal security. First, in each stage of salvation that is mentioned in vv. 29-30, the same group of people are mentioned as going through each stage [READ vv. 29-30]. Many people have called these verses “the golden chain of salvation,” because all of these stages are linked together in God’s plan. Thus, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you have been chosen by God, and if you have been chosen then your destiny with respect to heaven and hell has been settled! If you are on this “golden chain of salvation,” you will be on it all the way through to the end.
Second, notice that each stage of salvation mentioned here is mentioned in the past tense—even our eventual glorification, which hasn’t happened yet on the timeline of history. Nevertheless, even that future event is mentioned here in the past tense, which would suggest that our glorification—our entrance into heaven—is a settled fact, even though it hasn’t happened yet.
So God is working out a plan that will see our salvation through from beginning to end. This plan involves our justification, which is the second work of God for us to consider today.
II. He has declared that His legal case against us is closed
This is the meaning of the fancy-sounding theological term “justification.” It means that God—as our Judge—declares that all of His demands against our sin have been met. Sometimes in our world, when a person finishes a prison sentence or pays a fine, we say that their debt to society has been paid. What we mean is that in the eyes of the justice system, that person has no more legal requirements against them. Their completed punishment or payment has satisfied the law of the land, and that case is closed.
That’s exactly what God declares when He declares that we are justified! Everything that His law requires as a penalty against our sins has been met—not by us, but by Jesus through His sacrificial death on the cross. We receive the benefit of His sacrificial death when we accept Him as our Savior, and when we do, God renders the verdict that we are justified because all of His demands have been met!
I believe we can rest assured that God will never reverse this verdict that He makes when we are saved, and I think Romans 8:33 communicates this. Paul puts our minds into a courtroom setting here and he writes [READ Rom. 8:33]. In this courtroom setting, Paul is asking who could possibly serve as a prosecutor against us. Who could step into God’s courtroom and press charges against us and win the case if God is the judge and He has already said we’re justified? Such a prosecutor would have to prove to God that He had been wrong in His original verdict, and I think we can safely say that is impossible.
III. He has willed to keep us secure through His sovereign will and power
In the Gospel of John, we find some amazing statements about God’s sovereign will in salvation and what He intended to accomplish by sending Jesus Christ into the world. One statement that is particularly relevant for the discussion of eternal security is John 6:38-40 [READ John 6:38-40].
In v. 39, the picture is that God the Father has taken believers and given them to Jesus for safe-keeping. This same picture is mentioned in John 10:27-29 [READ John 10:27-29].
In my opinion, these verses are a strong affirmation that we will never lose our salvation, but I should mention some of my Christian brothers and sisters who do believe that we can lose our salvation have said that these verses only tell us that no one else can rob us of our salvation, but the possibility still exists that we could reject our salvation and thus lose it. I cannot agree with that conclusion for two reasons: first, Jesus makes a strong statement in v. 28 when He says, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” In the Greek text that lies behind our English Bibles, Jesus uses of the strongest possible ways of saying “no” to something. The Christian Standard Bible puts it this way: “I give them eternal life—and they will never perish, ever!” Now I think we can all agree that Jesus can speak only the truth; however, if someone eternally perished after receiving eternal life from Jesus, this statement could not be true. But I think we have to conclude that it is true because it was spoken by Jesus.
Second, I cannot agree with the conclusion that we can lose our salvation because we have to remember the limitations of our own will. We cannot always undo the effects of our previous choices simply by choosing to do so. Sometimes our choices set a course of events in motion that we cannot undo simply through our own will. Missed opportunities are a perfect example of this. Think of a high school student who is offered a scholarship by a college, but for some reason, the student chooses not to accept the scholarship. Most colleges then move on and offer the scholarship to someone else, so if the student later changes his or her mind, that opportunity may be gone. The effects of the original choice remain even though the student now desires something different.
Now, you may be thinking, “Okay, I get that example—but salvation is a gift, right? Can’t I reject a gift?” Well, on the human level, we can. If you give me a gift, I can later choose to give it back to you or just get rid of it altogether. But when we consider our salvation, we have to remember one of the lessons we learned last week—God’s gift of salvation involves promises on His part. These are promises that He intends to keep regardless of our faithfulness to Him. As 2 Timothy 2:13 says, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.”
Ultimately, I think we must simply take Jesus at His Word—all who receive eternal life from Him will never perish. That is also because of the final work of God the Father that we need to look at this morning.
IV. He has poured out His enduring love upon us
I take the wording for this point from Romans 5:5, which says that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Paul then goes on in that chapter to describe the depths of God’s love for us. Why don’t you turn with me to Romans 5? [READ vv. 6-10]
These verses highlight the change that has taken place in our relationship with God, and they use an argument from the lesser to the greater to point out how confident that we can be that we will be saved from God’s wrath. As these verses state, we used to be God’s enemies, and even in that condition He loved us enough to die for us. But now, we are no longer His enemies—we are reconciled to Him, which means that we’re back on friendly terms. So if He loved us enough to die for us while we were His enemies, how much more can we count on Him to save us from His wrath now that we are His friends? If that’s what God’s love compels Him to do for His enemies, then surely His friends are in a much better position to always be safe from His wrath.
But is there anything that can separate us from the love of God? Paul answers this question just a few chapters over in Romans 8:35-39 [READ Rom. 8:35-39].
What can I add to that but to say, “Praise God for His amazing love!”
Dad’s strength can also give a child a certain measure of boldness and confidence in what their Father can do. You’ll probably never hear two children fight about whether “my mom can beat up your mom,” but you just might overhear them fighting about who’s dad is the strongest.
Now, in the same way that we look to our earthly fathers for a sense of security, we can also look to our heavenly Father for a sense of security in our salvation. We’ve learned over the last few weeks that salvation is a gift from God—He has done the work to provide it, and He gives it to us as a gift when we repent of our sins and accept Jesus as our Savior by faith. And since salvation is a work of God, He also does the work to keep our salvation secure.
Over the next two weeks, we’re going to look at each person of the Trinity and focus on that person’s work to secure our salvation. This morning we will consider the work of God the Father, and we’ll answer the question:
How does God the Father secure our salvation?
I. He has chosen us and given us a certain destiny
This point refers to a doctrine known as the doctrine of election, which attempts to explain verses which state that God has chosen believers to be His own people and has marked out a clear destiny for them. This doctrine has been fiercely debated among Christians over the years, but its important to realize that no one really disputes the fact that God has chosen believers—they disagree over how God made His choice. Did He look down through the corridors of time and choose those whom He knew would choose Him, or did He make the choice of His own will and then lead those chosen people to faith?
The question of how God made the choice is open to debate, but we should recognize that the Bible plainly tells us that believers have been chosen by God. Take a look at just a few of the verses that state this doctrine:
• Eph. 1:3-4—“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…”
• 1 Thess. 1:4-5—“For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction.
• 2 Thess. 2:13—“But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.”
• 1 Peter 1:1-2—“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappodocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…”
These are just a few of the verses that mention this doctrine of election, and I mention this doctrine today because of the implications of it that are stated in Romans 8:28-30. Turn there with me if you would and let’s look at these verses [READ Rom. 8:28-30].
