The following Updated for Today Reader sermon is taken from A Defense of Calvinism, by Charles Spurgeon. © Roger McReynolds 2018.
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Final Perseverance, also called Preservation of the Saints by some, (or Perseverance of the Saints—as it is called in the T.U.L.I.P. acronym) is a doctrine in Christian theology, which teaches that once someone is born again by the grace of God, they will persevere, persist, continue to the end. In other words, once a child of God, always a child of God.
Final Perseverance (#75)
A Sermon Delivered on Sunday Morning, April 20, 1856
by C. H. Spurgeon
at New Park Street Chapel, London
Hebrews 6:4-6
For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
Introduction
There are some places in Europe that have been the scenes of frequent warfare, as for example the kingdom of Belgium, which might be called the battlefield of Europe. War has raged over all of Europe, but in some unhappy spots, battle after battle has been fought. Similarly, there is hardly a passage of Scripture that has not been disputed between the enemies of truth and those who support it. But this passage, along with one or two others, has been the special subject of attack. This is one of the texts that have been trampled by the feet of controversy. Opinions are poles apart, some asserting that it means one thing, and others declaring that it means another. We think some of them come close to the truth; but others of them seriously miss the mind of the Spirit. We personally approach this passage with the intention to read it with the simplicity of a child, and to convey whatever we find; and if it does not seem to agree with something we have held until now, we are prepared to cast away every doctrine of our own, rather than one passage of Scripture.
Taking the passage as a whole, it appears to us that the apostle wished to push the disciples forward. There is a tendency in the human mind to stop short of the heavenly target. As soon as ever we have reached the first principles of religion—have passed through baptism and understand the resurrection of the dead—there is a tendency in us to stand still; to say, “I have passed from death to life, I may take my stand here and rest.” But the Christian life was never intended to be lived standing still; it is a race, a perpetual motion.
Therefore, the apostle endeavors to urge the disciples to keep going, to make them run the heavenly race with endurance, looking to Jesus, to obtain the imperishable prize. He tells them it is not enough to have once passed through a glorious change, to have, on a certain day, experienced the wonderful effect of the Holy Spirit. He teaches them that it is absolutely necessary that they have the Spirit throughout their entire lives, that as long as they live, they should be progressing in the truth of God. In order to make them persevere, if possible, he shows them that if they do not, they must, most certainly, be lost; because if they do not, there is no other salvation except the one that God has already provided for them. If that does not sustain them, carry them forward, and present them holy and blameless before God, there cannot be any other. For it is impossible, he says, once you have been enlightened, if you fall away, to restore you again to repentance.
We shall, this morning, answer one or two questions. The first question will be, Who is the apostle talking about? Are they true Christians rf not? Second, What is meant by falling away? And, third, What is intended, when it is maintained that it is impossible to restore them again to repentance?
Who Is the Apostle Talking About?
We begin by answering the question, Who Is the Apostle Talking About? If you read Dr. John Gill, Dr. John Own, and almost all the distinguished Calvinistic writers, they all assert that these people are not Christians. They say that enough is said in this passage to represent someone who is a Christian on the outside, but not enough to be talking about a true believer. Now, it strikes me that they would not have said this if they did not have some doctrine to support; because a child, reading this passage, would say, that the people intended in it must be Christians. If the Holy Spirit intended to describe Christians, I do not see how he could have used clearer terms than those in this passage. How can someone be said to be enlightened, and to have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, without being a child of God? With all respect to these learned doctors, and I admire and love them all, I humbly think that they allowed their opinions to be a little skewed when they said that. And I think I will be able to show that only true believers are described here.
First, they are spoken of as having “once been enlightened.” This refers to the enlightening influence of God’s Spirit, poured into the soul at the time of conviction, when a person is enlightened about their spiritual condition and shown how evil and spiteful it is to sin against God; a person is made to feel how completely powerless they are to rise from the grave of their corruption, and is further enlightened to see that “by works of the law no human being will be justified,” and to see Christ on the cross as the sinner’s only hope. The first work of grace is to enlighten, or inform, the soul. By nature we are entirely dark; the Spirit, like a lamp, sheds light into the dark heart, revealing its wickedness, displaying its sad spiritual poverty, and, in due time, revealing Jesus Christ, so that in his light we may see light. I cannot consider someone truly enlightened unless they are a child of God. This term clearly indicates a person taught from God. It is not all of the Christian experience; but is it not a part?
