Where is our security? Where is our hope?

Now that I am in my fifties, I am learning things about life that I never imagined I would learn.

My least favorite thing is that people whom I thought were believers in Jesus can fall away from faith.

"Once saved, always saved," they used to tell us, and Eternal Security was the doctrine of all doctrines.  "Did he ever make a profession of faith?" people would ask when someone's unchurched relative died, and everyone hung on a positive answer, believing that a raised hand at a VBS event when he was seven years old is absolutely sufficient to cover for years of rebellion and dissipation, culminating in a tragic and untimely death.  Instead of life insurance, it's eternity insurance, and it's quick, easy and cheap... free, in fact: a free gift.  Say the sinner's prayer, write your name and a date in the back of a Bible if you're particularly concerned, and go on your merry way.  You're fine.  You're covered.

But are you?  Are you really?  It would be nice, but can you claim that you're saved, that anyone is saved, if there is no evidence that the Spirit of Christ is present in the life at stake?

We don't save ourselves.  We don't save ourselves by doing good works.  We don't save ourselves by saying a particular prayer.  We don't save ourselves by walking an aisle or making an informed decision.  We don't save ourselves.

God saves us.  Only God can open sin-blinded eyes and move a soul to be awestruck at His glory.  Only God can cut out a heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.  Only God can awaken a mortal soul from the deadly stupor of sin and make it long for something better.  Only God calls and draws people into His kingdom.  Only God.

Why should He save me, and not someone else?  Why should He enable me to perceive things about Himself that someone I deeply love is simply unable to see?

And why do people--who seemed to see and believe at one time--fall away?  I hate this.  I really hate it.  I cannot tell you how much I hate it.

I went through a phase where I did not believe in Eternal Security, because I saw random people falling away, and it seemed obvious that "Eternal Security," at least the way I heard it taught in certain Baptist circles, could not be true.  Like "Free Will," and, "The Trinity" -- "Eternal Security" is not a term that the Bible uses as such.  Those of us who grew up in church must be careful to separate what the Bible actually says from what it does not say, although we have been taught something over and over again.

The Bible says nobody can snatch a believer from the hands of God (John 10:27-28).  In context, you see that these believers listen to Jesus' voice, and He knows them, and they follow Him.  They listen.  They follow.  He knows them.  A real and substantive relationship exists.  This is not a hastily procured contract for eternity insurance.  This is a covenant of love.  Jesus says, "I give them eternal life."  Notice, He does not say, "I will give them eternal life in the future."  He says, "I give them eternal life."  He gives eternal life immediately, when His Spirit takes up residence in the temple of our bodies.  The immortal Spirit of God comes into us and grants spiritual life where before there was no life, only death left by the curse of sin that infects every soul born into the physical world.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved.  ~Ephesians 2:4-5

This transaction comes from Him, and only from Him.  We were dead in the natural sin-state that infects all of creation (Ephesians 2:1-3), but God, by His great mercy and love, graciously gave us life by joining us with the eternal, immortal Spirit of Christ.  He knows us.  He calls us.  He quickens us, gives us life, awakens us to Himself.

When this happens--a real thing, a spiritual birth, an implantation of everlasting spiritual life by the Spirit of God--then I think it is true that nobody can undo it.  Once a person has received eternal life, been indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, a forever miracle has occurred, and there is no going back.  Eternal life is eternal.

Paul writes in Romans 8:35-39 that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When God calls us, and justifies us through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and indwells us by His powerful and precious Holy Spirit, it is forever.  He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).  He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6).  He will transform us into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).  He will present us blameless before the glory of God with great joy (Jude 24-25).  He initiates it.  He continues it.  He completes it.  He does it all.  Our job is to believe and to abide in Him. (John 15).  But even when we are weak, He is strong.  His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

It's His power.  His sufficiency.  This is why God could say to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?" (Job 1:8).  God knew Job's faith would prevail, because God Himself was in Job, strengthening Job when he had no strength of his own.  The book of Job is a display of the sustaining grace of God, the power no evil can overcome.  There is a children's song that I listen to almost every morning (because it is in my CD alarm clock), and it says, "As I hold onto my faith, Jesus, You are holding onto me."  This is a beautiful and true picture.  I am able to endure and persevere and keep believing when it seems that despair should overwhelm me, because the Spirit of Christ in me will not abandon me.  He holds me together.  He is in me, but even more reassuring, I am in Him.

So what about those who fall away?  Why do they?

I think they must not have received the Holy Spirit.  If they had, they would be transformed by Him, and He would not leave them, and He would complete His work in them.  These are all promises, and God always keeps His promises.  John writes that those who leave the fellowship were not of us, and their leaving shows that they were not children of God (1 John 2:19).  This is one of those awful passages, on the order of (but not quite as horrible as) Hebrews 6:4-8.  But the Holy Spirit of Christ never leaves His true children.  And we can always pray for those who do not believe, hoping that the Lord will call them, too, and enlighten them and save them.  One of my favorite promises of God is in Luke 11:13--our heavenly Father delights to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.

The Lord's desire is to save.  He takes no pleasure in death (Ezekiel 33:11).  His entire mission is to bring life and hope back to a broken world (John 3:17).  He offers the water of life (Isaiah 55:1), and calls all who will come to partake of it (Revelation 22:17).  He is more merciful than we can comprehend.  He knows that we are dust (Psalm 103:13-14).  He heals our waywardness, even our apostasy (Hosea 14:4).  He understands our weakness (Hebrews 4:15-16), and He wields powerful wrath against the enemy who deceives vulnerable mortals and leads them astray (Psalm 60:11-12).  He hates what sin does to His beautiful creation, and He is mighty to save (Zephaniah 3:15-17).  He is not a weak deity up in heaven wringing His hands in despair over the state of the world (the way we do).  He is joyful, almighty and confident that His plans and purposes will succeed (Psalm 115:3, Isaiah 46:9-10).  Eternal glory is the end of the story.

It will be okay.

Strengthen the weak hands 

and make firm the feeble knees.  

Say to those who have an anxious heart, 

"Be strong!  Fear not!  

Behold, your God will come with vengeance, 

with the recompense of God.  

He will come and save you."  

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, 

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  

Then shall the lame man leap like a deer, 

and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

For waters break forth in the wilderness, 

and streams in the desert; 

the burning sands shall become a pool, 

and the thirsty ground springs of water.

~Isaiah 35:3-7a

There is yet hope for the blind and the deaf.  The living water of the Spirit of Christ is a well of life, reviving the hearts of men.  He will come and save us.  Oh, come, Lord Jesus.