Hebrews Lesson 107
NKJ Acts
Open your Bibles to John 5:42. Since we are talking about eternal security
and the whole issue of the gospel…last time I mentioned this and I didn’t get
my focus on the right verse. In John
A man is on a desert island. He doesn’t know anything about Christianity
at all. He doesn’t know anything about
the Bible. A bottle floats up and it has
a piece of paper in it. Most of the text
is washed out, but a little bit is left.
In John 5, did I get the verse wrong again? No, I didn’t.
I thought I copied it in my notes.
I got it wrong again. I can’t
believe I did this.
Jesus says, “If you believe, I will give you eternal
life.”
That’s all it says.
It’s a short verse. It’s not
NKJ John
Maybe it’s
NKJ John
Apparently what Zane sets up is
that he has this passage from John 6:43-47.
But the only thing that is visible…everything else is wiped out or
washed out except for the phrase “Jesus therefore answered and said to them”...
then verse 47…
Now how many of you all (now
here is an interesting little side note) have a New American Standard or an
NIV? This is confession time. See you don’t have “in Me” in your text…so not
only does the illustration kind of fall apart in terms of its theology, but
Zane’s a Majority Text guy. It’s got to
be the Majority Text that washes up on the island. If he gets the NIV or NASB, the guy can’t get
saved at all. But his point is that
Jesus offers eternal life and that this is all you need to get saved. There is no mention of the cross. There is no mention that Christ died for your
sins. There is no mention of anything.
All you need to know and the way he sets it up and describes it in print
is that he reads this and then he makes the statement and somehow the man is
convinced that this Jesus can actually give him and can guarantee him that he
has eternal life.
Now my question is how can
this guy on the island distinguish between Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the gardener
and Esa the Moslem.
He can’t because there is no content there. The hole in the logic is that somehow he is
convinced (as Hodges states it somehow he becomes convinced) that this Jesus
can guarantee the promise. The “somehow”
is your logical hole because the somehow means that in some way he is told
something about who this Jesus is. That
would include His deity and that He could do that. That’s what is implied there. He is not just leaving
out the Holy Spirit; He is leaving out the cross completely. That’s the issue.
That’s why this guy Tom
Siegel up in
The other nuance that is
developing in this debate and this discussion is that eternal life (the eternal
part of the phrase eternal life) means that when you understand that Jesus is giving
you eternal life what that means is if you don’t understand that it’s eternal in
the sense that it can’t be taken from you or can’t be lost then if you aren’t
believing that it’s eternal life that you are getting then you aren’t saved. In other words (in the most extreme form of
that) position was stated in a paper at the Grace Evangelical Society last
year, though the author later backed off of it.
See one of the reasons these kinds
of conferences is for guys…it’s like a professional society. You present your paper for peer review. Sometimes your theological ideas are wacky.
Your peers come along and
knock you down and say, “Well, you’re missing this and you’re missing that. This is
wrong.”
So he did back off of
this. But some of these guys are clearly
saying that if you don’t have a sense…the phrase they’ll use is that assurance
is of the essence of saving faith and that if you’re not assured of your salvation
which we have studied subjective realization that you can’t lose your
salvation. If you don’t have an
assurance of salvation, then you were never ever saved. That causes all kinds of problems;
theologically I think…many, many problems.
That is why we are studying this
whole issue of eternal security because this is at the heart of this issue. Now our starting point was in our passage in
Hebrews 7:25.
NKJ Hebrews
He being Jesus.
is also able to save to the
uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make
intercession for them.
The word “uttermost” has the
idea to save completely, totally. Jesus
is able to do this interestingly enough in Hebrews 7 because He’s eternal. That’s been the whole argument here, that He
is eternal and has an eternal priesthood.
Therefore because He has an eternal priesthood He can save
eternally. That is a basis for
understanding eternal security, but it is not a basis for becoming saved. The object of faith at salvation isn’t eternal
life. The object of faith is Christ who
died on the cross for your sins.
That is what we find in
passages such as I Corinthians 15. Turn
with me there. You ought to have these
verses underlined. Paul is talking to
the Corinthians. He says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare to
you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which
you stand,
So he is getting ready (or as
we say in
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:2 by which also you are saved, if you
hold fast that word which I preached to you
Word being synonymous to
gospel, the message.
