The Recipients, Source, and Certainty of Security B

Herein lies the supreme guarantee of my security. It's all wrapped up in God's purpose. If someone claims one thing but his actions tell a different story, there's a problem. Sadly, some people see no problem when a person claims to be a Christian, but his actions and attitudes and way of life bear no resemblance to what the Bible says a Christian should be. Today, John MacArthur gives you a list of the characteristics of a person who has been redeemed by God, someone who's securely in the grip of God. That's his current study on grace to you. And here's John now with today's lesson. We're looking at Romans chapter 8, verse 28, familiar words.

Let me read them to you. We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. This says what we really wanted to hear, and that is that no matter what happens in our lives, it works together ultimately for our eternal good. And that is to say that nothing can ever change our relationship with the living God.

No matter what happens, it works together for our good. Paul has been masterfully revealing the great truth that justification is secured forever. It is secured forever by the decree of God. It is secured forever by the sacrifice of Christ and His imputed righteousness, and it is secured forever by the unique intercessory ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The verse emphasizes four elements. Let's just remind ourselves these four elements of our security, the extent of it, the recipients of it, the source of it, and the certainty of it. The extent of it, the recipients of it, the source of it, and the certainty of it. We talked about the extent of our security. Let's talk about the recipients of this security.

Who really possesses this kind of security? Well, he makes it very clear in verse 28. God causes all things to work together for good to those who what? Who love God to those who are called according to His purpose.

You have two very, very pertinent statements there with tremendous implications. One of them views our relationship with God from our side, and the other views our relationship with God from His side. On the one hand, we love God.

On the other hand, He called us. This promise of eternal security belongs to those who love God and who are the called of God. And the promise of eternal security.

You could say that those two wonderful truths sum up our identity. We are the called who love God. Now, God's people are described in many ways, and I want to just look at that description that is given here in verse 28, those who love God. God's people are described as His children. They are described as His sheep, His flock.

They are described as His sons. They are described as His bride, His beloved, His church. They are described as believers. They are described as true worshipers. They are described as saints. They are called Christians. But no designation of believers is more indicative of their character than this one. Here, believers are defined as those who love God. We are the people who love God.

That's summing it up as simply as it can be summed up. And for those who love God, God is causing all things to work together. 1 Corinthians 2, 9, very interesting verse, quoted from Isaiah. Just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who what?

Who love Him. Christians are people who love God. Believers are people who love God.

That is the distinguishing characteristic of their lives. Now, how do we mark out this love? If I want to look at my life, or if need be, help somebody else, and I want to determine whether or not they really love God, what am I looking for? Am I looking for some sentiment? Am I looking for some emotion?

Am I looking for some sort of nostalgia that comes out of the roots of my childhood or my background? What am I looking for when I'm looking for when I'm looking for evidences of love for God? This love for God that defines a Christian is a love that loves what God loves. It is a love that loves what God loves. Don't tell me you love God if you're filled with the love of the world. 1 John simply says, if the love of the world is in you, the love of God is not, right?

James put it this way, friendship with the world is enmity with God. If you love God, then you love what God loves. Psalm 119.97, oh, how I love thy law, it's my meditation all the day. He loves God's law because God loves His law. He loves what is holy, what is sacred. How sweet are thy words to my taste?

Verse 103, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Job said His love for the word of God was a stronger desire than His desire for His food. If you love God, you love what God loves. If you love God, you love what God loves. And what God loves predominantly is truth.

Truth and virtue follows behind it. So you say you love God, then you meditate on His glory. You trust in His power. You seek communion with Him. You enjoy peace in your soul in that settled eternal relationship. You feel the pain when He is dishonored and you love the things that He loves, kind of an unnatural leap for you to set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth. I remind you again of 1 John 2. If you're dominated by the love of the world, the love of the Father is not in you. Furthermore, loving God means loving whom God loves. Not only loving what God loves in terms of truth and virtue, but loving whom God loves. And that simply means that if you really love God, then you love God's people. People say, well, I'm a Christian, but I don't go to church.

I don't really have any interest in church. You have a problem, my friend, because apparently you don't have any driving, compelling affection for God's people. 1 John 5 again, whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. If you love the Father, you love His children.

