Insights

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The security of the people of God is of the first importance to every Christian. There is a life and death difference between the hearts of these two possible Gods:

1. A God who saves you from sin and promises to keep you with Him for eternity.
2. A God who saves you provisionally and reserves the right to change His mind and abandon you to hell for eternity.

Which one do you believe is the true heart of the God who is love? Which one can you trust? Which one sounds amazingly God-like and which one sounds like a human father? Confusing the two, Christians might ask with deep concern:

Although I have been born again and passed from death unto life, is my final salvation in heaven certain or are there uncertainties about it?

Is there anything in the nature of the atonement, or the work of regeneration, or the character of God that may justly lead me to believe that, after the blood of Christ has cleansed me, I am permanently saved?

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

John 5:24 ESV

Security is Yours Because God Does Not Count Your Sin Against You

Some might argue that security is left in the people’s hands instead of in God’s hands. It cannot be denied that we all sin and forget God and do wrong, some more and some less, and if God counts our sins against us, we would fall to be sure, but if God does not impute sin to us, we cannot fall. To “impute” means “to say that someone is responsible for something that has happened, especially something bad.”

While we are responsible for our sins, we are also helpless to save ourselves. This is why we need the Savior Jesus Christ. We fully depend upon Him for our security. This is the essence of being a Christian: not trusting in self-effort in the least but trusting in God in every way.

In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5:19 ESV

God’s way of saving sinners is by not counting their sin against them.

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

Hebrews 10:17 ESV

When God says, “never remember” He means He will never bring up the matter again. God will never use your sins against you, but the devil certainly will. So, God has not imputed sin to those who are saved. He clears away their record, resulting in the joy of the believer.

David also spoke of this when he described the happiness of those who are declared righteous without working for it: “Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight. Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.”

Romans 4:6-8 NLT

Security is Yours if You Believe Christ’s Death is Your Only Hope

David also taught that if God should count sin against us none of us would be able to stand (Psalm 130:3). How then can anyone be saved?

The blessed man to whom God does not impute sin is the Christian, and if God does not impute sin to the Christian, he cannot “fall from grace.” In other words, the only way to fall from grace is to have your sins counted against you. Therefore, you have security in your salvation because Christ no longer counts your sins against you.

Satisfaction must be rendered for every sin, and certainly, our obedience cannot satisfy a broken law. It requires death, and Christ’s death hushes the claims of law. Now, if all our sins were borne and satisfied by Jesus, the claims of law fully met by him in its very jots and tittles, then the ground of our hope is in what Jesus has done, and nothing else. Our deeds may be mixed with sin, and we often go astray, but these shall not overthrow us because the death of Christ is our only hope. This is the only principle upon which sinners can hope to be saved.

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Hebrews 9:22 ESV

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

1 John 1:7 ESV

So there never was nor ever will be a single sin forgiven on earth without that forgiveness being procured by the blood of Christ. And, you have been cleansed from all sin (including past, present, and future sin).

From what has been said, we can conclude:

• works are no part of the cause of our salvation;
• God does not impute sin to his people;
• the only ground of forgiveness is in the blood of Christ.

All these being true, apostasy is impossible. You have a guarantee from Christ, as a genuine believer in His death and resurrection, that you will be with Him in heaven for all eternity. That is true security!

Learn more about eternal security.
This post started as the public domain works of J. H. Oliphant. While substantially the same in many ways, I modernized the language and added my thoughts to provide greater clarity for my readers.
Image by Amrulqays Maarof from Pixabay

Reading time: 3 minutes

You are a child no matter how old you are. How is this possible? It’s not because you have parents. It’s because you are a child of God if you are a born-again believer. As Creator, God is the adult. As creatures, we are His children. Adults and children have different roles and responsibilities.

A Child of God is Forever Young

God is eternal. He lives outside of time. Relative to God’s “age” (essentially infinite) the oldest person alive is still like a child. This is true both in terms of physical age, but also in terms of knowledge and understanding.

What image comes to mind when you picture youth?

