17 Feb 2024
Many Christians asked how they can be sure, that after having started their Christian way, that they are going to arrive at the goal in the celestial city. There are those who proclaim, ‘Once saved, always saved’, without elaborating on the qualifying factors of this statement.
John Bunyan, in his ‘Pilgrim’s Progress, suggests in this book that there is a road leading to condemnation even from the very gates of the celestial city – so how can believers be confident that they will persevere to the end. During the Reformation in the state of Venice, a lawyer from the town in this state who had embraced the Christian faith of the Reformation appeared before the Inquisition, denied the faith he had confessed, made a public recantation, and died later in the same year in deep melancholy. Many preachers in the following century made frequent reference to the awesome possibility of failing to persevere by illustrating it from the life of this man.
We must also face the question which faces us in the light of the unhappy ending which some of our own contemporaries may have made to their spiritual pilgrimage. If this can happen to them, how do I know it will not happen to me?
This question becomes more relevant for believers in these last days – particularly as we realise that the number of martyrs in this generation exceeds even the total number of martyrs throughout the history of the church; the upheavals, unrest, calamities, climate changes and catastrophes in the form of earthquakes, wars, the moral decline and compromises, among many, would mean more pressure and ‘spiritual attacks’ arising in societies and churches. The Bible also speaks of the end times and the tribulations which would be intense; reference was also made to ‘Antichrist’ and increasing activities of Satan and false teachings and false prophets, which would amount to a severe test of the loyalty of God’s people to Him and the faith (See the book of Revelation).
The New Testament warns us by precept and example that some professing Christians may not persevere in their profession of Christ to the end of their lives. It seems that more than one of Paul’s companions not only deserted him, but deserted Christ as well.
Jesus, in the parable of the Sower and the Soils, points out that only one of the categories of hearers bears fruit and perseveres. All the others are eventually swallowed up and destroyed by the malignant influences which militate against Christian perseverance
When we read through the letter to the Hebrews, we cannot but be astonished, by the way it is so regularly punctuated by words of warning and exhortations to persevere. This was clearly a matter of concern for the writers of the New Testament.
On the other hand, there are strong, almost extreme assurances given to believers in the New Testament which appear to stress the absolute certainty of Christian perseverance and that no amount of future danger will prevent the Christian from running the race to the end.
Jesus himself said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30). Nothing can be plainer than the language used by Jesus in John 10.
The Apostle Paul writes that he is ‘sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ’ (Phil.1:6). Here of course Paul is speaking in a corporate, not an individual context, but that context must of necessity include the experience of individuals. Certainly, it is of individuals Paul speaks in his climactic words, at the end of Romans 8, where, challenging all the powers on earth, in heaven, and under the earth, he speaks of the certainty he has that nothing can separate God’s children from Christ’s love. Christ’s death, properly understood, guarantees perseverance.
God has chosen us in Christ
All the blessings of the gospel flow from this fountain, and assume the certainty of perseverance. When God’s choice is described as predestination the issue really seems to be beyond doubt unless the purpose of God is to fail. He has not only set his love on us but determined our eternal destiny as his people – a destiny of glorification and therefore of perseverance.
Note that there is no such thing in Scripture as perseverance without faith. Apostle Peter also says that those who have faith will persevere.
God indwells his people by the Spirit
Jesus promised that his Spirit, ‘the Counsellor, is given to be with us forever’ (John 14:16)…and he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
Christ intercedes for the Christian
Christ not only died, he was raised from the dead and is at God’s right hand making intercession (Rom. 8:34). The author of Hebrews writes that Christ lives for ever to intercede for us (Heb, 7:25). He is our heavenly Advocate, and our Lord’s burden is, at least in part, for the perseverance of his disciples so that they may persevere to the end and their witness may be preserved (John 17:11,15).
Perseverance and faith, therefore, or perseverance and the Christian’s duty to battle on in the fight of faith, are never separated or polarised in the Bible. We persevere through faith and never apart from it (see Rev. 12:11).
But there is no blanket guarantee of perseverance. There is no mere doctrine of ‘the security’ of the believer, as though God’s keeping of us took place irrespective of the lives we live. Indeed, there is no such thing in the New Testament as a believer whose perseverance is so guaranteed that he can afford to ignore the warning notes which are sounded so frequently.
It is never enough to fix our gaze only on the assurance which we find in Scripture. We must give our attention to two other matters: the hindrances which persevering Christians must face, and the means which God has ordained for our continuing in the faith.
We have shared much previously on the matters of hindrances and the means God has ordained to ensure that we continue in the faith. Among them, we referred to the ‘enemies’ of the negative influence of the world, the attacks and manipulations of the evil one, and the problem of the flesh; we also noted the provision of the Scripture, the Holy Spirit, the fellowship of the church, prayer and encouragement among the brethren.
But perhaps we can highlight and reemphasise some important areas:
There is the hindrance of a heart which does not allow the Word of God to penetrate, and is therefore prey for Satan. Some people never really persevere because they have never even begun to allow divine truth to break up the hardened soul of their lives; some are not even willing to take pains to know the divine truth accurately and the Bible is gathering dust on their shelves.