When you set your love on someone, you love those that belong to that someone. So this is a love that loves what God loves in terms of truth and virtue, and it is a love that loves whom God loves in terms of people. In fact, 1 John 2 says, if you say that you're in the light and you hate your brother, you're in the what? You're really in the darkness because you'd love believers. It's not some kind of duty for me to be with Christian people. They're whom I love, and I love them because I love Christ in them, and they belong to Him.

Let's turn the table and add something else. It is a love that hates what God hates. It's a love that hates what God hates. If you say you're one of those who loves God, if you say you're one of those who loves God, then you're going to hate the things that He hates because your devotion and affection for Him is going to color all of life.

Genesis 39, 9, story of Joseph. There is no one greater in this house than I and He has withheld nothing from me except you because you are His wife. How then could I do this great evil? This great evil and sin against God. I can't do this because God hates it, and I don't want to do anything that God hates. That's a very, very basic foundational principle of loving God. You love God. You hate what God hates. I think it's Psalm 97, 10, 10, hate evil, you who love the Lord. He does, doesn't He? If you really love Him, you'll hate what He hates.

Let me take that a step further. If you love God, you will grieve over sin. You will grieve over sin. We've already hinted at that when we talked about the fact that you feel the pain when He's dishonored, but just refining it a little bit, you will grieve over sin.

If you love God, because sin dishonors God. I think of Matthew 26, 75. There it is, the cock crows. Peter is told, when the cock crows, you're going to deny me three times. That's exactly what he did. He heard that cock crow and he knew the prophecy had come to pass, and he went out and wept bitterly.

That's exactly what he should have done. If you love God, you'll grieve over sin. You'll have a hard time living a repetitiously sinful life because you have to constantly cycle through grief, which sort of takes the charm out of it.

Let me add a couple more. If you love the Lord, you will love Him with a love that rejects the world, with a love that rejects the world. You will hate what He hates, and that means the world which is the kingdom of darkness operated by the prince of the power of the air who is Satan himself. You will disdain all of that.

You will not have any interest in the domain of darkness. You will not so profane the Lord's name. 1 John 2.15, you will not love the world.

And I'll just add one last thing. It is a love that longs for Christ's return. I mean, that's pretty basic to love. I think love seeks the honor of its object, even human love.

I think love trusts. I think love seeks intimate communion. Love secures the soul with a wonderful peace. Love produces sensitivities to the feelings of the one loved. Love tends to love what the other loves and hate what the other hates, and love tends to embrace what builds up and resent what tears down.

Love rejects anything that would intrude in its sphere, and love longs for intimacy, for the closest and sweetest fellowship. And that's why someone who truly loves the Lord longs for His return. In 2 Timothy 4.8, it says, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, that's the crown which is eternal, consummate righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing. If you love Him, you'll love the thought of His coming. That's why the Apostle John said, even so, come Lord Jesus. All of that is important, but there's one more, even more compelling issue that really sums it up, and here it is. Loving the Lord means obeying His commands.

That's really the sum of everything. Loving the Lord means obeying His commands. That's how you know whether you love Him if you have a desire to obey His Word. Listen to John 14, 21, He who has My commandments and keeps them, He it is who loves Me, plain and simple.

How do you know you love Him? You have His commands, you obey them. He's commanded you to honor Him and worship Him. He's commanded you to be virtuous and pursue righteousness and avoid sin. He's commanded you to study His Word and learn it and live it. He's commanded you to witness.

He's commanded you to pray. He's commanded you to care for one another, to use your gifts, to serve. And when you obey His commands, you give evidence of being the one who loves Him.

And He who loves Me, same verse, shall be loved by My Father and I will love Him. Simply stated then in summation, true Christians, are lovers of God, whose heart desire is toward God. They seek His glory. They trust His power. They long for sweet and intimate communion with Him. They enjoy peace and rest and tranquility of soul because of the unbroken relationship they have with Him.

They're not agitated and troubled. They feel the pain when He is dishonored. They love Him. They love Him. They love Him. They love God. They love the things He loves. They love the people He loves. They hate what He hates. They grieve over sin. They reject the world. They long for His coming.

