You rejoice in the fact that you have a living hope, that you have an inheritance that can't perish and can't be defiled and can't fade away, that is now reserved in heaven for you and that you are protected by the power of God through faith. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Charles Spurgeon said that if he didn't believe salvation is permanent, that once you're saved, you're saved forever, he should be of all men the most miserable because he would lack any ground for comfort. Well, friend, how about you? Are you confident that you're saved for good, that right now you're in God's family and safely held in his permanent grip? Helping you settle that question is what John's current study is all about.
He calls it God won't let you go. And now with today's lesson, here's John. The guarantee of Scripture and therefore the promise of God is that salvation is forever. And this is not a stand-alone doctrine. This is not one that you can believe or not believe without any major effect on other doctrines.
In fact, quite the opposite is true. To get this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, or the eternality of salvation wrong, is to produce chaos in regard to the doctrine of predestination, the doctrine of election, the doctrine of justification, the doctrine of sanctification, and the doctrine of glorification. It is, if you will, to unravel all the strands in the cord of salvation. That's why I said at the outset that the most important element in all the range of salvation doctrines is this issue of the perseverance of the saints. It is in the end what makes salvation, salvation because it is forever. And I know, as you do, that it has been debated as if it's sort of a, I guess, difficult doctrine to come to a conclusion about, as if the Scripture took both sides and was unclear, or as if it was just sort of a matter of personal preference. The fact of the matter is, it is an absolutely critical component in the entire understanding of salvation. And there are so many passages of Scripture that relate to this that we could draw this study out perhaps longer than we need to. Suffice it to say, I can anchor you down, I think, so strongly that as you study the Bible in the future, you're going to see those passages that relate to this. And you're going to be able to answer those passages that perhaps once troubled you with regard to this issue.
I'll show you just two texts in the gospel of John by way of foundation here. In John chapter 10 and verse 27, Jesus says, "'My sheep hear My voice and I know them.'" And the word know has to mean more than I know who they are because that would be true of anybody and everybody.
To know them means to have an intimate and personal relationship with them. I know them and they follow Me and I give eternal life to them and they shall never perish. Jesus said, "'It is not the will of My Father that any one of these little ones should perish.'" And here He says, "'They shall never perish.'
And no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one."
We are held in the secure hands of the Father and the Son. By such statements and many, many more, we are to be confident that those who are genuinely the children of God through faith in Christ are secure in that relationship forever and will never perish. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will never perish. Salvation is the gift of eternal life and those who receive it will never lose it or forfeit it. And that is so essential to understanding salvation that it really does boggle the mind that it would ever be open to question.
And yet there are many, many Christians, many of you who have been denied the sweetness of that confidence, who have been denied the joy of that confidence, who have been denied the peace of that confidence, the hope of that confidence, the assurance of that confidence, the rest, the tranquility that that confidence brings. So many have been told that they will be lost unless they hold on to their confession, unless they hold on to their faith, unless they hold on and keep on believing. If I could lose my salvation, I would lose it. If I was in charge of it and I had to hold on, I wouldn't because I couldn't. I couldn't produce my salvation by an act of my own faith and I couldn't sustain it that way either. It's a terrible thing to say to people. You have to hold on.
Well how tightly do you have to hold on? Well you have to live righteously. Well how righteously do you have to live? And so people are caught in this idea of doubt and fear and unnecessary anxiety, wondering how far they can go in sin and still not lose it, or how much they can doubt and still not have a non-saving faith. This is a rejection of the very clear nature of salvation, the very clear promise of God. So it is a sin in the sense that it underappreciates what God has done. It diminishes gratitude because it diminishes understanding.
And in diminishing gratitude it diminishes worship. And because we are to respond with full praise and full worship all the promises of God and give Him glory for them all, we must be clear on this the most gracious pledge in the doctrine of salvation. I understand that the doctrine of justification is the great sort of noble head of all the doctrines of salvation. And I understand the wonder of the doctrine of reconciliation and redemption and ransom and adoption and conversion and regeneration.
I understand all those terms and all of that. But in the end, what makes all of those have such infinite value and produce such lasting joy is that they are all forever. As soon as you pull that out, you've diminished everything. Any idea of salvation that leaves out security is a distortion of the truth. And any idea of security that leaves out perseverance is a distortion of the truth. So if you've ever been saved, you can never be lost. But if you have been saved, you're not going to live a life that presumes on that, as so often people assume, and go out and sin any way you want because you can't lose your salvation because if you've truly been converted, you love the Law of God, you long to obey Christ and that's how you're going to live. And consequently, your faith is a persevering faith. We are secure in our salvation by the gift from God of a faith that perseveres. He doesn't just give us the faith to save us as a supernatural gift and then remove it.