-- unless you believed in vain.
This is a second class
condition indicating it’s not – unless you believed in vain, but you didn’t
believe in vain that is.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:3 For I delivered to you
See delivering to you…how did he deliver to you? He proclaimed it.
He spoke the message, the Word. Here he is giving the content of his gospel
message
first of all that which I also
received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:4 and that He was buried, and that He
rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,
So he goes on. Everything he says here is not central to the
gospel because the construction continues.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.
So you see “that he was seen by
Peter” is still part of the sentence and the object of what he explained to
them. So in one sense what he is
explaining here is the mechanics of how salvation was accomplished.
But what is it that you
believe? Well, let’s turn to another
passage. Turn to 1 Thessalonians 4. Move on passed Ephesians, Colossians, to 1
Thessalonians 4 – a passage that is cited at almost every funeral. Verse 14 is the key passage.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians
That is the believers who have died physically.
lest you sorrow as others who have
no hope.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died
and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
A first class condition –
here it is assuming it’s true.
What is it that you
believe? It’s what’s on the other side
of the “that”. That’s what you believe –
that Jesus died and rose again. You
can’t divorce the message of Jesus’ death on the cross from what a person
believes when they are saved, for that is the issue.
One more passage that I want
to go to is in I Corinthians 1. Once again it’s a context here of division and
Paul says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians
Now that doesn’t mean that
Paul wasn’t supposed to baptize. It’s that
it wasn’t his primary mission. His
primary mission was to proclaim the gospel.
His primary mission...God didn’t send him to take up a collection
either. But I Corinthians he takes up a collection for the poor in
He’s not saying “God didn’t
send me to baptize and therefore baptism isn’t for today.”
He is saying, “That wasn’t my
primary objective.”
The primary objective was to
proclaim the gospel, not with wisdom of words.
In other words it’s not based on the rhetorical standards of Greek,
speaking and using the right words and the right style and all these
things.
lest the
cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
That indicates there that the
cross of Christ is a key element in the gospel.
Then in verse 18 he says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians
If there is no message of the
cross, then he is not proclaiming the gospel.
The preaching of the gospel is the message of the cross.
Then skip down to verse
23. He says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians
In verse 17 he is to preach
the gospel. That is further defined in
verse 23 as preaching Christ crucified.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
NKJ 1 Corinthians
The point that he is making
is that he is there to preach the cross.
The cross is at the core of the gospel message because that is what
secures our salvation.
So I find this to be the
oddest piece of logic that some of these people are getting into. You wonder how they...I don’t know, people
get sometimes all messed up and then they come up with some little doctrine
that they think is such a brilliant breakthrough. And then anyone who doesn’t agree with them
gets excluded from fellowship because you don’t agree with my-little-pinhead-doctrine. Every one of us can come up with some little
nuance or shade on some aspect. But, especially when you come up with something
that no one else in church history has ever come up with ...and that doesn’t
mean it’s not right. The Lord knows the
more we probe the depths of Scriptures, pastors and theologians can always put
together and they do put together and come to understand the Scriptures in a
better fashion than maybe it has been understood before. But when no one else has ever emphasized
something that you’re emphasizing, don’t make it the watershed for
fellowship. Don’t make that the
benchmark of orthodoxy. In church
history there has always been a process where the leaders in the church will
debate these issues and work out the kinks among those who are trained and equipped
in the Scriptures. So that is what’s
going on.
One reason eternal security
is such an important issue within the Free Grace Camp and it’s also important
because in the broader scenario of evangelicalism, you have Arminians on the
one hand who don’t believe in eternal security and you have Calvinists (High
Calvinists) on the other hand who don’t believe that you can have an assurance
of your salvation. Yet, the Bible
teaches both.
I pointed out last time that
the difference is this - eternal security is the objective side of the
coin. You know that God promises that if
you’re saved you can never lose that salvation.
Assurance of salvation is the personal subjective side of the coin that
I understand that I am certain of my salvation.
Those are the two sides of the coin.
So even though you have eternal security until you come to understand
it, you may not feel assured of your salvation.