This is an incredible set of verses that gives us a summary of a plan that stretches from eternity past to eternity future. So when God chose believers, He chose us with a definite plan and destiny in mind for them. Notice two things about these verses that apply to all that we’ve been discussing about eternal security. First, in each stage of salvation that is mentioned in vv. 29-30, the same group of people are mentioned as going through each stage [READ vv. 29-30]. Many people have called these verses “the golden chain of salvation,” because all of these stages are linked together in God’s plan. Thus, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you have been chosen by God, and if you have been chosen then your destiny with respect to heaven and hell has been settled! If you are on this “golden chain of salvation,” you will be on it all the way through to the end.
Second, notice that each stage of salvation mentioned here is mentioned in the past tense—even our eventual glorification, which hasn’t happened yet on the timeline of history. Nevertheless, even that future event is mentioned here in the past tense, which would suggest that our glorification—our entrance into heaven—is a settled fact, even though it hasn’t happened yet.
So God is working out a plan that will see our salvation through from beginning to end. This plan involves our justification, which is the second work of God for us to consider today.
II. He has declared that His legal case against us is closed
This is the meaning of the fancy-sounding theological term “justification.” It means that God—as our Judge—declares that all of His demands against our sin have been met. Sometimes in our world, when a person finishes a prison sentence or pays a fine, we say that their debt to society has been paid. What we mean is that in the eyes of the justice system, that person has no more legal requirements against them. Their completed punishment or payment has satisfied the law of the land, and that case is closed.
That’s exactly what God declares when He declares that we are justified! Everything that His law requires as a penalty against our sins has been met—not by us, but by Jesus through His sacrificial death on the cross. We receive the benefit of His sacrificial death when we accept Him as our Savior, and when we do, God renders the verdict that we are justified because all of His demands have been met!
I believe we can rest assured that God will never reverse this verdict that He makes when we are saved, and I think Romans 8:33 communicates this. Paul puts our minds into a courtroom setting here and he writes [READ Rom. 8:33]. In this courtroom setting, Paul is asking who could possibly serve as a prosecutor against us. Who could step into God’s courtroom and press charges against us and win the case if God is the judge and He has already said we’re justified? Such a prosecutor would have to prove to God that He had been wrong in His original verdict, and I think we can safely say that is impossible.
III. He has willed to keep us secure through His sovereign will and power
In the Gospel of John, we find some amazing statements about God’s sovereign will in salvation and what He intended to accomplish by sending Jesus Christ into the world. One statement that is particularly relevant for the discussion of eternal security is John 6:38-40 [READ John 6:38-40].
In v. 39, the picture is that God the Father has taken believers and given them to Jesus for safe-keeping. This same picture is mentioned in John 10:27-29 [READ John 10:27-29].
In my opinion, these verses are a strong affirmation that we will never lose our salvation, but I should mention some of my Christian brothers and sisters who do believe that we can lose our salvation have said that these verses only tell us that no one else can rob us of our salvation, but the possibility still exists that we could reject our salvation and thus lose it. I cannot agree with that conclusion for two reasons: first, Jesus makes a strong statement in v. 28 when He says, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” In the Greek text that lies behind our English Bibles, Jesus uses of the strongest possible ways of saying “no” to something. The Christian Standard Bible puts it this way: “I give them eternal life—and they will never perish, ever!” Now I think we can all agree that Jesus can speak only the truth; however, if someone eternally perished after receiving eternal life from Jesus, this statement could not be true. But I think we have to conclude that it is true because it was spoken by Jesus.
Second, I cannot agree with the conclusion that we can lose our salvation because we have to remember the limitations of our own will. We cannot always undo the effects of our previous choices simply by choosing to do so. Sometimes our choices set a course of events in motion that we cannot undo simply through our own will. Missed opportunities are a perfect example of this. Think of a high school student who is offered a scholarship by a college, but for some reason, the student chooses not to accept the scholarship. Most colleges then move on and offer the scholarship to someone else, so if the student later changes his or her mind, that opportunity may be gone. The effects of the original choice remain even though the student now desires something different.
Now, you may be thinking, “Okay, I get that example—but salvation is a gift, right? Can’t I reject a gift?” Well, on the human level, we can. If you give me a gift, I can later choose to give it back to you or just get rid of it altogether. But when we consider our salvation, we have to remember one of the lessons we learned last week—God’s gift of salvation involves promises on His part. These are promises that He intends to keep regardless of our faithfulness to Him. As 2 Timothy 2:13 says, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.”
Ultimately, I think we must simply take Jesus at His Word—all who receive eternal life from Him will never perish. That is also because of the final work of God the Father that we need to look at this morning.
IV. He has poured out His enduring love upon us
I take the wording for this point from Romans 5:5, which says that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Paul then goes on in that chapter to describe the depths of God’s love for us. Why don’t you turn with me to Romans 5? [READ vv. 6-10]
These verses highlight the change that has taken place in our relationship with God, and they use an argument from the lesser to the greater to point out how confident that we can be that we will be saved from God’s wrath. As these verses state, we used to be God’s enemies, and even in that condition He loved us enough to die for us. But now, we are no longer His enemies—we are reconciled to Him, which means that we’re back on friendly terms. So if He loved us enough to die for us while we were His enemies, how much more can we count on Him to save us from His wrath now that we are His friends? If that’s what God’s love compels Him to do for His enemies, then surely His friends are in a much better position to always be safe from His wrath.
But is there anything that can separate us from the love of God? Paul answers this question just a few chapters over in Romans 8:35-39 [READ Rom. 8:35-39].
What can I add to that but to say, “Praise God for His amazing love!”
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Gift That Keeps on Giving--Eternal Security series
Imagine yourself as a young child waking up on Christmas morning. As you sit up in your bed you’re hit with the smell of cinnamon rolls baking in the oven. Of course, there’s no time to eat right now because there are presents to open, so you run out of your bedroom and into the living room to be greeted by a scene that you had only dreamed about the night before. You see a stocking hanging over the fireplace with your name on it, and you can see that it’s big and full of presents. You look under the tree and see big boxes with your name on them. And then, you see your parents coming into the room with big smiles on their faces. You start to run toward them to give them a big hug, and as you do you notice that they are holding something out toward you. They ask you to take a look at it, and what is it—but a contract! You’re kind of surprised by all of this, but then you start to read it and it says this:
“The holder of this contract (hereafter referred to as “The Child”) may open and enjoy all of his/her presents at once, but will lose the aforementioned presents if any of the following agreements are broken:
1. The Child agrees to never again walk past a pile of his/her toys and say, “I’m bored.”
2. The Child agrees to never again roll his/her eyes when hearing that money doesn’t grow on trees.
3. The Child agrees to do everything in his/her power to become worthy of receiving the aforementioned presents.
Now I don’t know about you, but those presents don’t sound much like gifts to me! They sound more like rewards or bribes. I don’t think we would be too happy if our parents thought that was the way to give gifts, because we know a thing or two about what gifts are like. Gifts are supposed to be free to the one who receives them. They’re not supposed to have all kinds of strings attached to them.
Fortunately, that’s not the way that God offers the gift of salvation. He offers it as a real, true gift—with no cost to us, and with no strings attached. But as we continue our study of the doctrine of eternal security, another implication that we need to understand about the gift of salvation is that the fact that it is a gift means that God will never take it away from us. What we are going to see from Scripture today is that…
Salvation is a gift given by God that He will never take away.
I’d like to unpack that thought today by looking at some observations about God’s gift of salvation that should instruct us, comfort us, and inspire us to live for him and him alone.
