Q. “Gershom,” you ask how is it that the saints whom Peter addresses as, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,” (1 Peter 1:2), are told in 2 Peter 1:10, “Give diligence to make your calling and election sure?”
A. It seems strange to say to a person who possesses a thing to “lay hold” of it, and “make sure” of it, as you find in many places — yet it’s always the way in Scripture. Timothy had eternal life, and yet he is told to “Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called” (1 Tim. 6). There are many instances of the kind. Scripture always looks upon the Christian, in the two-fold condition, “as having nothing, and yet possessing all thing.” It is the riddle of the Christian state. If he looks at Christ on high, and the changeless purpose of God who has called him, he knows that “He who (had) begun a good work in (him) will perform it,” and that born of God to-day, he never can be not born of God. If Christ bore his sins and put them away, there never can come a moment when He did not bear them. He is united to Christ on high, and knows it by the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. To all this condition nothing can be added, and it never changes. But when he looks at himself below, he is a poor worm, in weakness, and feebleness on earth, and has got nothing yet, unless the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, the earnest of all he possesses in Christ. Then he must get to heaven, and “so run,” that he “may attain,” “Lay hold” on what he has got, “make his calling and election sure” to himself, in a walk in which God ministers to his soul the joy and secure sense of his position. It cannot be made sure to God, because He has called him, and chosen him. A walk, as detailed in the preceding verses (5-9), fills the heart with the sense of security, and joy in which he dwells. It is the atmosphere of the place where God dwells in unhindered blessedness; and his “entrance” is “abundant’’ into that scene, when his time has come to enter it. Thus he makes it sure to his own heart.
Words of Truth 3:232-236.