And summarily, they obey His Word. Now, can a man generate that kind of love on his own? Can I just decide one day that I've been hating God all my life?

And I just think it's a much smarter thing to him. Frankly, I don't have that capacity. There's no way in my spiritual deadness and alienation from God I could ever pull that off.

Couldn't be done. I belong in the category of Exodus 25, verse 5, I am one of those generations of those who hate God. And I am desperately wicked and unable to do anything at all about that. How then can I come to the place where I love God, where there's a total turnaround and stop being a hater, become a lover of God? It takes us to the second part of the verse. Go back to Romans 8, 28. Only one way it can happen.

Only one way, and this is profound stuff here. Verse 28, God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are what? Called according to His purpose. The only reason they love God is because they're what?

They're called. This is the divine love which initiates our love. We love Him, 1 John 4.19, because He first loved us.

The word called is never used in the New Testament epistles to some external invitation. It always means what the theologians have called an effectual, or an effective, or a saving call. It literally means to be brought to salvation. Verse 30 explains that. Whom He predestined He called, and whom He called, these He also, what?

Justified. So we're talking here about the divine act that initiates salvation and brings it to fulfillment. We have been called not according to our own purpose, not according to our own plan, not according to our own wisdom, or our own choice or decision. We have been called to be saved because of God's eternal, everlasting, redemptive purpose. And it is because of the call of God that we are transformed and made capable of loving Him. In 1 Corinthians 1, 2, it says the church is those who have been set apart in Christ Jesus, made holy by calling.

That is the calling of God, the calling of God. In fact, in verse 24 of 1 Corinthians 1, believers are the called. We are the called.

And this is again, this is not just a general invitation to be accepted or refused, this is an effectual and every time that term is used in the New Testament epistles, it has that meaning. We are the called and we have been called because we've been predestined. And because we've been called and predestined, we have been justified.

Philippians 1, 11, we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to His purpose. God had a purpose to redeem us. He predestined us before time began, wrote our names in a Lamb's Book of Life and calls us to the salvation for which we were predestined.

It's a tremendous truth, tremendous truth. We have been called to God's purpose. 2 Timothy 1, 9, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, a separated calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus, listen to this, before time began. Before time began, God set His purpose as it were in place and His purpose involved our calling to salvation. This is the great, glorious doctrine of election. Jude starts his little epistle, Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.

Wow, what a statement. Beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, we are the called, we are the called. First Peter 5, 10 says, God, the God of all grace has called us to His eternal glory in Christ. As Martin Lloyd-Jones used to like to say, the only reason you love God is because God interfered with your life.

First came the conviction of sin, then a subsequent humbling and brokenness, followed by a hunger for salvation, followed by the preaching of the gospel, followed by the gift of faith mixed with the hearing of the gospel and by the Word and by the Spirit, you were called to justification. We love God because He first loved us. We love Him because He called us. He called us when we hated Him. He called us when we were enemies.

He called us out of darkness. For whom is this promise? God causes all things to work together for good? It's for whom is the promise of eternal goodness, of eternal glory? It's for those who love God. Who are those who love God? They are the called according to divine eternal purpose.

And that takes us to the third point, the source of security. The source of this whole security is the purpose of God. It all springs from the plan of God. It was all determined before the foundation of the world. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.

Ephesians 1, 4 says that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. And it was all according to the kind intention of His will, His will, His purpose, His plan. The source of this security is all bound up in God Himself.

We are the chosen of God. You know why you love God? Because He planned for you to do it. You love Him because He planned for you to love Him.

You love Him because He determined to set His love on you. Listen to Deuteronomy 7. This isn't anything new with us. Listen to Deuteronomy. This is written to Israel. You are a holy people to the Lord your God.

How did that happen? The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. As Richard Wolff said years ago, how odd of God to choose the Jews.

I suppose it wouldn't rhyme as well, but you could ask the same question if He chose somebody else. The reason that Israel had a special relationship with God is because God ordained it. Then verse 7, the Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. In other words, it wasn't anything about you that caused Him to make a choice, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers. The Lord just chose to love you and He is therefore the Lord your God, God the faithful God who keeps His covenant, His loving kindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him. He loved you first so you could love Him back. I love God because He planned for me to love Him.

