TEXT: I Peter 1:5b

SUBJECT: Watson on the Perseverance of the Saints #7

For the last couple of months, we’ve been studying the Perseverance of the Saints, a doctrine taught in the Bible and expounded by Thomas Watson in his fine book, A Body of Divinity, first published in 1692 and as useful today as it was way back then.

In the customary Puritan style, Watson begins with the doctrine—defining it, proving it, defending it, and so on. Then he applies it or shows us how the doctrine should affect our lives. To his way of thinking, a Christian life without doctrine is a contradiction in terms. Our devotion and obedience flow from our doctrine. Thus, the better we know the truth, the better we will live the truth. And that’s what it’s all about: not knowing for the sake of knowing, knowing for the sake of arguing, and so on, but knowing for the sake of discipleship. The Lord once said,

Free, not only from errors in doctrine, but also from errors in living for Christ. May the Lord forgive us for not being interested in doctrine and for not living up to the doctrine we know.

In brief, the perseverance of the saints means true believers cannot be lost—not in this life and not in the life to come. In this life, the believer will live for Christ—not perfectly, not consistently, and not as well as he ought to—but he will live for Christ. There is no such thing as a Carnal Christian, that is, one who has accepted Jesus as his Savior, but not as his Lord! The Gospel does not offer Him as Savior or Lord, but as Savior and Lord.

As he lives for Christ in this world, the believer will live with Christ in the world to come. Watson says,

The believer cannot be lost! He has been reconciled to God; he is in fellowship with Christ; he is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He can no more go to hell than the Trinity can go to hell!

This is what the doctrine is and it is plainly what the Bible teaches.

Having said all this, Watson goes on to explain what the doctrine means to us. Or how it affects our thinking and living for Christ. Thus far, we have looked at some uses for God’s praise and for our comfort. Now, as we close in on the end of the chapter, we come to the use he calls

He means to spur us to action! Don’t just think about persevering, persevere—all the way to the end. Don’t quit one step short of death—live for Christ till He takes you home. There’s nothing wrong with retiring from your career or your job. But retiring from Christ? Never! Quitting the Christian life for a golf course or a fishing boat or a warm climate? No way!

To keep us alive and active, Watson offers four helps. Here’s the first one:

The Puritan first alludes to a race: If five men run the hundred yard dash, which one wins it? It’s the one who is in the lead at the end of the race! Being in front ten yards from the starting blocks doesn’t matter! Being in the lead one inch from the tape doesn’t matter. It’s the finishing that matters—not the fast start or the lead at ninety-nine yards.

This means, it does not matter how spectacular your conversion experience was; it doesn’t matter how much you used to do for Christ or how dearly you loved Him five years ago! What matters is living for Christ now! Since you don’t know where the finish line is, you’ve got to stretch for it every day. Starting off well is good, but finishing well is better.

This is most encouraging because it means my stumbles and spills in the past can be made up for—by confessing them and living for Christ now. Maybe I committed a whopper of a sin last year or maybe the last few months have been bad ones for me. If I just get up and start running hard now, I can still win the race.

The crown and glory—Watson says—are not for the perfect, not for the people who were saved in infancy or who have lived for Christ for sixty years, but for people who finish well, for the ones who stay in the race and run it, doggedly, if not so gracefully.

His second allusion to a magnificent home. If you poured the foundation with liquid diamonds and then quit, what would you have? You’d have a very expensive foundation, but no home. The effort and expense of that foundation are lost because you don’t pour a foundation in order to have a foundation, you pour a foundation in order to have a place to live!

In the same way, you don’t start the Christian life in order to start the Christian life, but in order to live the Christian life!

There’s a house a block or two over from where my dad lives (and where I grew up). When I was about fifteen years old, the people began a big remodeling job. Today—30 years later—the stucco around the upstairs window is still not painted! Think of the money they poured into the job and the hard work they did to fix up the house! It looks worse than it did when I was a boy!

If you’ve started well in the Christian life, God bless you! But don’t rest with a good start! Finish the job. Work for Christ till He promotes you to heaven.

That’s the first incentive for persevering. The second has a slightly unpleasant sound to it, but, if you think about it, you’ll see that it’s good news indeed. Here it is:

Nothing makes hard work more bearable than knowing that quitting time is near. Nothing makes it harder than knowing you’ve got a long, long, long time to go.

