The Hymn of Security, Part 2

If we're God's elect, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if Christ has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, He rose for us, He ascended for us and He intercedes for us so He's not going to condemn us. You say Satan. Yes, but Satan isn't a higher court and he's thrown out every time he comes with his accusations. In Isaiah 50 verses 8 and 9, listen to what the prophet says, "'He is near that justifieth me, who shall contend with me?'"

What a great statement. "'He is near that justifieth me, who shall contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me.

Behold, the Lord God will help me. Who is he that shall condemn me?'" And just maybe Paul's thought came from Isaiah through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If we are God's elect, if God has made us righteous in Jesus Christ, if Christ has given His life for us, died, rose, ascended and interceding, if all of that has been done in our behalf, shall not He keep those for whom He has given His life? Look at Hebrews 9 for a moment and I want to share with you a few verses, Hebrews chapter 9.

And I want you to look at verses 7 to 11. Hebrews 9 and 7, "'But into the second...that is into the inner part, the Holy of Holies, went the High Priest alone once every year, not without blood, which He offered for Himself in the errors or sins of the people.'" This is the Day of Atonement the High Priest goes in and offers His offering in the Holy of Holies. "'The Holy Spirit was thus signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was yet standing.'" In other words, it was simply a symbolic act and the Holy Spirit was showing that the real sacrifice hadn't been made because if it had already been made, the priest wouldn't have to keep going in there every year, right? So it was symbolizing what was yet to come. "'It was only a figure for the time then present in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that couldn't make Him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience.'"

In other words, they were only symbols, they couldn't perfect the individual. It stood in foods and drinks and various washings and carnal ordinances imposed on them until the time of Reformation or the New Testament. All those Old Testament symbols were picturing something to come in verse 11. "'But Christ...underline that somewhere in your Bible...but Christ...or draw a circle around it, being come and High Priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building.'" And he goes on to verse 14 to talk about how through the blood of Christ we have been purged to serve God. You see, Jesus Christ was that perfect Priest who offered that perfect offering to make us perfect, to bring us to God. And to deny the security of the believer is to deny the sufficiency of the work of Christ, the sufficiency of the work of Christ.

We are secure. Back up to Hebrews 6 for a moment, verse 17. When God wanted to show us the security of His salvation, it says in verse 17, He was willing to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability, that is the unchanging character of His counsel. So God says, I want to show you that I'm not going to change my mind. If I saved you now, I'll save you forever. And I want to show you that by confirming it by an oath that by two immutable things and the two, you can write them in the margin, His promise and His oath, He made a promise and He swore to keep it in which it was impossible for God to lie that we might have a strong hope who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope that was set before us which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.

Just think about it, it's tremendous. God has given us a covenant of grace in Christ, that new covenant of which He's talking here, and that new covenant was promised and God swore to keep it so by two immutable things His promise and His oath from God who cannot lie, He promises to keep us and that becomes for us a strong hope who have fled to find a refuge and a hope we can cling to and here indeed is one. And our hope, verse 19, I love this, is an anchor of the soul. It's as if God has anchored us. And where's the anchor? It says at the end of verse 19, it's entered into that within the veil. The Lord took the anchor and He anchored it in the heavenly sanctuary.

So you're hooked, folks. If you're saved, you've got a rope from you, spiritually speaking, that goes behind the heavenly veil and it's anchored in the holy of holies in the heaven of heavens by the work of Jesus Christ. So there is no person, there is no person, not God, not Christ, not Satan, not anybody who can cause God to lose His hold on you or to change His mind or break His promise.

And His promise was for eternal life in Christ, right? Now another objector might come along and say, but wait a minute, maybe not a person, but you yourself...and this is where the people who try to teach that you can lose your salvation usually land. They say you can take yourself out by rejection or unbelief or changing your mind or turning your back or sinning and falling away.

It's sort of like there was a slide and you can slide down so far but if you go past a certain point, you can't get back. And it's the sin slide and you slip down so far by willful rejection, you can get yourself out. In other words, they say sins and circumstances and temptations and pressures and all of that stuff cause you to reject your salvation. And then they invariably will say, because I know this guy and he used to be a Christian and he turned his back and walked away.

That's always the way it's sort of defended. And so in verses 35 to 37, the Apostle Paul deals with the fact of circumstances. What if under pressure, for example, under the stress of temptation we fall and we reject Christ and we take ourselves out? Watch verse 35, what shall separate us from the love of Christ? What's going to do that to you?

