The Song of Security

Paul can't leave it at that.

It's as if he knows there must be a few more critics who need to be exposed and whose questions need finally and forever to be answered. Paul is very concerned that we understand that salvation is forever. But once a person becomes a Christian, that never changes but lasts forever. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. If you've been listening to the broadcasts this week, you know that John has been talking about anxiety free living, showing you how to avoid worry caused by strained finances or health concerns, broken relationships, and the other challenges of life this side of eternity. But it may be that you or someone you know is concerned and even tempted to worry about an even greater issue, and that is whether your salvation is permanent. If you've ever wondered, can a Christian lose his salvation and could that have already happened to me? Stay here for John's lesson titled The Song of Security, Encouraging Truth, from Romans chapter 8.

And now here's John MacArthur. Romans chapter 8, the tremendous truth of verses 28 to 30 sums up the theology of the security of the believer as no other portion of Scripture does and really says all that would be necessary to be said to make the point. But Paul can't leave it at that.

It's as if he knows there must be a few more critics lurking around in the shadows somewhere who need to be exposed and whose questions need finally and forever to be answered. Paul is very concerned that we understand that salvation is forever. That once a person becomes a Christian, that never changes, but lasts forever. The chapter began with a statement, there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. In other words, if you are in Christ, you have put your faith in Him, you belong to Him, your life is His life, His life is your life, He is your Lord and Savior, there will never be any condemnation. But he anticipates all kinds of queries and questions and so forth, and so he launches off of verse 1 really into a whole chapter to strengthen our confidence in the security of our salvation.

Now he comes to the climax, he comes to the pinnacle, the high point, and it has kind of a doxological feel to it. It's less rational reason to erudite carefully laid out logical theology and more praise and joy and exhilaration, and that's why I tend to feel about verses 31 to 39 as though they are more doxology than theology, although theology is certainly the component of the doxology given here. Let me read these verses to you.

You follow along and then we'll discuss them. What then shall we say to these things, if God is for us who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns?

Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather, who was raised? Who is at the right hand of God? Who also intercedes for us? Who or what shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? Just as it is written, for Thy sake we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now what he is saying there obviously comes through. There is nothing that can separate us from this eternal love. When Jeremiah said it, he said it for all of eternity. I have loved you with an everlasting love, quoting God, Jeremiah 31 3.

This love is a love that is inseparable, unbreakable. So says Paul that we might forever cease asking questions about whether salvation is eternal. Back in verse 31 we sort of introduced the passage. He says, What then shall we say to these things?

What things? Truth about eternal security, the truth about our eternal salvation. What do we say in response? What do we say in response, for example, to there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ earlier in chapter 8? What do we say in response to the fact that we are being led by the Spirit of God as the sons of God to a day when we'll enter into the glory of God? What do we say to that great truth that someday we'll have the redemption of our bodies and participate in the glorious manifestation of the sons of God? What do we say to the fact that we have a hope that is secure and is eternal and we eagerly wait for it? What do we say to the fact that we are secure because the Holy Spirit is making intercession in unutterable language before God on our behalf? What do we say to the fact that our salvation is secure because God works everything, even sin, together for our ultimate and eternal good?

What do we say to the fact that whomever He foreknew and predestined, He will glorify? What is our response to all of this? How are we to argue against this? How are we to debate this, He's saying? And He responds, since God, literally should be since, since God is for us, who is against us?

In other words, successfully, who can withstand us? You see, His point is what are we going to say after we know this much? It amazes me that people can read Romans 8, study Romans 8, and somehow still believe you can lose your salvation.

But how can you say that? Well, Paul wants to follow his argument up a little further. So let's push it to the ultimate extreme.

Let's push it as far as we can push it so we silence any critic. And let's just say that there may be some ways in which we can lose our salvation, some persons who can take it from us. So Paul says, let's go through the catalog. We'll start, first of all, with just somebody else, some human being. Can some human being take away our salvation? Look at verse 31 again.

What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? In other words, who successfully is against us? If God is on our side, what person can succeed in being against us? If God says we're not condemned, what person can get our condemnation? What person can secure our damnation? What person or persons can come along and take away our salvation? Are there any such persons?

Is there anybody in the world that can do that? How about the Judaizers in Galatia who wanted to take away the salvation of the Galatians because they didn't keep the ceremonial law? How about people around us? You know, there are people who would like to take us out of salvation.