Is the believer’s life full of hard work—and some of it very unpleasant? Yes it is: the Bible says so. That can really get to you…until you remember you’re almost finished. Nobody here will be working and suffering for Christ in a hundred years! That sounds like a long time—until you compare it to the time we’ll have after work!

Running the race for twenty or fifty or eighty years sounds hard, but not when you remember that the crown we win in this life will be worn forever and will never wilt or fade or lose its glory!

What would you think of the baseball player who quit one day before being called up to the Major Leagues? Or the man who committed suicide because of his poverty, only to have the winning lottery ticket in his pocket? You’d feel for that man—so near, yet so far! If he had only hung on another day, another hour or two…

Then remember that your pilgrimage through this world is a short one—even a long life is like a vapor that rises from a hot cup of coffee, like the morning fog that burns off by 8:30, like the cramp in your leg that goes away as soon as you stand up.

Think hard on these things! Think hard of how near heaven is! Unlike the men before the flood, you don’t have to hang on for another eight hundred years! It will only be a few years—at the most—and then you’ll be in heaven with Christ, far above the problems that confused and hurt you so badly in this life.

You think the saints in glory are still worried about their bills? You think they’re tossing and turning about their health? Or losing their jobs or making a hard decision? No, they’re laughing their heads off for joy! They’re celebrating life and the party goes on forever!

Are you tired? Are you discouraged? Are you tempted to give up? If you are, I have to remind you: you’re almost home. Hang on till you get there!

This is the second exhortation. The third one is more negative, but just as useful…

The Bible teaches that your responsibility to God is tied to your privileges from God. To whom much is given, much will be required. To be an unbelieving American—for example—is far worse than being an unbelieving tribesman from New Guinea. Why? Because we have access to the Word of God; anyone in American who wants to hear the Gospel can hear it. The tribesman, however, does not have the opportunity (many of them don’t, at least). This does not mean his sins are not sinful or that he is saved because he didn’t have the chance to believe in Christ! But it does mean that—on the Day of Judgment—God will be much harder on the American who blinded himself to the light than on the tribesman who had far less light.

Apply this reasoning to the apostate (or one who professes Christ and falls away), and you’ll see how terrible it is to not persevere. An apostate knows the Gospel, has professed it, and has many helps in sustaining the life he has begun. But he doesn’t sustain it! He resists the Gospel he hears on Sunday morning; the Bible he used to read every day now collects dust on a shelf somewhere in the house (or maybe in the car!). Friends who try to help him are politely ignored or even told off for butting into his personal life.

If the Tribesman deserves eternal punishment for his life, what does the Apostate deserve? This is what the Book of Hebrews teaches in the famous warning passages!

The implied answer is: the Apostate of today is far worse off than the man who fell away from the Mosaic Law! For he had more light than the old man did, and he put it under a bushel!

Falling away from Christ is not a minor thing! Every sin is serious, but apostasy is the worst of them all! What a terrible thing it is to know the Gospel, profess it for a time, live in its light, only to slip back into the Shadow!

We ought to pray earnestly for people who have done this. And make sure we don’t do it! Not formally and publicly. And not secretly in our hearts.

This is the third motivations to persevere: it is a bitter medicine, but good for you. The last one is also good for you, but quite a bit sweeter.

On this point, Watson speaks directly to our age. Evangelical Christians are rightly afraid of mixing works with faith as the means of salvation. We mustn’t do that! We are saved by grace alone through faith alone!

But in insisting on faith alone, we must be careful to not strip faith of its true character: saving faith is obedient faith, a faith that perseveres. We are not saved by acknowledging Christ, but by believing in Him. And believing in Him is another way of saying, trusting Him. And trusting Christ can be seen—or not seen—in our lives.

The Bible very plainly teaches that unless we persevere in faith, we will not be saved! "He who endures to the end, the same shall be saved". But this is not what the Puritan is getting at here!

He’s saying when we persevere, we will be saved, beyond the shadow of a doubt! If God has promised to save those who persevere in Christ, they who persevere in Christ will be saved! Every last one of them! Including the one who weakly perseveres!

You have very good reasons to persevere! Now go do it and the love of Christ be with you all. Amen.