Having once been enlightened, as the text says, the next thing that God gives to us is a taste of the heavenly gift, by which we understand, the heavenly gift of salvation. This includes the pardon of sin, justification by the righteousness of Jesus Christ being paid to our account, new birth by the Holy Spirit, and all those gifts and graces that bring salvation in the early dawn of spiritual life. All true believers have tasted the heavenly gift. It is not enough for someone to be enlightened; the light may glare on their eyes and they may still die. They must taste, as well as see that the Lord is good. It is not enough to see that I am corrupt; I must taste that Christ is able to remove my corruption. It is not enough for me to know that he is the only Savior; I must taste of his flesh and of his blood, and have an essential union with him.
We believe that when someone has been enlightened and has had an experience of grace, they are a Christian. Whatever those great theologians might believe, we cannot believe that the Holy Spirit would describe an unsaved person as having been enlightened, and as having tasted of the heavenly gift. No, my brothers and sisters, if I have tasted of the heavenly gift, then that heavenly gift is mine. If I have had ever so brief an experience of my Savior’s love, I am one of his. If he has brought me to green pastures, and made me taste of the still waters and the tender grass, I have no need to fear whether I am really a child of God.
Then the apostle gives an additional description, a higher state of grace: sanctification by sharing in the Holy Spirit. It is the exceptional privilege of believers, after they have first tasted of the heavenly gift, to be made sharers in the Holy Spirit. He resides permanently in the hearts, and souls, and minds of people. He makes this mortal body his home. He makes our soul his palace and lives there. We maintain (and we think, on the authority of Scripture), that no one can share in the Holy Spirit and not be saved. Where the Holy Spirit lives, there must be life. If I share in the Holy Spirit and fellowship with him, then I may rest assured that my salvation has been purchased by the blood of the Savior. You have no reason to fear, beloved; if you have the Holy Spirit, you have that which guarantees your salvation. If you, by an inner fellowship, can share in his Spirit, and if the Holy Spirit lives in you, you are not only a Christian, but you have arrived at some maturity through and by grace. You have gone beyond mere enlightenment. You have passed from the bare taste, you have arrived to an absolute feast, and a sharing in the Holy Spirit.
However, to prevent any mistake about these people being children of God, the apostle proceeds to a further state of grace. They “have tasted the goodness of the word of God.” Now, I will venture to say there are some good Christian people here who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have never “tasted the goodness of the word of God.” By that I mean, they are really converted, they have tasted the heavenly gift, but have they not grown strong enough in grace to know the sweetness, the richness, and pleasures of the very word of God that saves them. They have been saved by the word of God, but they have not yet come to realize, and love, and feed on the word like many others have. It is one thing for God to do a work of grace in the soul, it is quite another thing for God to show us that work. It is one thing for the word of God to work in us, it is another thing for us to really and habitually enjoy, and taste, and rejoice in that word.
Some of my hearers are true Christians, but they have not advanced to that state where they can love election, and swallow it as a sweet morsel; they cannot yet take the great doctrines of grace and feed on them. But these people had. They had tasted the good word of God, as well as received the good gift. They had arrived to a place where they loved the word of God, tasted it, and feasted on it. It had become their indispensable helper; they regarded it as sweeter than honey, yes, sweeter than the “drippings of the honeycomb.” They had “tasted the goodness of the word of God.” I repeat, if these people are not believers—who are?