They would like to remove us from this Christian preoccupation and way of life. You can be sure of that. You say, well, who would ever want to do that?

Well, let me give you a little list. There are probably some of you who have people in your family who would like to do that. You're maybe the only Christian. And it's really an irritant to your family. And if they had their way, they'd get you to reject Jesus Christ and recant your faith and get away from this kind of stuff.

Because it's turning you into a fanatic. And you're very difficult to live with because you don't enjoy the things that they enjoy and you bring a guilt trip on them frequently. And they would really like to get you out of this. Believe me, they would.

Can they? And then there are people in secular education who would love to do that. They would love to convince you that there is no God and if there is, He doesn't care.

The world was not created, but the world evolved out of a puddle somewhere in the great, great past. They would love to say that there's no God. They would love to take your young people when you send them to the universities of our country and the world. And they would love to attack their Christian faith and their Christian conviction and question all their beliefs and fill their minds with doubt and wonder and therefore steal their faith. And then there are the purveyors of lies and filth and immorality and pornography and trash in the media today all the way from what is in print to what is visually available to you in films and on television. And those people would love to get you out of Christianity so that you could become a consumer of their products. And then there are the legalists. There are those people who would love for you to abandon salvation by grace, chuck the whole idea that you're saved by faith and buy into their thing that you're saved by baptism or you're saved by ceremonies or you're saved by rituals and get you off this grace kick and back onto the law.

And then there are those people that bicycle around your neighborhood two by two in white shirts and black ties. They would love to get you to renounce Jesus Christ as God in human flesh. They would love for you to deny that He is in fact a Redeemer and Savior of the world.

They would love for you to join their association. And then there are all those other false teachers and false religions who want to take you away from the truth and confuse you with their lies. And there are plenty of folks out there who would really like to have you lose your salvation.

They want to undo in you what Christ has wrought. Can they succeed? Those who are against you, can those who are against you succeed?

Well, look back at verse 31. If God is for us, then who in the world is going to be successful against us? If God, the great power, our stronghold, our Savior, our refuge, our Deliverer is for us, is there someone more powerful than He who in opposing Him is the victor?

Obviously the answer is of course not. God is for us. That we're confident of. He is for us. And since He is for us, who can successfully be against us? So Paul makes a grand and glorious statement about general truth and it is that God is for us. He's for us getting to glory. He's for us reaching heaven. And since He is for us, the great and almighty, all powerful God, there is no human agency on the face of the earth who in opposition to us can succeed, right?

Now somebody's going to come along and say, okay, all right, I'll buy that. That's pretty clear there. There aren't any human beings, there aren't any people out there that can successfully cause us to abandon true saving faith. By the way, as a footnote, if someone does abandon it, the faith wasn't real. 1 John says in 2 19, they went out from us because they never were of us.

If they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But he says, does Paul in his mind, somebody is going to say, okay, no human being can do it. Maybe God can. Maybe God just can get to the point where He's so fed up or He's so disappointed or He's so frustrated or maybe He just knows us so well He doesn't love us like He used to and He turns against us.

Could that happen? Could God do that? Verse 32, Paul says, look, God didn't spare His own Son. The Greek verb there, He didn't hold Him back.

He didn't hold Him back. There was nothing that God restrained in terms of the full fury of sin on Christ. So He neither held back His Son as the proper gift for salvation, nor did He hold back the fury of His wrath poured out on His Son. He didn't spare His Son anything. He didn't spare His Son the very act of death and He didn't spare His Son any mitigation of judgment.

He poured it all out on Him. Now if God took His own beloved Son, His own personal possession, and it uses that very phrase, idios, His own personal possession, the one who belonged intimately to Him, and if it pleased the Lord, as Isaiah 53, 10 says, if it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, and if God chose to put Him to terrible grief, if God didn't spare His own Son, but He says, look back to verse 32, delivered Him up, gave Him over to the powers of darkness, to death, to sin-bearing, to bearing a curse, to being separated from Him. If God gave Him up to all of that for us, will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

All things mean eternal blessing, eternal glory. In other words, if He already gave us the greatest gift, His Son, won't He give us the rest of what is in heaven as our reward? If He gave us the most, will He not give us the least? If He gave us the best already, will He hold back something good?

That's His point. I mean, God already put His position on display. He already put it on the line. He said, look, I will give you My own Son and spare Him nothing.