So now we're stuck trying to generate our own faith to hold on to salvation on our own. He gives us a faith as a permanent gift that perseveres. That's why instead of talking about eternal security, which states a truth but doesn't tell us how, we would rather talk about the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, meaning that we have a faith that never turns to doubt, so severe as to become unbelief. We have our moments of doubt, we have our struggles, but never does our faith turn to final doubt, complete doubt and denial. We are secured by the same supernatural faith that was given to us to cause us to believe savingly and we are sustained by the gift of that same supernatural faith. Salvation can't fail because the faith can't fail, the faith that's come to us from God. In order to see this, I want you to turn to 1 Peter chapter 1.
We just sort of introduced that last time and I want to work our way through it. 1 Peter chapter 1 and verses 3 through 9. And my hope is that we can work our way all through these verses. Now this marvelous epistle begins with the doctrine of election in verse 1, we are chosen. It then moves to the sanctifying work of the Spirit, obedience to Christ, being sprinkled with His blood. And so it is clearly an epistle directed at the elect, those who have been sanctified by the Spirit through justification unto glorification. And he comes into verse 3 and starts to unfold the blessing of this salvation which began in eternity, passed with election and was realized in time through the sanctifying work of the Spirit in our lives that produced submission to the lordship of Christ.
And I want you to notice where he starts. It's as if Peter says, I acknowledge that you're the elect, I acknowledge that you are those whom God has chosen and whom the Spirit has set apart from sin to God. I acknowledge that you are those who obey Jesus Christ. I acknowledge that you have received grace and peace in fullest measure. And immediately he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he could have said, for the doctrine of election, for the truth of justification, for the truth of sanctification, for the truth of glorification, for our redemption, for our regeneration, any of those glorious terms.
But notice what he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a doxology, this is a benediction in response to our salvation who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you...and here comes the key statement...who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice. What do you rejoice in? You rejoice in the fact that you have a living hope, that you have an inheritance that can't perish and can't be defiled and can't fade away, that is now reserved in heaven for you and that you are protected by the power of God through faith. It's in this that you rejoice and even though now for a little while if necessary you've been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ and though you have not seen Him, you love Him and though you do not see Him now but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. Peter says, look, the thing that produces the joy, the thing in which you greatly rejoice, the thing that causes you to praise and glorify and honor God, the thing that fills you with joy inexpressible and full of glory is that. The end result of your faith is the full and final salvation reserved for you at the coming of Jesus Christ, at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
This is the whole point. This is the passage as much as any in the Scripture that tells me how at the heart of all matters of salvation is this issue of perseverance. The key phrase for you to underline would be in verse 5, who are protected by the power of God. Now verse 1 tells us that Peter was writing to aliens, that is to say Christians living in the world and they are aliens as we are in this world.
Christians, believers who are the elect, who have been sanctified by the Spirit, that includes their salvation and ongoing sanctification, those who are obeying Christ, having been sprinkled with His blood, that is in a sense having made a covenant obedience with Him. And he writes to these scattered believers in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, those are all Gentile parts of the world. And he's writing to believers who are not just scattered but they're feeling some serious persecution in chapter 2, in chapter 3, in chapter 4 and even to some degree in chapter 5, references are made to their suffering.
So Peter is writing to scattered believers in Asia Minor, which is modern Turkey. They are facing severe persecution, in some cases they're facing death, martyrdom. And these believers have a natural fear for their own lives and a fear for their own faithfulness. Now remember that they don't have a Bible, they don't have the Scripture, they don't necessarily know the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, so they have to be instructed.
Put yourself in their place. You've come to Christ. You're in a Gentile world. You only know the gospel that you heard and whatever else you've been instructed in.
And you're at best a neophyte, you're new. And you feel the heat of the world around you and the pressure of the world around you and you also now feel the escalating hostility toward the faith and you see others being persecuted and perhaps some being martyred and you wonder if your faith could stand that test. That's not too far-fetched, is it? I suppose you've asked yourself that question. I've asked myself that question through my life. What would I do if I were standing there before the stake, or if I were standing there before the guillotine to put my head in to have it chopped off?
What would I do? What would I do if I was to be tortured in some horrific way? With all that I know, I believe at this particular point that the Spirit of God would accomplish His work in me and I would stand the test and pass the test.
But if I didn't have what the Word of God has to say about that and I was just kind of hanging on to my own ability to take that severe test, I might begin to wonder whether I'd ever pass the test. And so here you have these new believers and very normal for them not to trust their own faith, not to trust their own strength. And they are aliens in the world. They are citizens of heaven. Peter calls them a royal priesthood, living stones in God's temple, a people of God's own possessions.
They belong to Him. And one thing for sure, they do not need to fear. They do not need to be intimidated.
They do not need to be troubled by persecution. They never need to be afraid that their faith will fail when it comes to the test. In fact, in verse 7 he says, when various trials come, verse 6, they become the proof of your faith which is more precious than gold which is perishable even though tested by fire and may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. In other words, what he says to them is when you come to the test and you come to the fire, your real faith will prove itself.
It's just the opposite of what you think. You have been given a kind of faith that shines in the fire. In verse 5, you are protected by the power of God through faith. In verse 8, no matter what is going on, you believe in Him. In verse 9, the outcome of your faith is the salvation of your soul.
That's what we're talking about. It's the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, or another way to say it is, persevering faith...faith that perseveres. They were protected by the power of God through the faith that He gave them. You don't have to say to people, well if you can keep on believing, you can keep on being saved. I couldn't be saved by my own faith, I can't be kept by my own faith, that's why I said if I could fall, I would fall.
But I can't fall because I have a faith that's a gift of God. The issue is very similar in Jude. Jude, the bondservant of Jesus Christ, the brother of James to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father and kept...and kept for Jesus Christ. Now these people to whom Jude wrote had a lot to fear because they were in a world of false teaching and they were being told to go and reach those who were in false religious systems. And it was dangerous work, as it says in verse 23, you're snatching people out of the fire and you have to do this with fear, hating the garment polluted by the flesh, you get near to false doctrine, you can get polluted by it.
Maybe they were wondering, can we go into that world of false doctrine and come out unpolluted? And that's why he says, at the end of Jude, now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, you are the chosen and you are the kept and you will not fall. If Peter believed and if it were true that believers could lose their salvation, he would have to say something very different than this. If believers were there worried about whether they would survive persecution, worried whether they would survive martyrdom, worried whether their faith would hold on and it really was up to them, Peter would have written this letter very differently. Hang on, folks, hold on, don't abandon the faith, be faithful, be true.
Instead he says, lest be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it's all in His hands, the one who chose you, who foreknew you, who sanctified you, who gave you grace and peace in fullest measure, it's all in His hands and according to His great mercy, He has regenerated you to a hope that ever lives to an inheritance that can never fade away, you are protected by the power of God through faith, etc., etc., etc. If this had depended on them, you couldn't say all that. But Peter doesn't give them doses of sympathy.
Oh, I understand, hold on, hold on. He doesn't indicate that their fears are legitimate. But he points rather to their absolute safety. They might lose all their earthly possessions and their lives but never their salvation. Their heavenly inheritance is fixed and guaranteed by God and their faith will endure through anything and everything because that faith is not natural faith, it's a gift from God, it's supernatural.
And their love for Christ would stand against all assaults and never, ever fail. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current study is titled, God Won't Let You Go. Now John, today's message focused on three verses in 1 Peter chapter 1, but you look beyond that passage to the book of Jude and the Gospel of John, for example, and anyone who's listened to Grace to You will recognize that whenever you teach on a particular passage, you always refer to other parts of the Bible as you go. This strategy of studying multiple passages in order to understand one particular portion of Scripture, does that require a lot of technical or professional skill or is that a method that even lay people can use?
It's definitely a method lay people should use because it's absolutely critical to accurate interpretation. The Bible is its own best interpreter. A given passage in the Bible, I have found this through my half a century of teaching the Word of God, the Bible is its own best commentary and that is because it is consistent. It has one author, the Holy Spirit.
There are no contradictions. Therefore, it's going to be cohesive, coherent and putting it together is how you get the full picture. So from the get-go in my ministry, I decided that I would explain the Bible by the Bible and that's kind of been a mark of my teaching. To understand this passage, you have to go to this verse and that verse and the other verse and what you're doing is not only feeding into an understanding of a given passage but you're collecting a kind of a systematic theology along the way so that you can make a full and rich identification of a given doctrine. The MacArthur Study Bible would really help you to do that because all of that is done for you in the notes and the newest edition of the MacArthur Study Bible is the translation of the Legacy Standard Bible, this incredible new English translation. What exactly is the Study Bible?
As the name implies, it's a Bible designed to draw you in deep study of God's Word and make the meaning of every passage, even difficult ones, clear. The MacArthur Study Bible explains virtually every scripture text in detail and each page includes the Bible text on top and my notes on the bottom and you'll find about 25,000 of those study notes passage by passage, verse by verse to help you understand with clarity what the Word of God, and here's the important part, means by what it says. And now you can get the MacArthur Study Bible in the Legacy Standard Bible text, a new refinement of the New American Standard text which I've used for many years. So if you're thinking about giving a Bible to a loved one this Christmas, take a look at the Legacy Standard edition of the MacArthur Study Bible, four different binding options, reasonably priced, free shipping in the U.S., place your Christmas order now.
Yes, do, friend. The MacArthur Study Bible makes a great gift this Christmas. To order the MacArthur Study Bible now including the Legacy Standard Bible text, get in touch with us today. You can order from our website, gty.org, or when you call us at 800-55-GRACE. The MacArthur Study Bible in the Legacy Standard version may be the most helpful single study tool you own. Again, to place your order, go to our website, gty.org, or call us at 800-55-GRACE.
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Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. When trials come and God seems far away, how can you be sure He's still holding on to you as tightly as ever? For the answer, be here tomorrow as John continues his current study, God Won't Let You Go, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
