1 The Promise of Eternal Life - 1 John 5:11-13; John 20:31 CLAY COUNTY, Fla. (CBS Tampa) - A teenager by the name of Cody Williams reportedly spent over a month in prison after he was mistaken for another teenager who was also named Cody Williams. According to the Florida Times-Union, the wrongfully arrested Williams was imprisoned for 35 days and faced one charge of sexual battery of someone younger than 12. The trouble began on Halloween in 2012, when the unnamed victim told Clay County Sheriff s deputies that an older boy by the name of Cody Williams had forced her inappropriately. After getting a description and more information on the assailant, including where he attended high school, deputies began to search for the attacker. Two months later, they placed Cody Lee Williams, then 17, under arrest. Due to the nature of the crime, he was charged as an adult. I can t even tell you the horror of hearing those words, Williams told the paper of hearing the charge against him. My heart just started beating really fast and all my insides just kind of dropped. Ultimately, the mistake was uncovered when Cody Lee Williams himself remembered a classmate by the name of Cody Raymond Williams that bore a slight resemblance to him. The victim was then called in to pick her attacker out of a lineup and the wrong Cody Williams was set free, after 35 days of being incarcerated and humiliated for a crime he did not commit. What a horrific experience! 35 days in jail for the crime of having the wrong name! What an atrocious error! But friends, when it comes time for the Lamb s Book of Life to be opened, there will be no confusion or uncertainty. No wrong names will be called. Those who know Jesus Christ can be certain that they are saved. Here s the sermon in a sentence: If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. This first promise in our Summer of Promise series has been referred to as Eternal Security, Perseverance of the Saints, or by the phrase, Once Saved, Always Saved. The promise of eternal life means that those who are born again can never lose their salvation and are assured that they will inevitably go to heaven. Our Baptist Faith and Message, which comprises our doctrinal statement, reads clearly. All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, bring reproach on the cause of Christ, and temporal judgments on themselves, yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. Please hear me, dear friend. As important as our doctrinal statement is, it cannot give you the assurance you need. My words in this sermon won t settle it for you either. The only way you can be sure is by going to the Scriptures themselves. In an age of short attention spans, sound-bite sermons, superficial spirituality and doctrinal shallowness, I plead with you to dig into the Word of God with me so that the promise of eternal life becomes very personal to you. It s my aim today that you will be convinced by both the content and clarity of God s Word. My plan is to saturate you with Scripture so that you get this settled once and for all and that you pass this promise on to our children and grandchildren as well. Let me just say that this promise is extremely practical. I know many seemingly saved people who have no assurance of their salvation. When asked if they know for sure if they are going to heaven when they die, they will answer something like this: I hope so or I think so or If I m good enough. But I ve also talked to people who are filled with fear. They are afraid that they haven t done enough good deeds to make it! Or they are afraid they might commit the unpardonable sin. The way I see it there are four possibilities related to our topic today. Everyone here today is in one of these situations.
1. You may be lost and know that you re lost. 2. You may be lost and think you are saved. 3. You may be saved and not know it for sure. 4. You may be saved and know that you re secure. I would love to have everyone in this final group by the time we re finished this morning because if you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Let me say that again. If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Can I get you to say that with me? If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Amen Here s how I want to approach our topic today. Instead of walking through a number of Books of the Bible like we did last week, I m going to limit our focus to one of the human authors of the Bible and to two of the five books he wrote. His name is the Apostle John and I want us to first camp in the Gospel that bears his name and then we ll move over to the first letter that he wrote known as 1 John. Here s an interesting insight. Of the 42 instances that the phrase eternal life is used in the Bible, 22 of them are found in these two books. Let s look first at the Gospel of John. The Apostle John tells us why he wrote his gospel in John 20:31: But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. This is significant! When someone tells you explicitly why he/she has written to you, then you need to take note. John s reason for writing was so that we might come to faith in Jesus Christ and then know for certain that we are forever saved. In that gospel, John recorded the words of Jesus we find in 3:16-18: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God s one and only Son. This is the most memorized verse in the Bible, and with good reason. It is the entire Gospel in the fewest words. In that same chapter, John brings the point home all the more. Look at John 3:36. Once again John is quoting Jesus. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God s wrath remains on him. The Apostle wants his readers to have a genuine assurance of their salvation. In John 5:24 John quotes Jesus again: I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. One interesting side note: the tense of the verb in this sentence underscores that eternal life is our present possession, right now, and carries over for all time and eternity. The Apostle goes on to let us know that God wants us to know we have eternal life! It is His will! John 6:40: For my Father s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. This morning God wants you to have that assurance. He wants you to know that you have the life of Jesus Christ flowing through you right now! Now look with me at John 10:27-30. This is one of my all time favorite promises from the Word of God. Once again, these are the words of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father s hand. I and the Father are one. Talking about a promise!!! I wrote down seven quick observations to this promise: 1. True sheep listen to, and follow the lead of the Shepherd. 2
2. Jesus knows those who are His. He will successfully keep secure those given to Him. 2 Timothy 1:12: and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. 3. Eternal life is a gift given by the Savior. My salvation depends entirely on what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for me. If you have this gift you have it eternally because God never starts a project that He does not finish. 4. Those who know Him will never perish. This is a strong double negative in Greek: They will indeed not never perish. This is covenant or contract language. 5. Our salvation can never be stolen. The word snatch means to pluck, pull or take by force. No person or problem or circumstance or situation or sin can wrestle you out of the grip of God (see Romans 8:31-39). 6. The greatness of the Father is the ground of safety for the sheep is greater than all. I love the language used by a great preacher of old named A.W. Pink: The promises of God are unimpeachable He will be punctilious in securing the eternal welfare of those whom He has appointed to Heavenly glory! Though the world, the flesh and the Devil combine against Him, He cannot be frustrated. He who triumphed over the grave cannot be thwarted by any feebleness or fickleness in His people. Those whom He pardons He preserves. 7. We are doubly secure because we are in the grip of the Father and the Son. Who is able to snatch us from their hands? Not even our own wills are up to such a task. Again I turn to the great preacher Charles Spurgeon: Satan s work is constantly trying to make us regard ourselves instead of Christ. He insinuates, Your sins are too great for pardon; you have no faith; you do not repent enough you have such a wavering hold of Jesus It is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee it is Christ therefore, look not so much to thy hand with which thou art grasping Christ, as to Christ s hand that grasps thee. Do you remember the slogan, You re in good hands with Allstate? John tells us that our Lord s sheep could not be in better hands the hand of the Son and the hand of the Father. No one is more secure than one of His sheep. I ve heard some people say that a person may take himself out of God s hand. But would you notice that this verse says nothing about a believer holding on to the Father s hand? It says that the Father is holding tightly to us. As a dad I have fond memories of holding the hands of our sons and grandchildren. I was always on high alert at all times because of the dangers surrounding us. It didn t really matter if they relaxed their grip on my hand because my hand was bigger and stronger and there was no way I was going to let go of theirs. It s not like I was holding a stick on one end and they were holding the other. My grip was glued to their hand and there was no way I was letting go. Dear friends, if you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Will you say that with me again? If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Amen! Now please take a quick journey with me into the little epistle of First John. John ended his gospel by telling us why he wrote it that we might have eternal life. As we turn to the book of 1 John we are going to find a similar desire to bring his readers assurance. As we look at 1 John 2:25, we see the language of promise staring us in the face. And this is what he promised us even eternal life. The promise of eternal life is the essence of the Gospel and the focal point of John s writing. In this letter John tells us that his purpose in writing is so that we might know that we have eternal life. Turn to 1 John 5:11-13: And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. Quickly I want to point out five truths that scream out of these words at us for understanding: 3