I spare nothing. Now if He did that, do you think He will not, along with Christ, also give us everything else? So He says, look, God's not about to change His mind. He already made the major gift. He gave you His Son. And by the way, as a footnote, He gave you His Son to die for you when you hated Him and were unworthy, and now all He needs to do is give you the blessings now that you're His children.

Your condition changes. If He could love you when you were wicked and sinful and give you His Son the greatest gift, can He not love you now that you're His child and give you the lesser gifts, eternal blessings? That's His point. Infinite love isn't going to change. God isn't going to change.

That's why we're secure. The same God who loved us when we were sinners and gave us His Son is the same God who loves us now that we're His children and will give us the blessings His Son procured for us. People would say, well, but we're not worthy to receive those blessings. That's right, but we weren't worthy to receive the salvation in the first place. And there's a sense in which you could say we were less worthy then than we are now. So He says if you're looking at God and thinking maybe God is going to change His mind, He already put His view on the line.

Now somebody will come along and say, well, here's another option. Maybe God doesn't want to do it, but maybe Christ does. Maybe Christ would like to get rid of us.

Maybe He's had enough of us. Look at verse 33. Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died.

Stop at that point. In verse 33 He says, look, it won't be God who will turn against you. We already pointed that out. He justified you. In verse 34 He says, it won't be Christ who will condemn you. He already died for you, was raised for you, is at the right hand of God and interceding for you. I mean, they've already made their statement pretty clear. Back to verse 33 for a moment. This introduces another component into the situation, and we need to address that as well. But just before we do that, take that little phrase, God is the one who justifies.

Now, it's a very simple thing. God declared you righteous, therefore He cannot at the same time declare you condemned, right? Listen carefully to me. He never declared you righteous on your own merit in the first place, so He's not going to declare you unrighteous on your own merit in the second place. You understand that? You were declared righteous on the merit of Christ in the first place, and you are continually declared righteous on the merit of Christ. Since it was never your righteousness that made you savable, it is not your unrighteousness that makes you unsavable. It's all bound up in the work of God. And God has already declared you righteous.

That's what it means. God is the one who justifies. God has already justified you, said you're righteous.

Why? Because you were in Christ. Christ died. The penalty was paid.

You rose to walk in newness of life. That is a settled issue. God says, price paid, case dismissed, you are righteous in Christ. The God who said that cannot condemn you.

He cannot talk out of both sides of His mouth. Then He goes on to verse 34 and brings Christ into the picture and He says, Look, Jesus Christ died for you. That's His first point. He died for you. Now this you must consider carefully.

You must think this through. Christ died for you. Shall Christ who died for you turn His back on that very act as to its purpose? I mean the point is this, that when He died, He received the condemnation that was due to you and me. He received the condemnation for sin that we should have received. He never would have died otherwise.

The wages of sin is death. Christ had no sin. He never would have died. He never would have died if He hadn't borne our sin. It was our sin that killed Him. Now listen, He can't condemn us, follow this, because His death proves that He already took our condemnation. He would literally undo the very death He died. You see, you convolute the whole of redemptive comprehension.

The whole thing is totally skewed and misrepresented and confused if you deny the security of a believer. Because now you've got Christ bearing a condemnation, the condemnation for all your sins, and then turning around and because of some sin you commit, condemning you. When He Himself has already paid for that sin and borne the condemnation. And so, shall Christ that died, He says, is He going to condemn you when He already died as your condemnation? The only condemnation you'll ever know is the one that He experienced. Then He goes a step further. Shall Christ condemn you, the one who was raised?

What does He mean? On the cross He blotted out our sins and it was affirmed by His resurrection. And He says, because I live, you shall live. Then He said, look, Paul does, if you can't see that He can't condemn you in the cross because it's already been done, then look at the resurrection. He promised you in His resurrection that you would live. Now is He going to kill you? Is He going to take away that promise? He died for the covering of your sin. He rose to provide your eternal life. He's done all that. Is He going to undo that?

That's His point. He died, your condemnation paid. He rose, your eternal life guaranteed. Third thing He says, in verse 34, who is at the right hand of God?

You say, what does that mean? Look, He's been exalted to the right hand of God. He's been exalted. Why did God exalt Him? God exalted Him for two reasons. One, He bore the penalty of sin on the cross.