And they had gone even further. They had reached the summit of reverence for God. The had received “the powers of the age to come.” Not miraculous gifts, which are denied us in these days, but all those powers with which the Holy Spirit provides Christians. And what are they? Why, there is the power of faith, that commands even the heavens themselves to rain, and they rain, or stop, and the rain stops. There is the power of prayer, that places a ladder between earth and heaven, and asks the angels to ascend and descend, bringing our desires up to God, and bringing down blessings from above. There is the power with which God clothes his servants with an inspiration that enables them to instruct others, and lead them to Jesus. Whatever power there may be—the power of having fellowship with God, or the power of patiently waiting for the Son of Man—these individuals possessed these powers. They were not simply children, they were adults. They were not merely alive, but they were supplied with power. They were adults with strong muscles and bones; they had become giants in grace, and had received not only light, but also the power of the world to come. These, we say, whatever the text may mean, must have been beyond a doubt, true and real Christians.
What Is Meant by Falling Away?
And now we answer the second question, What Is Meant by Falling Away?
We must remind our friends that there is a vast difference between falling away and falling. Nowhere in Scripture does it say, that if someone falls they cannot be restored. On the contrary, “The righteous falls seven times and rises again.” However many times the child of God falls, the Lord sustains the righteous. When our bones are broken, he sets them again, and places us once more on solid ground. He says, “Return, O faithless children…for I am your master.” If Christians backslide ever so far, still Almighty mercy cries, “Return, return, return, and seek an injured Father’s heart.” He still calls his children back again.
Falling is not falling away. Let me explain the difference. Someone who falls may behave just like someone who falls away, and yet there is a great difference between the two. I can use no better illustration that the difference between fainting and dying. There lies a young woman; she can hardly breathe; she cannot lift her hand by herself, and if someone else lifts it, it falls. She is cold and stiff; she is faint, but not dead. There is another woman, just as cold and stiff as the first, but there is this difference—she is dead. The Christian may faint, and may fall down in a faint too, and someone may pick them up, and say they are dead, but they are not. If they fall, God will lift them up again; but if they fall away, God himself cannot save them. For it is impossible, if the righteous fall away “to restore them again to repentance.”
Furthermore, falling away is not committing sin as the result of a temporary surprise temptation. Abraham goes to Egypt; he is afraid that his wife will be taken away from him, and he says, “She is my sister.” That was a sin committed under the influence of a temporary surprise temptation—a sin, of which, by-and-by, he repented, and God forgave him. Now that is falling; but it is not falling away. Even Noah committed sin, which has tarnished his memory even to this day, and will disgrace it to the end of this age. But Noah doubtless repented, and was saved by sovereign grace. Noah fell, but Noah did not fall away. A Christian may go astray once, and quickly return again; and though it is a sad, and tragic, and evil thing to be surprised into a sin, yet there is great difference between this and the sin that is the result of a total falling away from grace.
Nor can a person who commits a sin, that is not exactly a surprise, be said to fall away. I believe that some Christian men—God forbid that we should say much about it; let us cover the nakedness of our brother with a garment. But I do believe that there are some Christians, who, for a period of time, have wandered into sin, and yet have not absolutely fallen away. There is that black case of David—a case that has puzzled thousands. David certainly lived for some months without making a public confession of his sin, but he doubtless had heartache, because grace had not stopped its work. There was a spark among the ashes that Nathan stirred up, which showed that David was not dead, or else the kindling that the prophet added would not have caught fire so quickly. And so, beloved, you may have wandered into sin for a time, and gone far from God; and yet you are not the person described here, about whom it is said that it is impossible they can be saved. But wanderer though you be, you are still your Father’s child, and mercy cries, “Repent, repent; return to your first husband, because it was better with you then than it is now. Return, oh wanderer, return.”
Again, falling away is not even giving up calling oneself a Christian. Some will say, “Now there is So-and-so; he used to call himself a Christian, and now he denies it, and what is worse, he dares to use bad language, and says that he never knew Christ at all. Surely he must be fallen away.” My friend, he has fallen, fallen fearfully, and fallen very badly; but I remember a case in Scripture of a man who denied his Lord and Master in front of him. You remember his name; he is an old friend of yours—our friend Simon Peter! He denied Christ with swearing and said, “I do not know the man.” And yet Jesus looked on Simon. He had fallen, but he had not fallen away; for only two or three days after that, there was Peter at the tomb of His Master, running there to meet his Lord, to be one of the first to find him risen.
