The following sermon was downloaded from MLJTrust, a YouTube site that is dedicated to preserving his sermons for posterity. There is a link at the end of this post to that site’s video page, which you can search if you are listening from a laptop or a pc.
There is a list of sermon highlight points under the sermon:
Sermon: Once Saved; Always Saved; mp4 sermon follows sermon points:
Sermon points [statements in square brackets; emboldening; and underscoring are mine]:
- Lloyd-Jones examines several texts that seem to say the opposite of perseverance of the saints
- Romans 14: 14-16, the importance of conscience with faith (review of last week’s sermon) and how one makes shipwreck of his soul by forgetting the importance of conscience in faith
- Today: perseverance of the saints; or is it possible to fall away from the grace / faith?
- (Rom 14:15 [NLT]) And if another believer is distressed by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you eat it. Don’t let your eating ruin someone for whom Christ died.
- (1Cor 8:11 [NLT]) So because of your superior knowledge, a weak believer for whom Christ died will be destroyed.
- In the above verses, the apostle seems to be saying that by our meats, we can cause a person for whom Christ has died to fall away, to be lost
- Is that possible?
- First, however, let’s get rid of a statement that seems to have something to do with this subject but does not: Gal: 5:4
- (Gal 5:4 [NLT]) For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.
- Above, the Judaizers added circumcision to the gospel. The apostle is referring to a type of thinking that goes back to law because it added to faith [they violated faith by adding anything to it, as if to say that God could not save by Himself]
- Hebrews 6 and 10 are more difficult related passages:
- (Heb 6:4 [NLT]) For it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once enlightened—those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit,(Heb 6:5 [NLT]) who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come—(Heb 6:6 [NLT]) and who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back to repentance; by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame.
- Hebrews 6; 10; Romans 14; and 1 Cor. 8: what do we make of these passages?
- Start with the Hebrews passages; The apostle is dealing with a hypothetical position: He nowhere says of those people that they’d been born again – one may have tasted of the powers of the world to come without being regenerate
- During the revival at Wales in 1904 and 1905, many who seemed to have been born again, fell away: it seems that when the Spirit comes in power, He carries up a certain amount of the people with the tide – they experience a temporary state of seeming regeneration [as in Jesus parable of the soils] but they fall away
- Back to the original topic: how do we deal with this situation wherein the scripture seems to be contradicting itself?
- It NEVER does; we need to reconcile these passages: RULE: start with scriptures that are very explicit, plainly clear in what they say
- We have and apparent difficulty in Romans 14; if we go back to Romans 8:28ff
- (Rom 8:28 [KJV]) And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Rom 8:29 [KJV]) For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Rom 8:30 [KJV]) Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
- (Rom 8:31 [KJV]) What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
- (Rom 8:38 [KJV]) For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, (Rom 8:39 [KJV]) Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- The above is the greatest statement in the scriptures on the perseverance of the saints: it is the absolute assurance of all who are called according to God’s purpose arriving in glory
- (John 10:28 [KJV]) And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
- The above is a confirming statement about perseverance
- In Romans 14, destroy indicates that you put him on a road wherein he can perish
- Why is it impossible that anyone of us could be responsible for another of person’s destruction?
- Isn’t it obvious that the destiny of a soul could not be in our hands – if you misinterpret these passages, then you would mistakenly believe that you could do that
- It would also mean that men have greater power than God: He sent the Spirit to work in us, and we are told that we can undo that
- We are all prone to wander; thus, if salvation were in our hands, we would certainly fall away
- Another consideration – if the ultimate falling away of a soul is possible, then the Devil defeated God
- That is to say, that one who has been regenerated can fall away and lose his regeneration, either by his own sin or another’s
- And then you could come back when you were moved to do so
- This is impossible because regeneration is the action of God, not men; a man can go in and out of his decision, but he can’t go in and out of regeneration [see John 3:1-8]
- At this point, the Doctrine of Backsliding is important. Definition: a child of God being disobedient, examples given
- How do you know if a backslider is a Christian? He always comes back
- To say that a child of God can fall away is to misunderstand why God sent His Son into the world
- In the first creation, God made man in His own image and gave him freewill, the power of determining his immediate destiny – he used it to sin
- What is the difference between the first creation and the NEW creation? Or between Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ as the representative man (Romans 5)?
- That Adam could fail as our representative and he did fail / fall. God’s Son cannot fail and He did not
- Adam was entirely perfect, yet he fell into sin
- God has done something that cannot fail; Christ is the firstborn of many brethren, the head of a new humanity, this is all in Romans 4
- (Rom 4:16 [KJV]) Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,
- It is of grace, by God only, that it might be sure: …that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, (Rom 8:39 [KJV]) Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Not even you can make yourself fall away – or else, when you made it to glory, you’d be able to boast… [when king David fell into grievous sin, God sent Nathan to rouse him, and the sword remained in his house as a consequence of straying like that]
- So, then, what is the meaning of the teaching in Romans 14; 1 Cor. 8; Heb. 6; 10?
- That it is through these sorts of warnings that God preserves His people and keeps them from such fates: as in Acts 27, Paul was given a vision that none would perish on the ship in the great storm; and when some wanted to flee, Paul reminded them that all had to remain to be saved
- That is, if they fled, those on the ship would perish, so they encouraged the men not to flee
- We believers are frightened by such statements, but it is part of God preserving us
- Then, does such teaching of Romans 14, give the weaker brother much power over us?
- Historically, this teaching did not have such an effect: they were in a transitional period wherein Hebrews and Pagans were transitioning into the new faith; regarding matters that are not essential for salvation
- The weaker brother is to be teachable, is to be taught, and to be dealt with in grace
- If he refuses to be taught, he becomes a sinner, obstinate about doing as he ought to be doing among his brethren
- The above doctrine is for believers with genuine troubled consciences
- When Paul said elsewhere, he had become like all men…that he might save some…consider the following example
- Woodbine Willie: a chaplain in WW1 who smoked the kind of cigarettes the men in the foxholes smoked; drank beer; swore…in an effort to win them over; he did not, but became a fool
- Christ mixed with sinners, but did not sin
- We must never, to help weak brethren, we must never incorporate their practices into the church; the Roman Catholic Church has, through the centuries, taken Pagan practices into the church – in a misguided effort to honor the weaker brother
- Christ did not
- In 1 Cor. 10: 27,28, Paul stated that when in the presence of unbelievers, eat what they set before you; but if they say it was offered to idols, eat not – for the sake of the consciences of those present and your own: because a religious significance was attributed to it, they were not to eat it
- In Acts 16, Paul had Timothy circumcised when he was going to take him with him, so as not to cause offense over a matter that of indifference (not of doctrinal significance); but in Galatians 2, he would not let Titus be circumcised because the Judaizers believed that a Christian had to be circumcised and believe the gospel
- Those points lead to this very important point: the truth itself, should never be accommodated at all, it is eternal, fixed, static.
- All things must be done to the glory of God; this must be supreme
- Give no offense, to the Jews or to the Gentiles, nor to the church of Christ
- Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but that they might be saved
- Prayer: May God grant us wisdom…submitting ourselves to the word of God in the power of the Spirit…
The following excerpt that was under the above video at MLJTrust:
The final perseverance of the saints; Hebrews 6:4-6; dealing with apparent contradictions; controlling assertions about God’s purpose; the use of warnings to preserve; the weak must be teachable; the limits of accommodation
YouTube home page of MLJTrust: 1600 Martyn Lloyd Jones sermons: