Why I Accept Aspects of Free Grace Theology

Well, there—I said it! And it’s true: I accept some aspects of Free Grace theology. Now before you Google “Free Grace theology” and assume that I affirm everything you read about it, please take the time to read this post and allow me to explain my views.

 Now, why am I writing this post as if it’s some big revelation? Well, because in the circles that I minister in, it potentially is a big revelation. Free Grace theology was a point of some debate at my alma mater, Calvary University, and it has been the subject of heated debate at times within my pastoral fellowship, IFCA International. That means that I have dear friends who will disagree with me on this subject—and who may not yet know the positions that I take.

 To give you some sense of the greater landscape here, the aspects of Free Grace theology that I affirm put me at odds on some issues with a wide swath of very popular Bible teachers—people whom I generally respect greatly, such as John MacArthur, John Piper, J. I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, and basically everyone associated with The Gospel Coalition and the Together for the Gospel Conference. If you’re familiar with some theology and the evangelical landscape, you’ll notice the main thing that the aforementioned teachers universally embrace—Calvinism, either a moderate or strong form of it. As I’ll note later, the root of my disagreement with these men grows from one of the underpinnings of strong Calvinism—namely, a determinist view of God’s sovereignty.

 Let me sum up the essence of what I want to say before I touch on some details: I hold to a moderately Calvinistic view of justification (becoming born again), but I hold to a Free Grace view of sanctification (growing as a Christian)—particularly on the question of how to find assurance of salvation. Lest anyone think I’m theologically bipolar, the rest of this post will explain what I deny and what I affirm with respect to Free Grace theology and how I think this marriage between moderate Calvinism and Free Grace theology is logically necessary for anyone who does not wish to embrace a determinist view of God’s sovereignty.

 One more summary statement before I turn to details. This statement will be helpful for anyone who is familiar with the teachers who are on the moderate Calvinist—Free Grace spectrum: I find myself having substantial disagreements with Zane Hodges and Robert Wilkin, but I find myself in substantial agreement with Charles Ryrie (So Great Salvation), Paul Benware (The Believer’s Payday), Norman Geisler (Chosen But Free; Systematic Theology) and Joseph Dillow (The Reign of the Servant Kings). I’m certain those men would have some disagreements with each other, but collectively their works have shaped my thinking considerably.

 And now, on to the details.

 What I Deny with Respect to Free Grace Theology

 I deny that repentance can be separated from saving faith.

The relationship between repentance and saving faith is a hot-button issue in Free Grace circles, with some Free Grace teachers viewing repentance as something of a Trojan horse that has been used to smuggle works into the Gospel. For my part, I believe repentance IS necessary for a person to be born again. I define repentance as a change of mind about one’s sinfulness and the person and work of Christ. It is simply the recognition and acknowledgement of one’s terrible predicament due to sin, which then serves as a preparation leading to faith in Christ. And yes, I’m comfortable saying that this change of mind will affect how one behaves and lives—though a little later I will criticize the idea that measuring spiritual fruit is a biblically commanded, sure-fire means of proving whether or not a person has truly repented.

 To clarify what some Free Grace teachers have said with respect to repentance, consider this statement from the Grace Evangelical Society (taken from their website at https://faithalone.org/beliefs/): “No act of obedience, preceding or following faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, such as commitment to obey, sorrow for sin, turning from one’s sin, baptism or submission to the Lordship of Christ, may be added to, or considered part of, faith as a condition for receiving everlasting life.” This statement includes baptism, which I’ll just exclude for the sake of this discussion because I think it’s a different issue.

 Excluding baptism, I’m not sure why any of the attitudes mentioned in that statement have to be construed as a work that would earn us merit in the sight of God. I think those attitudes simply arise naturally as one realizes his sinfulness and his danger of going to Hell and then realizes the true nature of the One who died for His sins and offers him forgiveness. I’m not even sure why someone would trust in Christ if he acknowledged his sins but felt no sorrow over them! Even submitting to the lordship of Christ should flow naturally from the recognition that I have been rebelling against my Creator but He now shows me incomprehensible grace and mercy for the sake of Christ.