Others may be sure of their salvation now, but they don’t understand
eternal security so they are afraid that if they do something, they can lose
that salvation. That’s true about
Arminians.
So we defined eternal
security as the work of God toward the believer at the instant of faith alone
in Christ alone. It is God’s work, not
our work. We don’t keep ourselves; God
keeps us. In fact as we’re studying all
three members of the trinity keep us. They’re
all involved in keeping us. It’s the
work of God which guarantees that God’s free gift of salvation is eternal and
cannot be lost, terminated, abrogated, nullified, or reversed by any thought,
act or change of belief in the person saved.
Now last time I went through
some introductory concepts talking about the definition, key terms like “once
saved, always saved”. I explained the
difference between assurance and eternal security, the historical development between
High Calvinism and Arminianism and then the problem as it’s developed within High
Calvinism and Lordship salvation.
Now tonight I am looking –
last time we also started looking at how God the Father secures our
salvation.
I’m going to break it down
this way. We are going to look at how God
the Father secures our salvation, how the Son secures our salvation and how God
the Holy Spirit secures our salvation. In
that we’ll look at some basic things that come from the character of God
Himself - that’s true of all three members.
That’s where we’re starting – from the character of God in terms of who
God is before we get into the three Persons.
So the first argument really
comes from the character of God. We have
our essence of God. He’s sovereign; He’s
righteous; He’s just; He’s love; He’s eternal; He’s omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent,
veracity, and immutability. He can’t ever change.
Now I went over this last
time before we finished In His
omniscience God knows all the knowable.
If He knows everything, then He knows every sin that’s going to be
committed in history. So He can design a
solution that takes care of every sin in history.
Now one of the things you may
run into…somebody may say, “Hum, well, He takes care or murder in principle,
but not the individual murders.”
He’s not paying for sins if
He does that. But I have had people try to argue that. He is omniscient so He knows everything.
He is omnipotent which means
that God is able to do what He intends to do.
Omnipotence doesn’t mean that God can do anything at all because God
can’t make a circle square or silly little things like that. Omnipotence means that God is able to do
everything He intends to accomplish. He
is all powerful. So if He plans to solve
the sin problem, He is able to solve the sin problem.
In His omniscience He knows
every sin so it’s paid for and it’s paid for immutably. It never changes. So, all of His aspects of His character are
involved in solving the sin problem from the aspect of His character. Furthermore, it also means that God is able
to keep His promises. Under immutability,
we know that God is faithful and that He never changes.
Then another aspect has to do
with His integrity. Integrity focuses on
four aspects of God’s character. It deals
with righteousness which is the standard of His character, His justice which is
the application of that standard to every area of life, love which is an
integral part of His makeup which is always consistent with righteousness and justice
because love has to do with personal relationship.
And He is truth. Of course love is related to faithfulness.
The Old Testament you have the Hebrew word chesedh
which means loyal or faithful love. So
these things are all pulled together. The
psalmist talks about the fact that righteousness and justice are the foundation
of His throne and love and truth go out from it.
So this is the
foundation. In His omniscience and
omnipotence He is able to do all which He has planned. In His immutability, He is faithful to His
word. He has promised He will secure our
salvation. In His integrity He is consistent
with His promise and He is going to bring it about. So this is all from the character of God.
Now let’s look at the
argument from the character of God the Father.
The believer is secured by the purpose, the power, the provision and
love of God the Father - all of those.
Last time we looked at the purpose in terms of Romans 8:29-30.
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans 8:30 Moreover whom He predestined, these
He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified,
these He also glorified.
He doesn’t lose anybody. Whoever gets justified gets glorified. When you put your faith alone in Christ at
that instant God imputes to you the perfect righteousness of Christ. At that instant God declare you just. Nobody gets lost. Of those He justifies all are glorified, no
more and no less.
Now when we get into looking
at this whole aspect of God’s power and God’s ability to save us from sin, one
of the problems that we run into is that too many people have a distorted view
of what sin is. This is why sometimes it’s
necessary when you’re witnessing to somebody to help them understand that they’re
sinners. There are a lot of people who
don’t think they are sinners. Some
people are pretty clear that they are sinners.
