Why Eternal Security Needs Community
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, we usually serve up specific questions to you, but today I simply want
00:00:08.840 | to ask if there's anything from your personal devotions lately that you want
00:00:12.140 | to share with us here.
00:00:13.500 | Tony, just yesterday I was reading in 1 John on my way through the Bible, and
00:00:20.000 | I've often said that eternal security is a community project rather than
00:00:28.440 | something that's individualistic merely and automatic. God uses means to keep us
00:00:35.480 | eternally for himself. It's not like a vaccination against hell. It's more like
00:00:41.680 | a committed therapist who unfailingly, this is God unfailingly seeing to it
00:00:49.200 | that we hold to the health regimen that brings us to everlasting glory. I totally
00:00:56.100 | believe in eternal security. Jesus said, "I give them eternal life. They will never
00:01:02.400 | perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father is great. No one can
00:01:08.440 | snatch them out of my Father's hand." But I've also said that this keeping, this
00:01:15.120 | divine keeping, is a community project in which God uses people. Exhort one another
00:01:23.040 | every day as long as it is called today that none of you may be hardened by the
00:01:28.520 | deceitfulness of sin because we have come to share in Christ if we hold our
00:01:34.920 | original confidence firm to the end. So our exhorting one another every day is
00:01:40.560 | one of the instruments, one of the means by which God keeps us in Christ to the
00:01:46.600 | end of time. So yesterday in 1 John, here's what I read, and I saw that it's
00:01:51.760 | in a totally fresh way. 1 John 5 16, "If anyone sees his brother committing a sin
00:02:00.400 | not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life." So I had never
00:02:10.600 | paused to think, "You mean the life that we need to make it to the
00:02:17.680 | end, the eternal life, is given when I see a brother sinning and I pause and I
00:02:26.000 | ask God, 'Oh God, bring him to repentance, bring him to the point of confession,' and
00:02:32.480 | God will use that prayer as a means of preserving that person's eternal life. So
00:02:41.840 | there is a kind of sinning that shows God has given a person over to depravity.
00:02:48.400 | John tells us that. There is sinning that is that is unto death. It's like Esau's
00:02:52.480 | sin in Hebrews 12 17. He sought repentance and he couldn't find it even
00:02:58.440 | though he sought it with tears, which is a fearful prospect that we could ever
00:03:02.040 | sin so long God would just give us up. But 1 John is mainly devoted to
00:03:09.600 | helping us see that there is sin that is not unto death. We write these things to
00:03:16.000 | you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate. That's
00:03:22.520 | chapter 2 verse 1, "Or if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and will
00:03:27.520 | forgive our sins." So John is so eager to help Christians not despair that if they
00:03:32.760 | sin, they are proving themselves to be unregenerate. And what I hadn't
00:03:37.920 | noticed before in 1 John is that God says one of the means by which he will
00:03:46.240 | preserve us in Christ is when we pray for each other. If anyone sees his
00:03:52.360 | brother committing a sin not leading to death, he'll ask and God will give him
00:03:57.880 | life. So eternal life is sure for the bride of Christ and for those who
00:04:04.760 | are called and justified, but it's not automatic like a vaccination. It
00:04:10.600 | involves exhortations from Hebrews 3 and it involves prayers like this
00:04:16.640 | one in 1 John 5:16. And then just as I was pondering that, the Lord brought to
00:04:23.440 | mind James 5:20 where it says, "Let him know that whoever brings back a
00:04:30.280 | sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death." And I thought, "Okay,
00:04:38.440 | how do you bring back a sinner from wandering?" And you do it at least in
00:04:43.120 | those two ways, don't you? Hebrews 3, exhort him and 1 John 5:16,
00:04:49.720 | pray for him and the Lord will give him life. So here's the personal impact it
00:04:55.720 | had on me. I'm out here in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee and that's a scary
00:05:01.400 | place to be, isn't it? Because this says, in essence, don't separate yourselves
00:05:07.400 | from the very people who could be the means of your life, be the means of your
00:05:13.000 | preservation. So I just hope that everyone who's listening to this won't
00:05:18.520 | leave the fellowship of believers. They'll keep themselves grafted in to
00:05:23.680 | believers who can pray for them, that they won't lose their life, and who will
00:05:29.920 | exhort them to hold true to the end, and that they'll do that for others. And I
00:05:35.960 | hope people will pray for me, that God will reveal to me any sins that I
00:05:41.160 | may have in my family or in relationships, that if I spot them, I
00:05:47.080 | could repent of them, get forgiveness for them, and thus be preserved.
00:05:52.120 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email
00:05:55.480 | your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:05:59.160 | At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources from
00:06:02.040 | John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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