Beloved, you may even have denied Christ by openly claiming that you do not know him, and yet if you repent there is mercy for you. Christ has not cast you away, you will repent yet. You have not fallen away. If you had, there is no reason for me to preach to you; because it is impossible for those who have fallen away to be restored again to repentance.
But someone says, “What is falling away?” Well, there has never been a case of it yet, and therefore I cannot describe it from personal observation; but I will tell you what I believe it would necessitate. To fall away, would be for the Holy Spirit to completely go out of a person, for his grace to entirely cease. Not to lie dormant, but to cease to be—for God, who has begun a good work, to completely abandon the work, to take his hand completely and entirely away, and say, “There! I have half saved you; now I will damn you.” That is what falling away is. It is not to sin for a time. A child may sin against its father, and still be alive; but falling away is like cutting the child’s head clean off. Not merely falling, for then our Father could pick us up, but being violently thrown down a high cliff, where we are lost forever. Falling away would involve God’s grace changing its living nature, God’s immutability becoming capable of change, God’s faithfulness becoming changeable, and God becoming not God. Falling away would require all of these things.
What Is Intended, When It Is Maintained That It Is Impossible to Restore Them Again to Repentance?
But if a child of God could fall away, and grace could cease in a person’s heart—now comes the third question: The apostle said, It is impossible for that child of God to be restored. What did he mean? One distinguished commentator says, He meant that it would be very hard. It would be very hard, indeed, for someone who fell away, to be saved. But we reply, “My dear friend, it does not say anything about it being very hard; it says it is impossible, and we like to read our Bible just as a child would read it.” It says it is impossible, and we say that it would be utterly impossible. If someone could truly fall away, God has stated that he will never grant a second salvation to save those for whom the first salvation has failed to deliver. I think, however, I hear someone say, “It seems to me that it is possible for a person to fall away, because it says, ‘It is impossible, in the case of those…who…have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance.’” Well, my friend, let us accept your theory for a moment. You are a good Christian this morning. Let us apply it to yourself and see how you will like it. You have believed in Christ, and committed your soul to God, and you think, that in some unlucky hour you may fall entirely away. Think about this. If you come to me and tell me that you have fallen away, how would you like me to say to you, “My friend, you are as much damned as the devil in hell, because it is impossible to restore you again to repentance”?
“Oh! no sir,” you would say, “I will repent again and join the Church.” That is simply the Arminian theory over again; but it is not in God’s Scripture. If you once fall away, you are as damned as anyone who suffers in hell forever. And yet we have heard a man talk about people being converted three, four, and five times, and born again over and over again. I remember a good man (I suppose he was) pointing to a man who was walking along the street, and saying, “That man has been born again three times, to my certain knowledge.” I could mention the name of the individual, but I refrain from doing so. “And I believe he will fall again,” said he. “He is so addicted to drinking, that I do not believe the grace of God will do anything for him, unless he becomes a total abstainer.” Now, such pastors cannot read the Bible; because in case their members do positively fall away, it is stated here, as an absolute fact, that it is impossible to restore them again to repentance. But I will ask my Arminian friend, does he not believe that as long as there is life there is hope? “Yes,” he says:
“While the lamp holds out to burn,
The vilest sinner may return.”
Well, that is not being very consistent—to say, in one breath, that a person can fall away and be restored and then tell us, in the next, that there are some people who fall so far away that they cannot be saved. I want to know how you make these two things fit each other. I want you to make these two doctrines agree; and until some enterprising individual will bring the North Pole, and set it on the top of the South, I cannot tell how you will accomplish it. The fact is you are quite right in saying, “While there is life there is hope;” but you are wrong in saying that for any individual who fell into such a state that it is impossible for them to be saved.
We now come to two things: First, to prove the doctrine, that if a Christian falls away, they cannot be saved; and, second, to improve the doctrine, that is to show how to use it.