 As I said before, I think a problem does arise when it is assumed—on the basis of a determinist view of God’s sovereignty—that repentance will unfailingly lead to a consistently observable degree of spiritual maturity in the life of a believer. But more on that later…

 I deny that The Gospel of John is the only book that should be used to establish the Gospel message.

Some Free Grace proponents have argued this point based on the explicitly evangelistic purpose of The Gospel of John. Because of this purpose, they have said, The Gospel of John surely contains all the essential elements of the message that one must know in order to be saved. Furthermore, it is argued, since the word “repentance” is not used in The Gospel of John, then repentance must not be necessary for a person to be saved.

 I won’t belabor this point so that I can get on to some other issues, but I will say that surely the concept of repentance is found in John’s Gospel even if he doesn’t use that specific word. And why can’t we look to Peter’s evangelistic message in Acts 2 to help us define the Gospel? Why must we exclude Paul’s evangelistic message at the Areopagus in Acts 17? If such passages are equally inspired, it seems arbitrary to say that they should be excluded from our efforts to define the content of the Gospel.

 I deny the “Cross-less Gospel.”

The so-called “Cross-less Gospel” arose from a thought experiment offered by Zane Hodges in an issue of the Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society. In it, he envisioned a man on an island who knew nothing about Christianity. This man noticed a piece of paper wash ashore on which he could read these words from John 6:43-47—“Jesus answered and said to them…Most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.” Hodges argued that this man could become born again despite knowing nothing more about the “Jesus” who was mentioned on the paper—even knowing nothing about Christ’s death on the cross. Hence the name, “the cross-less Gospel.”

 On the basis of 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, I have to disagree with Hodges’ conclusion. In light of Paul’s summary of the Gospel message, the man-on-the-island’s knowledge was simply inadequate. He knew nothing about his sinfulness, nothing about Jesus’ status as the Christ and what that means, nothing about the resurrection of Christ. I think Hodges makes a valid point that it can be hard to avoid arbitrariness in announcing what a person must know in order to be saved, but from 1 Cor 15:1-4, I think a knowledge about sin, Christ’s death, and the resurrection can hardly be called arbitrary.

 What I Affirm with Respect to Free Grace Theology

 I affirm that genuine believers can become fruitless and lead lives that produce little that is of eternal value.

This claim is perhaps the hallmark of Free Grace theology, and I affirm it on the basis of passages such as John 15:1-8, 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, and 2 Peter 1:5-11. Notice that I said “become fruitless” because I believe that all Christians manifest some spiritual fruit upon being born again. If we look at the fruits listed in Galatians 5:22-23, I would say that every believer manifests at least joy and peace upon conversion. Indeed, it seems typical for new converts to manifest spiritual fruit for a time, but as the Lord warned in John 15:1-8, if we do not remain closely connected to Him (abide), then we can become fruitless, for apart from Him we can do nothing of any spiritual value.

 Let me briefly comment on 2 Peter 1:5-11 since it includes a verse that Calvinists often use to encourage people to search for assurance of salvation by examining their lives for spiritual fruit. This text states:

 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (ESV).

 To cut to the chase for the sake of this post, notice that in v. 9, Peter affirms that a person who “was cleansed from his former sins” can, in fact, lack the qualities that he outlined in vv. 5-7—the very qualities that will keep a person from being ineffective or unfruitful according to v. 8. Peter is clearly talking about a saved person in v. 9, so I can only conclude that a saved person might very well lack the qualities of vv. 5-7 and thus become unfruitful for Christ according to v. 8.