1. The gift of salvation is given by God
This observation implies two things:
A. Salvation is free to us
Part of the nature of a gift is that it is free to the one who receives it. If the recipient has to pay something for it or do something to earn it, it is no longer a gift. Now accordingly, the Bible states that the gift of salvation is free to us. Rev 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” And in the Old Testament, Isaiah uses water and food to picture the free gift of God’s mercy: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Is 55:1).
So if the gift of salvation is free to us, this implies that…
B. Salvation was paid for by God
We get a clear statement of this fact in Rom 3:24—“[we are] justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The word for “redemption” in that verse is used in classical Greek to refer to the ransom payment that is made to free a person from slavery. When Jesus died on the cross, he was making that payment to free us from the debt of our sins, and when he said, “It is finished” we can hear him saying, “Paid in full,” because the complete payment for sin was made.
Salvation was paid for by God, or to be more specific, it was paid for when Jesus died on the cross in our place. When you receive Jesus as your Savior, that payment is applied to you, so that, as Colossians 2:14 says, your debt of sin has been canceled. God declares that the payment Christ made for you was enough, and thus all of His demands against you have been met. But think about this—if you could lose your salvation for committing a sin of any kind, then God would be declaring that Jesus’ payment was not enough to cover that sin. We could look at it in two ways—either God would be demanding double payment for that sin (my own payment on top of Christ’s payment), or He would be saying that Christ’s payment was not enough. Either way, we run into problems—if He demanded double payment for the sin, He would be unfair, and if He declared that Christ’s payment was not enough, He would be declaring that His previous verdict was wrong.
Thus, I think it is very important for us to remember that God has paid the full price of the gift of salvation that He offers to us, and when we receive that gift, God declares that the price for our sins has been paid in full, and we can trust that He won’t change that verdict or demand double payment for any of our sins.
So we know that the Bible describes salvation as a gift, and this gift is of course given by God—He has paid for it, and He gives it to us. But there is another observation to be made about the gift of salvation, and it is really the crux of our discussion today.
2. God will not take his gift of salvation away from those who have received it
This is of course the main point under dispute, but I believe the Bible gives us two reasons for saying this.
A. God’s gift of salvation involves a promise
We can learn a lot by comparing God’s gift of salvation to gifts that we might give to each other, but here the comparison kind of breaks down. When we give gifts to one another, we don’t normally make promises to each other, or make any guarantees about future for our relationship. We may give a gift to a co-worker, and then if we change jobs later, we may never talk to them again. We may have family visit us around Christmas, and we’re happy to give them a gift on Christmas day, but when they’ve overstayed their welcome on Jan 5th, we’re ready to send them home and say, “See you next year.” Or worse yet, we might give a gift to a friend, and then a week later they’ll stab us in the back and we’ll never speak to them again. But God’s gift of salvation involves a promise on his part—basically it is a promise to finish what he has started.
Look with me at Eph 1:13–14 [READ Eph 1:13-14]. I like the way the New English Translation puts verse 14. It says that the Holy Spirit is “the down payment of our inheritance,” and that’s the word picture that Paul is using here. Many of you live in your own home right now, and most of you have a mortgage on that home. Hardly anyone is rich enough to pay for a house outright, so we take out a home loan and a sign a contract to purchase a home. Now one of the things that’s required of us when we enter that agreement is to make a down payment, which is a sum of money that you pay toward the total price of the home. That down payment shows your intention to complete the purchase that you just made.
When God gives us his Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit is God’s down payment to guarantee to us that he will complete the purchase that he has made. He is the promise from God that we have been forgiven and that one day he is going to free us completely from the sin that is in our lives. Now I know our housing market is a little shaky right now, but when God makes a down payment, He won’t need a bail out and He won’t be foreclosed on! He will finish what he has started because…
B. God’s promises are guaranteed by His character
Why don’t you turn with me to Malachi 3? Some of you might be familiar with what God has to say in the first part of Malachi 3:6, but almost no one is familiar with the context of that verse. In the first part of that verse the Lord says, “For I the Lord, do not change,” and we usually stop there and say, “Wow isn’t that great!” And we might expect the last part of the verse to say, “therefore you can always count on me” or “therefore I’ve always got your back.”
But instead the Lord says, “therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Whoa! What a minute! What is God talking about? Well, back in v. 5 he was describing all of the sins that they had committed against him. They had engaged in sorcery and adultery and perjury and had oppressed needy people, so why didn’t God consume them? Why didn’t he just wipe them out? Because he had promised to their ancestors that he would never wipe them out, but that he would make them a great nation and would draw them back to himself. Notice just a few of the promises that God had made to the people of Israel:
• Isaiah 54:10—“‘For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.”
• Jeremiah 31:37—“Thus says the Lord: ‘If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done,’ declares the Lord.”
• Jeremiah 33:20–21—“Thus says the Lord: ‘If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers.’”
God has kept and will keep these promises to Israel because they are guaranteed by His character, which, as he himself says here, never changes. God keeps His promises, so we can rest assured in the promise that He has made to us that we have an inheritance in heaven. God has given us that promise, and He has given us His Holy Spirit as a guarantee of His promise.
Salvation is a gift given by God that he will never take away. God is the one who has paid for it, and he graciously gives it to those who place their faith in Jesus Christ. God’s gift also involves certain promises on his part that he guarantees with his own character.
So with these observations in mind, we can be confident that God will never take his gift of salvation away from us! Certainly he will deal with our sin, as any loving Father would, but what we can know for sure is that He will never cast us out of his family.
Just think about the freedom and the peace that this assurance gives us. Some of us probably grew up in situations where our dad wasn’t around, or if he did come around, it was only a matter of time before he walked out on us again. Or some of us may have grown up in situations where we felt like we had to prove that we were worthy of our father’s love, and we felt like nothing we did was ever good enough.
But if you have received God’s free gift of salvation, you are forgiven of your sins and you are accepted. You don’t have to prove that you’re worthy of his gift in order to keep God in your life. You don’t have to feel like you’re one mistake away from God walking out on you. You are secure, and you are free to serve God in love to show him your gratitude for his gift of salvation.
“The holder of this contract (hereafter referred to as “The Child”) may open and enjoy all of his/her presents at once, but will lose the aforementioned presents if any of the following agreements are broken:
1. The Child agrees to never again walk past a pile of his/her toys and say, “I’m bored.”
2. The Child agrees to never again roll his/her eyes when hearing that money doesn’t grow on trees.
3. The Child agrees to do everything in his/her power to become worthy of receiving the aforementioned presents.
Now I don’t know about you, but those presents don’t sound much like gifts to me! They sound more like rewards or bribes. I don’t think we would be too happy if our parents thought that was the way to give gifts, because we know a thing or two about what gifts are like. Gifts are supposed to be free to the one who receives them. They’re not supposed to have all kinds of strings attached to them.
Fortunately, that’s not the way that God offers the gift of salvation. He offers it as a real, true gift—with no cost to us, and with no strings attached. But as we continue our study of the doctrine of eternal security, another implication that we need to understand about the gift of salvation is that the fact that it is a gift means that God will never take it away from us. What we are going to see from Scripture today is that…
Salvation is a gift given by God that He will never take away.
I’d like to unpack that thought today by looking at some observations about God’s gift of salvation that should instruct us, comfort us, and inspire us to live for him and him alone.
1. The gift of salvation is given by God
This observation implies two things:
A. Salvation is free to us
Part of the nature of a gift is that it is free to the one who receives it. If the recipient has to pay something for it or do something to earn it, it is no longer a gift. Now accordingly, the Bible states that the gift of salvation is free to us. Rev 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” And in the Old Testament, Isaiah uses water and food to picture the free gift of God’s mercy: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Is 55:1).
