However interesting it is to trace the ways of faith through the dispensational dealings of God with man, it is of more practical importance to see how sovereign grace is interwoven with the believer's responsibility now. For now it is not only a dispensation of grace as distinct from law, but this present time is specially distinguished by what we may call the minute and careful operation of grace upon each believer, and which is as varied in the detail of its operation, as each individual saint may differ in circumstances, in character, and in need. Evidently while grace always must remain grace, and the believer always remains responsible for faithfulness in walk, the operation of grace must be a moral process in each soul, during which every energy of the new nature is called into active exercise, and where the sustaining power of God is seen in. every moment of weakness, His watchful care in every hour of danger, and His strength in every victory. This is seen in the every day life of believers now, it is God's way with His saints. And since He has given us the relationship of children, how could He act otherwise? Redemption has brought us into a place where we can say “Abba Father,” and as Father He deals with us. Perhaps no scripture more explicitly declares the grace of God and the responsibility of the believer, combining—and giving each its true place than Phil. 2:12, 1312Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12‑13), “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” —here is the believer's responsibility; “for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure,” —here is God's grace. And both are so combined that the grace of God has the first place, as it must have; for He works in us, then we “will” and “do.”
The word of God assures eternal life to every believer on the Lord Jesus Christ; not a question of attaining eternal life after he believes, but a free and absolute gift at the moment. On the other hand the same word contains warnings, promises, and exhortations as if our salvation depended upon our own diligence. We know that there is a blessed and divine connection between the assurance and the warning. The Word of God is perfect. To sever the one from the other, because of human inability to grasp both, has not only divided believers into two opposing schools—and this is the lesser evil—but it has opposed one part of God's truth to another. This is not faith; in its root it is infidelity. The result is that those who are simply occupied with one side of the truth have evolved principles which are contrary to the plainest statements. For if because of the warnings to believers it is inferred that a soul born of God may after all be lost, what becomes of the assurance of eternal life? If on the other hand because life is eternal, this certainty is used to lessen, if not to deny, the sense of responsibility, then the solemn word of warning is practically set aside, that “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” So evident is it, that not a word can be omitted, added, or displaced, without marring the truth and injuring our own souls. The simple bow to the whole truth, and to such God gives unshaken faith.
Salvation is a free gift. Holiness also is a gift; none could possess it if God did not bestow it. But our salvation expresses the new and blessed relationship into which we are brought once and forever to God. Holiness is both a gift and a moral quality, and being a quality admits of development and progression, and being a moral quality, it is not impressed upon us by the simple “fiat” of God, but He works in us to will and to do.
The infidel has dared to say that there are contradictions in the Bible. He forgets that he will be judged by that word. But saints sometimes feel a difficulty in discerning the perfect accord between every part of it. This is sometimes due to erroneous teaching, sometimes to insubjection of heart to the Word. Still there are cases when a soul really desires to learn, not doubting the perfectness of the Word, but feeling his own ignorance, and especially when misapprehension of the Truth touches communion with God, or shakes the assurance of having eternal life, and thus instils a fear that perhaps after all he may be a castaway. But there is no statement so reiterated as that declaring the believer has everlasting life-statements so plain that the most untaught can understand. The gift of this eternal life, by Him whose life is the light of men, is the theme of the earlier part of John's Gospel. “Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” And again in the same chapter, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” Nor is it only that this blessed truth is frequently repeated, but the form is varied, as if the Spirit would array the divine assurance in different colored robes, so as to fax it indelibly upon the hearts of His saints. “Never perish,” “Nothing shall take them out of my hand,” “I am the living bread—if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever,” and so of the water that He gives, it springs up into everlasting life. We need not ask why eternal life has so full a place in the Gospel of John; it is this Gospel which presents the Son of God, although a man, made flesh; yet the Word that was God, therefore the source of life, made man for the purpose of imparting life, the eternal life which was man's need. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of man.” Where a fuller, though brief, development of this great fact than in John 6? And the power and proof of the Lord Jesus being the life will be declared at the last day. It is the Lord saying that He will guard the life so given until the body is fixed in incorruptibility and prepared for eternal glory. There is not even the possibility of losing it, it is not in our keeping, it is hid with Christ in God. He Himself is our life. Can Christ be lost? No more can our life. Wherever the word of God speaks of the life given to believers it is always with the character of being eternal. Therefore if any scripture seem to be at variance with this truth it must be that we do not apprehend its meaning. Who but an infidel would dare to say that scripture disagrees with itself?