 It is very significant that the context includes v. 10, a verse that strong Calvinists interpret as a command for believers to seek assurance of salvation. Strong Calvinists argue furthermore that such a search is to be made by examining one’s life for consistent patterns of and appropriate levels of spiritual fruit. But is this likely to be how Peter would encourage a person to seek assurance of salvation, given what he just wrote in vv. 5-9? He just affirmed that a person who was cleansed from his former sins might lack the qualities that allow him to produce spiritual fruit! If we take that affirmation seriously, it seems that such an examination of one’s life could yield a “false negative”—that is, that a saved person could conclude he is unsaved because he does not see (or at least thinks he does not see) the requisite amount of spiritual fruit in his life (whatever the “requisite” amount is said to be). This observation leads me to my next point regarding the assurance of salvation.

 I affirm that complete assurance of salvation is possible and is to be found through trust in God’s promises in Scripture.

When it comes to assurance of salvation, what Calvinism gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. This reality has often been the punch line of jokes among theology nerds—that Calvinists are sure they can’t lose their salvation but can’t be sure they ever had it in the first place! But this humor brings an unsettling thought to the surface—why does Calvinism find assurance of salvation to be such a difficult hurdle to clear? Does this struggle point to a flaw within the system? I believe it does, and as I’ll explain in a moment, the fault lies in the deterministic engine that drives the Calvinist understanding of the perseverance of the saints.

 If becoming born again truly is a free gift, and there is nothing more that I must do to receive it than to repent and trust in the Lord Jesus, then I should be able to know with complete assurance that I am saved. True, a deeper understanding of the Gospel will be extremely beneficial whenever doubts arise, but this deeper understanding can be achieved by looking again at precisely what Jesus has accomplished for me and at what God has promised to me on the basis of Christ’s work. Examining my life for spiritual fruit is necessary for other reasons, but not for establishing the assurance of my salvation. I contend that assurance and spiritual fruit could only be so inextricably joined together if determinism is true, so let me now turn to that subject.

 Why I Affirm What I Do

I reject the determinism that underlies strong Calvinism.

Determinism is the view that God establishes all things in such a way that they could not be different than what they are. Applied to human choices, it means that for any given choice you made yesterday, for example, you could not have chosen to do differently than what you actually did. To be sure, determinists affirm that humans make choices for which they are responsible, but they argue that this is simply a point at which our understanding of God’s ways fades into mystery. That’s fair enough, because even if one takes a different view of God’s sovereignty, we all have to acknowledge a point at which our understanding can go no further.

 My concern is that determinism just seems thoroughly unscriptural. For example, 1 Corinthians 10:13 states that God “will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” According to this verse, anytime a believer gives in to temptation, he could have chosen differently than he actually did. Moreover, determinism would mean that commands in the Bible do not present actual alternative courses of action that a person could take. In a moment of decision, a person’s choice would have already been made for him, and it could not be otherwise. Moreover, I don’t know how determinists hope to offer a plausible explanation of Christ’s lament over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37--"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” What sense can we make out of this if we have to say that God had determined that they would be unwilling and they could not have possibly been otherwise!?

 Now, what does this have to do with Calvinism and assurance of salvation? The Calvinist’s logic, based as it is on determinism, goes as follows: if God will unfailingly bring the elect to be born again, then He will also unfailingly bring them to spiritual maturity. The implication is clear—if you do not grow to spiritual maturity (given enough time, and as evidenced by sufficient spiritual fruit) then you are not saved.

 But if determinism is false, there does not seem to be a certain degree of spiritual maturity that every believer will unfailingly achieve. That point seems abundantly clear from 1 Corinthians 3:15—there will be believers whose life work will be spiritually worthless, and “he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” If your theological system can’t account for the reality of such believers, then I think there’s just something out of whack with your theological system. For this reason, I think Free Grace theology is superior to Calvinism on these questions of sanctification and assurance of salvation.

The Atonement--Definite Convictions Series

            In the musical “Scrooge,” there’s a scene in which the Ghost of Christmas Future takes old Ebenezer to his office on some future Christmas morning. There’s a crowd gathered there, and Ebenezer doesn’t realize at first that the crowd is there to celebrate his death. A man named Tom Jenkins is leading the crowd, and he takes up a song that he sings to the now-deceased Scrooge:

Thank you very much, thank you very much,

That’s the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me!

