A.Joseph
Puritan Board Senior
I was thinking about the many once sincere Christians that I’ve either read about or known about that have seemingly lost their battle against despair, indifference or plain hypocrisy by leaving the faith, embracing homosexuality, engaging in unrepentant infidelity, committing suicide, other gross and/or potentially disqualify sins, etc, etc…..
It makes me wonder if we can take for granted how much a conscious and living faith in Jesus as our All in All must abound for us to have any inkling of assurance….?
I don’t think many lazy Christians can get to the finish line. I don’t mean lazy as merely sedentary, but maybe there aren’t many comfortable Christians…. ?
Maybe it is the assured that are the restless…. Consider the following and tell me if we can have assurance without vigilance?
“Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall”
“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”
“For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end”
It makes me wonder if we can take for granted how much a conscious and living faith in Jesus as our All in All must abound for us to have any inkling of assurance….?
I don’t think many lazy Christians can get to the finish line. I don’t mean lazy as merely sedentary, but maybe there aren’t many comfortable Christians…. ?
Maybe it is the assured that are the restless…. Consider the following and tell me if we can have assurance without vigilance?
“Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall”
“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”
“For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end”
“A Man Who Does Not Persevere Fails by His Own Fault. But it is said, It is by his own fault that any one deserts the faith, when he yields and consents to the temptation which is the cause of his desertion of the faith. Who denies it? But because of this, perseverance in the faith is not to be said not to be a gift of God. For it is this that a man daily asks for when he says, Lead us not into temptation;Matthew 6:13 and if he is heard, it is this that he receives. And thus as he daily asks for perseverance, he assuredly places the hope of his perseverance not in himself, but in God. I, however, am loth to exaggerate the case with my words, but I rather leave it to them to consider, and see what it is of which they have persuaded themselves — to wit, that by the preaching of predestination, more of despair than of exhortation is impressed upon the hearers. For this is to say that a man then despairs of his salvation when he has learned to place his hope not in himself, but in God, although the prophetcries, Cursed is he who has his hope in man.Jeremiah 17:5” -Augustine
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