But there are other people
who think, “Well, sin is racism. Sin is something
defined in terms of intolerance today.”
Or, they are defining sin in
terms of some cultural problem. They
don’t understand that sin is a violation of the character of God. Therefore they don’t really understand what
salvation is all about. You’re saved
from something and you’re saved from the eternal consequences of sin. So people have a small view of sin. If you have a small view of sin, you’re going
to have a small view of salvation. Often
you see this especially with those who are more inclined to Arminianism and the
fact that if you commit certain sins you lose your salvation. If you talk to some Arminians, they haven’t
sinned in a long time because Wesleyan Arminians can become perfect. They
can become sinless. See, they have a
narrow view of what sin is. Sin is doing
one or two or three things and as long as they don’t do those 3 or 4 things,
they’re sinless. So they have a small
view of sin and consequently a small view of salvation.
A good passage to go to when
you are talking to someone like this is James 2:10.
NKJ James
See it doesn’t matter that
you didn’t commit murder or that you didn’t commit adultery or that you weren’t
a false witness. You might have kept
every point of the law, but you are a little greedy. You covet.
As Paul states in Colossians, greed is a form of idolatry. So what you have done is set up an idol in
terms of money. So you are greedy and
you covet. That’s what made Paul realize
he was guilty of the whole law. Even if
you are guilty of a small thing that you think of as not that great a sin, it
means you are guilty of everything else.
You violated the whole law. You might
as well have gone out and committed adultery and committed murder and dishonored
your parents and all the other things broken all the other laws because you are
guilty of everything. It only takes a
little bit to violate the character of God.
All Adam had to do was eat a piece of fruit. It’s not on anybody’s big list of sins.
So you have to help people
understand a little bit about the fact that sin is a violation of God’s
standard and that there is a consequence for it. That is separation from God. But, Jesus paid the price for all those sins.
The next thing we have to
help them understand is that God is more powerful than our sin. There is no sin that we can commit that is
too powerful for God.
Jude
NKJ Jude
God is the one who is able. God is the one who has the power. It’s
not dependent upon us. That’s such a
freeing relaxing thing – to realize that I am going to sin. That doesn’t mean that I am rationalizing it
or justifying it. It’s reality that the
sin nature never disappears this side of physical death. Therefore I am going to sin, but every sin was
paid for on the cross. There are so many
Christians that run around that don’t understand that either their sin was paid
for on the cross or they don’t understand I John1:9 that all you need to do is
admit the sin to God and He will forgive you.
They don’t understand anything about divine forgiveness and they focus
all their attention on sin. They are all
concerned about it.
Now here is another
thing. Every now and then I hear
this. I used to hear it a lot more, but
I guess I don’t run around with the wrong kind of people anymore.
I used to hear people say, “I
used to think that about I John 1:9, but I was obsessing on all my sins. I was so concerned about being in fellowship
that I went around all the time thinking about – am I in fellowship? I was just consumed with whether or not I was
in fellowship.”
Well, see I think they have a
little bit of a problem. There are some
people who are that way. I John 1:9
isn’t this thing that causes you to walk around all the time trying to figure
out if you’ve committed some sin. You’ll
know it when you commit a sin. Most of
us are arrogant most of the time. So
that’s a real easy one I think to confess.
I don’t know about you, but it is real easy for most people to get self-absorbed. Just get out on the freeway and you will
figure out if you are out of fellowship or not.
But, don’t obsess on it. There are
some people who take it that way. That’s
not what we mean when we teach that you need to be in fellowship and to keep
short accounts. You’re aware when you
sin. Just confess it. So people get so consumed about this.
Jude
NKJ Jude
God is the one who holds the
believer and keeps him from falling away.
We can’t do anything to permanently fall away in our relationship with
God.
Another passage that focuses
on what God the Father does is in Romans 8:33.
NKJ Romans
Paul asks a rhetorical
question. What’s the answer? Well, first of all it is God who
justifies. God didn’t provisionally,
conditionally or partially justify you. When
He imputed to you the perfect righteousness of Christ, what is in your account
is Christ’s perfect righteousness. It’s
not something that’s partial or something that you can affect because it’s
Christ’s righteousness not your righteousness.
