Perseverance in Christ
“The steadfastness of your faith IN Christ.” — Col. ii. 5.
OD, had He seen meet, could have so ordered that the Believer might have had his new spiritual life made at once absolutely complete. At the moment of transition from darkness to light He might have said — “If any man be IN Christ, the angel-life — the perfect life — has forthwith begun.” Not so. He has willed it, and wisely willed it, otherwise. Jesus, in speaking of those in whom that union was realised, says emphatically — “These are in the world” (John xvii. 11). He has decreed for His people a season of discipline, before the mystical oneness of earth is merged and consummated in everlasting union and communion in Heaven. The forty years’ wilderness hardships precede the green fields and smiling vineyards of the true Canaan.
“In Christ:” — and yet — “these are in the world!” — that world offering no smooth path — no exemption from trial and sin; rather, temptation without, having an answering echo to corruption within. Corruption and temptation too, not only warring and wrestling, but alas! at times overthrowing and mastering.
But blessed also is the counterpart truth — “God is faithful.” The mournful deflections and aberrations of His people, — their z^Tifaithfulness — will not affect His faithfulness. Nay, more; we have the recorded promise regarding His own, that “He will not suffer them to be tempted above that they are able, but will, with the temptation, make a way to escape, that they may be able to bear it” ( i Cor. x. 1 3). Even Satan, the roaring lion, is kept by Him as it were in a chain. The great Adversary was not permitted to put forth his hand so much as to touch righteous Job, till he received permission; and even then, the “Mightier than the mightiest” set bounds to his assailing power (Job i. 12). This Old Testament picture has its New Testament parallel in the case, not of one of God’s patient, but of His mpatient children, whose unadvised lips drew forth the consolatory assurance — “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke xxiL 31, 32).
These lamentable stumblinors and fallinojs on the part of the believer (cause of deepest spiritual humiliation), are yet, as an old writer expresses it, “falls within the house.” With broken-hearted penitence and contrition of soul he can, without presumption, still cleave to the glad and gracious assurance — “Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord iiplioldeth him with His hand” (Ps. xxxvii 24). “Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise” (Micah vii. 8). Mournful exceptions there may be, and often are, in the case of those who claim the Christian name. But with regard to all who are really in Christ, let us ponder the sure word of promise under both the legal and Gospel dispensations. What says the former? “If they break My statutes, and keep not My commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless My lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips” (Ps. lxxxix. 31-34); or, as it has been translated and confirmed in the language of the better covenant — “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast” (Heb vi. 17-19).
Such seasons of declension and backsliding — in an unwatchful moment the fatal yielding to some sudden gust of temptation, may be regarded only as the rock which impedes the stream, frets its course or soils its purity, but which fails to stem its onward flow. Or, to take a more apt illustration, the true ’ life in Chinst * resembles the ocean tide. Even while we watch its advance, it seems partially to recede. One moment a dash on the shingle, with a boom of muffled thunder; the next, borne back chafed and buffeted. Yet all the while it is steadily progressive. The scores you made a few minutes ago on the hard, unwashed sand, are now converted into a series of little pools, each silently telling that the retreat is only apparent, that soon the boats now moored on the beach will be floating on their own buoyant element.
So with the Christian. The spiritual retrogression we have spoken of, is often painfully visible — the wave of ardent feeling of to-day, refluent to-morrow; to-day an Asahel, to-morrow a Eeady-to-halt, perchanca worse. But “faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it” (i Thess. v. 24). Inviolable is the word — “He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim. ii. 13). As well dream of arresting the apparently capricious advance of these tidal waters, as arrest the wavelets of spiritual life in the human soul once turned Godwards and heavenwards. In the Living Vine once, in the Vine for ever. On the Rock once, on the Rock for ever. In the fold once, in the fold for ever. “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand” (John x. 28).