So if the gift of salvation is free to us, this implies that…
B. Salvation was paid for by God
We get a clear statement of this fact in Rom 3:24—“[we are] justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The word for “redemption” in that verse is used in classical Greek to refer to the ransom payment that is made to free a person from slavery. When Jesus died on the cross, he was making that payment to free us from the debt of our sins, and when he said, “It is finished” we can hear him saying, “Paid in full,” because the complete payment for sin was made.
Salvation was paid for by God, or to be more specific, it was paid for when Jesus died on the cross in our place. When you receive Jesus as your Savior, that payment is applied to you, so that, as Colossians 2:14 says, your debt of sin has been canceled. God declares that the payment Christ made for you was enough, and thus all of His demands against you have been met. But think about this—if you could lose your salvation for committing a sin of any kind, then God would be declaring that Jesus’ payment was not enough to cover that sin. We could look at it in two ways—either God would be demanding double payment for that sin (my own payment on top of Christ’s payment), or He would be saying that Christ’s payment was not enough. Either way, we run into problems—if He demanded double payment for the sin, He would be unfair, and if He declared that Christ’s payment was not enough, He would be declaring that His previous verdict was wrong.
Thus, I think it is very important for us to remember that God has paid the full price of the gift of salvation that He offers to us, and when we receive that gift, God declares that the price for our sins has been paid in full, and we can trust that He won’t change that verdict or demand double payment for any of our sins.
So we know that the Bible describes salvation as a gift, and this gift is of course given by God—He has paid for it, and He gives it to us. But there is another observation to be made about the gift of salvation, and it is really the crux of our discussion today.
2. God will not take his gift of salvation away from those who have received it
This is of course the main point under dispute, but I believe the Bible gives us two reasons for saying this.
A. God’s gift of salvation involves a promise
We can learn a lot by comparing God’s gift of salvation to gifts that we might give to each other, but here the comparison kind of breaks down. When we give gifts to one another, we don’t normally make promises to each other, or make any guarantees about future for our relationship. We may give a gift to a co-worker, and then if we change jobs later, we may never talk to them again. We may have family visit us around Christmas, and we’re happy to give them a gift on Christmas day, but when they’ve overstayed their welcome on Jan 5th, we’re ready to send them home and say, “See you next year.” Or worse yet, we might give a gift to a friend, and then a week later they’ll stab us in the back and we’ll never speak to them again. But God’s gift of salvation involves a promise on his part—basically it is a promise to finish what he has started.
Look with me at Eph 1:13–14 [READ Eph 1:13-14]. I like the way the New English Translation puts verse 14. It says that the Holy Spirit is “the down payment of our inheritance,” and that’s the word picture that Paul is using here. Many of you live in your own home right now, and most of you have a mortgage on that home. Hardly anyone is rich enough to pay for a house outright, so we take out a home loan and a sign a contract to purchase a home. Now one of the things that’s required of us when we enter that agreement is to make a down payment, which is a sum of money that you pay toward the total price of the home. That down payment shows your intention to complete the purchase that you just made.
When God gives us his Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit is God’s down payment to guarantee to us that he will complete the purchase that he has made. He is the promise from God that we have been forgiven and that one day he is going to free us completely from the sin that is in our lives. Now I know our housing market is a little shaky right now, but when God makes a down payment, He won’t need a bail out and He won’t be foreclosed on! He will finish what he has started because…
B. God’s promises are guaranteed by His character
Why don’t you turn with me to Malachi 3? Some of you might be familiar with what God has to say in the first part of Malachi 3:6, but almost no one is familiar with the context of that verse. In the first part of that verse the Lord says, “For I the Lord, do not change,” and we usually stop there and say, “Wow isn’t that great!” And we might expect the last part of the verse to say, “therefore you can always count on me” or “therefore I’ve always got your back.”
But instead the Lord says, “therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Whoa! What a minute! What is God talking about? Well, back in v. 5 he was describing all of the sins that they had committed against him. They had engaged in sorcery and adultery and perjury and had oppressed needy people, so why didn’t God consume them? Why didn’t he just wipe them out? Because he had promised to their ancestors that he would never wipe them out, but that he would make them a great nation and would draw them back to himself. Notice just a few of the promises that God had made to the people of Israel:
• Isaiah 54:10—“‘For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.”
• Jeremiah 31:37—“Thus says the Lord: ‘If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done,’ declares the Lord.”
• Jeremiah 33:20–21—“Thus says the Lord: ‘If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers.’”
God has kept and will keep these promises to Israel because they are guaranteed by His character, which, as he himself says here, never changes. God keeps His promises, so we can rest assured in the promise that He has made to us that we have an inheritance in heaven. God has given us that promise, and He has given us His Holy Spirit as a guarantee of His promise.
Salvation is a gift given by God that he will never take away. God is the one who has paid for it, and he graciously gives it to those who place their faith in Jesus Christ. God’s gift also involves certain promises on his part that he guarantees with his own character.
So with these observations in mind, we can be confident that God will never take his gift of salvation away from us! Certainly he will deal with our sin, as any loving Father would, but what we can know for sure is that He will never cast us out of his family.
Just think about the freedom and the peace that this assurance gives us. Some of us probably grew up in situations where our dad wasn’t around, or if he did come around, it was only a matter of time before he walked out on us again. Or some of us may have grown up in situations where we felt like we had to prove that we were worthy of our father’s love, and we felt like nothing we did was ever good enough.
But if you have received God’s free gift of salvation, you are forgiven of your sins and you are accepted. You don’t have to prove that you’re worthy of his gift in order to keep God in your life. You don’t have to feel like you’re one mistake away from God walking out on you. You are secure, and you are free to serve God in love to show him your gratitude for his gift of salvation.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Transaction Complete--Eternal Security Series
If you have ever taken a public speaking course, you were probably told to craft the introduction of a speech in such a way as to grab your audience’s attention and pique their interest in the subject that you are about to discuss. I was told the same thing in my preaching classes, so I am going to attempt to do just that today. But given the subject matter that we’re about to discuss, I imagine that I need to do little more than say the words, “eternal security.”
The question of whether salvation can be lost or forfeited seems to be of perpetual interest among Christians. Some Christians have a definite academic interest in this question. They want to dissect every verse and pull every statement together into an airtight system that answers every question. That’s not a bad desire, but most Christians have a much more personal interest in this question. Most of us just want to know where we stand with God, and if our standing with God could possibly change.
If you ever have doubts about your salvation, you’re not alone. I suspect that most of us have those doubts from time to time, even if they alone last a split-second. But these doubts can have a major effect in our lives. They can rob us of the joy and peace that are available to us in Jesus Christ, and they can have a chilling effect on our relationship with God. After all, what kind of intimacy can you have with someone if you’re never sure where you stand with them? If I woke up every day with doubts about my wife’s love for me, what kind of intimacy could I have with her? If we cannot get doubts about our salvation settled in our minds, we will always have a rift in our relationship with God.
So, we’re going to begin taking a look today at the question of eternal security—is it possible for me to lose or forfeit my salvation? This sermon is the first of a series covering several more weeks, and today we’ll begin this series by taking a look at the nature of salvation. Basically, we’ll answer the question, “How does the Bible describe the transaction that takes place when a person accepts Christ?” I believe the answer to this question will assure us that our salvation is eternally secure and therefore cannot be lost.