It’s never based on who and what we are or what we have ever done. That’s so great because that gives us the
ability to relax and live our Christian lives without always being consumed
about sin.
Another passage that
reinforces this is in Ephesians 2 - Ephesians 2. Now I want you to turn there in your
Bibles. We ought to be pretty familiar
with Ephesians 2. I have alluded to this
section several times in the last month - Ephesians 2.
Now as I stated before, the
first 7 verses are one sentence. The
sentence is talking about what God does for us.
So you are not introduced to the subject of the sentence, the
grammatical subject of the sentence until verse 4.
NKJ Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy,
because of His great love with which He loved us,
Then you have a relative
clause and a couple of digressions in verse 4 and 5. You don’t main verb until verses 5 and 6.
NKJ Ephesians 2:5 even when we were dead in
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
NKJ Ephesians 2:6 and raised us up together,
and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
So God did these three things
for us at the instant that we were saved.
He made you alive together with Christ.
That’s regeneration.
So if you lose your salvation
that means you get kicked out of your position in Christ. You’re no longer
seated in heaven which is kind of a bizarre concept to think that God would do
this. God does the work of raising you
and seating you. You don’t do that work
so how can you do anything to reverse it?
It’s not logical; it’s not consistent with the text.
Another verse that we have in
our study is Hebrews 7:25.
NKJ Hebrews
It’s His power. He is the one who is able to save us.
Paul says:
NKJ 2 Timothy 1:12 For this reason I also suffer these
things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am
persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.
See the one thing that runs all
the way through this is He is able to keep us.
He is the one who regenerated us, raised us and seated us. He’s the one who is able to guard what I have
entrusted to Him until that day. It is
God that does the work. It is God’s
power that does the work.
In I Peter 1:4-5:
NKJ 1 Peter 1:4 to an inheritance incorruptible and
undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
NKJ 1 Peter 1:5 who are kept by the power of God
through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
See, we are protected by the
power of God. We’re not protected by our
ability to not sin, our ability to obey, our ability to always be in Bible
class, or our ability to do anything. It
is the power of God who protects us. So
the first aspect of looking at God the Father is that it’s His power that keeps
us. It is His power that made us alive,
raised us, and seated us together with Christ.
It is His power that guards what has been entrusted to Him and His power
that keeps us and protects us through faith.
The next thing that we
have…we looked at the power of God, now we look at the provision of God. When we understand the dynamics and the
complexities of what God must do to save even one person, then we understand that
this isn’t reversible.
I have always thought that
this was so absurd to think that the salvation process was reversible. And part of this is because people aren’t
taught very much about what happens at salvation, what God has to do to save
us. It’s a phenomenal process. God does so much for us and He transforms us
into a completely new creature with all these new assets that are given to
us. To think that we can lose it is like
saying...it boggles the mind that all of that is reversible. What happens to us when we gain eternal life
and gain salvation, we have so much more than Adam ever had before he fell. We have all the things that Christ does for
us. We have all the things the Holy
Spirit does for us. We’re adopted into
the family of God. We have the imputation
of righteousness which…Adam did not have anything like that. All of this is ours forever. So we have a simple part of it is our
imputation of Christ’s righteousness. It’s
credited to our account. To lose that
God would be one who went back on His word.
He is going to give it and then take it away.
When I was a kid we used to
call that being an Indian giver. Now are
we Native American givers? I don’t
know. It’s not politically correct, but
you know by now that you don’t have a politically correct pastor. I guess I am always carnal.
Justification – we are
justified because we possess that perfect righteousness. Its justification is a declaration from the
Supreme Court of Heaven. You stand
before the bar of God’s justice. He
looks at the fact that you have perfect righteousness at the instant of your
salvation and He declares you just. It’s
a judicial decision.
You go down to court. You get a ticket. You go down to court.
The judge says, “Not guilty.”
You go home. Can you get arrested the next day? No, that’s silly. God doesn’t go back on His Word. Once He declares you justified He can’t
reverse it.
Romans 5:1-3 says:
NKJ Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
NKJ Romans 5:2 through whom also we have access by
faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of
God.