            Most of the time, of course, it would be extremely inappropriate to thank someone for dying. But when we consider the Lord Jesus Christ, we can hardly help but say “thank you” as we remember all that his death has done for us. Truly, his death for our sins is the most loving, most gracious thing that anyone’s ever done for us!

            Today, our study of our church’s Statement of Faith brings us to the section entitled, “The Atonement.” You’ll notice that just after that title, in parentheses, is the word “reconciliation” – a word which is probably a bit more familiar to us than the word “atonement.” When you are reconciled to someone, you move from having hostility with them to having peace. And so, as we study this section, we are studying what Jesus has done to bring us back into a relationship of peace with God. Here’s what this section has to say:

We believe that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was crucified, died, and was buried as planned by God before the foundation of the world. By the shedding of His blood, His sacrificial death upon the cross became and is the only ground of atonement for sin whereby man, by personal faith, is redeemed from the guilt, penalty, and power of sin (Rom 3:24-25; Rom 5:6-11; 1 Cor 15:3-4; Heb 9:14; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 John 4:10; Heb 9:22).

Let’s take a closer look at a few of the statements from this section.

“As planned by God…”

            Our Statement reminds us of the incredible truth that Christ’s death for sinners was not an afterthought in God’s plan, but a central part of it. When Adam and Eve plunged the human race into sin, God was not left scrambling, wondering what he was going to do. No – before he even created the world he knew that mankind would sin, and in his love he created a plan that would allow for us to be forgiven.

            And it wasn’t just any plan – it was a plan that called for tremendous personal sacrifice from God. How can we help but marvel at the fact that God knew what the cost would be to provide forgiveness, yet he still decided that it was good to go ahead and create mankind!

            God’s planning of Christ’s sacrificial death was a theme that the Apostles stressed in their earliest sermons after the Day of Pentecost. If they were going to publicly proclaim to their Jewish countrymen that Jesus was their long-awaited Messiah, they would have to explain why Jesus had been crucified. They did this by appealing to God’s eternal plan for salvation.

            For example, as he spoke on the Day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter told the crowd, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men (Acts 2:23).” Peter didn’t let the people off the hook for their own guilt in Christ’s crucifixion, but he pulled back the curtain for them to reveal that it had all happened “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.” It was not an accident or mistake – it was all part of God’s plan for our forgiveness.

            A short time later, as the Apostles were praying to God, they said to Him, “for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place (Acts 4:27-28).”

            It could be easy to think of the Crucifixion as a moment when history itself spun out of God’s control, but in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The sacrifice that Jesus made was all part of God’s plan, and it came about just as he intended.

“By the shedding of His blood…”

            Our Statement then goes on to give a very appropriate emphasis to the shedding of Christ’s blood as being the means by which we are cleansed from our sins. The New Testament frequently connects our forgiveness not merely to Christ’s death, but to His shed blood. Consider these verses:

·         Romans 3:24-25: “[we are] justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

·         Romans 5:9: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”

·         Ephesians 1:7: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”

·         Colossians 1:19-20: “For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

·         1 Peter 1:18-19: “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

            This emphasis on the shed blood of Christ teaches us that we are saved not merely by the fact that Jesus died, but by why and how he died. It would have done nothing for us if Jesus had simply died of old age or through an accident in the carpenter’s shop. No – we are saved because Jesus died as an intentional offering to pay for our sins, and in such offerings, the shedding of blood is required.

            The author of Hebrews put this very plainly when he wrote in Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” This was God’s requirement because of the connection between the blood and the very life of a sacrificial offering. He explained it this way to the children of Israel as he laid out for them the system of animal sacrifices under the Law of Moses: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life (Leviticus 17:11).” This is why we sometimes talk about the “lifeblood” of something, because life and blood are virtually synonymous.