One. I must prove the doctrine, that if a Christian falls away—not falls, for you understand how I have explained that; but if a Christian ceases to be a child of God, and if grace in their heart is dead—they are then beyond the possibility of salvation, and it is impossible for them to ever be restored. Let me show you why. First, it is completely impossible, if you consider the work that has already broken down. When people have built bridges across rivers, if they have been built with the strongest materials and in the most excellent manner, and yet the foundation has been discovered to be so bad that nothing will stand, what do they say? Why, “We have already tried the best that engineering or architecture has taught us; the best has already failed; we know of nothing that can exceed what has already been tried. Therefore, we feel that there remains no possibility of ever bridging that river, or ever running a line of railroad track across this marsh, or this wetland. We have already tried what is acknowledged to be the best method.”
As the apostle says, “These people have once been enlightened; they have once been influenced by the Holy Spirit revealing their sin to them. What remains to be tried? They have once been convicted—is there anything superior to conviction?” Does the Bible promise that the miserable sinner will receive anything over and above the conviction of their sin to make them aware of it? Is there anything more powerful than the sword of the Spirit? That sword failed to pierce the person’s heart; is there anything else that will do it?
Here is someone who has been under the hammer of God’s law; but that has not broken their heart; can you find anything stronger? The lamp of God’s Spirit has already lit up the caverns of their soul; if that is not enough, from where will you borrow a better enlightenment? Ask the sun, does it have a lamp brighter than the illumination of the Spirit? Ask the stars, do they have a light more brilliant than the light of the Holy Spirit? Creation answers, No. If the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit fails, then there is nothing else. Besides, these people had tasted the heavenly gift, and though they had been pardoned and justified, yet pardon and justification through Christ were not enough (using this supposition) to save them. How else can they be saved? God has cast them away; after he has failed in saving them using these, what else can deliver them? They have already tasted the heavenly gift; is there any greater mercy for them? Is there a brighter garment than the robe of Christ’s righteousness? Is there a more efficacious bath than that “fountain filled with blood”? No! All the earth echoes, “No.” If the one has failed, what else remains?
These people have also shared in the Holy Spirit. If that was unsuccessful, what more can we give them? If, my hearer, the Holy Spirit lives in your soul, and he does not sanctify you and keep you to the end, what else can be tried? Ask the blasphemer whether he knows a being, or dares to suppose a being, superior to the Holy Spirit! Is there a being greater than Omnipotence? Is there a power greater than that which lives in the believer’s new-born heart? And if the Holy Spirit has already failed, Oh, heavens above, tell us where we can find anything that can surpass his might? If that is ineffective, what can be tried next? These people had also “tasted the goodness of the word of God.” They had loved the doctrines of grace; those doctrines had entered their souls, and they had fed on them. What new doctrines are there to preach to them? Prophet of ages, tell us, where will you find another system of theology? Who will bring it? Shall we raise up Moses from the tomb? Shall we bring back all the ancient prophets and have them preach? If, then, there is only one doctrine that is true, and if these people have fallen away after receiving it, how can they be saved?
Again, according to our text, these people have had “the powers of the age to come.” They have had power to conquer sin—power in faith, power in prayer, power in fellowship with God; with what greater power shall they be provided? This has already failed; what can be done next? Oh you angels! Answer. What next? What other means remain? What else can succeed, if the great things of salvation have already been defeated? What else shall be attempted now? They have been once saved; but yet it is now supposed that they are lost. How, then, can they now be saved? Is there a supplemental salvation? Is there something that is superior to Christ, that can be a Christ where Jesus is defeated?
And then, the apostle says that if they did fall away, the greatness of their sin would put them outside the borders of mercy. Christ died, and by his death he made an atonement for his own murderers; he made an atonement for those sins that crucified him once. But do we read that Christ will ever die for those who crucify him twice? The apostle tells us that if believers do fall away, “They are crucifying once again the Son of God… holding him up to contempt.” Where, then, will we find an atonement for that? He has died for me. If the sins of the whole world were on my shoulders, still they only crucified him once, and that one crucifixion has taken all those sins away. But if I crucified him again, where would I find pardon? Could heaven, could earth, could Christ himself—with a heart full of love—point me to another Christ, guide me to a second Calvary, give me a second Gethsemane? Ah, no! If we were to fall away, the very guilt itself would place us beyond all hope.