1. The word testimony is the word for witness and was used in courtroom settings. In this picture, God is on the witness stand declaring that eternal life is found in His Son. Can you imagine that? This is God s testimony! 2. Eternal life begins at conversion and continues forever. 3. God wants us to know for certain so that you may know The word know appears 39 times in this short book. It s not a matter of feeling or thinking or hoping but of knowing with a settled intuitive knowledge and is often rendered, to be sure or to be assured. The root word means for us to have personal, experiential knowledge. Too many of us follow our feelings instead of focusing on the faithfulness of God! 4. Believing in Jesus is the only way to have eternal life. To believe means to count on someone or to trust in them. Salvation only comes to the one who knows that he/she has nothing they can add to what Christ has done for them. Only by expressing faith in the completed work of Jesus Christ can anyone be saved. 5. Assurance comes from what has been written in the Word of God I write these things to you We can t rely on our emotions or our experiences or even our spiritual progress. What we CAN rely on is the eternal Word of God. For any of God s children to perish would necessarily entail a defeated Father who had lost those He had claimed; a disappointed Son, who would never see the fruits of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; and a disgraced Spirit, who had failed to preserve those entrusted to His care. What we ve learned from the Scriptures is that you can be convinced that you are saved and certain that you will be with the Savior forever. I appreciate how one great pastor answered the question, Can I lose my salvation? Here s what he says: It depends on who saved you. If God saved you, you can t lose your salvation because it depends on God. If you saved yourself, you can lose it because it depends on you. Let me say that again. If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Can I get you to say that with me? If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Amen! Your salvation is eternally secure if God did the saving. But if you think that salvation is a cooperative venture between you and God, where you do a part and He does a part, then you re in big trouble because what you start you could mess up along the way. But if God started it, He ll also finish it. That reminds me of Philippians 1:6: Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. There is great danger in believing that you can lose your salvation because to believe so: Leads to excessive introspection, frustration, fear and guilt. Strips you of any certainty that your sins are forgiven. Leads to fear as you approach death. Tends to produce legalistic faith. Takes the focus off of Christ and places it on your own performance. May lead to despair and abandoning the faith altogether. Could make you hypercritical of others whose faith you doubt. Keeps you from growing because you think you need to get saved over and over again. Makes the Christian life an unstable roller coaster of up and down experiences. Takes the Good News out of the gospel because you can t be sure about anything. A salvation you could lose is not much of a salvation at all! You can t be sure you have it, and if you have it today, you can t be sure you ll have it tomorrow. And if you lose it, you can t be sure you ll 4
get it again. And if you get it again, you can t be sure you ll keep it the next time. What kind of salvation is that? It s a man-centered salvation that makes heaven dependent on what you do. The fundamental problem with saying that a Christian can lose his or her salvation is that we would have to say that God will not fulfill His promises. Let me say it again: If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. Now here are some of the benefits of proclaiming the promise of eternal life: Puts the focus of salvation where it ought to be - on God and not on us. Provides a way to live with a new confidence. Gives real hope at the moment of death. Gives us proper motivation to pray for sinning believers. Builds the Christian life upon love and gratitude - not doubt and fear. Produces a life of love, faith and obedience to God. Puts the Good News back in the gospel. Helps us get back up when we fall because we don t lose our salvation when we stumble. Points us toward heaven and to our eternal rewards. Three Surprises in Heaven Someone once said that there will be three surprises when we get to heaven. First, we re going to be surprised that some people are there that we didn t expect to see there. Second, we re going to be surprised that some people aren t there that we were sure were going to be there. And finally, the greatest surprise of all will be that we ourselves are there. That leads me to this question. Are you going to be there? If you died tonight, would you go to heaven? Are you sure? I can t think of anything more tragic than to have the sense that you re saved only to find out that you re not. Check out Matthew 7:21-23: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. [Remember, that s the will of the Father! To believe in His Son!] Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers! Are you ready right now to make sure that your sins are forgiven? Do you want to be certain that your name will be called to receive the award of eternal life? They ll be no mix-up and no confusion. Those who know Christ are known by Christ. He knows the names of those who name Him as Savior and Lord. If you re saved by the Savior you ll be safe with the Savior forever. If you want to make sure you can pray this prayer with me Lord Jesus, I know that I m a sinner and I m making a mess of my life. I know I cannot save myself. I believe that you are the Son of God and that you died on the cross as my substitute and that you rose from the dead on the third day. I turn from the way I ve been living and ask you to forgive me for all my sins. I believe and now I receive the free gift of eternal life. I trust you now as my Lord and Savior. With all that I am, and all that I have, I give myself to you. Make me into the kind of person you want me to be. Thanks for the certainty of knowing that once you save me I will be safe with you forever. In the name of Jesus I pray. Amen. 5