So how does the Bible describe this transaction?
1. Salvation is not a wage
This is to say that salvation is not something that we earn from God; it is not a payment that we receive for a job well done. I think we all understand that when we receive wages, our boss is not just giving us money out of the kindness of his heart. He is giving us what we have rightfully earned, because that’s what a wage is.
But the Bible could not be clearer in telling us that salvation is not a wage that we earn from God. This is very clear in Romans 4:1–4 [READ Rom. 4:1–4]. In other words, forgiveness from God comes not by trying to earn it like some kind of wage, but by recognizing our ungodliness and turning to Him in faith.
We do not want our relationship with God to be based on what we could earn from Him, because Romans 6:23 tells us what our paycheck would look like when it says, “the wages of sin is death.” There is no possible way that we could earn salvation like a wage, because before we are saved, even the “good” things we do are tainted by evil motives and desires. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” That translation is kind of politically correct, because when it says “polluted garment,” the Hebrew term actually speaks of the cloth that a woman would use for personal hygiene during menstruation.
That’s not a pretty picture, but that’s what our so-called “good” deeds are like in the eyes of God before we are saved, so its no wonder that we could never earn salvation by offering Him something like that.
So salvation is clearly not a wage, but we must also realize that…
2. Salvation is not a loan
This statement means that salvation is not something that God pays for initially and then offers to give to us as long as we pay him back. This concept is actually the Mormon idea of salvation. Mormons will tell you all day long that they believe Jesus is their Savior, but what they mean is that Jesus has basically re-financed our salvation. In their doctrine, salvation used to be available to us at terms that we couldn’t meet, but Jesus purchased salvation for us and now offers it to us at terms that we can meet. So in other words, salvation to them is like a loan that we have to pay back.
This notion is expressed clearly in a parable that was told by one of the leaders of the LDS Church. In this parable, he describes a man who unwisely took on a massive debt in order to live the high life. But when the payment for the debt finally came due, the debtor could not pay, and so his lender was preparing to have him thrown in jail when another man, a mediator, stepped in and offered to pay the debt. The mediator made the offer to the lender and then turned to the debtor and said, “If I pay your debt, will you accept me as your creditor?” The debtor agreed, and so the mediator said, “Then you will pay the debt to me and I will set the terms. It will not be easy, but it will be possible. I will provide a way. You need not go to prison.”1
Now you can probably tell that the mediator in that parable is meant to represent Jesus, and in that character’s own words, he calls himself a creditor. So according to Mormon doctrine, when you accept Jesus, you are accepting Him as a creditor, and in order to receive salvation you must pay off your debt by doing good works.
But according to the Bible, nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible does describe our sins like a debt, but when Jesus paid our debt of sin, He didn’t purchase it to offer us forgiveness at easier terms—He got rid of it completely! Look with me at Colossians 2:13–14 [READ Col. 2:13–14].
We must make sure that we don’t think of salvation as a debt that we have to pay back. When we sing songs like, “Jesus paid it all/all to Him I owe,” we must make sure that we don’t get the wrong idea. Jesus deserves our gratitude and our allegiance, but we don’t have to pay back the price that He paid for our sins. That’s not what salvation is!
3. Salvation is not a contract
This is to say that salvation is not an agreement that we strike with God in which He agrees to do certain things for us as long as we agree to do certain things for Him. This is the idea that we normally have in our minds when we doubt our salvation. We look at our sins and feel like we haven’t kept up our end of the deal, and so we begin to wonder if God will declare our salvation null and void.
But my friends, we must remember that there is no deal for you to keep. This is not the nature of salvation. The idea of salvation as a contract is ruled out by the biblical concepts of grace and mercy. Grace means that you receive a blessing that you don’t deserve, and mercy means that you don’t receive a punishment that you do deserve.
These ideas rule out the concept of salvation as a contract. Think through this with me—if you enter into a contract with someone, and if you keep your side of the deal, then you deserve to have the other person keep their side of the deal. In fact, you have a legal right to it. So if the other person keeps their side of the deal, they’re not showing you grace because you deserve what they have done for you, and they’re certainly not showing you mercy because you have no punishment to escape.
So God extends grace and mercy to us not in any contractual sense in which we are worthy of it, but in spite of what we truly deserve. The Bible makes it clear that salvation is based on God’s grace and mercy. Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” and Titus 3:5 says, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.”
So what is this transaction called “salvation,” then, if its not a wage, a loan, or a contract?
4. Salvation is a gift
The Bible clearly states that salvation is a gift, which means that it is a token of God’s grace and mercy which He gives to us without cost. Notice the various verses that describe salvation in this way:
• Isaiah 55:1—“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
• Romans 3:22b–24—“For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
• Romans 6:23—“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• Ephesians 2:8–9—“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
• Revelation 22:17—“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”
Now we all know what a gift is, but just by way of reminder, the dictionary defines a gift as “something given voluntarily without payment in return.” If you receive a gift, you are not required to pay for it either before or after you receive it. A gift has no strings attached, and it is given based on the love of the giver—not the worthiness of the recipient.
This observation has tremendous implications for the idea of eternal security. We’re going to talk more next week about the fact that salvation is a gift and what that means for the security of our salvation, but for now, ponder this thought with me—if God gives us the gift of salvation despite the fact that we are unworthy to receive it, what could make us unworthy of keeping it down the road? If we are unworthy to receive salvation in the first place, how could we become unworthy of keeping it? God gives us the gift of salvation when we don’t deserve it, so if we still don’t deserve it later on, why would that move Him to take it away from us? God already knew we didn’t deserve it when He gave it to us.
The fact is that God’s grace and mercy are not based on what we deserve. No one deserves the gift of salvation at any point, ever! We don’t deserve it before we get it, we don’t deserve it at the moment we get it, and we don’t deserve it after we’ve received it. I don’t care how long you have walked with the Lord or how much spiritual growth you’ve had in your life—you don’t deserve salvation anymore today than when you first received it.
But that’s the whole point of salvation! It is a gift that God gives to those who recognize their unworthiness and ask God for mercy. And since it is a gift, there is no price that we have to pay for it. There is no contract that we have to live up to, there is no loan that we have to pay back, and there is no wage that we have to earn.
I believe the recognition that salvation is a gift is foundational to everything else that we could ask about the matter of eternal security. This idea is the anchor that will keep us from going adrift on the sea of questions that surround this subject. With the gift of salvation as our anchor, we can rejoice today that God does not deal with us according to what we deserve, but in His grace and mercy He is willing to give us something that truly is—PRICELESS!
Notes:
1. Boyd Packer, as recorded in Gospel Principles, Missionary Reference Library edition (Deseret Book: 1990), pp. 69-71.
The question of whether salvation can be lost or forfeited seems to be of perpetual interest among Christians. Some Christians have a definite academic interest in this question. They want to dissect every verse and pull every statement together into an airtight system that answers every question. That’s not a bad desire, but most Christians have a much more personal interest in this question. Most of us just want to know where we stand with God, and if our standing with God could possibly change.
If you ever have doubts about your salvation, you’re not alone. I suspect that most of us have those doubts from time to time, even if they alone last a split-second. But these doubts can have a major effect in our lives. They can rob us of the joy and peace that are available to us in Jesus Christ, and they can have a chilling effect on our relationship with God. After all, what kind of intimacy can you have with someone if you’re never sure where you stand with them? If I woke up every day with doubts about my wife’s love for me, what kind of intimacy could I have with her? If we cannot get doubts about our salvation settled in our minds, we will always have a rift in our relationship with God.