            And so, by shedding his blood as a sacrificial offering for our sins, Jesus has paid the necessary price for our forgiveness. And as our Statement correctly says, “His sacrificial death on the cross became and is the only ground of atonement for sin.” It is not Christ or something else, as though we have multiple options for forgiveness to choose from. Nor is it Christ and something else, as though there is more that needs to be accomplished for our forgiveness. It is Christ alone as the only ground of atonement for sin.

“Whereby man, by personal faith, is redeemed…”

            And how is it that we come to receive the forgiveness that Christ has purchased for us? Is it something that God gives only to those who were born into the right family? Is it something that he gives only to those who appear to be more worthy of it than others?

            No – as our Statement says, it is received simply by personal faith in Christ. We simply have to acknowledge that we need this forgiveness because we have rebelled against God through our sin. When we make that humbling admission, we then simply trust in Jesus to save us, believing that he has done all that was necessary for our forgiveness through his sacrificial death.

Monday Matters

            As we go through this series, we always want to remind ourselves of how a knowledge of doctrine can help us in daily life. With the doctrine of the atonement, there is one application that rings out above all others:

Christ's death for my sin is the clear and unchanging proof that God loves me.

            If I may modify the song “Jesus Loves Me” just a bit, I might say it like this:

Jesus loves me, this I know,

For he died to show me so.

            Christ’s death for us is the proof of God’s love for us, our shelter in the time of storm. Sometimes the blessings of life blow in all around us like a gentle breeze in the Spring, and we feel nothing but the sunshine of life upon our faces and we see beauty on the horizon all around us as far as our eyes can see. But at other times, the storm clouds of life roll in like an unstoppable front, and the damaging winds blow and threaten us with harm.

            How can we stay grounded and secure in such times? With this ever-changing turmoil we may often ask, “Does God really love me?” But over the anguished cry of our doubts comes the sound of nails being hammered into wood, and the sound of the very same words that are on our minds: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Then drowning out every other sound in our souls comes the triumphant cry, “It is finished!”

            Yes, God really does love me. Christ’s sacrifice stands for all time like a beacon in the night, shining through the darkness to help me keep my bearings when I might otherwise feel lost. Doubts will come because they are part of difficulties, but they do not have to win the day because the hill of Calvary is the high ground that our doubts cannot overtake. We will find refuge from our doubts about God’s love if we flee to the cross of Christ again and again.

Clear Thinking and Clean Living in Light of God's Plan--1 Peter 1:13-16 (1 Peter Series)

            Last week, I was putting together a puzzle with Adrianna. It was a puzzle we had never done before, and we just had all of the pieces in a baggie – we didn’t have the box for the puzzle at all. As we were putting it together, I found myself wishing that we had the box so we could look at the picture on the front of it and see how this whole thing was supposed to look. As you all know, it’s very helpful to have that picture on the front of the box to show you what the puzzle is supposed to look like when you finish it.

            When it comes to God’s plan for us as his children, he has already given us the picture on the front of the box, so to speak. We don’t know about every twist and turn along the way, but we know what things are going to look like for us when God’s plan is all said and done. The culmination of God’s plan for us is going to be joyous and beautiful and glorious.

            So far in the book of 1 Peter, we’ve read about the apostle’s description of the plan of God for our salvation. He’s emphasized that the fulfillment of this plan is certain – that there is an inheritance being kept for us, and we are being guarded for it. He wrapped up this first section by telling us that this plan that God has for us makes us the envy of the very angels in heaven!

            Beginning with verse 13 of chapter 1, Peter is now going to instruct us about how we should live in light of this great plan of salvation that God has for us. It is not only a truth to sit and savor – it is also a truth to send us into action in some very particular ways. In our passage for today, will begin to see that:

Central Idea: Our knowledge of God’s plan for us should lead to clear thinking and clean living.

Follow with me as I read 1 Peter 1:13-16 [READ].