What's going to pull you out? Would you notice this, please, that the love of Christ is not talking about your love for Him but His love for you? What can make Him stop loving you? Because listen, beloved, your salvation isn't based on your love for Him, you only love Him because He...what?...first loved you and your salvation is based on His love. So if you're getting out, He's got to change His mind.

And what's going to do that? What's going to cause Him to cease to love you? We know it's the love that Christ has for you because verse 37 emphasizes Him that loved us. Verse 39 emphasizes, again, from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.

So 37 and 39 put together with 35 tell us that He's talking about the love that Christ has for us. What's going to break that bond? Oh, you say things come into the life of a person and they bail out. What kind of things? Well, all these kinds of things that He names. And I think that's just why He names them. They're the most stressful things that could be named.

Well what can do that? Listen to John 13.1, "'Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come, that He should depart out of this world to the Father.'" Listen to this, "'Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.'"

It's unchanging love. Second Thessalonians chapter 2, I don't know if you've ever read this little benediction at the end of the second chapter, "'Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God, even our Father, who hath loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good work.'" What has God given us? He's loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace. The reason we have everlasting consolation and the reason we have an unending hope is because we know that when we sin, He gives us what? Grace. It's everlasting consolation and good hope through grace that comforts our hearts. It's John MacArthur with a look at what Scripture says about the permanence of salvation. John has been a pastor for over five decades. He's also chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and his current study on Grace to You comes from Romans chapter 8.

It's titled Guaranteed for Eternity. Well, John, this study is giving listeners helpful biblical truths that they can lean on for assurance of their salvation. And so with that in mind, what would you say is the single most convincing evidence that a person is saved?

And is it possible to boil it down to just one? I would say that one thing is what Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 1, where he says that the testing of your faith yields assurance. There are a lot of things that indicate your genuine salvation—your love for the Lord, your love for His Word, your love for His people, humility, your willingness to acknowledge your sin, your desire for obedience—but I think the great test of true salvation is a severe trial. And when you come out the other side of that trial and your faith is intact, that is the acid test.

That's the ultimate test. When you see somebody who claims to be a Christian and they get cancer or they have some terrible disaster in their life, and all of a sudden they walk away from God, that was the manifestation that that faith wasn't real. True faith is unbreakable.

And who is the classic illustration of that in the Bible? Job. You know, the devil says, well, Job just serves you because you bless him. And God says, no, this faith that saves is forever faith. It's eternal.

It's not going to ever be broken. So he proves the point by just allowing Satan to batter Job, and everything is lost. I mean, death of his family and illness, and he loses everything, and then the worst of it is stupid counsel from well-intentioned but misguided friends. And in the end, Job, the triumph of the book of Job is, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. That is the kind of faith that survives a test that's incomprehensible, what Job went through. And that's the reason for the book of Job, to show you that the faith that God gives to those who are his children can't be broken by any trial or a mass of trials. So ultimately, it's coming out the other side of a serious trial, and that's why when you get to our age, my age, I've seen enough of those, and my faith has come through all of them intact, and I know it's a faith that God has given me as a heavenly gift.

So let me just say this. If you want some help on this, there's a book called Saved Without a Doubt. It's available, affordable, 220 pages, Saved Without a Doubt.

You don't need to doubt, this book will help you, affordably priced and shipping is free in the US. That's right, and friend, if you're not sure you're a Christian, if you're battling with doubt and fear, Scripture has answers. And John's book Saved Without a Doubt can show you where to find the biblical assurance that you're looking for, or reveal that you haven't repented and you need to submit to Christ. To order your copy, contact us today. Saved Without a Doubt costs $10.50 and shipping is free. To order, call toll-free 800-55-GRACE or go to our website GTY.org.

Again the title, Saved Without a Doubt. To get your copy, call 800-55-GRACE or go to GTY.org. And if you're wrestling with other questions as you study Scripture, let me remind you about our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible. It has 25,000 explanatory notes written by John, there are introductions to each book of Scripture, and there are over 100 charts and maps, and more, all of it designed to help you align your thoughts and affections and actions with the Word of God. The Study Bible comes in the New King James, New American Standard, and English Standard versions, and several non-English translations, including Spanish, Italian, French, Russian. To get yours, call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website GTY.org. That's GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace To You television this Sunday on DirecTV, channel 378, or check your local listings for Channel and Times, and be here tomorrow when John continues his compelling look at Romans 8 with another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.