So, we’re going to begin taking a look today at the question of eternal security—is it possible for me to lose or forfeit my salvation? This sermon is the first of a series covering several more weeks, and today we’ll begin this series by taking a look at the nature of salvation. Basically, we’ll answer the question, “How does the Bible describe the transaction that takes place when a person accepts Christ?” I believe the answer to this question will assure us that our salvation is eternally secure and therefore cannot be lost.
So how does the Bible describe this transaction?
1. Salvation is not a wage
This is to say that salvation is not something that we earn from God; it is not a payment that we receive for a job well done. I think we all understand that when we receive wages, our boss is not just giving us money out of the kindness of his heart. He is giving us what we have rightfully earned, because that’s what a wage is.
But the Bible could not be clearer in telling us that salvation is not a wage that we earn from God. This is very clear in Romans 4:1–4 [READ Rom. 4:1–4]. In other words, forgiveness from God comes not by trying to earn it like some kind of wage, but by recognizing our ungodliness and turning to Him in faith.
We do not want our relationship with God to be based on what we could earn from Him, because Romans 6:23 tells us what our paycheck would look like when it says, “the wages of sin is death.” There is no possible way that we could earn salvation like a wage, because before we are saved, even the “good” things we do are tainted by evil motives and desires. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” That translation is kind of politically correct, because when it says “polluted garment,” the Hebrew term actually speaks of the cloth that a woman would use for personal hygiene during menstruation.
That’s not a pretty picture, but that’s what our so-called “good” deeds are like in the eyes of God before we are saved, so its no wonder that we could never earn salvation by offering Him something like that.
So salvation is clearly not a wage, but we must also realize that…
2. Salvation is not a loan
This statement means that salvation is not something that God pays for initially and then offers to give to us as long as we pay him back. This concept is actually the Mormon idea of salvation. Mormons will tell you all day long that they believe Jesus is their Savior, but what they mean is that Jesus has basically re-financed our salvation. In their doctrine, salvation used to be available to us at terms that we couldn’t meet, but Jesus purchased salvation for us and now offers it to us at terms that we can meet. So in other words, salvation to them is like a loan that we have to pay back.
This notion is expressed clearly in a parable that was told by one of the leaders of the LDS Church. In this parable, he describes a man who unwisely took on a massive debt in order to live the high life. But when the payment for the debt finally came due, the debtor could not pay, and so his lender was preparing to have him thrown in jail when another man, a mediator, stepped in and offered to pay the debt. The mediator made the offer to the lender and then turned to the debtor and said, “If I pay your debt, will you accept me as your creditor?” The debtor agreed, and so the mediator said, “Then you will pay the debt to me and I will set the terms. It will not be easy, but it will be possible. I will provide a way. You need not go to prison.”1
Now you can probably tell that the mediator in that parable is meant to represent Jesus, and in that character’s own words, he calls himself a creditor. So according to Mormon doctrine, when you accept Jesus, you are accepting Him as a creditor, and in order to receive salvation you must pay off your debt by doing good works.
But according to the Bible, nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible does describe our sins like a debt, but when Jesus paid our debt of sin, He didn’t purchase it to offer us forgiveness at easier terms—He got rid of it completely! Look with me at Colossians 2:13–14 [READ Col. 2:13–14].
We must make sure that we don’t think of salvation as a debt that we have to pay back. When we sing songs like, “Jesus paid it all/all to Him I owe,” we must make sure that we don’t get the wrong idea. Jesus deserves our gratitude and our allegiance, but we don’t have to pay back the price that He paid for our sins. That’s not what salvation is!
3. Salvation is not a contract
This is to say that salvation is not an agreement that we strike with God in which He agrees to do certain things for us as long as we agree to do certain things for Him. This is the idea that we normally have in our minds when we doubt our salvation. We look at our sins and feel like we haven’t kept up our end of the deal, and so we begin to wonder if God will declare our salvation null and void.
But my friends, we must remember that there is no deal for you to keep. This is not the nature of salvation. The idea of salvation as a contract is ruled out by the biblical concepts of grace and mercy. Grace means that you receive a blessing that you don’t deserve, and mercy means that you don’t receive a punishment that you do deserve.
These ideas rule out the concept of salvation as a contract. Think through this with me—if you enter into a contract with someone, and if you keep your side of the deal, then you deserve to have the other person keep their side of the deal. In fact, you have a legal right to it. So if the other person keeps their side of the deal, they’re not showing you grace because you deserve what they have done for you, and they’re certainly not showing you mercy because you have no punishment to escape.
So God extends grace and mercy to us not in any contractual sense in which we are worthy of it, but in spite of what we truly deserve. The Bible makes it clear that salvation is based on God’s grace and mercy. Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” and Titus 3:5 says, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.”
So what is this transaction called “salvation,” then, if its not a wage, a loan, or a contract?
4. Salvation is a gift
The Bible clearly states that salvation is a gift, which means that it is a token of God’s grace and mercy which He gives to us without cost. Notice the various verses that describe salvation in this way:
• Isaiah 55:1—“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
• Romans 3:22b–24—“For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
• Romans 6:23—“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• Ephesians 2:8–9—“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
• Revelation 22:17—“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”
Now we all know what a gift is, but just by way of reminder, the dictionary defines a gift as “something given voluntarily without payment in return.” If you receive a gift, you are not required to pay for it either before or after you receive it. A gift has no strings attached, and it is given based on the love of the giver—not the worthiness of the recipient.
This observation has tremendous implications for the idea of eternal security. We’re going to talk more next week about the fact that salvation is a gift and what that means for the security of our salvation, but for now, ponder this thought with me—if God gives us the gift of salvation despite the fact that we are unworthy to receive it, what could make us unworthy of keeping it down the road? If we are unworthy to receive salvation in the first place, how could we become unworthy of keeping it? God gives us the gift of salvation when we don’t deserve it, so if we still don’t deserve it later on, why would that move Him to take it away from us? God already knew we didn’t deserve it when He gave it to us.
The fact is that God’s grace and mercy are not based on what we deserve. No one deserves the gift of salvation at any point, ever! We don’t deserve it before we get it, we don’t deserve it at the moment we get it, and we don’t deserve it after we’ve received it. I don’t care how long you have walked with the Lord or how much spiritual growth you’ve had in your life—you don’t deserve salvation anymore today than when you first received it.
But that’s the whole point of salvation! It is a gift that God gives to those who recognize their unworthiness and ask God for mercy. And since it is a gift, there is no price that we have to pay for it. There is no contract that we have to live up to, there is no loan that we have to pay back, and there is no wage that we have to earn.
I believe the recognition that salvation is a gift is foundational to everything else that we could ask about the matter of eternal security. This idea is the anchor that will keep us from going adrift on the sea of questions that surround this subject. With the gift of salvation as our anchor, we can rejoice today that God does not deal with us according to what we deserve, but in His grace and mercy He is willing to give us something that truly is—PRICELESS!
Notes:
1. Boyd Packer, as recorded in Gospel Principles, Missionary Reference Library edition (Deseret Book: 1990), pp. 69-71.
Monday, October 10, 2011
What's the Connection Between the Lord's Supper and the New Covenant?--Understanding the Lord's Supper series
Over time, traditions have a way of becoming rituals that people mindlessly repeat even if they have no idea where the tradition came from or what it means. Take, for instance, the Rock Chalk chant of my beloved Kansas Jayhawks. Every year, thousands upon thousands of people participate in the Rock Chalk chant at sporting events, yet most people have no idea what it means.