We can’t come out of
that. We can’t be removed from that position
of having peace with God. So no matter what
we do we still have peace with God because the morals, the standard, the sin of
ours is there. Our personal sin, our
personal unrighteousness, our personal failures are still there. But, we have the righteousness of Christ and
it’s that righteousness that is the basis for our salvation, not what we
do. When people come along and think
that they can do something to lose their salvation, what they’re not
understanding is it’s not their righteousness ever that is the basis for
salvation. It is Christ’s
righteousness.
That’s why I say whenever you
think you can lose your salvation somewhere in your thinking you have a problem
because you think there is something you’re doing, something of yours that has
been the basis for your salvation.
Now we talked about the power
of God, we talked about the provision of God. Now let’s look at the love of God.
Romans 5:8 says:
NKJ Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love
toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Now the point of this is to
show that God’s love is given to us, is demonstrated to us when we’re enemies,
when we’re hostile to Him, when we’re in the most negative, obnoxious position we
could possibly be in. While we were yet
sinners we were at enmity with God. We’re
in the position of being enemies of God. But He demonstrated His love toward so that
if He died for us while we were in the worst state we could possibly be in,
what more would He do for us when we are peacefully oriented to Him which is
the context of Romans 5 (being justified we have peace with God).
So this whole line of
thinking culminates in what Paul says in the end of Romans 8.
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
What we see here is for the
most part pairings although you have angels and principalities nor powers. (You
have three things there.) I think the angels
are the elect angels and principalities and powers relate to demonic
organization here, but I can’t prove it definitively. What he does is he takes...this is a figure
of speech called a merism. A merism is
when you take two opposites (like black or white, night or day, heaven and
earth) and you express them and that includes everything that is conceivable
within those two opposites.
So when he says, “I am
persuaded that neither life nor death” – nothing dead, nothing alive - can you
think of anything that does not fit in those two categories? I mean everything is either dead or it’s
alive. So that means that there is
nothing – okay. By using the two
extremes he’s including everything that there is. So that would relate to that which could die
or that which could live, that which has life.
The second category talks
about the immaterial realm that God created – neither angels, nor
principalities nor powers. In other
words nothing in the angelic hierarchy - fallen angels, demons, elect angels - nothing
in the unseen realm can do anything to affect our salvation.
Nothing present nor things to
come…it excludes the past because that’s what is taken care of at the cross –
for sure. So there is nothing present,
nothing to come. There is nothing
potential. That includes everything - nothing
that you can think of.
Neither height nor depth
covers everything.
Nor any other created thing...in
case I left something out, there is nothing in God’s creation that can separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now that phrase “in Christ
Jesus” is specifically related to baptism of the Holy Spirit for the Church Age
believer. That when we are placed in
Christ at the instant of our salvation, that action is done through the Holy
Spirit by means of the Holy Spirit. Once
we are in Christ, that love that the Father has for us is a special kind of
love. It is a familial love. It is an intimate love. That’s why the Greek word for an intimate
love (phileo or the noun philos)… the verb is only used with believers as the object. God loves the whole world, agapao. But He
only has phileo love for believers. Once you are in the love of Christ (this is agape
here) our Lord that can never be lost - even the broader love which would
include as a subcategory the family love.
Jesus says in John 5:24:
NKJ John
Now we are going to move from
talking about what the Father does to what the Son does. John
See this is a pre-cross
description of the gospel. We started
talking about the problem that we have today with the way some people are
trying to express the gospel. They’re go
into passages like John 5 and John 6 when Jesus is talking to Jews - not only
is it a pre-cross environment; but it’s probably in that period before the
official rejection by the Pharisees that’s pictured in Matthew 12 which comes
during the last year of His public ministry.
So Jesus is still offering Himself as the King.
So even an Old Testament
believer which is what these would be prior to the cross has a certainty of
salvation. If you believe in Me, you
have eternal life. It can’t be taken
from you.
So we are secured by the
promise of the Son.
Another passage is in John
6:37.
NKJ John
If you come to the Father. Jesus said:
Matthew
Coming to Jesus is comparable
to believing in Him, accepting Him as your Savior.
John 6:39-40 says:
NKJ John
God is omnipotent therefore
He is able to keep Jesus from losing anything.
Jesus is omnipotent so He can’t lose anything.
