The Persevering Christian

If God saves by grace, through faith, because of Christ alone, thereby securing our eternal salvation for us, can we fall away from the faith and be lost? No. Were it not for the preserving grace of God would we fall away from the faith? Yes. This begs the question, “If God is doing the saving and preserving, why then do we as Christians need to struggle against sin and persevere in the faith?”

Like many other mysteries in the Scriptures the preservation of God and the perseverance of the saints are held in tension. We are perfectly righteous through the imputed righteousness of Christ yet still unrighteous in many of our ways. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus yet still part of the Church Militant on this earth. We are eternally secure in Christ yet we are warned to make our calling and election sure. We have a salvation finished in Christ and a salvation being worked out in us. How then are we to understand this tension?

The “called, chosen and faithful” are between the cross and heaven, between the “already” and the “not yet”, secure in our positional standing in Christ yet struggling with the practical holiness God expects from His chosen people. The Latin phrase for all of this is simul iustus et peccator; “At the same time righteous and a sinner” or saints and sinners at the same time.

If this makes you a bit spiritually schizophrenic you’re not alone. John Stott in his commentary of Romans identified in Chapter 7:21-25 two egos, two laws, two cries, and two slaveries working in Paul at the same time. He says of the two egos, When I want to do right, evil lies close at hand (v.21). Of the two laws Paul says, For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law . . . the law of sin (vs. 21, 23). Paul cries out, What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul’s final words of struggle are I myself (autos ego, the authentic regenerate Paul) serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh (sarx, the false and fallen Paul) I serve the law of sin.

Regeneration happens in an instant and justification in a moment - sanctification takes a lifetime. In the time it takes blink an eye one supernatural touch from the Holy Spirit awakens us from the dead that we might hear and believe the gospel. It takes the means of grace ministered to us every seven days our whole lives for us to grow up into Christ by dying to sin that we might live unto God.

On this trip from earth to heaven from Sinai to Calvary to Zion “The only haven of safety is in the mercy of God, as manifested in Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete.” John Calvin

Law and Gospel

American Christianity is dying. Biblical faith and practice of ages past is now being rejected wholesale as not relevant to this generation. This impending death of the evangelical nation is evidenced in many ways. The clearest proof, however, of the decline of Christian faith in America can be found in how God is worshiped and what is being preached in our churches?

These two things actually go together since the way people worship says more about what they really believe about God than any creed they might confess or profession of faith they might have made. But what people believe and how they worship comes from the content of what they hear preached as “gospel.” For many they hear law or gospel. For most it’s the law as gospel. When in fact, what should be preached is law and gospel.

Preaching law or gospel produces legalists or libertines. The “works righteousness” legalists in the long sad line of Pelagius, Erasmus and Arminius are convinced that what God commands them to do they can do. Just give them the Ten Commandments or any other list of things to do to please God and they are set; they know what the goal is and they are confident that with a little help from the grace of God they can get it done. On the contrary, libertines simply use grace as an excuse to sin thereby giving evidence of being unconverted.

When the law is preached as gospel you will find people seeking a better life “in Adam” not necessarily a new life “in Christ.” The law as gospel is marked by good works and obedience to spiritual laws or principles designed to "Change Your Life!" Faith and action based upon these laws releases the power and favor of God into the human condition. This is heralded as “good news” when in fact it’s not the “gospel” at all. When human initiative is the contingency to get God to do what He really wants to do, that He can’t do unless we exercise some spiritual law that lets God be God, its spiritual fraud. There is no gospel in "What would Jesus do?

What the Bible teaches is law and gospel. The loud thunder of the law is seldom preached anymore. The law is “bad news” for the sinner. There is a holy God and by His holy law we are judged sinners, condemned to die, and suffer His judgment. We are “dead in our trespasses and sin” and we can’t do a thing about it. This is really “bad news.” The law either drives us to despair or to Christ who did for us what we could not do and would not do for ourselves. The gospel isn’t a “new and improved” us. The gospel is Christ dying for our sins and being raised again for our justification.