Some people are hardened in their hearts by the very activity of listening to the Word of God (in sermons, books, bible study) but not hearing it with faith (cf. Heb. 4:2). In the lives of such it has no opportunity to ‘bear fruit and prevail’.
To receive the Word of God only with joy, but not with the experience of sorrow as God put his finger on various areas of our sin and failures, does not augur well and may indicate that such ones may well never really persevere. If we think that Christian living is all joy and happiness, we are heading for a rude awakening.
The third cause of failure to persevere is locate in what our Lord Jesus terms the ‘thorny soil’. The thorns are “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things” (Mark 4:19). These ‘choke the word, and it proves unfruitful’.
All of us, whatever our abilities and place in society may know the worries of this life, the feeling that ‘the grass is greener on the other side’. But these deviations are fatal to the influence of God’s Word on the human heart, and will choke it.
Jesus is emphasising that these are features of our hearts which we have failed to deal with from the beginning of our reception of God’s Word. Their effects may appear later on, but the reason they ruin any likelihood of our perseverance is that they were not rooted out from the start (cf. mortification of sin and lusts of the flesh).
The means of perseverance
Here we will state them briefly as we have covered them extensively in the past:
The Word of God
God’s Word gives us heart when we go through periods of trial or days of spiritual dryness. It provides us with ‘precious and very great promises’ from God (2Peter 1:4) to encourage and to assure us as we battle on for Christ.
Obedience of duties to God
Nothing is more tempting when we go through ‘the blues’ than to neglect prayer and God’s Word, witnessing and worship. It is incumbent upon us therefore, in season and out of season, to bind to our consciences the duties of our individual Christian lives.
Christian Fellowship
Many have heard of the illustration of a live coal separated from the others in a fire – it will gradually lose its heat and become dead. God has so constituted us Christians as Christians that to be what God intends we need fellowship. Worshipping, praying, witnessing with others, having social interactions on mental and spiritual levels and even in the general gifts of God’s grace, are some of the means God has promised to employ to keep us marching to the heavenly city.
Our spiritual progress depends in measure on our being able to minister to others, and our receiving ministry from others. We are members of the body of Christ; the body moves, lives and grows together.
All these means above enable us to persevere to the end.
(B)
We have shared previously on the above issue. We noted that although the Bible has many passages on “Assurance” and God’s encouragement to keep his people until the end, the Bible also speaks of “Warnings” on Apostasy, and that the dangers of falling away from the faith are very real indeed.
We saw also the hindrances to ‘perseverance’, and also the means that help God’s people to persevere. We noted also the intimate relationship between perseverance and faith; perseverance requires God’s people to continue to walk by faith – and the faithful would persevere to the end.
We also considered how the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, has been given to believers to empower them, to enable them to persevere and to be transformed into the image of the Son. Also, we noted how the ascended Christ, at the right hand of God the Father, is continually interceding for us, and the heavenly Father overseeing, and overruling circumstances and events to ensure that all things work together for good for His people.
But the process to persevere is long and hard, given the fallen world we live in, our indwelling sin, the formidable ‘enemy’ to battle; to continue to live by faith is very difficult and daunting, especially when we feel so ‘helpless’ and ‘weak’ and also when the circumstances seem so ‘negative’ and ‘hopeless’ (from our perspective).
But interestingly, Scripture reminds us that “God’s grace is sufficient for us, for His power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Being divinely empowered so that one grows stronger in Christ has nothing necessarily to do with performing spectacularly, or successfully (by human standards). In the Magnificat in Mary’s response to God, her praise of God also indicated that God had scattered those who are proud and lifted up those who are humble.
Being empowered by God has everything to do with knowing and feeling that one is weak. In this sense, we grow stronger only by growing weaker. God-given strength or power is a matter of being enabled by Christ himself, through the Spirit, to keep on keeping on in personal holiness before God, personal communing with God, personal service of God, and personal action for God (and this is essentially what perseverance in Christ means).
No doubt we need discipline to keep on going on in the pursuit of holiness, in the continual communion with God in prayer, in His Word, in serving him and acting for him, but we need to realise fully that it is God’s enabling, his grace, his Spirit, his intervention and intercession for us, which make it possible for us to endure, persevere, with joy in the midst of sorrow, with hope in the midst of apparent ‘despair’ individually, and corporately as his people (hence the need for Christian fellowship in Christ).
Perseverance involves: keeping on however weak one feels; keeping on even in situations where what is being asked for seems to be beyond one, and one does so in the confidence that this is how God means it to be. For only at the point where the insufficiency of natural strength is faced, felt, and admitted does divine empowering begin.
So the power path is humble dependence on God to channel his power to the depths of our being so as to make and keep us faithful to our calling in sanctity and service. With that we depend on him to channel his power through us into others’ lives to help them move forward at their points of need.
The power pitfall is self-reliance and failure to see that without Christ we can do nothing that is spiritually significant; divine strength is perfected in conscious human weakness!