Many true believers when harassed with fears have applied to themselves Heb. 6:4-6, and perhaps there is no other part of the word which shows how much one may possess and yet not have life. They tasted, were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, but not of life. Where this is not seen, Satan takes advantage of our ignorance to make us doubt that which is so plainly stated in the Gospel of John. I doubt if this scripture (Heb. 6) ever troubled a mere professor. The dread of having fallen away is rather a mark of having life. The more a lifeless professor had of outward privilege the farther would he be from feeling such a dread.
But what did those spoken of in this chapter possess? They were enlightened, and tasted of the heavenly gift; this does not go beyond the light which reaches the intellect but not the heart; the natural mind is able to make a profession of Christian truth. They had an intellectual taste of the heavenly gift, i.e., the truth of Christ (not Christ, the truth) was received by the mind; it was heavenly truth, for Christ was in heaven, and the revelation of the truth of Christ is a heavenly gift. It is intellect preferring gospel truth to law.
They were made partakers of the Holy Ghost. This is an advance upon the former, something more than mere mind assenting to revealed truth. There is a power dwelling in the church, the power of the Holy Ghost, and all within the sphere of that power feel and partake of it. But a man may be within the sphere of the power of the Holy Ghost as displayed in the assembly of God, without having the Holy Spirit as indwelling; for the Spirit only indwells where there is life. The power of the Holy Ghost as manifested among saints “builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit” is different from the Spirit dwelling in each believer as the power of life. When the, Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost filled the house, He was then the Spirit of power as witness of the ascended Christ. When the Lord Jesus breathed upon the disciples, saying “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” He was the Spirit of life.
Another characteristic follows, which was peculiar to that time, i.e., to the first age of the church, for then miracles accompanied the word. They had tasted of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come. By a word, many had been healed, some raised from the dead. “In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk,” said Peter to the lame beggar. “Aeneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.” To the dead Tabitha, he said Arise; but all was God's word, which was seen and enjoyed by all within the sphere of profession. Nor was it less a mark of power or of tasting the good word of God when Elymas was made blind; it was equally a testimony to the truth of the good word of God. But these miracles are the powers of the world to come. The coming age is the millennium which will be characterized by deliverance from the bondage of Satan. Samples of this delivering power were given by the Apostles. Nor was miraculous energy limited to the Apostles. Whoever preached the word, the Lord confirmed it by signs following. Living amid such displays of power, and in measure sharing it, those of whom the Apostle speaks tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the coming age. Thus we have here enlightenment, tasting the heavenly gift, partaking of the Holy Ghost (as did Balaam, king Saul, and Judas) tasting the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, but not one word of eternal life. Wonderful as all this is, these advantages enjoyed by man without life, they are but the natural result of a risen Christ, whose power and coming glory were witnessed to, and if we may so say, “sampled” in those early days, and their significance apprehended at least in measure by mere man, who by intellect could distinguish between the grace and glory of the gospel, and the dry hard commands of the law. But all was apart from living faith. Having no life, when the testing moment came—as come it will to every professor—all without faith fall away. Therefore Heb. 6:4-64For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, 6If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. (Hebrews 6:4‑6) shows us a profession which might be renounced, not a life which can be lost. The enjoyment of privilege, the possession of gift, is distinct from eternal life.
But if life is eternal, if nothing can take the believer out of His hand, what is the meaning of “Let us therefore fear lost, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it “; “Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest lest any man fail after the same manner of unbelief,” and, “Now the just shall live by faith, but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him? “
The Hebrews were in peculiar danger of going back to their old Judaism; the Gentile professor was not nearly so liable to return to paganism—though that was possible. For the law and the ordinances were of God and had been clothed with divine authority. The Hebrew who had no real faith, but who by profession of Christ's name was reckoned among the saints and therefore a partaker of all the outward privileges of God's assembly, never did, nor could break away from the old things which the death and resurrection of Christ had annulled for faith. And even as Israel in the wilderness went back into Egypt in their hearts, so the Hebrew not born of God would go back again into the Judaism he had professed to have given up. The gospel which he heard was not mixed with faith; of necessity he came short of God's rest, like those unfaithful Israelites who fell in the wilderness, never entered the earthly Canaan. The Apostle refers to them as a warning to the Hebrew believers. There were among them those who were true, and of them the Apostle says, “We are persuaded better things of you,” and again, “We are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” Why was he so persuaded? Because lie knew the power of eternal life, and the pledged word of our Lord, “I will raise him up at the last day.”
Nevertheless the warning is addressed to them all as a company of professors of faith in the Lord Jesus. These same warnings speak now to all who bear the name of Christ. Where there is real faith in the heart, confession with the mouth surely follows, but there may be, alas! a pseudo-confession of the mouth while the heart is full of guile. Paul in writing to the Philippians speaks of some in the church who were enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end was destruction. Jude also speaks of corrupt men who had crept in unawares.