All traditions can follow that pattern, including the traditions that we uphold within the Church. That’s why we have been taking a close look at the Lord’s Supper each time we have observed it over the last few months. Today we’re going to discuss a question that may have come to your mind before: what is the connection between the Lord’s Supper and the New Covenant?
Whenever we observe the Lord’s Supper together, we read from the instructions of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, and in v. 25, he quotes the words that the Lord Jesus spoke when He gave the cup to his disciples and said, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.” What did Jesus mean by that statement? That’s what we’re going to discover today.
1. What is the New Covenant?
First of all, we need to answer the simple question, “What is the New Covenant?” This phrase might be very unfamiliar to you, even if you have heard it many times while observing the Lord’s Supper. To put it simply, the New Covenant is a promise made by God to the nation of Israel during one of her darkest hours, in which He promised to restore her fortunes both materially and spiritually. This was the promise that the Jewish people were clinging to when Jesus came into the world, though by and large they had unfortunately overlooked the spiritual aspects of this promise. They were eagerly waiting for the material aspects of this promise—such as a restored kingdom for Israel and other such blessings—but their overlooking of the spiritual aspects of this promise led to a great misunderstanding of Jesus’ ministry. This misunderstanding, among other things, led to the crucifixion of Jesus, though ironically, as we will learn, the sacrificial death of Jesus actually established the New Covenant.
The phrase “New Covenant” is found in Jeremiah 31:31. Why don’t you turn there with me? There are other passages that also describe the details of this promise, but we’ll focus on a few points from Jer. 31:31–34.
A. It is “new” in contrast with the “old” covenant that God made with Israel through Moses (vv. 31–32)
Follow with me as I read vv. 31–32 [READ vv. 31–32]. Here the Lord expresses this promise to make a new covenant with Israel and Judah, which was necessary because the people had broken the former covenant that was made after God brought them out of Egypt. Let’s talk about that “old” covenant for a moment.
According to the book of Exodus, after God graciously and powerful saved Israel from their slavery in Egypt, He led them into the wilderness of Sinai, which is the easternmost part of Egypt today, and just south of modern-day Israel. At a mountain in that wilderness, God entered into an agreement or a covenant with the people. In Exodus 19, beginning at v. 4, the Lord said, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:4–6).
The agreement was very straightforward—God stated that if the people would obey Him, He would confirm with them the special relationship that He had promised them since the time of Abraham. He would use them in a very special way to be like priests for the rest of the world, so that the rest of the world could learn about God through them.
God then spelled out the way that the Israelites were supposed to behave and the way that they were supposed to worship Him. These commands are what we normally call the Law of Moses—they are all of the rules and regulations that you read about in Exodus through Deuteronomy. Its important to note that these commands were not designed to allow the Israelites a way to earn a place in heaven or anything like that. They were meant to show the people how to live as God’s priests to the rest of the world.
So the covenant was clear-cut—if the people would obey God’s commands, God would confirm His special relationship with them. But the sad testimony of the Old Testament is that the people did not obey God’s commands. They broke His commands, and thus they broke the agreement of the covenant. As a result, they received the curses mentioned in that covenant rather than the blessings. In fact, at the time that Jeremiah recorded the words of the New Covenant, the people of Israel were experiencing one of those curses—they were being oppressed by the armies of Babylon and were about to be taken from their land and relocated. But in the midst of that dark hour, God allowed the light of His grace to shine through by telling the people about the significant blessings that He still had in store for them.
B. It contained the promise of significant spiritual blessings for Israel and Judah (vv. 33–34)
Other passages, such as Ezekiel 36, contain information about the material blessings of this covenant, but the Lord spoke through Jeremiah about the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant, as we see here in vv. 33–34. There are four significant blessings mentioned here:
1) God’s law will be written in the hearts of the people [READ 33a]. This idea is amplified in Ezekiel 36:26–27 when the Lord states that He will put His Spirit within the people and give them a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone.
2) God will establish an intimate fellowship with the people [READ 33b]. No longer will there be a strain in God’s relationship with the people. They will serve Him alone as their God, and He will give them the fullness of His blessing.
3) God’s people will have a universal knowledge of Him [READ 34a]. No longer will Israel be divided between those who know the Lord and those who don’t know Him. They will all know Him.
4) God will forgive the sins of the people [READ 34b].
As you can see, God promised some tremendous blessings to the people of Israel in the New Covenant. Its no surprise that the promise of this covenant became a special thing to them. But what does this have to do with the Lord’s Supper? Why did Jesus mention this covenant on the night before He was crucified?
2. How is the New Covenant related to the Lord’s Supper?
If you will think back to the words of Jesus that Paul recorded in 1 Cor. 11:25, the Lord made the statement, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” So the Lord tied the New Covenant to His own blood that He was about to shed in His sacrificial death on the cross. What did Jesus mean by this statement? I think a little piece of history will clear things up for us.
In ancient times, when two people would make a binding agreement like a covenant, that agreement would often be accompanied by the sacrifice of an animal. That sacrifice would solemnize the occasion, and oftentimes it represented a challenge for the two parties as well. The idea is that they were saying, “May I end up like this animal if I break my word!”
So the sacrifice ratified or established the covenant. We can see this practice within the pages of Scripture. You may remember that in Genesis 15, when God made His covenant with Abraham, he told Abraham to gather a heifer, a goat, and a ram. Abraham gathered the animals and killed them, cut them in half, and laid the two halves opposite each other with a walkway between the halves. A vision of the Lord then passed between the two halves of the animals, which symbolized that His covenant with Abraham was now officially established.
Also, when the Lord made His covenant with Israel through Moses—which we just discussed a moment ago—a sacrifice was made on that occasion. It says in Exodus 24 that Moses offered sacrifices to God and then sprinkled the blood of the sacrifices on the people as they were gathered together before God. That sounds a little gross, but that was an element of the culture at that time.
Thus, when Jesus associates His blood with the New Covenant, He is saying that He is the sacrifice which establishes this promise between God and Israel. His sacrificial death was the foundation of this promise, because as we learn from other Scriptures, His death was necessary to provide that spiritual blessings of the covenant. His death was a necessary step in order for sins to be forgiven, which was necessary for God to put His law in the hearts of mankind through the Holy Spirit, which was also necessary for mankind to experience the fullness of fellowship with God.
And so, Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross made it possible for the promises of the New Covenant to be fulfilled. Now remember, these promises were made to the people of Israel, the same people with whom the old covenant was made through Moses. Since we have not yet seen these promises fulfilled with the nation of Israel, that gives us every reason to expect that they must be fulfilled in the future. I think we have every reason to believe that God is not done with His Old Testament people—He still has outstanding promises to them that He intends to fulfill.
But in the meantime, the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant are available to anyone who will accept Jesus as their Savior by acknowledging their sins to God and believing that Jesus paid the full penalty for their sins through His death on the cross. Our sins are washed away by the same blood that established the promises of the New Covenant, and so we can have our sins forgiven; we can have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us; we can have the fullness of intimacy with God.
The Lord’s Supper reminds us of all that God has done to extend His grace to us. He is a God who delights to show mercy, who chooses to make promises to His unworthy creatures and follow through with them. The fact that He sent Jesus to establish the New Covenant tells us that He will fulfill every promise that He has made to us, and that gives us tremendous reason to rejoice.
