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SAFE IN THE HANDS OF GOD AND OF CHRIST
Controversy exists regarding the safety of God's children. Some insist that those whom God has saved can be eternally lost by their unfaithfulness. Others are just as adamant that the true children of God can never be lost. We wonder just how it is that a person can know that they have eternal life if they are subject to losing it. After all John wrote: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God,” (1 John 5:13). Just how is that one who has eternal life can die? We wonder just how it is that a person can, having once been declared by God to be righteous because of the finished work of Christ, experience God's change whereby He declares them later to be unrighteous? “And by him [Christ] all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses,” (Acts 13:39). Especially do we doubt this because God says that He never changes: “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed,” (Malachi 3:6). There are a number of other things we cannot understand if a child of God can be eternally lost. For instance, what about all those things written about in the past tense that God reckons as already true of His children because of the work of Christ? Paul wrote: “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. 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,” (Romans 8:29-30). These are all things God did for His children. They are written in the past tense. They are already accomplished in the mind and plan of God. Shall God change His mind? Why? Did He learn something new about His child after He predestinated him? What a horrible blasphemy to think that God was or is ignorant! We wonder also at just how the words of Jesus can be true if a child of God can be lost. He said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand,” (John 10:27-29). Someone objects saying, “What if they stop following the Lord?” Ah! But they do not! His “sheep” do follow Him! He said so! They do not stop following Him! He said so! And they are safely kept in both His hand and the hand of His Father. Rejoice!
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