• Someone who is growing quickly.
• Someone who is learning constantly.
• Someone who is expending energy.
• Someone who is failing frequently.
• Someone who prioritizes growth before productivity.

How much does your life look youthful? Young people usually do not concern themselves with being responsible for others. This can be good and bad. It’s good to invest in spiritual growth. But spiritual growth and hard work do not have to be mutually exclusive. Maybe we should prioritize growth like Mary but also contribute like Martha.

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me! “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:38-42 NIV

A Child of God is Forever Dependent

As Creator, God is the source of everything good. As creatures, we need Him. The difference between human children and adults is a good metaphor for the difference between us and God.

What image comes to mind when you picture adults?

• Someone independent who accepts responsibility for self and potentially others.
• Someone who can invest in the growth of others.
• Someone who makes fewer mistakes because of lessons learned.
• Someone who is stable and content at least some of the time.
• Someone who balances growth and productivity.

Even with all of these benefits of being an adult, every Christian is still a child of God. In relation to God, Christians will be a blend of youth and adult. Everyone will always have more they can learn or experience. Everyone is permanently dependent upon God. Even well into eternity, we will only exist because God exists. But because we exist in the image of God, we will also be productive creators.

A Child of God is Forever Secure

God doesn’t need us but we will always need Him. An evil person would exploit this power differential for his gain. Because God lacks nothing, He has no reason to manipulate others in an attempt to extract resources from them. Instead, God is love, so His motive is love. He loves us enough that He died for us. He didn’t give up on us. He cares. He won’t give up on us.

When God won’t give up on us, that’s called security. God will discipline us to the very end to ensure we are better at being like Him.

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

Phillipians 1:6 NLT

Let God be God: responsible, parent, all-powerful, sustaining, love. This allows you to be you: dependent, seeking, learning, secure, child of God.

Learn more about security in God.
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Reading time: 3 minutes

Personality provides hints and clues into identity. God knows everything, so He knows us completely. But for us, life is an indefinite discovery process to understand the depths of who we are as well as who God is.

A person’s identity is internal. As you get to know someone, you see the outward expression of her identity. Interacting with others reveals personality over time.

People are living beings, so they are continuously changing. Thus, you can never exhaustively know someone. However, this doesn’t mean that a person can become anything she wants to be. Even though she is growing, there is direction to the growth; there is a definite destination.

As you learn who you are, you can be confident in what you find, with some exceptions like maturity and mood.

Personality is Different than Maturity

Each person is diverse and complicated but also knowable. People will respond differently to different stimuli. So while every day can be different, over time, patterns will emerge. The younger people are, the more they are in an experimental phase of life. Just because you observe someone acting outgoing one day, doesn’t mean that is normal for her. Maybe for the next nine days, she will be more withdrawn. It is the long-term pattern that matters.

If you flip a penny one time and it lands on tails, you would be wrong to conclude that the penny is biased to land on tails. You must flip it a significantly large number of times to determine its character (its bias or outcome that is consistently predictable).

Likewise, it is essential to make observations over a significantly large time when determining a person’s character. Personality can change over time, but that is only because of the maturation process, not because personality is fluid. New experiences can encourage unexpressed parts of personality to emerge, but as with coin flipping, more experiences will result in a person’s awareness of her personality becoming more certain, not less certain.

Personality is Different than Mood

If you are sad one day, that doesn’t define your personality. Mood is highly correlated to circumstances, as it should be. Emotions indicate what is going on inside, but this is strictly based on what circumstances are prevailing.

There is no such thing as an “anxious personality.” God didn’t design anyone to be fearful. God wants everyone to experience peace. Some people might be more pessimistic or cautious, but that is different than fear.

Some people might be more pensive (contemplative) but that’s different than depressed. Words like anxiety or depression indicate that something is broken. We know that in heaven, nothing will be broken. So, despair or horror is only possible when God is absent. Hopelessness is negative. But sadness can exist in the context of hope. If your favorite person dies, and you know she has a relationship with God, you can know you will see her again someday.