1. Pull your thoughts together and focus them on the grace that is coming to you (v. 13)

            You might be able to tell from the wording of verse 13 that Peter’s main point is this command for us to set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Remember that in the Bible, hope is not mere wishful thinking; it is a confident expectation and anticipation of something that you are looking forward to. In this case, Peter reminds us that we’re looking forward to the grace we will receive when Christ returns.

            This undoubtedly is a reference to the whole package of blessings that we will receive at that time. There will be the awesome experience of seeing Jesus with our own eyes – this one whom we have loved even though we’ve never seen him. We will enjoy being with him, and, as Peter mentioned in verse seven, we stand to receive praise and honor from him based upon our obedience to him today.

            Peter tells us that the anticipation and longing in our lives is to be set fully upon the return of Christ. That must be the moment that we are looking forward to more than any other – more than any plans that we’ve made for the future, even more than good things like having more kids or having grandkids or retiring. There must be nothing that we are looking forward to more than the return of Christ.

            Why is that? Because of this simple principle – what you desire to have the most tomorrow will determine what you prepare for today. Your desires for the future will impact the way you behave today.

            I remember speaking with a young lady once about the return of Christ. As our conversation went on, she said to me, “I can’t wait for Christ to return, but I hope I can get married first.” Think for just a moment about what that young lady was really communicating. I don’t believe she was trying to downplay the significance of Christ’s return, but what her statement really communicated was that she wanted to get married more than she wanted Christ to return. She could have said, “I can wait for Christ to return if it means I’ll get married in the meantime.”

            Now, I certainly understand the desire to get married. That desire hit me hard after I met Carmen, and I think the desire is even stronger for ladies! But what’s the danger in desiring marriage more than you desire the return of Christ? Well, you might be very tempted to resort to sinful ways of getting the attention of the opposite sex, or you might settle for the first person who shows interest even if that person doesn’t have the makings of a great spouse according to biblical standards.

            Anything that we might desire more than the return of Christ will bring along with it strong temptations to disobey Christ’s commands. And so, if we can set our hope fully on the return of Christ, we will find ourselves preparing for that moment more than any other, which in turn will lead us to live in the proper way.

            But how exactly do we see to it that our hope is set fully on the return of Christ? That’s what Peter tells us how to do in the first part of verse 13. He uses an interesting word picture in the first phrase of the verse. In Greek, it literally says “gird up (or pull together) the loins of your mind.” He’s referring to the way that the Jewish people would adjust their clothing when they needed to get down to work rather than leisure.

            The typical outer garment for a Jewish person was a long robe that stretched all the way down to the feet. When a person was getting ready to do something active, something that might require more freedom of movement, they would pull up the bottom of that robe and tuck it into their belt so it wouldn’t get in the way of their feet and trip them up. That action was similar to what we might do when we roll up our sleeves if we are about to do something dirty, or when a track athlete removes his or her warm-ups to get ready for an event. So we might say that the idea is that we need to pull our thoughts together so that none of them trip us up.

            This statement is a call for us to carefully assess the way that we think about every part of our lives. We don’t want to leave any loose ends in our thinking that might trip us up. So for example, perhaps a person might be thinking in a biblical way about how to start a family, but he’s not thinking biblically about how to grow his business, so consequently he gets tripped up – he starts to pursue some unethical and sinful ways to do business.

            Or perhaps a person thinks in a biblical way about how to work for his boss, but he’s not thinking biblically about something like retirement, so he becomes greedy and falls in love with money. So as we look toward the future, we don’t want to set our hope on Christ’s return in only three fourths of our lives or any other fraction. We want to pull together all the loose ends of our thinking so that none of them trip us up.

            Peter also tells us that part of setting our hope fully on Christ’s return is to be sober-minded. That statement emphasizes clear thinking – careful reflection on life that is not clouded by ignorance or any of the other hindrances that might characterize those who don’t know God’s message to mankind.

            We are not in that predicament, are we? We know God’s word, his message or revelation to mankind. We know his commands, and so we have a clear guide to know what is right and wrong. We know about his plan for the future, and so we have a clear view of where human history is headed and how we can be prepared for what’s to come.

