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SECURELY KEPT BY TWO SPIRITS

If you had the perfect mentor to train you, and He was also the perfect protector to guard you, the best ever instructor to teach you, the most eloquent debater to persuade you of solid truth - how could you ever fall away from that? When it comes to adoption, the Holy Spirit is all of the above.

A web site containing a Christian essay by H. W. Smith has the title: “Difficulties Concerning Doubts.” And the writer shares this story:

“I remember once seeing the anger and sorrow of a mother’s heart deeply stirred by a little doubting on the part of one of her children. She had left her two little girls with me while she did some errands. One of them played contentedly until her mother came back. The other one first wondered whether her mother would remember to come back for her. She then was afraid that her mother would indeed forget to come back for her because she had been naughty. She worked herself into quite a state.” And then this Christian minister and author adds: “I will not easily forget the look on that mother’s face, when the weeping little girl told what was the matter with her. Grief, wounded love, anger, and pity were struggling within the mother. She hardly knew whether she or the child was more at fault that such doubts could be possible.”

This same writer then reminds us of the great parable of the one lost sheep. You remember “the ninety and nine safely in the fold” and how the Good Shepherd goes out into the wilderness to find the one stray? Over and over in the Bible, God promises us: “I love you. I have come to save you. When you accept My Son, you HAVE eternal life. You HAVE crossed over. You WILL NOT be condemned.” And then Dr. Smith asks, in essence, “Do we not believe Him? Will God not do what He has said He will do?” Here’s a bit more of the essay:

“Any thoughts that are different from what He Himself has said are wrong. They dishonor Him. It is always sinful to indulge in doubts throughout your Christian life. Doubts and discouragements come from Satan and are always untrue. A direct and emphatic denial is the only way to meet them.”

It was interesting to us, in doing research for this very hard subject, to leave the Internet and our search engines, and go back into the archives and find something written in our own Adventist denomination clear back in 1957. Sometimes we think these debates and discussions are the latest thing, but Christians have been prayerfully sorting this one out since the Middle Ages. Anyway, in the book Questions on Doctrine, the team of writers makes this point clearly:

“The child of God may have confidence and assurance. It is our privilege, and really our heritage as the blood-bought children of God, to have ‘full assurance’ (Colossians 2:2), to enjoy ‘full assurance of faith’ (Hebrews 10:22), and to know the ‘full assurance of hope unto the end’ (Hebrews 6:11). We have confidence in Him (I John 5:14), ‘confidence toward God’ (I John 3:21).” Then they add: “To the true children of God” — remember that crying, doubting, distressed child in our opening story — “this experience is not hearsay; it is not veneer or make-believe; it is a real, genuine experience. They can say with all confidence, yet with humility, ‘We know that we have passed from death to life’ (I John 3:14); We know ‘that we are in Him’ (I John 2:5); ‘We know that He abideth in us’ (I John 3:24).”

I mentioned yesterday, and it’s only fair to say it again, that here at the Voice of Prophecy, and I think it’s an accurate portrayal of our Adventist heritage as well . . . that we would be still be classified, at least somewhat, in the Arminian camp. For this reason: we join Martin Luther in believing that although a Christian can be joyful and happy in full assurance of salvation, liberty of conscience and freedom of the will does mean that a man or woman could — on THEIR side — purposefully choose to reject the faith they once held. They could spurn the adoption they once enjoyed. Another web site described Arminianism this way:
“. . . That a true believer may ‘make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience.’”

Yet a third adds:

“The same free will by which the individual accepts Christ is itself able to depart from God after he is saved.”

Does this do damage to our assurance, then? Even if we are not on the constant spiritual roller coaster of “mortal sin, confession, mortal sin, confession, saved, lost, restored, saved, lost, restored,” are we equally vulnerable to a future falling away? If my heart is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” how can I know that ten years from now I won’t wilfully rebel and be lost?

I’d like to return to the same book we’ve been savoring for close to five weeks now: Knowing God, by J. I. Packer. Returning to our opening story, this was the little girl’s dilemma. She didn’t really KNOW the goodness and faithfulness of Mom. Would her mother forget to come back for her? Would her mother cast her aside because of recent transgressions? Her fears were unfounded because she did not truly know the way Mother was and always would be.

Dr. Packer, as we’ve already mentioned, celebrates with all Christians the promises of Romans 8, where “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” But then, in verses 15 and 16 of that same passage, we find this guarantee:

“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit” — “capital ‘S’ Spirit” — “of sonship. And by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” Now here’s verse 16; notice: “The Spirit himself testifies with OUR spirit that we are God’s children.”

Well, that’s a lot of “spirits” there, but what it boils down to — and you have to read the passage three or four times — is this. All of God’s sons and daughters can enjoy what Christians call the “dual witness.” Our own spirit — our soul, our spiritual understanding, our “conscious self,” as Packer describes it — is always learning and growing in the understanding that we are adopted. As we read God’s Word, as we celebrate His promises, as we go to church, as we fellowship with fellow believers — our brothers and sisters in the faith — we are always being solidified in our knowledge that God’s love for us is everlasting and that He’ll never abandon us. That we’ve “crossed over from death to life.” Our joy in adoption just gets bigger and better and more unshakeable every passing day.

In addition, the Holy Spirit Himself, the third member of the Godhead, is always reminding us of this same fact: He roots us and grounds us and strengthens in us the ideal of Abba, of God as a bedrock, steady “Daddy” who will never let us out of His hand. Again in verse 17: “The Spirit Himself testifies with OUR spirit.” Of course, the Holy Spirit is also involved in our own spirit’s understanding — that’s “little ‘s’ spirit” — so He is working through both avenues of our growing faith. Hence “the dual witness.” Another great Internet essay without an author’s name attached made this point:

“The witness of the Spirit of Truth is not an inward feeling of consciousness of pardon; it is a witness recorded in the imperishable words of Holy Scripture.”

Friend, I think it’s true in all of Scripture that we’ve got two legs. We can run toward God, or away from Him. God promises to hold us fast, but He doesn’t promise to hold us captive. Would we want it any other way? Would we want to be in a marriage, even a perfect one, where you were held hostage and could not leave? Or be adopted by a Father, even a wonderful, divine one, where you were prohibited from severing the ties? We wouldn’t want that, and a loving God doesn’t put us in that prison. But weigh with me the incredible KEEPING power of God. Remember Romans 8 again – “nothing can separate us.” The late Dr. L. S. Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, once wrote, in his book Salvation:

“Could it be possible that God would so love an individual as to give His Son to die for him, and still love him to the extent of following him with the pleadings and drawings of His grace until He has won that soul into His own family and created him anew by the impartation of His own divine nature, and then be careless as to what becomes of the one He has thus given His all to procure?”

My friend Morris Venden, who used to host our weekend broadcast, believes in the free will of Christians, and so preaches a sermon where he proclaims: “I believe in ‘once saved, almost always saved’!” But friend, he has another sermon — one I’ve heard many times — entitled “Hard to Be Lost.” And he reminds us of how desperately God is going to hold us in His hand . . . in every conceivable way. Is it possible for a Christian to fight through all the great promises of the Bible? Through the wonderful sermons we hear and the encouraging Christian books we read? Can we rebel against God by fighting through a mother’s prayers for our salvation? Can we ignore God’s providences for us, all the blessings He’s given? The list goes on and on. And at the end of the day, the answer is yes. Yes, you can fight against God’s saving, holding, keeping power. You can get yourself un-adopted if you most determinedly insist upon it. But it’s hard to do that. God loves you so much that it’s exceedingly hard to be lost.

And that should make it exceedingly easy to be joyful.