Anything that is based on sin, the curse, or evil is not a part of personality. It is temporary. Don’t consider your personality to be associated with circumstances. Negative circumstances will eventually improve (if only in the next life for believers – see Romans 8). But all the good things about who you are is constant.

Personality Grows Out of Identity

Identity is like a seed that is planted. Personality is like the root system, stem, branches, flowers, or fruit that grows from the seed. The seed is planted and it grows into what God programmed into the seed. The seed cannot self-determine to grow in ways it was not designed.

Likewise, God plants us and we grow into exactly who He intends. It is our limited experiences of life that make life interesting. God may know everything, but we don’t. I suspect that God delights in relating to creation because He is love. He can love us and lead us into truth. Meanwhile, we can enjoy the journey of discovering who He made us to be.

Learn more about identity.
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Inspiration for this article came, in part, from Why You Are More Than Your Personality

Reading time: 4 minutes

Who ultimately has the power to decide what happens in life? God is the one in control. Of everything.

The Bible teaches that a person’s election into salvation is unconditional. Unconditional means that there is no merit or mechanism within a person that tips God’s favor his or her way. People can’t earn their way to heaven. People can’t enter heaven unless God enables and allows them to enter. God’s vote in the election process is what counts.

For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me, and at the last day I will raise them up.

John 6:44 NLT

God Initiates and Completes the Election Process

God initiates salvation before anyone is born. God knows the people He creates. He calls and predestines them, knowing all the days of their lives (Psalm 139:16). In Romans 8:28-30 Paul lays out an unbreakable chain of events:

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.

Romans 8:28-30 NLT

The golden chain of salvation is the five unbreakable links between foreknow, predestine, call, justify, and glorify. Foreknowing always leads to predestination. Predestination always leads to calling. Calling always leads to justification. Justification always leads to glorification. Once God starts the process, He will complete it by glorifying the person in heaven.

God Foreknows the People He Chooses for Election

Foreknowledge is different than foreknowing. Foreknowledge is about factual information. Foreknowing is the intimate knowing of a person. This means that God is capable of much more than simply knowing who will choose Him in the future. Foreknowledge alone reduces election to merely a confirmation of a person’s choice. The more personal foreknowing means the following are true:

• God intimately knows the people He elects.
• God creates people for different purposes (some for noble and some for ignoble as in Romans 9:14-16).
• God is in control of the entire creative process. He knows what He is doing when He creates each person.
• God has the first and final decision as to who will be elected to eternal life.

All of this means that the state of a person at creation is not random. It’s not like God created 10 billion people with random characteristics, then looked into the future to see which ones would choose Him, and then predestined those particular ones. No. Instead, He intentionally loves the person and predestines him or her at the time of creation, knowing they will be in heaven.

This makes sense given that God is in control of everything. Shouldn’t the God of the universe have the final say in who will be with Him for eternity? God favors people and then creates them. Everyone God wants to be in heaven will be there. No one that God doesn’t want to be there will be there.

This might sound unfair, but how it sounds doesn’t make any difference because God is creator and is in control (He is sovereign). Election, therefore, is not a conditional process that puts the power of choosing within the person. Election is unconditional because the power to choose is God’s. No one deserves to be elected to heaven. It is only God’s mercy and love that elects some but not others.

If life is predetermined, how is it worth living? God knows everything but we don’t. We don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know the particular people God will call. God invites us to participate in sharing His Good News. God’s ways, His capacity to reason, are higher than ours. He can manage knowing everything while relating to us who know very little. Yes, He has the advantage.

It’s because of our sinful nature that we want to rebel against an ultimate authority that can decide the fate of all living creatures (see Genesis 3 and Ecclesiastes 6:10 NLT version). Left to ourselves, we’d like to be in control of our destiny (not a good thing). But as Christians, we know that God being in control is not only reality, it is far superior. We can let God be God. We can be thankful He loves and cares for us.

Learn more about election in 40 Questions About Salvation
Learn more about the golden chain of salvation
Learn more about resting in God’s favor
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