We are not lost in some fog of uncertainty or ignorance. God has given us a clear model for how we should live, and that’s what Peter goes on to emphasize in verses 14 to 16.

2. Live by the pattern laid out by God, not your own passions (vv. 14-16)

            In verses 14 through 16, Peter points out that just as it is normal and appropriate for children to imitate their parents, we too, as children of God, should imitate our heavenly father [READ vv. 14-16].

            The word “conformed” in verse 14 gives us an interesting word picture, in my opinion. The Greek term is the root word for our English word “schematic.” A schematic is like a diagram or a blueprint; diagrams of electrical circuits in particular are often called “schematics.”

            I think that connection can offer us a helpful paraphrase of this statement: “Don’t follow the diagram or the blueprint drawn up by the passions of your former ignorance.” As we are building our lives we need to follow a different blueprint, a different pattern – and that pattern is God’s own holiness.

            The fundamental idea of holiness is the idea of uniqueness; something that is separated out by itself because it has a unique and special quality to it. God has a unique and special quality to him no matter how you think about him. He is unique in his power, his knowledge, his eternality, and his wisdom. He is certainly also unique in the way that he interacts with others, because he always treats others in ways that are right and proper.

            We can’t really imitate God in terms of his power, for example, because we simply don’t have the capacity to be Almighty. But we certainly can imitate him in the way that we treat others, and that idea is really what the Bible is getting at when it calls us to be holy. Compared to the way that unbelievers treat other people, we should treat other people in a way that is unique and different, with a higher and more noble and beautiful quality to it.

            We should treat other people the right way, but perhaps what truly makes us unique and different is that we can treat other people the right way for the right reasons and with the right kind of goals in mind. As Christians, we certainly don’t have a corner on the market when it comes to treating people the right way. Followers of other religions and even people who are irreligious can and do treat other people with kindness and fairness.

            But what sets us apart as Christians is that we can treat people the right way for the right kind of reasons and with the right kind of goals in mind. We can treat people the right way not just out of habit or to conform to tradition as Midwesterners or something like that, but as a true expression of the character that the Holy Spirit is carving out within us. We can treat other people the right way not from a motivation of what we might get from them, but simply because they’re people made in the image of God and because it’s honoring to God to act that way.

            We can treat other people the right way without trying to satisfy any misguided notion that doing so will earn us favor in the eyes of God. Above all, I would say that our worldview and spiritual resources as Christians empower us to be able to treat all kinds of people the right way in all kinds of circumstances. Do we always do that? Of course not, but we are empowered to do so by the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

            Finally, please notice how Peter supports his call for us to imitate the holiness of God. First, he appeals to us as obedient children, which reminds us that it is simply normal and appropriate for us to imitate our father. But the real bottom line is seen in verse 16 – we have an express, written commandment from God to be holy because he is holy.

            Let us never forget that as Christians, the word of God is to be our final word for all matters of faith and practice – what we believe and how we conduct ourselves. The Bible is true and it is in fact a message from God to mankind, and though we can call God our father and Christ our brother without stretching the truth even a little bit, we must never forget that God is also our master. When we learn of his commands, we have one obligation – obey! We are not free to disobey his commands without the risk of facing his displeasure and discipline.

            And since his commands are recorded for us right here in the Bible, we also have no excuse for not knowing about them. As in our own courtrooms here in the United States, being ignorant of the law is no excuse for breaking the law. In the next section of 1 Peter, we will learn that it is in fact a fearful thing to live with the knowledge that even though we have God as our father, that fact does not exempt us from an evaluation of our lives when we meet him someday.

            It is so important for us, then, to learn God’s commands for us in the Bible so that we can obey. It is imperative for us to exalt the Bible in our own opinions so that we don’t treat its teachings as just one option among many for how we could live, but as the final word for how we should conduct ourselves in this world.

What's My Motivation?--Eternal Security series

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.

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!

"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!

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.