Again, beloved, think what it would take to save such a person. Christ has died for them once, yet they have fallen away and are lost. The Spirit has regenerated them once, and that regenerating work has been of no use. God has given them a new heart (I am only speaking, of course, on the supposition of the apostle). He has put his law in that heart, yet they have left him, contrary to the promise that they would not. God has made their path “like the light of dawn,” but they did not shine “brighter and brighter until full day.” Their path turned to blackness. What next? There must be a second incarnation, a second Calvary, a second Holy Spirit, a second regeneration, a second justification—and I know not what else—even though the first was accomplished and completed. If, after the gracious Savior failed, he were to attempt the work again, it would mean upsetting the whole kingdom of nature and grace, it would mean turning the world upside down.
If you read the seventh & eighth verses, you will see that the apostle calls on nature to illustrate his position. He says, “For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.” Look! There is a field. The rain falls on it, and it produces good fruit. Well, then, that is God blessing it. But there is, according to your supposition, another field on which the same rain descends, which the same dew moistens. It has been plowed and prepared, just as the other, and the farmer has applied his skill to it, and yet it is not productive. Well, if the rain of heaven did not help it, what next? The skills of agriculture have been tried, every implement has been worn out on its surface, and yet it has been of no use. What next? There is nothing left but to be scorched and cursed—like the Sahara Desert—and given up for destruction. So, my hearer, could it be possible that grace could work in you, and then not produce your salvation—that the influence of Divine grace could come down, like rain from heaven, and yet return to God empty? If that were so, then there could not be any hope for you, because you would be “near to being cursed,” and your end would be “to be cursed and burned.”
There is one idea that has occurred to us. It has struck us as remarkable, that our friends claim that people can be converted, become new creations, then fall away, and be converted again. I am an old creature by nature; God creates me into something new, he makes me a new creature, I cannot change back into an old creature, because I cannot be uncreated. But yet, suppose that being a new creation is not good enough to carry me to heaven—what happens after that? Must there be something higher than being a new creation—a new new creation? Really, my friends, we have arrived at the country of Dreamland. We have been forced to follow our opponents into the territory of absurdity, and we do not know how else to deal with them.
One more thought. There is nothing in Scripture that teaches us that there is any salvation, except the one salvation of Jesus Christ. Nothing tells us about any other power, however excellent, that overshadows the power of the Holy Spirit. These things have already been tried on someone, and yet, according to the supposition, they have failed, because this person has fallen away. Now, God has never revealed a supplemental salvation for people on whom one salvation has been ineffective; and until we are pointed to one passage in the Bible that declares this, we will continue to maintain that the doctrine of the text is this: If grace is ineffective, if grace does not keep a person, then there is nothing left but that they must be damned. And what is that but to say, in a round-about way, that grace will do it? Rather than opposing the Calvinistic doctrine of final perseverance, these words form one of the finest proofs of it that could be provided.
Two. And now, we come to improving this doctrine, that is, how to put it to good use. If Christians can fall away, and cease to be Christians, they cannot be restored again to repentance. “But,” says someone, “you say they cannot fall away. What is the use of putting this ‘and then have fallen away’ in to frighten children, like a ghost that does not really exist?” My learned friend, “Who are you…to answer back to God?” If God has put this in his Bible, he has done it for wise reasons and excellent purposes. Let me show you why.
First, oh Christian, it is there to keep you from falling away. God keeps his children from falling away, but he uses means to do it. One of these is the fear of the law, showing them what would happen if they were to fall away. There is a deep precipice. What is the best way to keep anyone from falling down there? Why, to tell them that if they did, they would definitely be smashed to pieces. In some old castles there is a deep cellar, where there is a vast amount of poisonous air, that would kill anybody who went down. What does the guide say? “If you go down you will never come up alive.” Who thinks of going down? The very fact that the guide explained the consequence would keep us from it. A friend takes away from us a drink spiked with arsenic. He does not want us to drink it, so he says, “If you drink it, it will kill you.” Does he suppose for a moment that we would drink it. No; he tells us the consequence, and he is sure we will not do it.
