Why Are Believers Threatened with Perishing?

00:00:00.000 | A podcast listener named Louis writes in to ask this, "Hello Pastor John, in Romans 8.13

00:00:10.000 | Paul is addressing believers saying that if they live according to the flesh they will die.

00:00:13.760 | What does Paul mean by saying to believers that they will die if they continue living according to the flesh after having been sealed

00:00:20.920 | by the Spirit?"

00:00:22.600 | So Louis and I agree that when a person is born again and

00:00:27.840 | receives eternal life

00:00:30.160 | and is sealed by the Spirit, united to Christ, adopted into God's family, justified, this person will never perish.

00:00:39.640 | I think he's assuming that, I'm assuming that.

00:00:42.320 | He will be kept by God. He is eternally secure. He'll never be lost. He may backslide,

00:00:50.760 | but not indefinitely and forever. God will hold on to him and cause him to return.

00:00:56.840 | And we believe it because of

00:00:58.840 | Romans 8.30, "Those whom he predestined he called and those we called he justified and those we justified he glorified." No dropouts

00:01:06.000 | between predestination and glorification. Or Philippians 1.6, "He who began a good work in you will complete it." Or 1 Corinthians 1.8,

00:01:15.600 | "He will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of Christ." So,

00:01:19.680 | yes, we're on the same page when it comes to the perseverance of the saints or

00:01:26.480 | eternal security. Question then, well, what do the warnings of the New Testament mean when believers are addressed with

00:01:34.560 | threats that say they could perish? What in the world does that mean?

00:01:39.360 | So Romans 8.12,

00:01:41.880 | "So then,

00:01:44.240 | brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

00:01:51.120 | But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

00:01:56.120 | For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God."

00:01:59.440 | Now that last phrase is crucial because what he's saying is the reason you will live

00:02:05.920 | if you put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit is that you will show yourself to be led by

00:02:14.440 | God and thus a son of God.

00:02:17.080 | Those who are led by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit are

00:02:21.480 | the sons of God. And the sons of God cannot die, but if you're not a son of God,

00:02:25.960 | you will die. And so I think the warning there is not that

00:02:29.800 | believers can perish, but that so-called believers can show that they're not sons of God.

00:02:36.720 | They may not be what they

00:02:40.480 | say or think they are.

00:02:43.920 | Here it is again in Galatians 5.18,

00:02:46.720 | "But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." And then comes this warning

00:02:52.480 | after a list of the works of the flesh.

00:02:55.360 | "I warn you, I warn you." She's talking to the church.

00:02:59.040 | "I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things

00:03:03.200 | will not inherit the kingdom of God."

00:03:07.040 | So the point is the same as Romans 8.13.

00:03:09.920 | If you are led by the Spirit to make war on the works of the flesh,

00:03:15.200 | or you surrender to the work of the flesh,

00:03:19.320 | you're gonna go in opposite directions.

00:03:22.440 | If you surrender to God and make war on the works of the flesh by the power of the Spirit,

00:03:29.920 | you won't perish. You will go into the kingdom of

00:03:34.760 | heaven. But if you

00:03:37.320 | surrender to the works of the flesh, don't make war on them. Make peace with sin.

00:03:41.640 | You will show that you are not born of God and you will

00:03:45.360 | be destroyed. You will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Same thing again in 1 Corinthians 6.8,

00:03:52.000 | "You yourselves wrong and defraud even your brothers," he says.

00:03:56.120 | So he's pointing to a real problem in the church and then he says, "Don't you know that the

00:04:00.960 | unrighteous won't inherit the kingdom of God?"

00:04:04.160 | Then he lists a whole bunch of them, including thieves and greedy and drunkards, and says

00:04:09.600 | they will not inherit the kingdom of God. So he's saying to them, "Look, you are starting to act

00:04:15.920 | like people who won't inherit the kingdom. If you go on in this way, you will prove yourself to be

00:04:22.520 | false to the faith." Now, the reason I feel free

00:04:26.040 | to draw out that kind of interpretation is because in 1 John 2.19,

00:04:31.200 | it says, "They went out from us because they were not of us.

00:04:35.800 | For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us." In other words,

00:04:40.640 | if you're truly a Christian, you persevere. But they went out that it might be complained that they were not of us.

00:04:47.080 | So the warnings are given to the whole church as a church

00:04:51.680 | with the assumption that those who are truly born of God will take heed to the warnings, apply them to their lives, and

00:04:59.000 | prove that they are part of Christ rather than part of the world. And here's one last

00:05:06.000 | confirmation of this in Hebrews 13.12, following, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart,

00:05:14.200 | leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today,

00:05:20.080 | that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

00:05:25.240 | So he's addressing the whole church as a body saying, "Watch out.

00:05:29.800 | You can be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, and you can drift and fall away from God." Now, does that mean

00:05:37.040 | believers can lose their salvation?

00:05:39.720 | Here's what verse 14 says, so crucial, one of the most important verses in Hebrews, I think, maybe in the New Testament. Verse 14,

00:05:47.200 | "For

00:05:49.120 | we have come to share in Christ if

00:05:53.240 | indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end."

00:05:59.320 | We have come, we have come to share in Christ if

00:06:04.840 | we hold fast. That is, if we fight sin, if we resist hardening. It does not say

00:06:10.320 | we will come to share in Christ if we hold fast. It says you're holding fast to the end.

00:06:18.440 | You're fighting the fight of faith. You're putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit. All of them show that you have

00:06:26.360 | come to share in

00:06:29.040 | Christ, not that you will. So all of our labors and works in the Christian life are

00:06:35.080 | evidences that we are

00:06:37.720 | real, and when they are missing,

00:06:40.160 | it's not that we cease to become born again,

00:06:43.880 | but that when we end this life in that condition,

00:06:47.840 | having turned on God, having not fought the fight of faith, you will be shown not to be part of Christ.

00:06:54.920 | So my word is take up the sword of the Spirit and

00:06:58.560 | put to death the sinful deeds of the body with the confidence that

00:07:02.480 | Christ is in you and will fight for you and will never ever let you go. Yes, amen.

00:07:09.440 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that. And on a related note, see episode number 223, "Does John 15 Defy Calvinism?" and

00:07:16.360 | episode number 102, "Can a Born-Again Christian Lose Salvation?" You can find both those episodes in the podcast archive.

00:07:22.920 | Those are episodes number 223 and

00:07:25.000 | 102. And speaking of hard topics, tomorrow a podcast listener writes in to ask if God, in his wisdom,

00:07:32.040 | predestines sinners to hell. We'll be back tomorrow with that. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:07:38.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Why Are Believers Threatened with Perishing?

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