Two, He triumphed in the grave. It was a perfect work and God exalted Him. Now you ask the question, is God going to have to send Him back down and give Him a low seat because the thing which He supposedly accomplished on the cross is going bad? All of the glory and the honor, forfeited? The Father lifted Him to His right hand because of His perfect work. Are we now to believe that His work wasn't so hot after all and a bunch of people that He died to save and got saved once are all losing their salvation? And the Father's going to send Him down a few notches?

No. He paid the perfect penalty, bore the condemnation, and because of what He Himself bore, He will never condemn those whose condemnation He bore. And He will never kill or give death to those to whom He has already given life. And He will never forfeit the glory the Father gave to Him at His right hand. And lastly, He says about Christ in verse 34, He intercedes for us. He intercedes for us, constantly making intercession on our behalf, constantly praying for us before God. Like Peter, you remember Jesus said, Satan desires to have you?

That's right. Satan wants you. But I've prayed for you that your faith fail not. And there he was interceding for Peter and that's how he intercedes for us. Yes, Satan wants us.

Yes, there are human beings that want us. They want to take us away from God and Christ and take away our salvation. But Christ is ever living to make intercession for us. And He always prays according to the Father and according to the Father's will. And as you remember in John 11 42, He says to the Father, I know that you always hear Me and He always gets what He asks for. So God isn't going to turn His back on you.

He already declared you just. He can't condemn you at the same time. Christ isn't going to turn His back on you. Christ isn't going to forsake you because He died to provide your salvation. He rose to provide your eternal life. He's at the right hand of the Father, wherein His glory lies, and He never lives to make intercession to make sure your relationship with God never, ever ceases to be what it is.

That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, with a lesson from Romans chapter 8 here on Grace to You. It's a message John calls the Song of Security, a practical look at how to break the cycle of doubt about whether you can lose your salvation. Now, of course, John, we know there are forces at work that cause believers to have doubts about their salvation. For that person who is questioning the certainty of his salvation, would you say that wrestling with that issue is inherently a bad thing? Well, no, it's not a bad thing.

It's inherently a good thing. And you have to understand, and I think you do, of course, Phil, but you have so many Christian people going to churches or ministries or events, whatever you want to call them, where they are never taught deeply about the Word of God. So they're trying to maintain assurance in an environment with very superficial theology, a superficial understanding of God, a superficial understanding of spiritual life, spirituality, the essential realities of salvation, the promises of God. Superficial theology will always rob you of confidence in God. So I just think the kind of evangelical Christianity that's floating around and seems to dominate the media these days will inevitably produce people who have a lack of assurance in their salvation because they don't understand the depth of their salvation. They don't understand, I guess, a biblical soteriology in all of its profound richness.

And secondly, so many professing Christian people go to a place where all they get is an emotional experience. It may be sentimentalism. It may be musical. Whatever it is, it could be music. It could be lights and drama and entertainment and whatever goes on to hype their emotions.

And when they walk out the door, all the emotions are gone. And if that's what they're basing their sense of relationship to Christ on, that is a weak, weak way to try to hold up any kind of confidence in the Lord. So you have to get to sound doctrine and you have to get to deep teaching in the Word of God that confronts your own life and your own sin in an honest way to enjoy assurance. I want to mention to you a free copy of a booklet titled A Believer's Assurance. It has eight reasons why people lack assurance and it'll take you from understanding why people lack assurance to how you can have assurance.

And it throws in some questions and some answers, cuts to the issues powerfully and practical. Well, again, A Believer's Assurance, free to anyone who asks, request a copy today. Yes, if you struggle with fear or doubt, if you wonder where you'll spend eternity, this booklet will help you. To get your copy of A Believer's Assurance, just call us or go to our website and we will send this booklet to you free of charge.

Get in touch today. Write your request at our website, gty.org, or call us at 855-GRACE. A Believer's Assurance shows you the reasons you might question your salvation and how to overcome those doubts. It's a great encouragement for a new Christian or for someone who's been plagued with doubts for years. Just remember this booklet, A Believer's Assurance, is our gift to you. Just call and request it, 855-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org, and we'll send it to you for free.

And friend, if John's teaching has helped you understand a Bible passage you've grappled with or encouraged you during some trial you've gone through or helped you clearly explain the gospel to a nonbeliever, we would love to hear your story. You can send an email to letters at gty.org. That's our email address. One more time, letters at gty.org. Or you can write to us through regular mail at Grace to You, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Thanks for getting in touch and staying in touch. Now for John MacArthur and the staff. I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to watch Grace to You television this Sunday. Check our website for availability and then join us next week for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.