All traditions can follow that pattern, including the traditions that we uphold within the Church. That’s why we have been taking a close look at the Lord’s Supper each time we have observed it over the last few months. Today we’re going to discuss a question that may have come to your mind before: what is the connection between the Lord’s Supper and the New Covenant?
Whenever we observe the Lord’s Supper together, we read from the instructions of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, and in v. 25, he quotes the words that the Lord Jesus spoke when He gave the cup to his disciples and said, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.” What did Jesus mean by that statement? That’s what we’re going to discover today.
1. What is the New Covenant?
First of all, we need to answer the simple question, “What is the New Covenant?” This phrase might be very unfamiliar to you, even if you have heard it many times while observing the Lord’s Supper. To put it simply, the New Covenant is a promise made by God to the nation of Israel during one of her darkest hours, in which He promised to restore her fortunes both materially and spiritually. This was the promise that the Jewish people were clinging to when Jesus came into the world, though by and large they had unfortunately overlooked the spiritual aspects of this promise. They were eagerly waiting for the material aspects of this promise—such as a restored kingdom for Israel and other such blessings—but their overlooking of the spiritual aspects of this promise led to a great misunderstanding of Jesus’ ministry. This misunderstanding, among other things, led to the crucifixion of Jesus, though ironically, as we will learn, the sacrificial death of Jesus actually established the New Covenant.
The phrase “New Covenant” is found in Jeremiah 31:31. Why don’t you turn there with me? There are other passages that also describe the details of this promise, but we’ll focus on a few points from Jer. 31:31–34.
A. It is “new” in contrast with the “old” covenant that God made with Israel through Moses (vv. 31–32)
Follow with me as I read vv. 31–32 [READ vv. 31–32]. Here the Lord expresses this promise to make a new covenant with Israel and Judah, which was necessary because the people had broken the former covenant that was made after God brought them out of Egypt. Let’s talk about that “old” covenant for a moment.
According to the book of Exodus, after God graciously and powerful saved Israel from their slavery in Egypt, He led them into the wilderness of Sinai, which is the easternmost part of Egypt today, and just south of modern-day Israel. At a mountain in that wilderness, God entered into an agreement or a covenant with the people. In Exodus 19, beginning at v. 4, the Lord said, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:4–6).
The agreement was very straightforward—God stated that if the people would obey Him, He would confirm with them the special relationship that He had promised them since the time of Abraham. He would use them in a very special way to be like priests for the rest of the world, so that the rest of the world could learn about God through them.
God then spelled out the way that the Israelites were supposed to behave and the way that they were supposed to worship Him. These commands are what we normally call the Law of Moses—they are all of the rules and regulations that you read about in Exodus through Deuteronomy. Its important to note that these commands were not designed to allow the Israelites a way to earn a place in heaven or anything like that. They were meant to show the people how to live as God’s priests to the rest of the world.
So the covenant was clear-cut—if the people would obey God’s commands, God would confirm His special relationship with them. But the sad testimony of the Old Testament is that the people did not obey God’s commands. They broke His commands, and thus they broke the agreement of the covenant. As a result, they received the curses mentioned in that covenant rather than the blessings. In fact, at the time that Jeremiah recorded the words of the New Covenant, the people of Israel were experiencing one of those curses—they were being oppressed by the armies of Babylon and were about to be taken from their land and relocated. But in the midst of that dark hour, God allowed the light of His grace to shine through by telling the people about the significant blessings that He still had in store for them.
B. It contained the promise of significant spiritual blessings for Israel and Judah (vv. 33–34)
Other passages, such as Ezekiel 36, contain information about the material blessings of this covenant, but the Lord spoke through Jeremiah about the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant, as we see here in vv. 33–34. There are four significant blessings mentioned here:
1) God’s law will be written in the hearts of the people [READ 33a]. This idea is amplified in Ezekiel 36:26–27 when the Lord states that He will put His Spirit within the people and give them a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone.
2) God will establish an intimate fellowship with the people [READ 33b]. No longer will there be a strain in God’s relationship with the people. They will serve Him alone as their God, and He will give them the fullness of His blessing.
3) God’s people will have a universal knowledge of Him [READ 34a]. No longer will Israel be divided between those who know the Lord and those who don’t know Him. They will all know Him.
4) God will forgive the sins of the people [READ 34b].
As you can see, God promised some tremendous blessings to the people of Israel in the New Covenant. Its no surprise that the promise of this covenant became a special thing to them. But what does this have to do with the Lord’s Supper? Why did Jesus mention this covenant on the night before He was crucified?
2. How is the New Covenant related to the Lord’s Supper?
If you will think back to the words of Jesus that Paul recorded in 1 Cor. 11:25, the Lord made the statement, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” So the Lord tied the New Covenant to His own blood that He was about to shed in His sacrificial death on the cross. What did Jesus mean by this statement? I think a little piece of history will clear things up for us.
In ancient times, when two people would make a binding agreement like a covenant, that agreement would often be accompanied by the sacrifice of an animal. That sacrifice would solemnize the occasion, and oftentimes it represented a challenge for the two parties as well. The idea is that they were saying, “May I end up like this animal if I break my word!”
So the sacrifice ratified or established the covenant. We can see this practice within the pages of Scripture. You may remember that in Genesis 15, when God made His covenant with Abraham, he told Abraham to gather a heifer, a goat, and a ram. Abraham gathered the animals and killed them, cut them in half, and laid the two halves opposite each other with a walkway between the halves. A vision of the Lord then passed between the two halves of the animals, which symbolized that His covenant with Abraham was now officially established.
Also, when the Lord made His covenant with Israel through Moses—which we just discussed a moment ago—a sacrifice was made on that occasion. It says in Exodus 24 that Moses offered sacrifices to God and then sprinkled the blood of the sacrifices on the people as they were gathered together before God. That sounds a little gross, but that was an element of the culture at that time.
Thus, when Jesus associates His blood with the New Covenant, He is saying that He is the sacrifice which establishes this promise between God and Israel. His sacrificial death was the foundation of this promise, because as we learn from other Scriptures, His death was necessary to provide that spiritual blessings of the covenant. His death was a necessary step in order for sins to be forgiven, which was necessary for God to put His law in the hearts of mankind through the Holy Spirit, which was also necessary for mankind to experience the fullness of fellowship with God.
And so, Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross made it possible for the promises of the New Covenant to be fulfilled. Now remember, these promises were made to the people of Israel, the same people with whom the old covenant was made through Moses. Since we have not yet seen these promises fulfilled with the nation of Israel, that gives us every reason to expect that they must be fulfilled in the future. I think we have every reason to believe that God is not done with His Old Testament people—He still has outstanding promises to them that He intends to fulfill.
But in the meantime, the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant are available to anyone who will accept Jesus as their Savior by acknowledging their sins to God and believing that Jesus paid the full penalty for their sins through His death on the cross. Our sins are washed away by the same blood that established the promises of the New Covenant, and so we can have our sins forgiven; we can have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us; we can have the fullness of intimacy with God.
The Lord’s Supper reminds us of all that God has done to extend His grace to us. He is a God who delights to show mercy, who chooses to make promises to His unworthy creatures and follow through with them. The fact that He sent Jesus to establish the New Covenant tells us that He will fulfill every promise that He has made to us, and that gives us tremendous reason to rejoice.
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