So God says, “My child, if you fall over this precipice you will be smashed to pieces.” What does the child do? He says, “Father, keep me; hold me up, and I will be safe.” It leads believers to greater dependence on God, to a holy fear and caution, because they know that if they were to fall away they could not be restored; and they stand far away from that great chasm, because they know that if they were to fall into it there would be no salvation for them. It is intended to excite fear; and this holy fear keeps the Christian from falling.
If I thought like the Arminian thinks—that I might fall away and then return again—I would fall away pretty often, and go and take in entertainment I know I shouldn’t, or get drunk, and then come back to the Church, and be received again as a dear brother who had fallen away for a little while. No doubt the minister would say, “Our brother Charles is a little unstable at times.” A little unstable! He knows nothing about grace, because grace inspires a holy caution, because we feel that if we were not kept by Divine power we would perish.
We tell our friend to put oil in his lamp, so that it may continue to burn. Does that imply that he will allow it to go out? No, God will give him a continual supply of oil. Like John Bunyan’s representation: There was a fire, and he saw a man pouring water on it. “Now,” says the Preacher, “don’t you see that that fire will go out, that the water is intended to put it out, and if it does, it will never be lighted again.” But God does not permit that; because there is a man behind the wall who is pouring oil on the fire, and we have cause for gratitude in that fact; because if the oil was not constantly poured on by a heavenly hand, we would certainly be driven to destruction. Take care, then Christian, for this is a caution.
This doctrine exists to excite our gratitude. Suppose you say to your little boy, “Don’t you know Tommy, if I do not to give you your lunch and dinner you would die? There is nobody else to give you lunch and dinner.” What then? The child does not think you are not going to give him his lunch and dinner; he knows you will, and he is grateful to you for them. The chemist tells us, that if there were no oxygen mixed with the air, animals would die. Do you suppose that there will be no oxygen, and therefore we will die? No, he only teaches you the great wisdom of God, in having mixed the gases in their proper proportions. One of the old astronomers said, “There is great wisdom in God, in that he has put the sun exactly at exactly the right distance—not so far away that we would freeze to death, and not so close that we would be scorched.” He said, “If the sun were a million miles closer to us we would be scorched to death.” Does the man suppose that the sun will be a million miles closer, and, therefore, we will be scorched to death? He said, “If the sun were a million miles farther off we would freeze to death.” Does he mean that the sun will be a million miles farther off, and then we will freeze to death? Not at all! Yet it is quite a rational way of speaking, to show us how grateful we should be to God. The apostle is speaking in the same way. Christian! If you should fall away, you could never be restored to repentance. Thank the Lord, then, that he keeps you.
“See a stone that hangs in air; see a spark in ocean live:
Kept alive with death so near; I to God the glory give.”
There is a cup of sin that would damn your soul, oh Christian. Oh, what grace that holds your arm, and will not let you drink it! There you are, right now, like the mythical bird catcher in the legend of St. Kilda. You are being drawn to heaven by a single rope. If the hand that holds the rope lets go, if the rope around you breaks, you are smashed on the rocks of damnation. Lift your heart to God, then, and bless him that his arm is not weary, and is never weakened that it cannot save.
Lord Kenmure, when he was dying, said to Samuel Rutherford, “Man, my name is written on Christ’s hand. I see it! That is bold talk, man, but I see it!” If that is the case, then Christ’s hand must be severed from his body before my name can be taken from him; and if it is written on his heart, his heart must be torn out before they can tear my name out.
Believer! Hold on, then, and trust. You have “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.” The winds are roaring, the storms howling; if the cable slips, or your anchor breaks, you are lost. See those rocks, to which so many are headed, and you will be destroyed there if grace abandons you. See those depths, in which the skeletons of sailors sleep; that is where you will be, if that anchor fails you. If that anchor were to break, it would be impossible to secure again; because there is no other anchor, there is no other salvation, and if that one fails you, it is impossible for you to ever be saved. Therefore thank God that you have a sure and steadfast anchor that cannot fail, and then loudly sing:
“How can I sink with such a prop,
As my eternal God,
Who bears the earth’s huge pillar up,
And spreads the heavens abroad?
How can I die, when Jesus lives,
Who rose and left the dead?
Pardon and grace my soul receives
From my exalted head.”
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