NKJ John 6:40 "And this is the will of Him
who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have
everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
He doesn’t say, “I might
raise him up on the last day. If he is good, I’ll raise him up on the last day.
If he shows himself worthy of the gift, I’ll raise him up on the last day.”
No, He says, “I will raise
Him up on the last day.”
So Jesus makes numerous
promises that are not conditional (That are not based on our obedience, our
behavior); but are based simply on believing in Jesus (coming to Him). This is the promise from the one who holds
the universe together. As He is able to
hold the universe together, then He is certainly able to keep us from falling
and to keep us from losing salvation.
Now the next section that we
re going to get into has to do with the prayer of the Son. We have looked at the promises that the Son
makes. Now we are going to look at the
prayer of the Son. Now this is important
because if we go back to our passage in Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
The context of Hebrews 7 is His
priesthood. The last clause of Hebrews
7:25 is that:
He is also
able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He
always lives to make intercession for them
That is Jesus. We are secure in our salvation because Jesus
is always praying for us as part of His high priestly ministry.
Now let’s look at John
17:11. John 17 is the true Lord’s Prayer,
not the passage over in Matthew that is typically referred to as the Lord’s
Prayer. That was the disciple’s
prayer.
John 17 is the prayer that
the Lord Jesus Christ utters just before He goes to the cross. He is praying for the disciples and praying for
those who come to know the truth through the disciples. As He is praying to the Father, He says:
NKJ John
So His first aspect of His
prayer in verse 11 is to the Father to keep us in His name. Now if Jesus prays for something, it is
within the will of the Father so the Father is going to answer Him according to
John 5.
NKJ John
This is another one of those
passages that makes it real clear that Judas was not a believer. He is called the son of perdition. The same Greek word that is used for
perdition here is the word that’s translated “perish” in John 3:16. Someone who is the son of perdition is one
who is perishing. It is literally “the
son of perishing”. So that means in
Hebrew idiom if you are the son of something, then that is what characterizes
you. If you were a fool, you would be
called the son of a fool. If you are a
murderer, you would be called a son of a murderer. It doesn’t have anything to do with what your
daddy did. It has to do with…that you
are demonstrating the characteristics of this quality. So if you are wise you would be called the
son of wisdom. If you are the son of
perdition, that means you are lost. You
are not saved.
Jesus says the only one that
“I did not keep and guard (because he wasn’t saved) was Judas.”
NKJ John
NKJ John
NKJ John
This is again a strong
passage against demon possession. But
it is that we can’t go back under the authority of Satan. We are transferred from the domain of Satan to
the
So Jesus’ prayer constantly
uses these words of keeping, guarding, protecting, and keeping them from the
evil one. This is His ongoing prayer.
This is stated again in terms
of His present intercessory ministry which is what understanding of the background
of Romans 5:10. Paul says:
NKJ Romans
See it’s the death of His Son
that’s the basis of reconciliation.
much more,
having been reconciled,.
That means you are justified;
you’re going to go to heaven. You have
eternal life.
we shall be
saved by His life
See His ongoing post
resurrection life is at the right hand of the Father as our High Priest, as our
intercessor. This is part of what
secures our salvation.
Paul says:
NKJ Romans
This is what He is doing with
His living – His post resurrection, post ascension living.
who is even
at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
NKJ John
Which is talking about His resurrection
life, post resurrection life.
you will
live also.
Not that He might live, but
that He would live.
NKJ John
Then finally in terms of His high priestly ministry:
NKJ Hebrews
Here we have that word from
the telos group meaning He has completed that
salvation. This is talking positional sanctification.
That is those who are in the
process of growing spiritually – post salvation. You are already perfected positionally,
brought to completion. But in time you
are maturing, being brought to completion in your spiritual life. So the first part of that verse indicates that
as part of His high priestly ministry He has perfected us forever, not just for
a short time, not just temporally or not just conditionally or
provisionally. But He has perfected
forever.
Now that takes us through the
promise of the Son. It takes us through
the promise and the prayer of the Son; then the last thing we will cover next time
is related to the work of the Son and then we’ll talk about God the Holy
Spirit.
Let’s bow our heads in
closing prayer.