The Power of God

Your assurance of salvation rests on two cornerstones. The first cornerstone of assurance is the evidence that you have truly believed. This was treated at some length in lesson 1. The evidence comes from the four tests of salvation.

The second cornerstone of assurance is the reliability of God's promise to save all who believe. It is affirmed by the doctrine known as "eternal security" or "the perseverance of the saints." The reliability of this promise is a corollary of the power, love, and truthfulness of God. Some groups, including those in the Wesleyan tradition, deny eternal security. They say you can lose your salvation, but we Baptists do not agree. We view this doctrine as a key truth.

The power of God. To comfort His disciples lest they fear for their eternal security, Jesus taught them that they are held firmly in His hand (John 10:28-29). His hand holds us also, as well as all others who believe. His power is greater than the power of anyone who might seek to rob us of our salvation. "Man" is italicized because it is not in the original. Our chief enemy is not a man but Satan, and the verse teaches that we are safe even from Satan's power. "Neither shall any [including Satan] pluck them out of my hand."

We are not only in Jesus' hand, but also in the Father's. How is that possible? Jesus' answer is, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). In other words, they are "one God." The persons of the Trinity, each being infinite in power and knowledge, cannot do otherwise than work together in perfect cooperation. Thus, we are held jointly by the Father and the Son. The wording suggests that when the Father gave us to the Son, He Himself did not let go of us. We are in the hands of both.

Jude 24 also directs us to see the power of God—not His power against our enemies so much as His power against our own weakness and frailty. Once we are in the hand of God, no enemy can take us away, and also we cannot remove ourselves. We are just not strong enough to get out. Thus, we cannot lose our salvation even if we sin.

The Love of God

If we could lose our salvation, God would be a poor father even by human standards. We as human parents do not disown our children should they happen to disobey us. If we did, the streets would be full of homeless urchins. Instead, we persist as long as possible in every measure that might help our children do right. What we can do for our children is limited, however. But what God can do for His children is unlimited. There is no sin that a wayward child of God can commit that his infinite, all-powerful Father cannot correct and eliminate by means of chastisement. Thus, since God our Father is perfect in love (Psa. 103:13; Heb. 12:6), He will, if we do wrong, chasten us rather than eject us from His family. We cannot do anything foolish or sinful enough to forfeit our salvation.

I can testify how effective God’s chastening can be. As a young man, I lived for the Lord, but in the course of my education I turned against Him. Like Nebuchadnezzar, I spent many years under the chastening hand of God, and eventually He brought me to the place of admitting that my thinking and my way of life were foolish. In terms of determination and intellectual self-assurance, I am a very strong person. So if God could break me, he can break anybody.

That the love of God guarantees our eternal security is taught also in Philippians (Phil. 1:6). In other words, God does not stop His projects when they are half-finished. When He is done fashioning us to His liking, we will all be images of Christ (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18). Will we then be all exactly alike? No, that would be a rather dull prospect. Christ is infinite God. Therefore, within Himself He is the fulfillment of all the shades and types of human potential. Therefore, we can be like Christ and still be different from each other. Look at the wonderful diversity in creation—at the many bizarre kinds of animals and flying beasts. God loves variety.

The Truthfulness of God

Our eternal security is guaranteed not only by the power and love of God, but also by His perfect truthfulness. The impossibility that God would ever renege on a promise is stressed in the many texts (2 Tim. 1:12; 1 Pet. 4:19; Heb. 6:10-12, 17-19; Heb. 10:23).

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between God and Satan is that God is Truth, whereas Satan is a liar. Jesus said of Satan, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). The way Satan drew Adam and Eve into sin was by telling them lies, including the greatest of all lies, that God is a liar. Doubting God is the beginning of sin and rebellion. That is why God puts such a high premium on faith. Faith is just believing God. We cannot obtain salvation except through faith (Eph. 2:8); we cannot walk daily with God and receive His blessings except by faith (Gal. 3:11); we cannot do the work of God except by faith (Matt. 17:20).

To believe God is hardly unreasonable. How could an infinite, all-powerful God be otherwise than truthful? Lying always proceeds from a position of weakness. Weakness uses lying to accomplish purposes that it cannot achieve more directly. For example, to win the support and love of Adam and Eve, Satan told them lies undermining their respect for God. Why did he adopt this strategy to gain worship? Because he was powerless to make creatures of his own who would by nature love him. But God is different. There is no purpose that He can accomplish only through deceit. Therefore, it is foolish not to believe Him.

And what has He said (John 3:16)? The verb “have” in the phrase “have everlasting life” is present subjunctive. It indicates that eternal life is the present possession of anyone who meets the condition of believing. In other words, if you believe in Jesus, you have eternal life now. We find the same promise in other presentations of the gospel (John 5:24; 1 John 5:11-13). But it could not be truly said that we have eternal life now if we could lose it in the future. If we could ever cross over some boundary of permissible sin into impermissible sin, causing us to forfeit our salvation, then all the benefits we enjoy now, including new life in Christ, might be of temporary duration. They could not be described as eternal. But since our life now is nothing other than eternal, we know that our salvation is secure forever. We have eternal security.