Kept and Keeping On: Persevering in the Power of the Saviour 3 (Perseverance and Conclusion) - GBC Bulletin Column #61

Someone who hasn’t really been born again will take the Bible’s teaching on the Christian’s preservation and use it as an excuse to live a sinful lifestyle. These are those who would “continue in sin that grace may abound” (Rom. 6:1). Jude spoke of them as “ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). Although they enjoy some of the benefits of attaching themselves to God’s family, they don’t actually belong to it, and demonstrate this by bearing bad fruit (Hebrews 6:4-8). Likewise there are those who profess to be Christians but lack any evidence of biblical conversion, who would do well to take seriously Paul’s command: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5).  

My purpose here though is not to talk about false converts, but those who have indeed been born again. All who have been adopted into the family (Ephesians 1:5) will live as sons of the Father and those who heartily declare “Jesus is Lord”, will act as citizens of his kingdom (Col. 1:13). They do not settle into complacency as to their growth in grace and the knowledge of Christ, but rather strive to heed Peter’s words: “be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall” (2 Peter 1:10). Kept for Christ, they keep themselves “in the love of God” (Jude 21).

This is not at all to say that we who are trusting Christ are without sin, but we confess our sins and are cleansed of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9), we no longer live in slavery to sin but submit to the power of the Spirit (Romans 8), and so we “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and… run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Right relationship with God does not mean that we cease to struggle with sin, but rather that we begin to struggle with it. In this struggle we shouldn’t be dominated by worries about our proneness to wonder, but by rejoicing in God’s power to save.

Preservation and perseverance bring together the biblical concepts of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, but that is not to say the two are complete equals. God transcends all that we are and his works surpass all that we could ever do. We can only persevere as saints if we have been preserved as sons, and actually, even our perseverance is a demonstration of God’s work, not our own. That’s why Paul said “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

A few questions by way of conclusion may help to further put things in perspective: 

• Having been brought to rebirth by the Holy Spirit “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13), can we then be “unborn” again?
• Having received eternal life, is it possible then to eternally perish (John 3:16)?
• Having saved his lost sheep, is Christ the Good Shepherd going to let them jump out of his hand (John 10)? 
• If before the foundations of the world, God chose a people for himself and if in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God has accomplished the salvation of that people, and if he draws them to himself by the Holy Spirit in repentance and faith, is he then going to let them take control and perish eternally?

The way we answer these questions does not reflect what we believe about ourselves as people who are fallen, but what we believe about God who is faithful. The term “perseverance of the saints” is good, so far as it goes, but if we wish to be truly God-centred we might do better to speak more of the “power of the Saviour.”

This is from the unedited version of an article published in the August 2014 edition of Grace Magazine. This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) on 12 October 2014.