Herein lies the supreme guarantee of my security. It's all wrapped up in God's purpose. I didn't come along at some point in my life and say, I'm going to love God.

If that were the case, I could come to another point in my life and say, I'm not loving Him anymore. But we were born, John 1 13 says, not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but of God. Someone wrote, why was I made to hear His voice and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come? It was the same love that spread the feast that sweetly forced us in else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin. Salvation is based on the sovereign purpose of God who said, I am the Lord, I change not. No wonder the psalmist said, I will lay down in peace and sleep for Thou Lord only makest me dwell in safety.

Isn't that wonderful? We're secure. Well last point, the extent of our security, the recipients of our security, those who love Him because they're called, the source of our security, His purpose, the certainty of our security. Just as if we haven't heard enough, here's the final word, verse 28, and we what?

What does it say? We know. That's the certainty. Not a mystical intuition, but a matter of divine revelation. We know that God is causing all things to work together for our good which means our eternal glory because we love God because He first loved us and purposed to bring us to glory. What a tremendous verse. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John's current study comes from one of the Bible's greatest chapters, Romans 8. It's titled The Grip of God. John, you went through a substantial list of what it means to love the Lord, and as you said, the whole crux of that love is obedience. So this idea, if you truly love the Lord, you're going to be willing to do what He says. Is this a new concept? Is this what the church has always believed? You know this is a controversial issue today. Why?

Well, it shouldn't be controversial. Jesus said you'll know them by their fruits. The Apostle Paul said, For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works that any man should boast. And you were created unto good works, which God had before ordained that you should walk in them. So salvation is by grace through faith.

That's a gift of God. And the outcome of that is you're a new creation known and marked by manifest good works. That is the evidence of true conversion. Conversion is just that.

It is transformation. It's not just justification, which is a forensic declaration by God that you've been transferred into the kingdom of God from the kingdom of darkness, and Christ's righteousness imputed to you. But there is a real sanctifying work that begins so that there's an actual transformation.

You are a new creation. This is something that has been lost over periods of time in the history of the church, but the church seems to find its way back to it. When I recognized that there was a widespread notion that you could be a true believer and have no fruit and no evidence and you were still saved, I was deeply disturbed by that, and I wrote an initial book called The Gospel According to Jesus to get it right. Dealing with confessing him as Lord meant a willingness to be obedient, and the power as well. And I followed it up with another book, The Gospel According to the Apostles.

This is a powerful book, and it didn't get as much traction as the first book, but I want to mention it to you. It's a 1988 bestseller, The Gospel According to Jesus, that generated a huge response and still does. And following that book came this book, The Gospel According to the Apostles, and it tackles questions like, is repentance necessary for salvation? Is salvation simply believing facts about Jesus? Is it possible to pray and receive Jesus and still not be saved? Is it possible to be a Christian and never produce any Christian fruit?

Vital, timeless questions. We would love to get you a copy of The Gospel According to the Apostles. You can get it immediately. You can order it from Grace to You and free shipping in the U.S. And by the way, this is one of the best ever books by John MacArthur, The Gospel According to the Apostles.

It makes an ideal gift for that loved one you've been witnessing to. To get a copy, contact us today. The book is available in softcover for a reasonable price and shipping is free.

It's also available in Spanish. To get your copy, call 800-55-GRACE or go to GTY.org. The title again, The Gospel According to the Apostles. Order when you call 800-55-GRACE or you can order from our website GTY.org. Now friend, if John's teaching, like today's lesson from The Grip of God, if it's helping you know where you stand in relationship to Jesus Christ, remember that we're able to produce this broadcast and make it available because of the faithful support of listeners like you. To help us take biblical truth to people in your community and communities around the world, mail your tax-deductible gift to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412, or call us at 800-55-GRACE or you can donate online at GTY.org.

That's our website, GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. Why does God save unworthy sinners like you and me? John helps answer that question tomorrow. He'll be continuing his study on The Grip of God with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.