And this lets us into the true secret of ‘the perseverance of the Saints,* that old article in the creed of faithful churches, which is at times sneered at. The Apostle’s monogram is the key to it — “In Christ.” It is nothing in believers themselves. They are like dismasted, rudderless vessels, tossed hither and thither by capricious waves; often ‘the wind contrary, or grazing the hidden rocks. But they are “kept by the power of God.” “Finally, my brethren,” says Paul, “be strong IN THE Lord “(in Christ),” and in the power of His might “(Eph. vi. i o).” I am crucified with Christ,” says he in another place, as he paraphrases his own brief formula, “nevertheless I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me “(Gal. ii. 20). That tempest-tossed bark would never have lived out the storm but for Him who now guides its helm. To him have the words of Omnipotence been spoken —” God hath given thee all them that sail with thee.” “There shall be no loss of any man’s life among you “(Acts xxvii. 24, 22). He will guide through winds and waves and buffeting elements till it can be said of the imperilled crew —” So He brought them into the haven where they would be.’* Christ’s own prayer of perpetual efficacy secures that safe landing on the eternal shore — “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me” (John xvii. 11). “Oh! what a blessing,” is the exclamation of the devout Evans, “that while the light of a believer’s soul can decay and wax dim, the life of his soul is imperishable: it ’ is hid with Christ in God.’”
It is interesting and remarkable, in connection with these thoughts, to note the very last words of the last letter the great Apostle dictated immediately before his death: — “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim. iv. 1 8).
Doubting, desponding one, “no small tempest lying on you,” buffeted with a great fight of afflictions, — seek fully to realise this truth — “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might, He increaseth strength” (Isa. xl. 29). At times God permits faltering and failure just to teach the lesson of your own weakness and of the Saviour’s almighty strength. He who felt warranted in appropriating the honoured title IN Christ, reiterates again and again this needed lesson, claiming no immunity from the power and peril of temptation — “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Kom. vii. 23). Paul “in Christ,” yet, at times, the reluctant captive of sin; mourning and deploring the unsteadfastness of his “faith in Christ!” “Does the greatness of this man oppress thee, instead of elevating thee?” asks one, who has ably analysed the Apostle’s inner life — “Behold, are his own words, ’ by the grace of God I am what I am: ‘” and in exhorting his beloved Philippians — “Brethren, be followers together with me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample” (Phil. iii. 1 7), he expects nothing of his brethren that is beyond the power of the riches of God’s grace working in them “both to will and to do” (Phil. ii. 1 3). “It shall be done,” adds the same writer, “if we will but tread in the blessed footsteps of Paul’s faith.”
Thus ’ treading,’ with God’s help, these trials and temptations which overcome others will be to you like the storm-blast to the oak moored in the rift of the rock: the very bending of the branches only tending to rivet the roots of faith, and trust, and love, firmer and deeper in the Rock of Ages. “That the trial of your faith,” says a brother Apostle and companion in tribulation, “being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” ( i Pet. i. 7).
Remember, too, for your comfort, that He is as willing as He is able thus to “keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24). You may take the words alike as a precept and a promise — “Sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom. vi. 1 4).
Most precious and encouraging surely is this view to take of our mystical union with the Saviour! Yet it is one that carries with it a correspondingly deep and solemn responsibility — “I am not my own, I am bought with a price.” “In Christ” — “whose I am, and whom I serve” (Acts xxvii. 23). Like the gold
* Besser.
and silver and brazen vessels in the tabernacle of old, the believer is first dedicated, then consecrated. Though armour-proof, if not against the wiles of the devil, yet against his final triumph over “the faithful in Christ Jesus” still, the Christian warrior has also the monitory words recorded for his admonition, that it is only “he that endureth unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. x. 22). “We are made,” says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end” (Heb. iii. 1 4).
“Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son” (i John ii. 24).
“Therefore,” is the tender and affectionate exhortation of “the man in Christ,” as he rises to some elevating conception of the grandeur of that union which he so loves to contemplate, — the words themselves, which we shall reserve for future consideration, sound like an antiphon to those of the honoured sou of Zebedee just quoted — “Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast iN the Lord, my dearly beloved” CPhil. iv. i).